The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  A small, middle-aged man with steel-rimmed spectacles rose up from the front row of the inmates and lifted a hand to acknowledge the applause. This the Governor silenced with a brisk mutter of words of command. ‘Now will all those of you who live in, please go out. And those of you who live out, please stay in. You’ll be escorted to the boardroom for drinks and light refreshments.’

  The screws who had been waiting, stationed round the walls like sentries, reclaimed their charges. I saw the director who had been applauded walking towards them with his knees slightly bent, moving with a curious hopping motion, as though he were a puppet on a string. I hadn’t seen his face clearly but something in the way he moved seemed familiar, although I couldn’t remember where I’d met him before, or what crime he might, or might not, have committed.

  ‘Never went much for Shakespeare when I was at school,’ Quintus Blake, the Governor, told me. He was holding a flabby sausage roll in one hand and, in the other, a glass of warmish white wine which, for sheer undrinkability, had Pommeroy’s house blanc beaten by a short head. ‘Thought the chap was a bit long-winded and couldn’t make his meaning clear at times. But, by God, doesn’t he come into his own in the prison service?’

  ‘You mean, you use him as a form of punishment?’

  ‘That’s what I’d’ve thought when I was at school. That’s what I’ll tell Ken Fry if he complains we’re giving the chaps too good a time. If they misbehave, I’ll tell him we put them on Shakespeare for twenty-eight days.’ Ken Fry is our new, abrasive, young Home Secretary who lives for the delighted cheers of the hangers and floggers at party conferences. Given time, he’ll reintroduce the rack as a useful adjunct to police questioning.

  ‘The truth of the matter’ – Quintus bit bravely into the tepid flannel of his sausage roll – ‘is that none of the fellows on Shakespeare duty have committed a single offence since rehearsals began.’

  ‘Is that really true?’

  ‘Well, with one exception.’ He took a swig at the alleged Entre Deux Mers, decided that one was enough and put his glass down on the boardroom table. ‘Ken Fry says prison is such a brilliant idea because no one commits crimes here. Well, of course, they do. They bully each other and get up to sexual shenanigans which put me in mind of the spot behind the fives court at Coldsands. I don’t know what it is about prison that always reminds me of my schooldays. Anyway, as soon as they landed parts in the Dream, they were as good as gold, nearly all of them. And for that I’ve got to hand it to Gribble.’

  ‘Gribble?’

  ‘Matthew Gribble. Inmate in charge of Shakespeare. Just about due for release as he’s got all the remission possible.’

  ‘He produced the play?’

  ‘And even got a performance out of that human bulldozer who played bully Bottom. One-time boxer who’d had his brains turned into mashed potatoes quite early in his career.’

  ‘Gribble was the man who stood up at the end?’

  ‘I thought I’d get this lot to give him a round of applause.’ The Governor looked at the well-meaning elderly guests, the puzzled but hopeful social workers, who were taking their refreshments, as they took all the difficulties in their lives, with grim determination. It was then I remembered Matthew Gribble, an English teacher at a Berkshire polytechnic, who had killed his wife.

  ‘I think,’ I said, ‘I defended him once.’

  ‘I know you did!’ The Governor smiled. ‘And he wants you to do the trick again before the Board of Visitors. I said I’d try and arrange it because, so far as I’m concerned, he’s an absolutely model prisoner.’

  All this happened at a time when Claude Erskine-Brown (who had not yet become a QC – I call them Queer Customers) took to himself a young lady pupil named Wendy Crump. Mizz Crump was a person with high legal qualifications but no oil painting – as Uncle Tom, of blessed memory, would have been likely to say. She had, I believe, been hand-picked by Claude’s wife, the Portia of our Chambers, who had not yet got her shapely bottom on to the Bench and been elevated to the title of Mrs Justice Phillida Erskine-Brown, a puisne judge of the High Court.

  ‘Your Mizz Crump,’ I told Claude, when we met at breakfast time in the Taste-Ee-Bite eatery a little to the west of our Chambers, ‘seems a bit of an all-round asset.’

  ‘All round, Rumpole. You’ve said it. Wendy Crump is very all round indeed.’ He gave a mirthless laugh and spoke as a man who might have preferred a slimline pupil.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind,’ I told him, ‘but I asked her to look up the effect of self-induced drunkenness on crimes of violence. She came up with the answer in a couple of shakes, with reference to all the leading cases.’

  ‘I’ll agree she’s a dab hand at the law.’

  ‘Well, isn’t that what you need a pupil for?’ I knew it was a silly question as soon as I’d asked it. An ability to mug up cases on manslaughter was not at all what Claude required of a pupil. He wanted someone willing, husky-voiced and alluring. He wanted a heart-shaped face and swooping eyelashes which could drive the poor fellow insane when they were topped by a wig. He wanted to fall in love and make elaborate plans for satisfying his cravings, which would be doomed to disaster. What the poor old darling wanted was yet another opportunity to make a complete ass of himself, and these longings were unlikely to be fulfilled by Wendy Crump.

  ‘What a barrister needs, Rumpole, in a busy life with heavy responsibilities and a great deal of nervous tension is, well, a little warmth, a little adoration.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if Mizz Crump didn’t adore you, Claude.’

  ‘Don’t even suggest it!’ The clever Crump’s pupil master gave a shudder.

  ‘Anyway, don’t you get plenty of warmth and affection from Philly?’

  ‘Philly’s been on circuit for weeks.’ Claude took a quick swig of the coffee from the Old Bailey machine and didn’t seem to enjoy it. ‘And when she’s here she spends all her time criticizing me.’

  ‘How extraordinary.’ I simulated amazement.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it? Philly’s away and I have to spend my days stuck here with Wendy Crump. But not my nights, Rumpole. Never, ever, my nights.’

  I lost his attention as Nick Davenant from King’s Bench Walk passed us, followed by his pupil Jenny Attienzer. She was tall, blonde, willowy and carrying his coffee. Poor old Claude looked as sick as a dog.

  That afternoon I was seated at my desk, smoking a small cigar and gazing into space – the way I often spend my time when not engaged in Court – when there was a brisk knock at the door and Wendy Crump entered and asked if I had a set of Cox’s Criminal Reports. ‘Not in here,’ I told her. ‘Try upstairs. Cox’s Reports are Soapy Sam Ballard’s constant reading.’ And then, because she looked disappointed at not finding these alluring volumes at once, I did my best to cheer her up. ‘Claude thinks you’re a wonderful pupil.’ I exaggerated, of course. ‘I told him you were a dab hand at the law. He’s very lucky.’

  It’s rare nowadays that you see anyone blush, but Wendy’s usually pale cheeks were glowing. ‘I’m the lucky one,’ she said, and added, to my amazement, ‘to be doing my pupillage with Erskine-Brown. Everyone I know is green with envy.’ Everyone she knew, I thought, must be strangely ignorant of life at the Bailey, where prosecution by Claude has come to be regarded as the key to the gaolhouse door.

  Wendy ended her testimonial with ‘I honestly do regard it as an enormous privilege.’ I supposed the inmates of Worsfield would consider basketball or macramé a privilege if it got them out of solitary confinement. Looking at the enthusiastic Mizz Crump I thought that Claude had been unfair about her appearance. It was just that she had acquired the look of an intelligent and cheerful middle-aged person whilst still in her twenties. She was, I suppose, what would be called considerably overweight, but there was nothing wrong with that. With her wiry hair scraped back, her spectacles and her willing expression, she looked like the photographs of the late Dorothy L. Sayers, a perfectly pleasant sight.

 
‘I just hope I can be a help to him.’

  ‘I’m sure you can.’ Although not, I thought, the sort of help the ever-hopeful Claude was after.

  ‘I could never rise to be a barrister like that.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s just as well,’ I encouraged her.

  ‘I mean I could never stand up and speak with such command – and in such a beautiful voice too. Of course he’s handsome, which means he can absolutely dominate a courtroom. You need to be handsome to do that, don’t you?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘thank you very much.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean that. Of course you dominate all sorts of courtrooms. And it doesn’t matter what you look like.’ She gave a little gasp to emphasize her point. ‘It doesn’t matter in the least!’

  ‘The extraordinary thing is that his name is Weaver. He was on the same floor as me, a couple of cell doors away.’ Matthew Gribble spoke as if he were describing a neighbour in a country village. ‘Bob Weaver. He used to laugh at me because I kept getting books from the library. He was sure I got all the ones with dirty bits in because I knew where to look for them. Of course, in those days, he couldn’t tell the difference between soft porn and Mansfield Park. He was hardly literate.’

  ‘You say he was.’

  ‘Until I taught him to read, that is.’

  ‘You taught him?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I honestly don’t know how I’d’ve got through the years here if I hadn’t had that to do.’ He gave a small, timid smile. ‘As a matter of fact, I enjoyed the chance to teach again.’

  ‘How did you manage it?’

  ‘Oh, I read to him at first. I read all the stories I’d liked when I was a child. We started with Winnie-the-Pooh and got on to Treasure Island and Kidnapped. Then he began to want to read for himself.’

  ‘So you decided to cast him?’

  ‘If we ever did the Dream. He looked absolutely right. A huge mountain of a man with the outlook of a child. And kind, too. He even had the right name for it.’

  ‘You mean, to play Nick, the weaver?’

  ‘Exactly! I asked him to do it a long time ago. Two years at least. I asked him if he’d like to play Bottom.’

  ‘And he agreed?’

  ‘No.’ The timid smile returned. ‘He looked profoundly shocked. He thought I’d made some sort of obscene suggestion.’

  We had been in the Worsfield interview room four and a bit years before, sitting on either side of the same table, with the bright blue paint and the solitary cactus, and the walls and door half glass so the screws could look in and see what we were up to. Then, we had been talking about his teaching, his production with the Cowshott drama group, the performances which he got out of secretaries and teachers and a particularly dramatic district nurse – and of his wife who apparently hated him and his amateur theatricals. When she flew at him and tore at his face with her fingernails during one of their nightly quarrels over the washing-up, he had stabbed her through the heart. I thought I had done the case with my usual brilliance and got the jury to find provocation and reduce the crime to manslaughter, for which the Judge, taking the view that a kitchen knife is not the proper reply to an attack with fingernails, had given him seven years. As the Governor told me, he was a model prisoner. With full remission he’d be out by the end of the month. That is, unless he was convicted on the charge I was now concerned with. If the Board of Visitors did him for dangerous assault on a prison warden, he’d forfeit a large chunk of his remission.

  ‘The incident we have to talk about,’ I said, ‘happened in the carpenter’s shop.’

  ‘Yes,’ he sighed, ‘I suppose we have to talk about it.’

  All subjects seemed to him, I guessed, flat, stale and unprofitable after the miracle of getting an illiterate East End prizefighter to enjoy acting Shakespeare. I remembered his account of the last quarrel with his wife. She had told him he was universally despised. She had mocked him for his pathetic sexual attainments while, at the same time, accusing him, quite without foundation, of abusing his child by a previous marriage. He had heard it all many, many times before. It was only when she told him that he had produced Hamlet as though it were a television situation comedy that their quarrel ended in violence.

  ‘Yes, the carpenter’s shop.’ Matthew Gribble sighed. Then he cheered up slightly and said, ‘We were building the set for the Dream.’

  I had a note of the case given to me by the Governor. There were only four members of the cast working on the scenery, one civilian carpenter and a prison officer in overall charge. His name was Steve Barrington.

  ‘Do you know’ – my client’s voice was full of wonder – ‘Barrington gave up a job as a teacher to become a screw? Isn’t that extraordinary?’

  ‘Do you think he regrets it? He may not have got chisels thrown at him in class, with any luck.’

  What was thrown was undoubtedly the tool which Matthew had been using. The screw was talking to one of the carpenters and didn’t see the missile before it struck his cheek. The other cast members, except for one, said they were busy and didn’t see who launched the attack.

  ‘I put the chisel on the bench and I was just turning round to tack the false turf on to the mound we’d built. I didn’t see who threw it. I only know that I didn’t. I told you the truth in the other case. Why should I lie to you about this?’

  Because you don’t want to spend another unnecessary minute as a guest of Her Majesty, I thought of saying, but resisted the temptation. It was not for me to pass judgement, not at any stage of the proceedings. My problem was that there was a witness who said he’d seen Matthew Gribble throw the chisel. A witness who seemed to have no reason to tell lies about his friend and educator. It was Bob Weaver who had made the journey from illiteracy to Shakespeare, and been rewarded with the part of bully Bottom.

  ‘Rumpole, a terrible thing has happened in Chambers!’ Mizz Liz Probert sat on the edge of my client’s chair, her face pale but determined, her hands locked as though in prayer, her voice low and doom-laden. It was as though she were announcing, to waiting relations on the quayside, the fact that the Titanic had struck an iceberg.

  ‘Not the nail-brush disappeared again?’

  ‘Rumpole, can’t you ever be serious?’

  ‘Hardly ever when it comes to things that have happened in Chambers.’

  ‘Well, this time, perhaps your attitude will be more helpful.’

  ‘It depends on whether I want to be helpful. What is it? Don’t tell me. Henry blew the coffee money on a dud horse?’

  ‘Claude has committed the unforgivable sin.’

  ‘You mean, adultery? Well, that’s something of an achievement. His attempts usually end in all-round frustration.’

  ‘That too, most probably. No. This is what he said in the clerk’s room.’

  ‘Go on. Shock me.’

  ‘Kate Inglefield, who’s an assistant solicitor in Damiens, heard him say it. And, of course, she was tremendously distressed.’

  ‘Can you tell me what he said?’ I wondered. ‘Or are you too embarrassed? Would you prefer to write it down?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Rumpole. He asked Henry if he’d seen his fat pupil about recently.’

  There followed a heavy silence, during which I thought I was meant to say something. So I said, ‘Go on.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Go on till you get to the bit that caused Kate Inglefield – not, I would have thought, a girl who distresses easily – such pain.’

  ‘Rumpole, I’ve said it. Do I have to say it again?’

  ‘Perhaps if you do, I’ll be able to follow your argument.’

  ‘Erskine-Brown said to Henry, “Have you seen my fat pupil?” ’

  ‘Recently?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He said recently.’

  ‘Really, Rumpole. Recently is hardly the point.’

  ‘So the point is my fat pupil?’

  ‘Of course it is!’

  I took out a small cigar and plac
ed it between the lips. Sorting out the precise nature of the charge against Claude would require a whiff of nicotine. ‘And he was referring – I merely ask for clarification – to his pupil Mizz Crump?’

  ‘Of course he meant Wendy, yes.’

  ‘And he called her fat?’

  ‘It was’ – Liz Probert described it as though murder had been committed – ‘an act of supreme chauvinism. It’s daring to assume that women should alter the shape of their bodies just for the sake of pleasing men. Disgusting!’

  ‘But isn’t it’ – I was prepared, as usual, to put forward the argument for the defence – ‘a bit like saying the sky’s blue?’

  ‘It’s not at all like that. It’s judging a woman by her appearance.’

  ‘And isn’t the other judging the sky by its appearance?’

  ‘I suppose I should have known!’ Mizz Probert stood up, all her sorrow turned to anger. ‘There’s no crime so contemptible that you won’t say a few ill-chosen words in its favour. And, don’t you dare light that thing until I’m out of the room.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re busy.’

  ‘I certainly am. We’re having a special meeting tonight of the Sisterhood of Radical Lawyers. We aim to blacklist anyone who sends Claude briefs or appears in Court with him. We’re going to petition the Judges not to listen to his arguments and Ballard’s got to give him notice to quit.’

  ‘Mizz Liz,’ I said, ‘how would you describe me?’

  ‘As a defender of hopeless causes.’

  ‘No, I mean my personal appearance.’

  ‘Well, you’re fairly short.’ The prosecutor gave me the once-over. ‘Your nose is slightly purple, and your hair – what’s left of it – is curly and you’re …’

  ‘Go on, say it.’

  ‘Well, Rumpole. Let’s face it. You’re fat.’

  ‘You said it.’

  ‘Yes.’