The Collected Stories of Rumpole Page 14

  ‘You go if you like, Rumpole,’ he said as he vanished into a funereal Austin Princess. ‘I can’t see how it’s going to be of the slightest assistance.’

  THE THEATRE ROYAL, EAST GRIMBLE

  The Frere-Hartley Players

  present

  G. P. Frere and Maggie Hartley

  in

  ‘PRIVATE LIVES’

  by

  NOËL COWARD

  with

  Alan Copeland

  Christine Hope

  Directed by Daniel Derwent

  Stalls £1.50 and £1. Circle £1 and 75p.

  Matinées and Senior Citizens 50p.

  The Theatre Royal, an ornate but crumbling Edwardian Music Hall, which might once have housed George Formby and Rob Wilton, was bolted and barred. Albert and I stood in the rain and read a torn poster.

  A cat was rubbing itself against the poster. We heard the North Country voice of an elderly man calling ‘Puss … Puss … Bedtime, pussy.’

  The cat went and we followed, round to the corner where the stage-door man, Mr Croft, no doubt, was opening his door and offering a saucer of milk. We made ourselves known as a couple of lawyers and asked for a look at the scene.

  ‘Mr Derwent’s round the front of the house. First door on the right.’

  I moved up the corridor to a door and, opening it, had the unnerving experience of standing on a dimly lit stage. Behind me flapped a canvas balcony, and a view of the Mediterranean. As I wandered forward a voice called me out of the gloom.

  ‘Who is it? Down here, I’m in the Stalls Bar.’

  There was a light somewhere, a long way off. I went down some steps that led to the stalls and felt my way towards the light with Albert blundering after me. At last we reached the open glass door of a small bar, its dark-red walls hung with photographs of the company, and we were in the presence of a little gnome-like man, wearing a bow tie and a double-breasted suit, and that cheerily smiling but really quite expressionless apple-cheeked sort of face you see on some ventriloquist’s dolls. His boot-black hair looked as if it had been dyed. He admitted to Albert that he was Daniel Derwent and at the moment in charge of the Frere-Hartley Players.

  ‘Or what’s left of them. Decimated, that’s what we’ve been! If you’ve come with a two-hander for a couple of rather untalented juveniles, I’d be delighted to put it on. I suppose you are in the business.’

  ‘The business?’ I wondered what business he meant. But I didn’t wonder long.

  ‘Show business. The profession.’

  ‘No … Another … profession altogether.’

  I saw he had been working at a table in the empty bar, which was smothered with papers, bills and receipts.

  ‘Our old manager left us in a state of total confusion,’ Derwent said. ‘And my ear’s out to here answering the telephone.’

  ‘The vultures can’t hear of an actor shot in East Grimble but half the Character Men in Spotlight are after me for the job. Well, I’ve told everyone. Nothing’s going to be decided till after Maggie’s trial. We’re not reopening till then. It wouldn’t seem right, somehow. What other profession?’

  ‘We’re lawyers, Mr Derwent,’ Albert told him. ‘Defending.’

  ‘Maggie’s case?’ Derwent didn’t stop smiling.

  ‘My name’s Handyside of Instructing Solicitors. This is Mr Rumpole from London, junior Counsel for the defence.’

  ‘A London barrister. In the Sticks!’ The little Thespian seemed to find it amusing. ‘Well, Grimble’s hardly a number-one touring date. All the same, I suppose murder’s a draw. Anywhere … Care for a tiny rum?’

  ‘That’s very kind.’ It was bitter cold, the unused theatre seemed to be saving on central heating and I was somewhat sick at heart at the prospect of our defence. A rum would do me no harm at all.

  ‘Drop of orange in it? Or as she comes?’

  ‘As she comes, thank you.’

  ‘I always take a tiny rum, for the chords. Well, we depend on the chords, don’t we, in our professions.’

  Apart from a taste for rum I didn’t see then what I had in common, professionally or otherwise, with Mr Derwent. I wandered off with my drink in my hand to look at the photographs of the Frere-Hartley Players. As I did so I could hear the theatre manager chattering to Albert.

  ‘We could have done a bomb tonight. The money we’ve turned away. You couldn’t buy publicity like it,’ Derwent was saying.

  ‘No … No, I don’t suppose you could.’

  ‘Week after week all we get in the Grimble Argus is a little para. “Maggie Hartley took her part well.” And now we’re all over the front page. And we can’t play. It breaks your heart. It does really.’ I heard him freshen his rum with another slug from the bottle. ‘Poor old G. P. could have drawn more money dead than he ever could when he was alive. Well, at least he’s sober tonight, wherever he is.’

  ‘The late Mr G. P. Frere was fond of a drink occasionally?’ Albert made use of the probing understatement.

  ‘Not that his performance suffered. He didn’t act any worse when he was drunk.’

  I was looking at a glossy photograph of the late Mr G. P. Frere, taken about ten years ago I should imagine: it showed a man with grey sideburns and an open-necked shirt with a silk scarf round his neck and eyes that were self-consciously quizzical. A man who, despite the passage of the years, was still determined to go on saying ‘Who’s for tennis?’

  ‘What I admired about old G. P.,’ I heard Derwent say, ‘was his selfless concern for others! Never left you with the sole responsibility of entertaining the audience. He’d try to help by upstaging you. Or moving on your laugh line. He once tore up a newspaper all through my long speech in Waiting for Godot … Now you wouldn’t do that, would you, Mr Rumpole? Not in anyone’s long speech. Well, of course not.’

  He had moved, for his last remarks, to a point rather below, but still too close to, my left ear. I was looking at the photographs of a moderately pretty young girl, wearing a seafaring sweater, whose lips were parted as if to suck in a quick draft of ozone when out for a day with the local dinghy club.

  ‘Miss Christine Hope?’ I asked.

  ‘Miss Christine Hopeless I called her.’ This Derwent didn’t seem to have a particularly high opinion of his troupe. ‘God knows what G. P. saw in her. She did that audition speech from St Joan. All breathless and excited … as if she’d just run up four flights of stairs because the angel voices were calling her about a little part in Crossroads. “We could do something with her,” G. P. said. “I know what,” I told him. “Burn her at the stake.” ’

  I had come to a wall on which there were big photographs of various characters, a comic charlady, a beautiful woman in a white evening-dress, a duchess in a tiara, a neat secretary in glasses and a tattered siren who might have been Sadie Thompson in Rain if my theatrical memory served me right. All the faces were different, and they were all the faces of Maggie Hartley.

  ‘Your client. My leading lady. I suppose both our shows depend on her.’ Derwent was looking at the photographs with a rapt smile of appreciation. ‘No doubt about it. She’s good. Maggie’s good.’

  I turned to look at him, found him much too close and retreated a step. ‘What do you mean,’ I asked him, ‘by good exactly?’

  ‘There is a quality. Of perfect truthfulness. Absolute reality.’

  ‘Truthfulness?’ This was about the first encouraging thing we’d heard about Maggie Hartley.

  ‘It’s very rare.’

  ‘Excuse me, sir. Would you be prepared to say that in Court?’ Albert seemed to be about to take a statement. I moved tactfully away.

  ‘Is that what you came here for?’ Derwent asked me nervously.

  I thought it over, and decided there was no point in turning a friendly source of information into a hostile witness.

  ‘No. We wanted to see … the scene of the crime.’

  At which Mr Derwent, apparently reassured, smiled again. ‘The Last Act,’ he said and led us
to the dressing-room, typical of a provincial rep. ‘I’ll unlock it for you.’

  The dressing-room had been tidied up, the cupboards and drawers were empty. Otherwise it looked like the sort of room that would have been condemned as unfit for human habitation by any decent local authority. I stood in the doorway, and made sure that the mirror, which went all along one side of the room, was shattered in the corner furthest away from me.

  ‘Any help to you, is it?’

  ‘It might be. It’s what we lawyers call the locus in quo.’

  Mr Derwent was positively giggling then.

  ‘Do you? How frightfully camp of you. It’s what we actors call a dressing-room.’

  So I went back to the Majestic Hotel, a building which seemed rather less welcoming than Her Majesty’s Prison, Grimble. And when I was breaking my fast on their mixed grill consisting of cold greasy bacon, a stunted tomato and a sausage that would have looked ungenerous on a cocktail stick, Albert rang me with the unexpected news that at one bound put the Theatre Royal Killing up beside the Penge Bungalow Murders in the Pantheon of Rumpole’s forensic triumphs. I was laughing when I came back from the telephone, and I was still laughing when I returned to spread, on a slice of blackened toast, that pat of margarine which the management of the Majestic were apparently unable to tell from butter.

  Two hours later we were in the Judges’ room at the Law Courts discussing, in the hushed tones of relatives after a funeral, the unfortunate event which had occurred. Those present were Tommy Pierce, QC, Counsel for the prosecution, and his junior Roach, the learned Judge, my learned leader and my learned self.

  ‘Of course these people don’t really live in the real world at all,’ Jarvis Allen, QC, was saying. ‘It’s all make-believe for them. Dressing up in fancy costumes …’

  He himself was wearing a wig, a tailed coat with braided cuffs and a silk gown. His opponent, also bewigged, had a huge stomach from which a gold watch-chain and seal dangled. He also took snuff and blew his nose in a red spotted handkerchief. That kind and, on the whole, gentle figure Skelton, J, was fishing in the folds of his scarlet gown for a bitten pipe and an old leather pouch. I didn’t think we were exactly the ones to talk about dressing up.

  ‘You don’t think she appreciates the seriousness,’ the Judge was clearly worried.

  ‘I’m afraid not, Judge. Still, if she wants to sack me … Of course it puts Rumpole in an embarrassing position.’

  ‘Are you embarrassed, Rumpole?’ His Lordship asked me.

  As a matter of fact I was filled with a deeper inner joy, for Albert’s call at breakfast had been to the effect that our client had chosen to dismiss her leading Counsel and put her future entirely in the hands of Horace Rumpole, BA, that timeless member of the Junior Bar.

  ‘Oh yes. Dreadfully embarrassed, Judge.’ I did my best to look suitably modest. ‘But it seems that the lady’s mind is quite made up.’

  ‘Very embarrassing for you. For you both.’ The Judge was understanding. ‘Does she give any reason for dispensing with her leading Counsel, Jarvis?’

  ‘She said …’ I turned a grin into a cough. I too remembered what Albert had told us. ‘She said she thought Rumpole was “better casting”.’

  ‘ “Better casting”? Whatever can she mean by that?’

  ‘Better in the part, Judge,’ I translated.

  ‘Oh dear.’ The Judge looked distressed. ‘Is she very actressy?’

  ‘She’s an actress,’ I admitted, but would go no further.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose she is.’ The Judge lit his pipe. ‘Do you have any views about this, Tommy?’

  ‘No, Judge. When Jarvis was instructed we were going to ask your views on a plea to manslaughter.’

  The portly Pierce twinkled a lot and talked in a rich North Country accent. I could see we were in for a prosecution of homely fun, like one of the comic plays of J. B. Priestley.

  ‘Manslaughter, eh? Do you want to discuss manslaughter, Rumpole?’ I appeared to give the matter some courteous consideration.

  ‘No, Judge, I don’t believe I do.’

  ‘If you’d like an adjournment you shall certainly have it. Your client may want to think about manslaughter … Or consider another leader. She should have leading Counsel. In a case of this …’ the Judge puffed out smoke … ‘seriousness.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think there’s much point in considering another leader.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘You see,’ I was doing my best not to look at Allen, ‘I don’t honestly think anyone else would get the part.’

  When we got out of the Judges’ room, and were crossing the imposing Victorian Gothic hallway that led to the Court, my learned ex-leader, who had preserved an expression of amused detachment up to that point, turned on me with considerable hurt.

  ‘I must say I take an extremely dim view of that.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘An extremely dim view. On this Circuit we have a tradition of loyalty to our leaders.’

  ‘It’s a local custom?’

  ‘Certainly it is.’ Allen stood still and pronounced solemnly, ‘I can’t imagine anyone on this Circuit carrying on with a case after his leader has been sacked. It’s not in the best traditions of the Bar.’

  ‘Loyalty to one’s leader. Yes, of course, that is extremely important …’ I thought about it. ‘But we must consider the other great legal maxim, mustn’t we?’

  ‘Legal maxim? What legal maxim?’

  ‘ “The show must go on.” Excuse me. I see Albert. Nice chatting to you but … Things to do, old darling. Quite a number of things to do …’ So I hurried away from the fired legal eagle to where my old clerk was standing, looking distinctly anxious, at the entrance of the Court. He asked me hopefully if the Judge had seen fit to grant an adjournment, so that he could persuade our client to try another silk, a course on which Albert’s senior partner was particularly keen.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I had to disappoint him. ‘I begged the Judge, Albert. I almost went down on my knees to him. But would he grant me an adjournment? I’m afraid not. No, Rumpole, he told me, the show must go on.’ I put a comforting hand on Albert’s shoulder. ‘Cheer up, old darling. There’s only one thing you need say to your senior partner.’

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  ‘The Penge Bungalow Murders.’

  I sounded supremely confident of course; but as I went into Court I suddenly remembered that without a leader I would have absolutely no one to blame but myself when things went wrong.

  ‘I don’t know if any of you ladies and gentlemen have actually attended performances at the Theatre Royal …’ Tommy Pierce, QC, opening the case for the prosecution, chuckled as though to say, ‘Most of us got better things to do haven’t we, members of the jury?’ ‘But we all have passed it going up the Makins Road in a trolley-bus on the way to Grimble Football Ground. You’ll know where it is, members of the jury. Past the Snellsham Roundabout, on the corner opposite the Old Britannia Hotel, where we’ve all celebrated many a win by Grimble United …’

  I didn’t know why he didn’t just tell them: ‘The prisoner’s represented by Rumpole of the Bailey, a smart-alecky lawyer from London, who’s never ever heard of Grimble United, let alone the Old Britannia Hotel.’ I shut my eyes and looked uninterested as Tommy rumbled on, switching, now, to portentous seriousness.

  ‘In this case, members of the jury, we enter an alien world. The world of the showfolk! They live a strange life, you may think. A life of make-believe. On the surface everyone loves each other. “You were wonderful, darling!” said to men and women alike …’

  I seriously considered heaving myself to my hind legs to protest against this rubbish, but decided to sit still and continue the look of bored indifference.

  ‘But underneath all the good companionship,’ Pierce was now trying to make the flesh creep, ‘run deep tides of jealousy and passion which welled up, in this particular case, members of the jury, into brutal and, say the Crown, quite co
ld-blooded murder …’

  As he went on I thought that Derwent, the little gnome from the theatre, whom I could now see in the back of the Pit, somewhere near the dock, was perfectly right. Murder is a draw. All the local nobs were in Court including the Judge’s wife Lady Skelton, in the front row of the Stalls, wearing her special matinée hat. I also saw the Sheriff of the County, in his fancy dress, wearing lace ruffles and a sword which stuck rather inconveniently between his legs, and Mrs Sheriff of the County, searching in her handbag for something which might well have been her opera glasses. And then, behind me, the star of the show, my client, looking as I told her to look. Ordinary.

  ‘This is not a case which depends on complicated evidence, members of the jury, or points of law. Let me tell you the facts.’

  The facts were not such that I wanted the jury to hear them too clearly, at least not in my learned friend’s version. I slowly, and quite noisily, took a page out of my notebook. I was grateful to see that some of the members of the jury glanced in my direction.

  ‘It simply amounts to this. The murder weapon, a Smith and Wesson revolver, was found in the defendant’s hand as she stood over her husband’s dead body. A bullet from the very weapon had entered between the third and fourth metacarpal!’

  I didn’t like Pierce’s note of triumph as he said this. Accordingly I began to tear my piece of paper into very small strips. More members of the jury looked in my direction.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen. The defendant, as you will see on your abstract of indictment, was charged as “Maggie Hartley”. It seems she prefers to be known by her maiden name, and that may give you some idea of the woman’s attitude to her husband of some twenty years, the deceased in this case, the late Gerald Patrick Frere …’