Rumpole and the Primrose Path Read online

  ‘Perhaps.’ My favourite instructing solicitor wasn’t always encouraging. ‘But you do make them particularly well.’

  We were trying to console ourselves with slices of cold pie and pints of Guinness in the pub opposite the Old Bailey, when a voice behind me was heard to say, ‘It’s an education to watch you in action, Mr Rumpole.’

  I turned to see a sun-tanned face and a helmet of fairish hair, and to meet the white-toothed smile of a boyish man in a dark, fashionably tailored suit.

  ‘As a very junior member of the legal profession, it would be an honour to buy you two hard-working gentlemen lunch.’

  After I had made a vague and happily unsuccessful protest, and after he had ordered himself a drink and handed a couple of notes to the barman, I asked him where he practised law.

  ‘Abroad, mainly. Middle East. Arab Emirates. All commercial work. I’m afraid you’d find it very dull. I just happened to be in England and I read you were defending a murderer.’

  ‘He’s not a murderer yet. Not till he’s found guilty.’

  ‘Still, it’s only a matter of time.’ He seemed to take it for granted.

  It was then that I remembered where I’d seen him. Of course, he was the man in the public gallery who my favourite juror had stared at for a long moment on the first day of the trial.

  ‘You’ve been listening to all the evidence?’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t miss a moment.’ He seemed so anxious to talk that I couldn’t finish a sentence. ‘I’m so admiring the way you’re making a hopeless case sound as though it actually had a run.’

  I hadn’t minded when Bonny Bernard said it, but I resented this instant presumption of guilt from a complete stranger. ‘I don’t think you’ll know whether or not there’s anything in it until the Jury comes back,’ I told him. ‘You may see some surprises yet.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have said that, I suppose.’ His smile was now faintly apologetic. ‘But you must know yourself, Mr Rumpole, with all your great experience of the law, that poor old religious maniac hasn’t got a hope in hell.’

  ‘We’re not in hell,’ I had to tell him. ‘We’re in Number One Court at the Old Bailey. And there’s always hope until the Jury comes back.’

  ‘Of course you’ve got to say that. And of course you’re putting up a great fight. But I’ve been looking at the Jury. They can’t wait to sink you.’

  ‘I’m not sure you’re right,’ I told the lawyer from the Arab world. ‘I think I’ve got some friends on the Jury.’

  ‘Oh, her.’ He seemed to know exactly whom I meant. ‘I don’t think she’s going to count much, is she? Sorry. Got to dash. I’ve got some calls to make before two o’clock.’

  So he swept up his change from the counter, I saw a sun-browned hand, a wrist decorated with a discreetly expensive watch, a glittering cufflink, and he was gone, no doubt to make his calls and then climb back to the public gallery before I even had a chance of asking his name.

  ‘I saw him at association. When we were watching the telly and what have you. In Brixton. I knew what he was in for, strangling the girl on Hampstead Heath, and most of them shunned him for it. He was very quiet usually. He just sat, not even looking at the telly. He seemed a lonely sort. So I sat near and spoke to him.’

  ‘Did you become friendly?’ Adrian Hoddinot was examining the witness whose evidence, arriving late as an afterthought, had seemed to strengthen the case against my client. Neville Skeate had apparently unburdened his soul and made a full confession to a fellow prisoner.

  ‘I wouldn’t say friendly. It was just that I thought he was the lonely sort. Needed a bit of cheering up. I’m the kind that will get along with anybody, so I engaged him in conversation.’ William Phelps was a small, soft-eyed, untidy man who seemed only anxious to be liked. ‘I think he appreciated that.’

  He avoided, I noticed, looking at the man in the dock, although he had wanted to get on with him and engage him in conversation. For his part, Neville Skeate gazed upwards as though communicating with heavenly powers, and showed no sign of recognizing the friendly witness.

  ‘Just tell us about any conversation you had with Skeate that might have been about this case.’

  ‘What on earth does that mean?’ I rose to object. “‘Might have been about this case?” That would include my client telling this witness who was defending him.’

  ‘I’m sure he did.’ Adrian Hoddinot was languidly dismissive. ‘My friend’s name is pretty well known among the inmates of Brixton Prison.’ He turned to the witness. ‘Did he mention Hampstead Heath at all?’

  ‘Don’t lead,’ I growled.

  ‘Oh, very well.’ Adrian gave the Jury a mock sigh, meaning, you can judge for yourselves the trouble I’m having with this old fart. ‘Tell us if there’s any conversation you can particularly remember.’

  ‘There was a girl singer on the TV. Quite a good-looking girl, she was.’

  ‘Is this relevant?’ I rose to ask, but here the witness got the better of me. ‘Oh yes it is, Mr Rumpole. Very relevant. He told me she looked a bit like that girl that he had to strangle on Hampstead Heath.’

  ‘Did he say why he had to strangle her?’ Adrian looked grateful to his witness.

  ‘He didn’t tell me that. He gave me no reason for it.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Phelps.’ Adrian sat down then, having expressed, I thought, the sincere gratitude of the Crown Prosecution Service, the Metropolitan Police and the newspaper-reading public, who all wanted someone convicted for Pamela’s death and now had a solid piece of evidence to achieve the longed-for result.

  ‘Mr Phelps, are you telling this Jury that Neville Skeate confessed to murder as you and a number of other prisoners sat around watching television?’ I waded in at the deep end.

  ‘That’s right. It seemed the sight of that girl reminded him.’

  ‘You mean, otherwise he might have forgotten? How many other prisoners heard him?’

  ‘I don’t think no one heard. He spoke very low, you see. Just to me alone.’

  ‘Just you alone? So we can take it you were the only witness to this conversation?’

  ‘Just me that heard it, yes.’

  ‘And you’ve had a pretty eventful career, haven’t you, Mr Phelps, in and out of prison?’

  ‘I’ve been in a bit of trouble and what have you, yes.’

  ‘What have I? What have you, Mr Phelps.’ I picked up the list of previous convictions and held it high so that the Jury could see that I had it all down on paper. ‘Four sentences for fraud. Four for obtaining money by false pretences. Obtaining a false document with intent to deceive. And now you’re in Brixton, awaiting trial on a charge of the fraudulent conversion of a vast quantity of frozen food ordered by you on credit for a restaurant that was discovered not to exist.’

  ‘I’m defending that one.’ He seemed proud of the fact.

  ‘Then I wish you luck!’ Kathleen Brewster liked that and gave me a small, congratulatory giggle. I even noticed other smiles on the hostile Jury faces. ‘So it comes to this, doesn’t it?’ I went on. ‘Time and time again you have been proved, beyond reasonable doubt, to be a fraud and a swindler.’

  ‘If you like to put it that way.’

  ‘Oh I do like to put it that way. I like to make it clear to this Jury that my client’s so-called confession depends on the words of a convicted liar.’

  ‘He said it!’ By now I thought it safe to ignore the witness’s protest.

  ‘And a scoundrel.’

  ‘I honestly did hear him say it.’

  ‘Honestly? I would suggest to you, Mr Phelps, that you have very little idea of what that word means.’

  ‘I told you what I heard, and I’m sticking to it.’ If Mr Phelps had been a girl I would have said he pouted.

  ‘Oh, you’ve got to stick to it, haven’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean? I’ve “got to”.’

  ‘This is a case where the police are desperate for a conviction. The only trouble is that they haven
’t got much evidence. Did anyone offer to go easy on your problem with the frozen food if you were kind enough to remember a convenient confession?’

  The Jury were looking hard at Phelps, who seemed to be engrossed in a study of his shoes. There was a silence unhealthy for the prosecution which Adrian Hoddinot filled, doing his best to sound aggrieved.

  ‘Is my learned friend suggesting a specific conversation with a particular officer?’ Adrian Hoddinot got on his hind legs to object. ‘If so, he should say so clearly to the witness.’

  Of course I hadn’t got a date to put or a name to name. ‘No police officer has told me, “We managed to bribe the fraudster Phelps to say your man made a confession.” I’m simply putting the possibility to the witness, my Lord. I think the Jury might be interested in his answer.’

  The learned Beetle looked doubtful, then he turned his thick-lensed eyes on the Jury. They must have seemed to him to be very interested, so he told me I could ask my question.

  I repeated it and Phelps raised his head and gave me a modest smile. ‘They did mention my trial. Yes. When they took my statement they mentioned it.’

  ‘What did they say exactly?’

  ‘That they might go a bit easy on me. If I told them the truth about what Skeate said about the girl.’

  Why did he say that? Did he imagine he’d find a way to make the Crown Prosecution Service stick to its bargain? Was he ashamed of grassing, even on so unattractive a character as Neville Skeate, or did he feel, as even proven liars sometimes do in the witness box, a sudden, irrational urge to tell the truth? Whatever it was, his answers had two immediate results. The smile on Number Four juror’s face broadened considerably, and there was the sound of a slight disturbance in the public gallery as the sun-tanned, gold-watched, youngish lawyer from the Arab Emirates left in what seemed like a hurry.

  When that day’s proceedings were over, I was in an Old Bailey lift with Bonny Bernard when Number Four juror got in just as the doors were closing. Kathleen smiled at me, and I gave her a vague smile back. Then, to my horror, she opened her mouth and spoke. ‘Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘No!’ I had to silence her. ‘No, you mustn’t! You can’t possibly talk to me. I’ll have to tell the Judge and ... well, please don’t.’

  She turned away from me then and said no more. When the lift stopped we got out and went our separate ways in silence. But if I had listened to what she had to say it might have saved a good deal of trouble.

  ‘You won’t mind if I go out this evening, Rumpole?’

  ‘Mind? Why should I mind?’ The idea that She Who Must Be Obeyed would seek my agreement before embarking on any course of conduct was so novel that I must have looked surprised. ‘Who are you going to meet? Someone you went to school with?’ It usually was.

  ‘No, Dermot Fletcher. You met Dermot, didn’t you? At the Lysander Club. His wife’s bunked off, he’s got to report on a football match and the babysitter’s not coming till later. I said I’d go over and hold the fort until she gets there. Little Tom, he’s only six but a proper man. Always getting into trouble.’ The way she said it made me feel vaguely inferior, as though I were not quite a proper man and didn’t get into trouble enough, although, heaven knew, it wasn’t for the want of trying. What was clear was that Hilda was looking forward far more eagerly to an evening with Tom than she would have with the shared shepherd’s pie and television in my company. And yet I couldn’t forget that surprising remark passed by Luci Gribble when she caught me on the stationary bicycle.

  ‘By the way,’ I tried to say it as casually as possible, ‘exactly why do you want me to spend my time pedalling uselessly in the Lysander Club?’

  ‘I told you, Rumpole.’

  ‘I’m not sure you did.’

  ‘I want you to lose weight.’

  ‘That, of course.’

  ‘To open your tubes and help your breathing. Make you sweat a little.’

  ‘I know that. But didn’t you have something else in mind? Some other ...’ I didn’t want to put words in the witness’s mouth, ‘motive, perhaps?’

  ‘I really don’t know what you mean.’ The witness was giving nothing away.

  ‘Luci thought you might have had some other reason.’

  ‘That Luci,’ Hilda was not to be drawn further, ‘doesn’t know nearly as much as she thinks she does.’ And then, after a silence, she repeated in a gentler tone, ‘You’re sure you don’t mind if I go and look after little Tom?’

  ‘Of course not. I’ll be out this evening anyway. I’m going lap dancing.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Rumpole.’ She was looking at me with pity. ‘You’ve used that joke before and it wasn’t even funny the first time.’

  Hilda was right. Whatever else you might say about lap dancing, it wasn’t funny. If you were looking for laughs, they were more likely to be found listening to Soapy Sam Ballard discussing his triumphs before the Rent Tribunals in Pommeroy’s than in the solemn precincts of the Candy Crocodile. The impression I got from the evening was of watching some perfectly pleasant and physically fit young women giving an exhibition of advanced gymnastics. All of which is not to say that my evening out with the lap dancers wasn’t useful. Its use was vital and unexpected.

  It had been Bonny Bernard who suggested it. ‘I reckon we should do a bit of research one evening,’ he had said, ‘round that Candy Crocodile club.’

  ‘It might be an idea,’ I told him. ‘There’s something curiously unnerving about this case. I’ve got a friend in the Jury and a fan in the public gallery, and she keeps looking at him, but not as though she likes him very much. Apart from that, what are we meant to think? That Neville Skeate waited about on Hampstead Heath in the faint hope that the Whore of Babylon would come strolling along so he could strangle her? There’s too much we can’t explain. I suppose we might learn something in this Candy Crocodile.’

  ‘You mean we should inspect the locus?’ Bernard was, even for him, unusually enthusiastic. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll want to be bothered with it, will you, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I was giving the matter careful consideration, ‘I should join you. The girls she worked with might know something.’

  ‘I should think so.’ My instructing solicitor seemed to be in complete agreement. ‘I should think they must know quite a lot.’

  Darkness. Throbbing music. The almost complete absence of conversation. These were the things that greeted us as we sat down to our dinner in the Candy Crocodile. Then I noticed that Bonny Bernard was staring at a row of the sort of poles down which firemen slide rapidly when the alarms ring. Now scarcely dressed young women were climbing up and down such poles with little gasps of affection. We ordered fish and chips and my instructing solicitor, who had taken the trouble to check up on the rules of the establishment, outlined the programme ahead.

  ‘You can get one to come over and dance for you, Rumpole. Then you give her ten pounds.’

  ‘Just for dancing with us?’

  ‘Not with us, Mr Rumpole. She dances by herself. You can watch her, but absolutely no touching allowed. You understand that?’

  ‘Of course. I certainly wouldn’t touch.’ It seemed odd, though, and not the sort of prohibition I imagined existed in Sodom and Gomorrah. Had our misguided client simply been wasting his breath when he called for fire and brimstone to destroy this apparently respectable eatery?

  ‘Shall I ask one of them for a dance, Rumpole?’

  ‘What I’d really like to ask for is a chat.’

  It was odd how easily both requests could be satisfied. Bernard sent a message by a waiter to a girl who, gripping the fireman’s pole between her thighs, was leaning back and making flying motions with her arms. She arrived at our table and gave her name as Christine. I congratulated her on her gymnastic ability and asked if she had taken a course in pole-dancing.

  ‘No. Entirely self-taught.’

  She slid out of what remained of her clothes and began to dance in a sinuous manner for our benefit. Wi
th my usual interest in fees, I discovered that Christine had to pay the Candy Crocodile a hundred pounds for the pleasure of sliding down one of the firemen’s poles. She hoped to make that back, and maybe double it, by requests to dance, not only, I was sure, for a couple of lawyers in search of information. Bernard told her that we were concerned in the Old Bailey trial, without making it clear which side we were on.

  ‘Terrible about Pamela. The girls all loved her. She was a good friend to all of us.’ Christine was undertaking a complicated series of gyrations. ‘She and I had a lot in common.’

  ‘What, exactly?’ I asked her.

  ‘The contemporary dance theatre. Pam and I both worked on the fringe. You might have caught my Mother Courage at the Bricklayers’ Arms in Kilburn? It was only a small part, but I think I was quite effective. Did you see it?’ She asked that of Bonny Bernard as she waved her behind, perfectly shaped and white as alabaster, in front of his eyes. For the moment he seemed lost for words, so I had to tell her we had, through intense pressure of work, missed all the best things in the theatre lately.

  ‘Too bad.’ She spun round to face me. ‘So you missed Pamela in Dr Faustus?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. But talking of Pamela -’

  ‘Poor Pam!’

  ‘I just wonder about her son. Is he all right?’

  ‘Cameron? Oh, he’s great. He’ll be a terrific guitarist.’

  ‘There’s someone to look after him?’

  ‘Absolutely. A good friend of Pam’s. An older woman, very responsible. She loves Cameron.’ Christine did a sudden twist, her hands fondling her breasts, and smiled at the riveted Bonny Bernard. ‘And he loves her.’

  ‘So that’s all right?’

  ‘It will be as long as no one tries to take him away.’

  ‘Is anyone likely to?’

  ‘Some father Cameron’s got somewhere. Pam was always afraid he’d try to take Cameron. Nice talking to you. I’ve got to go.’