The Collected Stories of Rumpole Read online

  ‘What’s the news in The Times, Rumpole? Has war started?’

  ‘A Dr Dacre has been arrested in Hunter’s Hill, Surrey. He’s charged with murdering his wife.’

  Hilda didn’t seem to find the intelligence immediately gripping. In fact she waved her correspondence at me.

  ‘There’s a letter from Dodo. You know, my friend Dodo, Rumpole?’

  ‘The one who keeps the tea-shop in Devon?’ I had a vague recollection of an unfriendly female in tweed who seemed to imagine that I tyrannized somewhat over She Who Must Be Obeyed.

  ‘She’s always asking me to pop down and stay.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ I muttered hopefully, and then returned to the Home News. ‘ “Dr Dacre … ? Dacre!” The name’s distinctly familiar.’

  ‘Dodo never cared for you, Rumpole,’ Hilda said firmly.

  ‘The feeling’s mutual. Isn’t she the one who wears amber beads and smells of scones?’ I repeated the name, hoping to stir some hidden memory, ‘Harry Dacre.’

  ‘Dodo’s been suffering from depression,’ Hilda rambled on. ‘Of course, she never married.’

  ‘Then I can’t think what she’s got to be depressed about!’ I couldn’t resist saying it, perhaps not quite audibly from behind the cover of The Times. ‘Dr Harry Dacre!’ I suddenly remembered. ‘He gave evidence in my greatest triumph, the Penge Bungalow Murders! He’d seen my client’s bruises. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Dodo writes that she’s taking a new sort of pill for her depression. They’re helping her, but she mustn’t eat cheese.’

  ‘Poor old Dodo,’ I said, ‘deprived of cheese.’ I read the story in the paper again. ‘It couldn’t be him. This is Dr “Ned” Dacre. Oh well, it’s just another nice little murder that’s never going to come my way. “Cause of death, cerebral haemorrhage”, that’s the evidence in the Magistrates’ Court, “sustained in an alleged attack …” ’

  As I read, Hilda was casting a critical eye over my appearance.

  ‘You’re never going to Chambers like that, are you, Rumpole?’

  ‘Like what, Hilda?’ I was wondering what sort of a savage attack by a local doctor could explain his wife’s cerebral haemorrhage.

  ‘Well, your stud’s showing and you’ve got marmalade on your waistcoat, and do you have to have that old silk handkerchief half falling out of your top pocket?’

  ‘That was the silk handkerchief I used to blow my nose on three times, tearfully, in my final speech in the double murder in the Deptford Old People’s Home. It has a certain sentimental value. Will you leave me alone, Hilda?’ She was dabbing at my waistcoat with a corner of a table napkin she had soaked in the hot-water jug.

  ‘I just want you to look your best, Rumpole.’

  ‘You mean, in case I get run over?’

  ‘And I’ll put that old hanky in the wash.’ She snatched the venerable bandana out of my breast pocket. ‘You’d be much better off with a few nice, clean tissues.’

  ‘You know what that fellow Dacre’s been accused of, Hilda?’ I thought I might as well remind her. ‘Murdering his wife.’

  As I had no pressing engagement until 2.30, when I was due for a rather dull touch of defrauding the Customs and Excise at the Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court, I loitered on my way to the tube station, walked up through the Temple Gardens smoking a small cigar and went into the clerk’s room to complain to Henry of the run-of-the-mill nature of my legal diet.

  ‘No nice murders on the menu, are there?’ When I asked him this, Henry smiled in a secretive sort of way and said,

  ‘I’m not sure, sir.’

  ‘You’re not sure?’

  ‘There’s a Dr Henry Dacre phoned to come and see you urgently, sir. It seems his son’s in a bit of trouble. He’s come with Mr Cossett, solicitor of Hunter’s Hill. I’ve put them in your room, Mr Rumpole.’

  Old Dr Dacre in my room! I began to sniff the memory of ancient battles and a never-to-be-forgotten victory. When I opened my door, I was greeted by a healthy-looking country solicitor, and a greying version of a witness whose evidence marked a turning point in the Penge Bungalow affair. Dr Harry Dacre held out his hand and said,

  ‘Mr Rumpole. It’s been a long time, sir.’

  How long was it, perhaps a legal lifetime, since I did R. v. Samuel Poulteny, better known as the Penge Bungalow Murders, which altered the course of legal history by proving that Horace Rumpole could win a capital case, alone and without a leader? Young Dr Harry Dacre, then a GP at Penge, gave valuable evidence for the defence, and young Rumpole made the most of it. I motioned the good doctor to my client’s chair and invited Mr Cossett, the instructing solicitor, to take a seat.

  ‘Well now, Doctor,’ I said, ‘what can I do for you?’

  ‘You may have read about my son’s little trouble?’ The old doctor spoke of the charge of wife murder as though it were a touch of the flu which might be cured by a couple of aspirin and a day in bed.

  ‘Yes. Was it a stormy sort of marriage?’ I asked him.

  The doctor shook his head.

  ‘Sally was an extraordinarily pretty girl. Terribly spoilt, of course. Ned gave her everything she wanted.’

  I wondered if that included a cerebral haemorrhage, and then told myself to keep my mouth shut and listen quietly.

  ‘She had her problems, of course,’ Dr Dacre went on. ‘Nervous trouble. Well. Half the women in Hunter’s Hill have got a touch of the nervy. All these labour-saving devices in the kitchen, gives them too much time to think.’

  Not a pioneer of women’s lib, I thought, old Dr Harry. And I asked him, ‘Was she taking anything for her nerves?’

  ‘Sally was scared of pills,’ the doctor shook his head. ‘Afraid she might get hooked, although she didn’t mind taking the odd drink too many.’

  ‘Do you think she needed medical treatment?’

  ‘Ned and I discussed it. He thought of a course of treatment but Sally wouldn’t co-operate. So he, well, I suppose he just put up with her.’ Dr Harry seemed to think that no one would have found his daughter-in-law particularly easy to live with.

  ‘And on, as the prosecutors say, the night in question?’ I decided it was time to get down to the facts.

  ‘Mr Rumpole! That’s why we need you,’ Dr Harry said flatteringly enough. ‘I know from past experience. You’re the man who can destroy the pathologist’s evidence! I’ll never forget the Penge Bungalow case, and the way you pulverized that expert witness for the Crown.’

  I wouldn’t have minded a lengthy reminiscence of that memorable cross-examination, but I felt we should get on with the work in hand.

  ‘Just remind me of the medical evidence. We don’t disagree with the Crown about the cause of death?’

  ‘Cerebral haemorrhage? No doubt about that. But it’s the other findings that are the difficulty.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘Multiple bruising on the body, particularly the legs, back and buttocks, and the wound on the head where the deceased girl fell and knocked the edge of the coffee table.’

  ‘Which caused the haemorrhage to the brain?’ I frowned. The evidence of bruising was hardly encouraging.

  ‘No doubt about it,’ Dr Harry assured me. ‘The trouble is the pathologist says the bruising was inflicted before death; the implication being that my son beat his wife up.’

  ‘Is that likely?’ It sounded rather unlike the home life of a young professional couple in Hunter’s Hill.

  ‘I told you Sally was a spoilt and highly strung girl, Mr Rumpole.’ Dr Harry shrugged. ‘Her father was old Peter Gaveston of Gaveston Electronics. She always had everything she wanted. Of course she and Ned quarrelled. Don’t all married couples?’

  Not all married couples, of course, include She Who Must Be Obeyed, but I had reason to believe that the good doctor was right in his diagnosis.

  ‘But Ned would never beat his wife up like that,’ Ned’s father assured me. ‘Not beat her up to kill her.’

  It sounded as if I would have
to do battle with another pathologist, and I was anxious to find out who my opponent would be.

  ‘Tell me, who’s the Miracle of the Morgues, the Prosecution Prince of the Post-Mortems? Who’s the great brain on the other side?’

  ‘It’s a local pathologist. Does all the work in this part of the country.’

  ‘Would I have heard of him?’ I asked casually.

  ‘It’s not a “him”. It’s a Dr Pamela Gorle. And the irony is, Ned knows her extremely well. They were at Barts together, before he met Sally, of course. He brought her home for the weekend once or twice, and I almost thought they might make a go of it.’

  ‘You mean, get married?’

  ‘Yes.’ Dr Harry seemed to think that the lady with the formaldehyde might have been a better bet than Sally.

  By this time I was beginning to feel some sympathy for Dr Ned. It’s enough to be put on trial for murder without having your ex-girlfriend examine your deceased wife’s body, and provide what turns out to be the only real evidence for the prosecution.

  ‘I just don’t understand! I simply don’t understand it.’

  Friendly young Dr Ned sat in the unfriendly surroundings of the prison interview room. He looked concerned but curiously detached, as though he had just hit on a mysterious tropical disease which had no known cure.

  ‘Doctor,’ I said, ‘did you and your wife Sally get on moderately well together?’

  ‘We had our quarrels, of course. Like all married couples.’

  It was the second time I had heard that. But, I thought, all married couples don’t end up with one dead and the other one in the nick awaiting trial on a charge of wilful murder.

  I looked at Dr Ned. He was better-looking than his father had been at his age; but Dr Harry, as I remembered his appearance in the Penge Bungalow Murders trial, had seemed the stronger character and more determined. As I looked at the charming, but rather weak younger doctor (after all, he hadn’t had to struggle to build up a practice, but had picked up his father’s well-warmed stethoscope and married an extremely wealthy young woman) I found it hard to imagine him brutally beating his wife and so killing her. Of course I might have been mistaken; the most savage murder I was ever mixed up in was the axing of a huge Regimental Sergeant-Major by a five-foot-nothing Sunday school teacher from East Finchley.

  ‘Your father told me that Mrs Sally Dacre was depressed from time to time. Was she depressed about anything in particular?’

  ‘No. In fact I always thought Sally had everything she wanted.’

  ‘But did she suffer from depression?’

  ‘I think so. Yes.’

  ‘And took nothing for it?’

  ‘She didn’t approve of pills. She’d heard too many stories about people getting hooked. Doctors and their wives.’

  ‘So she took nothing?’ I wanted to get the facts established.

  ‘My father was her doctor. I thought that was more professional. I’m not sure if he prescribed her anything, but I don’t think he did. There was nothing found in the stomach.’

  He said it casually and seemed only politely concerned. I don’t know why I felt a sudden chill at discussing the contents of his dead wife’s stomach with the doctor.

  ‘No pills,’ I agreed with him. ‘The medical evidence tells us that.’

  ‘Dr Pamela Gorle’s report,’ Dr Ned went on, still quite dispassionately. I fished out the document in question.

  ‘Yes. It talks of the remains of a meal, and a good deal of alcohol in the blood.’

  ‘We had a bottle of Chianti. And a soufflé. We were alone that night. We ate our supper in front of the television.’

  ‘Your wife cooked?’ I asked, not that there was any question of the food being anything but harmless.

  ‘Oh no.’ Dr Ned smiled at me. ‘I may not be an absolutely brilliant doctor, but my soufflés are nothing short of miraculous.’

  ‘Did you quarrel that evening?’ I asked him. ‘I mean, like all married couples?’

  ‘Not at all. We had a discussion about where we’d go for our holiday, and settled on Crete. Sally had never been there, and I had only once. Before we met, actually.’

  Had that been, I wondered, a romantic packaged fortnight with the pathologist for the Crown? Mine not to reason who with, so I kept him at the job of telling me the story of that last night with his wife.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then Sally complained of a headache. I thought it was perhaps due to watching the television for too long, so I switched it off. She was standing up to get herself a brandy.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She stumbled and fell forwards.’

  ‘Face forwards? Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Yes, I’m certain. It was then that her forehead hit the corner of the coffee table.’

  ‘And caused the cerebral haemorrhage?’

  Dr Ned paused, frowning slightly. He seemed to be giving the matter his detached and entirely professional opinion. At last, he said cautiously,

  ‘I can only think so.’

  ‘Doctor, your friend, the pathologist …’

  ‘Hardly my friend any longer.’ Dr Ned smiled again, ruefully this time, as though he appreciated the irony of having an old colleague and fiancée giving evidence against him on a charge of wilful murder.

  ‘No,’ I agreed with him. ‘She isn’t your friend, is she? She says she found extensive bruising on your wife’s back, her buttocks and the back of her legs.’

  ‘That’s what I can’t understand.’ My client looked genuinely puzzled.

  ‘You’re quite sure she didn’t fall backwards?’ I asked after a careful silence. Dr Ned and his wife were quite alone. Who would quarrel with the description of her falling backwards and bruising herself? I had given him his chance. A professional villain, any member of the Timson family for instance, would have taken that hint and agreed with me. But not Dr Ned.

  ‘No, I told you. She fell forwards.’ He was either being totally honest or wilfully obtuse.

  ‘And you can’t account for the alleged bruises on her back?’

  ‘No.’ That was all he had to say about it. But then he frowned, in some embarrassment, and said,

  ‘There is one thing perhaps I ought to tell you.’

  ‘About your wife?’

  ‘No. About Dr Pamela Gorle.’ Again, he hesitated. ‘We were at Barts together, you know.’

  ‘And went to Crete together once, on a packaged holiday.’

  ‘How did you know that?’ He looked at me, puzzled. It was an inspired guess, so I didn’t answer his question. As I am a perpetual optimist, I asked, ‘Do you think the Crown’s expert witness might be a little helpful to us in the witness-box?’

  ‘Not at all. In fact, I’m afraid she’ll do everything she can to get me convicted.’

  As I have said, I am an incorrigible optimist, and for the first time in my conference with Dr Ned I began to sniff the faint, far-away odour of a defence.

  ‘Pamela was an extraordinarily possessive girl,’ the doctor told me. ‘She was always unreasonably and abnormally jealous.’

  ‘When you married Sally?’

  ‘When I met Sally. I suppose, well, after that holiday in Crete Pam thought we might get married. Then I didn’t ring her and I began to get the most awful letters and phone calls from her. She was threatening …’

  ‘Threatening what?’

  ‘It was all very vague. To tell my father, or my patients, or the GMC, that she was pregnant.’

  ‘Would any of those august bodies have cared?’

  ‘Not in the least. It wasn’t true anyway. Then she seemed to calm down for a while, but I still got letters – on my wedding anniversary and on some date which Pamela seemed to think was important.’

  ‘Perhaps the day your affair started, or ended?’

  ‘Probably. I really can’t remember. She’d got her job with the Home Office, retained as a pathologist for this part of the county. I hoped she might settle down and get married, and fo
rget.’

  ‘She never did? Get married, I mean?’

  ‘Or forget. I had a dreadful letter from her about a month ago. She said I’d ruined her life by marrying a hopeless drunk, and that she’d tell Sally we were still meeting unless …’

  ‘Yes?’ I prompted him, he seemed reluctant to go on.

  ‘Well. Unless we still met. And continued our affair.’

  ‘Did your wife see the letter?’

  ‘No. I always get up early and opened the post.’

  ‘You’ve kept the letter, of course?’

  ‘No. I tore it up at once.’

  If only people had the sense to realize that they might be facing a murder trial at any moment, they might keep important documents.

  ‘And what did the letter say?’

  ‘That she’d find some way of ruining my life, however long it took her.’

  Hell, I supposed, hath no fury like a lady pathologist scorned. But Dr Pamela Gorle’s personal interest in the Dacre murder seemed to provide the only faint hope of a cure for Dr Ned’s somewhat desperate situation. I didn’t know if a murder case had ever been won by attacking the medical evidence on the grounds of a romantic bias, but I supposed there had to be a first time for everything.

  Everything about the Dacre murder trial was thoroughly pleasant. The old, red brick, local Georgian courtroom, an object of beauty among the supermarkets and boutiques and the wine bar and television and radio stores of the little Surrey town, was so damned pleasant that you expected nice girls with Roedean accents to pass round the Court serving coffee and rock cakes whenever there was a lull in the proceedings. The jury looked as though they had dropped in for a rather gentle session of ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’, and Owen Munroe, QC, was a pleasant prosecutor who seemed thoroughly distressed at having to press such a nasty charge as wilful murder against the nice young doctor who sat in the dock wearing his well-pressed suit and old Barts tie.

  Worst of all, Nick McManus was a tremendously pleasant Judge. He was out to be thoroughly fair and show every courtesy to the defence, ploys which frequently lead to a conviction. It is amazing how many villains owe their freedom to the fact that some old sweetheart on the Bench seemed to be determined to get the jury to pot them.