The Collected Stories of Rumpole Read online

  ‘You got off, of course. They can’t try you again for the same murder. That was the arrangement, wasn’t it?’

  ‘What “arrangement”?’ The young doctor was still smiling in a welcoming sort of way.

  ‘Oh, the arrangement between you and the Crown pathologist, of course. The plan that she’d make some rather silly suggestions about bruises and admit she was wrong. Of course, she lied about the contents of the stomach. You’re a very careful young man, Dr Ned. Now they can never try you for what you really did.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ But I saw that he had stopped smiling.

  ‘I was never more serious in my life.’

  ‘What did I really do?’ We seemed to be alone. A little whispering oasis of doubt and suspicion in the middle of the happy, chattering cocktail party. I told him what he’d done.

  ‘You opened a few of those new tranquillizer capsules and poured them into your wife’s Chianti. The cheese in the soufflé reacted in just the way you’d planned. All you had to do was make sure she hit her head on the table.’

  We stood in silence. The children came up and we refused canapés. Then Dr Ned opened an alabaster box and lit a cigarette with a gold lighter.

  ‘What’re you going to do about it?’ I could see that he was smiling again.

  ‘Nothing I can do now. You know that,’ I told him. ‘Except to tell you that I know. I’m not quite the idiot you and Dr Pamela took me for. At least you know that, Dr Ned.’

  He was a murderer. Divorce would have given him freedom but not his rich wife’s money; so he became a simple, old-fashioned murderer. And what was almost worse, he had used me as part of his crime. Worst of all, he had done his best to spoil the golden memory of the Penge Bungalow Murders for me.

  ‘Quiet everyone! I think Ned’s got something to say!’ Old Dr Harry Dacre was banging on a table with his glass. In due course quiet settled on the party and young Dr Ned made his announcement.

  ‘I just wanted to say. Now all our friends are here. Under one roof. That of course no one can ever replace Sally. For me and the children. But with Simon and Sara’s approval …’ He smiled at his charming children. ‘There’s going to be another doctor in the Dacre family. Pamela’s agreed to become my wife.’

  In the ensuing clapping, kisses, congratulations and mixing of more Buck’s Fizz, Rumpole left the party.

  I hear it was a thoroughly nice wedding. I looked hard at the photograph in the paper and tried to detect, in that open and smiling young doctor’s face, a sign of guilt.

  ‘… that perilous stuff.

  Which weighs upon the heart.’

  I saw none.

  Rumpole and the Spirit of Christmas

  I realized that Christmas was upon us when I saw a sprig of holly over the list of prisoners hung on the wall of the cells under the Old Bailey.

  I pulled out a new box of small cigars and found its opening obstructed by a tinselled band on which a scarlet-faced Santa was seen hurrying a sleigh full of carcinoma-packed goodies to the Rejoicing World. I lit one as the lethargic screw, with a complexion the colour of faded Bronco, regretfully left his doorstep sandwich and mug of sweet tea to unlock the gate.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Rumpole. Come to visit a customer?’

  ‘Happy Christmas, officer,’ I said as cheerfully as possible. ‘Is Mr Timson at home?’

  ‘Well, I don’t believe he’s slipped down to his little place in the country.’

  Such were the pleasantries that were exchanged between us legal hacks and discontented screws; jokes that no doubt have changed little since the turnkeys locked the door at Newgate to let in a pessimistic advocate, or the cells under the Coliseum were opened to admit the unwelcome news of the Imperial thumbs-down.

  ‘My Mum wants me home for Christmas.’

  ‘Which Christmas?’ It would have been an unreasonable remark and I refrained from it. Instead, I said, ‘All things are possible.’

  As I sat in the interviewing room, an Old Bailey Hack of some considerable experience, looking through my brief and inadvertently using my waistcoat as an ashtray, I hoped I wasn’t on another loser. I had had a run of bad luck during that autumn season, and young Edward Timson was part of that huge South London family whose criminal activities provided such welcome grist to the Rumpole mill. The charge in the seventeen-year-old Eddie’s case was nothing less than wilful murder.

  ‘We’re in with a chance though, Mr Rumpole, ain’t we?’

  Like all his family, young Timson was a confirmed optimist. And yet, of course, the merest outsider in the Grand National, the hundred-to-one shot, is in with a chance, and nothing is more like going round the course at Aintree than living through a murder trial. In this particular case, a fanatical prosecutor named Wrigglesworth, known to me as the Mad Monk, was to represent Beechers and Mr Justice Vosper, a bright but wintry-hearted Judge who always felt it his duty to lead for the prosecution, was to play the part of a particularly menacing fence at the Canal Turn.

  ‘A chance. Well, yes, of course you’ve got a chance, if they can’t establish common purpose, and no one knows which of you bright lads had the weapon.’

  No doubt the time had come for a brief glance at the prosecution case, not an entirely cheering prospect. Eddie, also known as ‘Turpin’ Timson, lived in a kind of decaying barracks, a sort of high-rise Lubianka, known as Keir Hardie Court, somewhere in South London, together with his parents, his various brothers and his thirteen-year-old sister, Noreen. This particular branch of the Timson family lived on the thirteenth floor. Below them, on the twelfth, lived the large clan of the O’Dowds. The war between the Timsons and the O’Dowds began, it seems, with the casting of the Nativity play at the local comprehensive school.

  Christmas comes earlier each year and the school show was planned about September. When Bridget O’Dowd was chosen to play the lead in the face of strong competition from Noreen Timson, an incident occurred comparable in historical importance to the assassination of an obscure Austrian archduke at Sarajevo. Noreen Timson announced, in the playground, that Bridget O’Dowd was a spotty little tart quite unsuited to play any role of which the most notable characteristic was virginity.

  Hearing this, Bridget O’Dowd kicked Noreen Timson behind the anthracite bunkers. Within a few days war was declared between the Timson and O’Dowd children, and a present of lit fireworks was posted through the O’Dowd front door. On what is known as the ‘night in question’, reinforcements of O’Dowds and Timsons arrived in old bangers from a number of South London addresses and battle was joined on the stone staircase, a bleak terrain of peeling walls scrawled with graffiti, blowing empty Coca-Cola tins and torn newspapers. The weapons seemed to have been articles in general domestic use such as bread knives, carving knives, broom handles and a heavy screwdriver.

  At the end of the day it appeared that the upstairs flat had repelled the invaders, and Kevin O’Dowd lay on the stairs. Having been stabbed with a slender and pointed blade he was in a condition to become known as the ‘deceased’ in the case of the Queen against Edward Timson. I made an application for bail for my client which was refused, but a speedy trial was ordered.

  So even as Bridget O’Dowd was giving her Virgin Mary at the comprehensive, the rest of the family was waiting to give evidence against Eddie Timson in that home of British drama, Number 1 Court at the Old Bailey.

  ‘I never had no cutter, Mr Rumpole. Straight up, I never had one,’ the defendant told me in the cells. He was an appealing-looking lad with soft brown eyes, who had already won the heart of the highly susceptible lady who wrote his social inquiry report. (‘Although the charge is a serious one this is a young man who might respond well to a period of probation.’ I could imagine the steely contempt in Mr Justice Vosper’s eye when he read that.)

  ‘Well, tell me, Edward. Who had?’

  ‘I never seen no cutters on no one, honest I didn’t. We wasn’t none of us tooled up, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Come on, Eddie. Someone must h
ave been. They say even young Noreen was brandishing a potato peeler.’

  ‘Not me, honest.’

  ‘What about your sword?’

  There was one part of the prosecution evidence that I found particularly distasteful. It was agreed that on the previous Sunday morning, Eddie ‘Turpin’ Timson had appeared on the stairs of Keir Hardie Court and flourished what appeared to be an antique cavalry sabre at the assembled O’Dowds, who were just popping out to Mass.

  ‘Me sword I bought up the Portobello? I didn’t have that there, honest.’

  ‘The prosecution can’t introduce evidence about the sword. It was an entirely different occasion.’ Mr Bernard, my instructing solicitor who fancied himself as an infallible lawyer, spoke with a confidence which I couldn’t feel. He, after all, wouldn’t have to stand up on his hind legs and argue the legal toss with Mr Justice Vosper.

  ‘It rather depends on who’s prosecuting us. I mean, if it’s some fairly reasonable fellow …’

  ‘I think,’ Mr Bernard reminded me, shattering my faint optimism and ensuring that we were all in for a very rough Christmas indeed, ‘I think it’s Mr Wrigglesworth. Will he try to introduce the sword?’

  I looked at ‘Turpin’ Timson with a kind of pity. ‘If it is the Mad Monk, he undoubtedly will.’

  When I went into Court, Basil Wrigglesworth was standing with his shoulders hunched up round his large, red ears, his gown dropped to his elbows, his bony wrists protruding from the sleeves of his frayed jacket, his wig pushed back and his huge hands joined on his lectern in what seemed to be an attitude of devoted prayer. A lump of cottonwool clung to his chin where he had cut himself shaving. Although well into his sixties he preserved a look of boyish clumsiness. He appeared, as he always did when about to prosecute on a charge carrying a major punishment, radiantly happy.

  ‘Ah, Rumpole,’ he said, lifting his eyes from the police verbals as though they were his breviary. ‘Are you defending as usual?’

  ‘Yes, Wrigglesworth. And you’re prosecuting as usual?’ It wasn’t much of a riposte but it was all I could think of at the time.

  ‘Of course, I don’t defend. One doesn’t like to call witnesses who may not be telling the truth.’

  ‘You must have a few unhappy moments then, calling certain members of the Constabulary.’

  ‘I can honestly tell you, Rumpole,’ his curiously innocent blue eyes looked at me with a sort of pain, as though I had questioned the doctrine of the immaculate conception, ‘I have never called a dishonest policeman.’

  ‘Yours must be a singularly simple faith, Wrigglesworth.’

  ‘As for the Detective Inspector in this case,’ Counsel for the prosecution went on, ‘I’ve known Wainwright for years. In fact, this is his last trial before he retires. He could no more invent a verbal against a defendant than fly.’

  Any more on that tack, I thought, and we should soon be debating how many angels could dance on the point of a pin.

  ‘Look here, Wrigglesworth. That evidence about my client having a sword: it’s quite irrelevant. I’m sure you’d agree.’

  ‘Why is it irrelevant?’ Wrigglesworth frowned.

  ‘Because the murder clearly wasn’t done with an antique cavalry sabre. It was done with a small, thin blade.’

  ‘If he’s a man who carries weapons, why isn’t that relevant?’

  ‘A man? Why do you call him a man? He’s a child. A boy of seventeen!’

  ‘Man enough to commit a serious crime.’

  ‘If he did.’

  ‘If he didn’t, he’d hardly be in the dock.’

  ‘That’s the difference between us, Wrigglesworth,’ I told him. ‘I believe in the presumption of innocence. You believe in original sin. Look here, old darling.’ I tried to give the Mad Monk a smile of friendship and became conscious of the fact that it looked, no doubt, like an ingratiating sneer. ‘Give us a chance. You won’t introduce the evidence of the sword, will you?’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Well,’ I told him, ‘the Timsons are an industrious family of criminals. They work hard, they never go on strike. If it weren’t for people like the Timsons, you and I would be out of a job.’

  ‘They sound in great need of prosecution and punishment. Why shouldn’t I tell the jury about your client’s sword? Can you give me one good reason?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, as convincingly as possible.

  ‘What is it?’ He peered at me, I thought, unfairly.

  ‘Well, after all,’ I said, doing my best, ‘it is Christmas.’

  It would be idle to pretend that the first day in Court went well, although Wrigglesworth restrained himself from mentioning the sword in his opening speech, and told me that he was considering whether or not to call evidence about it the next day. I cross-examined a few members of the clan O’Dowd on the presence of lethal articles in the hands of the attacking force. The evidence about this varied and weapons came and went in the hands of the inhabitants of number twelve as the witnesses were blown hither and thither in the winds of Rumpole’s cross-examination. An interested observer from one of the other flats spoke of having seen a machete.

  ‘Could that terrible weapon have been in the hands of Mr Kevin O’Dowd, the deceased in this case?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘But can you rule out the possibility?’

  ‘No, I can’t rule it out,’ the witness admitted, to my temporary delight.

  ‘You can never rule out the possibility of anything in this world, Mr Rumpole. But he doesn’t think so. You have your answer.’

  Mr Justice Vosper, in a voice like a splintering iceberg, gave me this unwelcome Christmas present. The case wasn’t going well but at least, by the end of the first day, the Mad Monk had kept out all mention of the sword. The next day he was to call young Bridget O’Dowd, fresh from her triumph in the Nativity play.

  ‘I say, Rumpole. I’d be so grateful for a little help.’

  I was in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, drowning the sorrows of the day in my usual bottle of the cheapest Château Fleet Street (made from grapes which, judging from the bouquet, might have been not so much trodden as kicked to death by sturdy peasants in gumboots) when I looked up to see Wrigglesworth, dressed in an old mackintosh, doing business with Jack Pommeroy at the sales counter. When I crossed to him, he was not buying the jumbo-sized bottle of ginger beer which I imagined might be his celebratory Christmas tipple, but a tempting and respectably aged bottle of Château Pichon-Longueville.

  ‘What can I do for you, Wrigglesworth?’

  ‘Well, as you know, Rumpole, I live in Croydon.’

  ‘Happiness is given to few of us on this earth,’ I said piously.

  ‘And the Anglican Sisters of St Agnes, Croydon, are anxious to buy a present for their Bishop,’ Wrigglesworth explained. ‘A dozen bottles for Christmas. They’ve asked my advice, Rumpole. I know so little of wine. You wouldn’t care to try this for me? I mean, if you’re not especially busy.’

  ‘I should be hurrying home to dinner.’ My wife Hilda (She Who Must Be Obeyed), was laying on rissoles and frozen peas, washed down by my last bottle of Pommeroy’s extremely ordinary. ‘However, as it’s Christmas, I don’t mind helping you out, Wrigglesworth.’

  The Mad Monk was clearly quite unused to wine. As we sampled the claret together, I saw the chance of getting him to commit himself on the vital question of the evidence of the sword, as well as absorbing an unusually decent bottle. After the Pichon-Longueville I was kind enough to help him by sampling a Boyd-Cantenac and then I said, ‘Excellent, this. But of course the Bishop might be a Burgundy man. The nuns might care to invest in a decent Mâcon.’

  ‘Shall we try a bottle?’ Wrigglesworth suggested. ‘I’d be grateful for your advice.’

  ‘I’ll do my best to help you, my old darling. And while we’re on the subject, that ridiculous bit of evidence about young Timson and the sword …’

  ‘I remember you saying I shouldn’t bring that out because it’s Chri
stmas.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Jack Pommeroy had uncorked the Mâcon and it was mingling with the claret to produce a feeling of peace and goodwill towards men. Wrigglesworth frowned, as though trying to absorb an obscure point of theology.

  ‘I don’t quite see the relevance of Christmas to the question of your man Timson threatening his neighbours with a sword …’

  ‘Surely, Wrigglesworth,’ I knew my prosecutor well, ‘you’re of a religious disposition?’ The Mad Monk was the product of some bleak Northern Catholic boarding school. He lived alone, and no doubt wore a hair shirt under his black waistcoat and was vowed to celibacy. The fact that he had his nose deep into a glass of Burgundy at the moment was due to the benign influence of Rumpole.

  ‘I’m a Christian, yes.’

  ‘Then practise a little Christian tolerance.’

  ‘Tolerance towards evil?’

  ‘Evil?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean, evil?’

  ‘Couldn’t that be your trouble, Rumpole? That you really don’t recognize evil when you see it.’

  ‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘evil might be locking up a seventeen-year-old during Her Majesty’s pleasure, when Her Majesty may very probably forget all about him, banging him up with a couple of hard and violent cases and their own chamber pots for twenty-two hours a day, so he won’t come out till he’s a real, genuine, middle-aged murderer …’

  ‘I did hear the Reverend Mother say,’ Wrigglesworth was gazing vacantly at the empty Mâcon bottle, ‘that the Bishop likes his glass of port.’

  ‘Then in the spirit of Christmas tolerance I’ll help you to sample some of Pommeroy’s Light and Tawny.’

  A little later, Wrigglesworth held up his port glass in a reverent sort of fashion.

  ‘You’re suggesting, are you, that I should make some special concession in this case because it’s Christmas time?’