Rumpole and the Angel of Death Read online

  ‘Do be quiet, Rumpole! You always look for the seamy side of everything.’ At which point, Lance, in another senseless burst of energy, leapt a stile and started chasing sheep.

  ‘Can’t you keep that dog under control?’ The voice came from a man in a cap, crossing the field towards us, with a golden labrador trotting in an obedient manner at his side. Hilda and I, having climbed the stile and called Lance, with increasing hopelessness, were set out on a course towards him.

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t,’ I apologized from a distance. ‘The animal won’t listen to reason.’

  ‘What did you say its name was?’

  ‘Sir Lancelot,’ Hilda boasted.

  ‘Of the Lake. To give him his full title,’ I added, trying to make the best of our lamentable attachment.

  ‘Sir Lancelot! Here, boy!’ the man in the cap called in a commanding tone and gave a piercing whistle. Whereupon Dodo’s dog stood still, shook itself, came to its senses and, much to the relief of the sheep, joined our group. At which, the man in the cap turned, looked me in the face for the first time and said, ‘By God, it’s Horace Rumpole!’

  ‘Rollo Eyles!’

  ‘And this is your good lady?”

  I resisted the temptation to say, ‘No, it’s my wife.’ Rollo was telling Hilda about our roots in history. He had been the Prosecution junior in the Penge Bungalow affair, arguably the classic murder of our time and undoubtedly the greatest moment of triumph in the Rumpole career.

  Until they heard my first devastating cross-examination of the police surgeon, legal hacks in the Penge Bungalow case treated me as an inexperienced white-wig who shouldn’t be allowed out on a careless driving. A notable exception was young Rollo Eyles, the Prosecution junior, then a jovial, school- boyish young man, born, like me, without any feelings of reverence. He was a mimic, and we would meet after Court in Pommeroy’s to drown our anxiety, and Rollo would do his impressions of the Judge, the prosecuting silk and the dry, charnel-house voice of Professor Ackerman, master of the morgues. In the middle of his legal career Rollo inherited an estate, and a good deal of money, from an uncle, and left the busy world of the Old Bailey for, it appeared, these damp fields where he was a farmer, Master of Foxhounds and Chairman of the Bench.

  For a while he wrote to me at Christmas, letters in neat handwriting, full of jokes. After a while, I forgot to answer them and our friendship waned. Now he said, ‘Why don’t you come up to the house and we’ll all have a strong drink.’ Rollo Eyles always had a sensible solution to the most desperate case. Sir Lancelot, realizing he had met a man he couldn’t trifle with, came and joined us with unusual docility.

  It was over a large whisky in front of a log fire that I told Rollo where we were staying. Our hotel was a plastic and concrete nightmare of a building conveniently situated for the trading estate outside the nearest town. It had all the joys of piped music in the coffee shop, towels in a thinness contest with the lavatory paper, and waitresses who’d undergone lengthy training in the art of not allowing their eyes to be caught. It was the only place we could find where we were allowed, after slipping a bribe larger than the legal aid fee for a guilty plea to the hall porter, to secretly have Sir Lancelot in the bathroom. There, he was due to spend a restless night on a couple of wafer-thin blankets. Having heard this sad story, Rollo offered us dinner and a bed for the night; Lancelot could be kennelled with the gentlemanlike dogs. Our host said he was looking forward to hearing the latest gossip from the Old Bailey and, in return, we could have the pleasure of seeing the hunt move off from his front drive before we went back to London.

  The rain had stopped during the night and the March morning was cold and sunny. Sir Lancelot was shivering with excitement, as if delightedly aware that something, at some time, was going to be killed; although I doubted if, during his peaceful cohabitation with Dodo Mackintosh in Lamorna Cove, he had ever met foxhunters before. However, he leapt into the air, pirouetted at the end of his lead, barked at the horses and did his best to give the impression that he was entirely used to the country sports of gentlemanlike dogs. So there I was, eating small slices of pork pie and drinking port which tasted, on that crisp morning, delicious. Hilda, wearing an old mac and a tweed hat which she’d apparently bought for just such an occasion, was doing her best to look as though, if her horse hadn’t gone lame or suffered some such technical fault, she’d’ve been up and mounted among our dinner companions of the night before.

  I looked up with my mouth full of pork pie to join in Hilda’s smiles at these new acquaintances who had merged with the children on ponies, the overweight farmers, the smart garage owners and the followers on foot. Rollo was there, sitting in the saddle as though it was his favourite armchair, talking to a whipper-in, or hunt servant, or whatever the red-coated officials may be called. Mrs Rollo – Dorothea – was there, the relic of a great beauty, still slim and upright, her calm face cracked with lines like the earth on a dried-up river bed, her auburn hair streaked with grey, bundled into a hairnet and covered with a peaked velvet cap. I also recognized Tricia Fothergill, who had clung on to the childish way she mispronounced her name, together with the good looks of an attractive child, into her thirties. She was involved in a lengthy divorce and had, during dinner, bombarded me with questions about family law for which I had no ready answer. And there, raising his glass of port to me from the immense height of a yellow-eyed horse, sitting with his legs stuck out like wings, was the old fellow who had been introduced to us as Johnny Logan and who knew the most intimate details of the private lives of all sporting persons living in the Cotswolds. Rollo Eyles, in the absence of any interesting anecdotes from the Central Criminal Court, clearly relied on him for entertaining gossip. ‘Roll ’em in the aisles, that’s what I call him,’ Logan whispered to me at dinner. ‘Our host’s extremely attractive to women. Of course, he’ll never leave Dorothea.’

  Now, at the meet in front of Wayleave Manor, Logan said, ‘Seen our charming visitors at the end of the drive? You might go and have a look at them, Horace. They’re the antis.’

  Dorothea Eyles was leaning down from her horse to chat to Hilda in the nicest possible way, so I took Lancelot for a stroll so I could see all sides of the hunting experience. A van was parked just where the driveway met the road. On it there were placards posted with such messages as STOP ANIMAL MURDER. HUNT THE FOXHUNTERS, and so on. There was a small group standing drinking coffee. At that time they seemed as cheerful and excited as the foxhunters, looking forward as eagerly to a day’s sport. There was a man with a shaven head and earrings, but also a woman in a tweed skirt who looked like a middle- aged schoolmistress. There was a girl whose hair was clipped like a sergeant-major back and sides, with one long, purple lock left in the middle. The others were less colourful – ordinary people such as I would have seen shopping in Safeway’s and there, I thought, probably buying cellophane-packed joints and pounds of bacon. The tallest was a young man who remained profoundly serious in spite of the excited laughter around him. He was wearing jeans and a crimson shirt which made him stand out as clearly, against the green fields, as the huntsmen he had come to revile.

  There was the sound of a horn. The dogs poured down the drive with their tails waving like flags. Then came Rollo, followed by the riders. The antis put down their sandwiches, lowered their mugs of coffee and shouted out such complimentary remarks as ‘Murdering bastards,’, ‘Get your rocks off watching little furry animals pulled to pieces, do you?’ and ‘How would you like to be hunted and thrown to the dogs this afternoon, darling?’ – an invitation to Tricia.

  Then Dorothea came riding slowly, to find the Crimson Shirt was barring her path, his arms spread out as though prepared to meet his death under a ton of horseflesh. A dialogue then took place which I was to have occasion to remember.

  ‘You love killing things, don’t you?’ from the Crimson Shirt.

  ‘Not particularly. Mostly, I enjoy the ride.’

  ‘Why do you kill animals?’

&nb
sp; ‘Perhaps because they kill other animals.’

  ‘Do you ever think that something might kill you one fine afternoon?’

  ‘Quite often.’ Dorothea looked down at him. ‘A lot of people die, out hunting. A nice quick death. I hope I’ll be so lucky.’

  ‘You might get killed this afternoon.’

  ‘Anyone might.’

  ‘It doesn’t worry you?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  ‘It’s only what you deserve.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Looking down from her horse, I thought she suddenly seemed thin and insubstantial as a ghost, her lined face very pale. Then she pulled a silver flask from her jacket pocket, unscrewed it and leant down to offer the Crimson Shirt a drink.

  ‘What have you got in there?’ he asked her.

  ‘Fox’s blood, of course.’

  He looked up at her and said, ‘You cruel bitch!’

  ‘It’s only whisky. You’re very welcome.’ He shook his head and the cobweb-faced lady took a long pull at the flask. Other riders had come up beside her and were listening, amused at first and then angry. There were shouts, conflicting protests, and the Crimson Shirt called out in the voice of doom, ‘One of you is going to die for all the dead animals. Justice is sure to be done!’

  I saw a whip raised at the back of the cavalcade but the Crimson Shirt had dropped his arm and moved to join his party by the van. Dorothea Eyles put away her flask, kicked her horse’s sides and trotted with the posse after her. They were chattering together cheerfully, after what had then seemed no more than a routine confrontation between the hunters and the sabs – rather enjoyed by both sides.

  The sound of the horn, the baying of the dogs and the clattering of horses had died away. The van, after a number of ineffectual coughs and splutters, started its engine and went. It was very quiet as Lancelot and I walked back down the drive to join Hilda who was enjoying a final glass of port. We went into the house to wait for the taxi which would take us back to the station.

  That evening we were at home at the mansion flat and I had been restored to my armchair. Lancelot, exhausted by the day’s excitement, was asleep on the sofa, breathing heavily and, no doubt, dreaming of imaginary hunts. The news item was on the television after a war in Africa and an earthquake in Japan. There were stock pictures of hunters and sabs. Then came the news that Dorothea Eyles, out hunting and galloping down a woodland track, had ridden into a high wire stretched tight between two trees. Her neck was broken and she was dead when some ramblers found her. An anti-hunt demonstrator named Dennis Pearson was helping the local police with their inquiries.

  Rollo Eyles had returned to my life, suffered a terrible tragedy and immediately disappeared again. Of course I telephoned but his recorded voice always told me he was not available. I left messages of sorrow and concern but the calls were never answered, and neither were the letters I wrote to him. Tragedy too often causes embarrassment and we didn’t visit Rollo in the Cotswolds. Tragedy vanishes quickly, swept on by the tide of horrible events in the world, and I began to think less often of Dorothea Eyles and her ghastly ride to death. Rollo joined the unseen battalion of people whom I liked but never saw.

  ‘Rumpole! I have heard reports of your extraordinary behaviour!’

  ‘Don’t believe everything you hear in reports.’

  ‘Erskine-Brown has told me that Henry told him . . .’

  ‘I object! Hearsay evidence! Totally inadmissible.’

  ‘Well well. I have had a direct account from Henry himself.’

  ‘Not under oath, and certainly not subject to cross-examination!’

  ‘You were seen entering the downstairs toilet facility with a bowl.’

  ‘What’s that meant to prove? I might have been rinsing out my dentures. Or uttering prayers to a water god to whose rites I have been recently converted. What on earth’s it got to do with Henry, anyway? Or you, for that matter, Bollard?’

  ‘Having filled your bowl with water, you were seen to carry it to your room.’

  ‘It would be inappropriate to say prayers to the water god in the downstairs toilet facilities.’

  ‘Come now, Rumpole, don’t fence with me.’ Soapy Sam Ballard was using one of the oldest and corniest of legal phrases, long fallen into disuse in the noble art of cross-examination, and I allowed myself a dismissive yawn. It wasn’t the brightest period of my long and eventful practice at the bar. Since our visit to the Cotswolds, and its terrible outcome, briefs had been notable by their absence. I came into Chambers every day and searched my mantelpiece in vain for a new murder, or at least a taking away without the owner’s consent. My wig gathered dust in my locker down the Bailey; the ushers must have forgotten me and I looked back with nostalgia on the days when I had laboured long and lost before Mr Injustice Gravestone. At least something was happening then. Now the suffocating boredom of inactivity was made worse by the arrival of an outraged Head of Chambers in my room, complaining of my conduct with something so totally inoffensive as a bowl of water.

  ‘You might as well confess, Rumpole.’ Ballard’s eye was lit with a gleam of triumph. ‘There was one single word written in large letters on that chipped enamel bowl.’

  ‘Water?’

  ‘No, Rumpole. Henry’s evidence was quite clear on this point. What was written was the word DOG.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘What do you mean, so what?’

  ‘Plenty of people wash their socks in bowls with DOG written on them.’

  Before Ballard could meet this point, there was that low but threatening murmur, like the sound heralding the dark and distant approach of a tube train, from behind my desk.

  ‘What was that noise, Rumpole?’

  ‘Low-flying aircraft?’ I suggested, hopefully. But at this point the accused, like so many of my clients, ruined his chances by putting in a public appearance. Sir Lancelot, looking extra large, black and threatening, emerged like his more famous namesake – with lips curled, dog teeth bared – eager to do battle in the lists. There was no contest. At the sight of the champion, even before the first snarl, Sir Soapy Sam, well-known coward and poltroon of the Table Round, started an ignominious retreat towards the door, crying in terror, ‘Get that animal out of here at once!’

  ‘No!’ I relied on my constitutional rights. ‘Not until the matter has been properly decided by a full Chambers’ meeting.’

  ‘I shall call one,’ Ballard piped in desperation, ‘as a matter of urgency.’ And then he scooted out and slammed the door behind him.

  The fact of the matter was that Hilda had been out a lot recently at bridge lessons and coffee mornings, and I, lonely and unoccupied in Chambers, started in a curious way to relish the company of a hound who looked as gloomy as I felt. On the whole, the dog was not demanding. Like many judges, Lancelot fought, nearly all the time, a losing battle against approaching sleep. Water from the downstairs loo, and the dog biscuits I brought in my briefcase, satisfied his simple wants. The sound of regular breathing from somewhere by my feet was company for me as I spent the day with The Times crossword.

  The Chambers’ meeting was long and tense. At first the case for the Prosecution looked strong. Henry sent a message to say that he undertook to clerk for a barristers’ chambers and not a kennel. He added that the sight of Sir Lancelot peering round my open door and baring his teeth had frightened away old Tim Daker of Daker, Winterbotham & Guilden- stern, before he’d even delivered a brief. Erskine-Brown questioned the paternity of Sir Lancelot and when I said labrador loudly, he replied, ‘Possibly a labrador who’d had hanky-panky with a dubious Jack Russell.’ He ended up by asking in a dramatic fashion if we really wanted a mongrel taking up residence in 4 Equity Court. This brought a fiery reply from Mizz Liz Probert who said that animals had the same rights to our light, heat, comforts, and presumably law reports, as male barristers. She personally could remember the days, not long past, when she, as a practising woman, was treated as though she were a so-called labrador of
doubtful parentage. Gender awareness was no longer enough. In Mizz Probert’s considered opinion we needed species awareness as well. She saw no reason, in the interests of open government and tolerance of minorities, why a living being should be denied entrance to our Chambers simply because it had four legs instead of two. ‘Of course,’ Mizz Probert concluded, looking at Erskine-Brown in a way which forced him to reconsider his position, ‘if we were to support the pin-striped chauvinists who hated mongrels and women, we should be alienating the Sisterhood of Radical Lawyers, devoted to animal rights.’

  I took up her last point in my speech for the Defence and did so in a way calculated to make Soapy Sam’s flesh creep. I had seen something of animal rights enthusiasts. Did we really want their van parked outside Chambers all day and most of the night? Did Ballard want a shorn-headed enthusiast with earrings shouting, ‘Get your rocks off shutting out innocent dogs, do you?’ Could we risk a platoon of grey-haired, middle- class dog-lovers staging a sit-in outside our front door every time we wanted to go to Court? After this, the evidence of a Member of Chambers, to the effect that dogs made him sneeze, seemed to carry very little weight. The result of our deliberations was, of course, leaked and a paragraph appeared in next day’s Londoner’s Diary in the Evening Standard:

  Should dogs be called to the Bar? The present showing of the legal profession might suggest that they could only be an improvement on the human intake. Indeed, a few Rottweilers on the Bench might help reduce the crime rate. The question was hotly debated in the Chambers of Samuel Ballard, Q.C. when claret-tippling Old Bailey character Horace Rumpole argued for the admittance of a pooch, extravagantly named Sir Lancelot. Rumpole won his case but then he’s long been known as a champion of the underdog.

  It was a pyrrhic victory. Dodo came back from holiday a week later and reclaimed Sir Lancelot. She was delighted he had been mentioned in the newspapers but furious he was called a pooch.