Rumpole Rests His Case (16 page)

I tried to listen to him sympathetically, and I didn't tell him that it was a position I'd got used to over the years.

‘I had the feeling that she was judging me all the time. Well, no one likes being judged, do they, Rumpole?'

‘None of my clients are very keen on it.'

‘So I'm thinking of marriage to someone younger. Someone more at the start of her career.'

‘Have you asked her yet?'

‘Asked who?'

‘Liz Probert.'

‘I don't know why you should think it's Liz I have in mind.' Claude looked flattered, however, as though I had recognized that he had a reasonable chance of Mizz Probert. ‘I haven't asked her yet. Naturally I'm not free to do so. But she has given me a certain amount of encouragement.'

‘You mean she let you take her to the
Tzuilight of the Gods?
'

‘She leapt at the idea of coming to Covent Garden with me. Wagner, a half-bottle and sandwiches in the Floral Hall. She loved every minute of it! That's the sort of life I can offer her, Rumpole.'

‘And you think she'll leap at that?'

‘What girl wouldn't?'

‘Oh, I suppose — hardly any.' I didn't disillusion the poor old QC, who felt happiness was within his grasp. And then his voice became more resolute and he frowned in a way he might have thought was merciless.

‘I have a strong suspicion,' he said, ‘that Phillida's seeing someone else. I mean why else would she want a separation?'

‘I can't imagine.'

‘I'm not hanging around for her agreement to a divorce, Rumpole. I've instructed my solicitor and I'm going to have her watched. She won't get away with this. I'm keeping her under close observation.'

 

 

‘You weren't invited to Dr Gurnley's party?'

‘Not actually invited. No. I told you. My friend, Anthea, happens to be the girlfriend of Keith Fawcett who plays for the Wanderers. They took me with them.'

‘Did you ask Anthea to do that?'

‘I asked her. Yes.'

‘Simply because you wanted to go to a party?'

‘I was in a party mood. Yes.'

‘It wasn't just that, was it?'

There was a moment's pause. Angela Illsley, ‘our reporter on the
Beacon',
stood in the witness box at London Sessions and looked towards the prosecution counsel as though for advice. She was, I thought, in her early thirties, her naturally pretty face marred, at that moment, by a frown of irritation. Her evidence in chief had been clear, precise and given with every sign of conviction. But she didn't like to be contradicted.

‘Why else would I want to go?'

‘Let me tell you. You were a fairly junior reporter at the
Beacon,
weren't you?'

‘I do my job well, Mr Rumpole, and I'm proud of it.'

‘Did you want to do your job even better and see if you could get a story about a well-known politician?'

‘I'm always on the look out for stories, Mr Rumpole.'

‘So you didn't just go because you were in a party mood. You went there in search of a story.'

‘If you put it that way, yes.'

Seldom have I played to a larger audience. The press benches were stuffed and seasoned Court reporters were squashed in with the public. Lawyers waiting for their cases to come on had dropped in to catch the highlights of our trial. Seated in the dock, wearing a dark suit and a Croydon Wanderers tie, my client indulged in rather too much smiling at the Jury. They looked a reasonable lot, a selection of variously coloured faces. There was a large, motherly black woman whom I had seen reading the
Guardian,
two young women who might have been schoolteachers, and a scholarly looking young Indian who took copious notes. They were men and women, I thought, who lived in a world more real than that inhabited by the Honourable Member.

‘The sort of story you were after wouldn't be one about what a thoroughly decent, kindly and upright citizen Dr Gurnley was and how the canapes were delicious.'

‘How the what were delicious, Mr Rumpole?' His Honour Stephen Millichip was a soft-voiced, gentle Judge who seemed to be constantly surprised by the rough and often brutal world to which his modest practice in the law of landlord and tenant had brought him. ‘Did you say the cannabis?' He named the drug as though the word might itself cause some sort of dangerous intoxication in Court.

‘No, Your Honour.
Canapés
. We'll get to the cannabis later.'

There was a little breeze of laughter from the Jury, and Angela Illsley got briskly back to business. ‘I don't think my editor would have wanted a story like that.'

‘What your editor wanted was a story that proved my client to be a complete hypocrite.'

‘I don't know what you mean, Mr Rumpole.'

‘Do you not? After three years working on the
Daily Beacon,
are you really telling this Jury you don't know what a hypocrite is?'

It was a mistake. The black
Guardian
reader smiled broadly, but the scholarly Indian frowned with disapproval. Adrian Hoddinot, a singularly fair-minded prosecutor, who looked owlish in thick pebble glasses and always said he only kept on working to provide adequately for his Great Dane, rose with a mild rebuke.

‘Your Honour, I'm sure we all enjoy Mr Rumpole's sense of humour in the robing room. I just don't think he should make jokes at the expense of the witness.'

‘Yes. You mustn't think of this Court simply as a place of entertainment, Mr Rumpole.' The Judge had, perhaps, put his finger on a flaw in my character. I stood looking suitably rebuked and he went on, as though regretting some judicial severity, ‘I know you'll want to rephrase the question.'

‘Certainly, I'll rephrase it.' I turned back to the
Beacon
reporter. ‘You wanted a story that would show my client doesn't practise what he preaches. That all his high moral talk about family life and cracking down on drugs was pure hogwash.'

‘Pure what, Mr Rumpole?'

‘Hogwash, Your Honour.'

I must have stopped being entertaining. The Judge wrote the word down carefully.

‘When I went to the party...'

‘When you gate-crashed the party.'

‘I told you, I went with my friend Anthea.'

‘Did my client know you were coming?'

‘I don't know. Perhaps not...'

‘So when you turned up uninvited, that was the story you were after.'

‘I didn't know what sort of story there'd be, or if there'd be a story at all.'

There was an obvious answer to this, but now was not the moment to accuse her of invention. I embarked on the slow approach, the line of questions the witness agrees to, until, in the end, she is fixed with one she doesn't want to agree to but may be left with no reasonable alternative.

‘You stayed on in the house after all the other guests had left?'

‘I told you, I was in the toilet.'

‘You told us that. Yes. Let's get this clear. Up to the time when you emerged from the lavatory, there'd been no sign of anyone smoking cannabis.'

‘No one was doing drugs. No.'

‘Had you told your friend, Anthea, you wanted to stay on after she and her friend had gone?'

‘She knew I did.'

‘So it was a carefully arranged plan?'

‘It was a plan. Yes.'

‘Where did you go, after you were the only one left?'

‘I went into the sitting-room. Tom was sitting on the sofa. I think he was having a drink.'

‘Did you sit beside him, and tell him it was a lovely party?'

‘Yes.'

‘Had you spoken to him before?'

‘Not really. Not actually spoken. He'd smiled at me.'

‘Did you tell him your name?'

‘He didn't ask me.'

‘Did you kiss him?'

‘I gave him a nice kiss.' She looked at the Jury and gave them a small, confidential smile and said, ‘I think he enjoyed it very much.' It was her first mistake. The motherly
Guardian
reader looked disapproving, the studious Indian mildly surprised.

‘A Judas kiss, was it?'

Adrian the prosecution rose, half-apologetic. ‘I think my learned friend should explain...'

‘Certainly I'll explain. A traitor's kiss. You kissed him and made up your mind to write a story which you knew would ruin his career.'

‘It's not my fault he's ruined his career.'

‘Isn't it? What did you hope for when you kissed him?'

‘I suppose I hoped we'd get friendly,' again she gave an unreturned smile to the Jury, ‘and he'd give me a story.'

‘So was the kiss enough ... to unlock his secrets?'

‘It didn't seem to be. He looked happy, as I say, but he was quiet.' A rare moment, I thought, in the life of Tom Gurnley, MP.

‘And after that?'

‘After that nothing much happened and I asked him if he minded me smoking.'

‘Did he mind?'

‘Not at all. So I got out cigarette papers and I had some...' She paused, and it was time to take a risk, to ask a question without knowing the answer.

‘You said in your statement to the police, and in your evidence in chief, that you rolled a cigarette. That wasn't the truth, was it?'

‘It was a sort of cigarette.'

‘A spliff?'

She looked at the prosecutor for help, but he sighed and looked away.

‘Yes.'

‘Cannabis. A class-B drug?'

‘Well, yes. But the police know. They gave me a warning.'

‘So not being a well-known Member of Parliament means you don't have to face the inconvenience of a prosecution?'

‘Mr Rumpole.' The Judge, unused to the ways of the world, asked me, in the politest possible manner, for some basic education. ‘Perhaps there are some Members of the Jury who know nothing about the making of “spliffs”, as you have called them. Can you help me?'

‘Certainly, Your Honour. Someone has a packet of papers and rolls a cigarette packed with the dope, which may be of varying quality. It's lit and passed round among the participants, who are meant to breathe the smoke in deeply. This produces a feeling of satisfaction and giggles, although by now the end of the joint may, perhaps, be unpleasantly moist...'

I stopped there. Some Members of the Jury were looking at me in wild surmise. Even the well-meaning Judge had raised his eyebrows and the prosecutor said, in a penetrating whisper, ‘Are you an expert witness, Rumpole?' Had I drawn too deeply on my experience of dinner with relics of the sixties during the case concerning Mrs Twineham's skeleton? To avoid further dangerous speculation, I passed quickly on to the next question.

‘Did you offer him the wet end of your spliff?'

‘Yes, I did.'

She had the Jury's full attention. Their disapproval was now reserved entirely for the witness.

‘Was that calculated to tempt him?'

‘I thought it might be fun to see how he'd react.'

‘Fun? Is this whole case
fun
to you? Fun to see a public figure humiliated and perhaps destroyed?'

‘All right then. I wanted to show him up.'

‘And you were determined to do that, weren't you? You had given him the Judas kiss and you were going to sell him for thirty pieces of silver.' Was I making an absurd comparison between the Honourable Member and the founder of a great religion? Undoubtedly. But the Jury, and in particular the
Guardian
reader, seemed to relish my quoting scripture in the case of the Camberwell Carrot.

‘I don't know about pieces of silver ...'

‘How much did the
Beacon
pay you?'

‘I got ten thousand.'

‘Not bad, for a beginner. And a job?'

‘I was promoted. Yes.'

‘And let off your own drug offence.'

‘I told you, I was warned. And I told you, he said he'd got better stuff of his own. He went to a drawer in his desk and unlocked it. He made himself this huge ...'

‘Camberwell Carrot?'

‘Yes.'

‘A name, Your Honour,' I hastened to bring the learned Judge up to date, ‘for a particularly large marijuana cigarette.'

‘Smoked in Camberwell?' The Judge was doing his best to keep up with the evidence.

‘Undoubtedly,' but here I turned back to the witness, ‘but never smoked in front of you in my client's house. Did he lecture you on the dangers of using drugs?'

‘No.'

‘How did it end?'

‘Well, we chatted a bit and then he seemed sleepy. So I left.'

‘Left to write a piece of rather poor fiction for ten thousand pounds. Yes? Thank you, Miss Illsley. I have no further questions.'