Rumpole Rests His Case (5 page)

‘Here's your man, Mr Rumpole.'

The screw on duty at the Brixton interview room was used to delivering a succession of alleged murderers, rapists and receivers of stolen laptops to me and my faithful instructing solicitor, ‘Bonny' Bernard, where a chair awaited them by the Formica-covered table which bore my brief, Bernard's packet of courtesy Marlboro Lights and the top of a tin of Oxo cubes which served as an ashtray.

The captive now delivered was markedly different from the usual run of Rumpole's clientele, in that he was neither angry, cocky, chippy nor overly anxious to please his brief. He didn‘t, as some customers do, appear eager to pretend that his dire situation was a bit of a joke. To begin with he was tall, well over six foot, causing me to look up at him. He was old, I should have said in his late sixties. He was also handsome, with clear-cut features, unblinking blue eyes and a head of white hair, well brushed, as perhaps his only vanity. He stood looking at me and Bonny Bernard with the half-smile of an Old Testament prophet who had arrived in Gomorrah and found it just as sad and disgusting as he had been led to believe.

‘Sit down, Mr Twineham.' I waved him to a chair. ‘Do have one of Mr Bernard's cigarettes.'

‘Thank you. I do not care to pollute the lovely world the good Lord has given us.' Another of them! I accepted the fact, then I thought that at least no one in prison had to go out into the street to smoke.

‘This is Mr Rumpole.' Mr Bernard made the introduction. ‘He'll be defending you at the trial.'

‘The Lord has sent you.' William Twineham looked at me as though he had been given a warning of my arrival into his life and thought there was, after all, nothing much he could do about it. ‘It's not for me to question the inscrutable ways of Providence.'

‘You and your wife moved into number 35 Primrose Drive, as I understand, as soon as it was built.' It was time, I thought, to move away from the concerns of God to such mundane details as might interest an Old Bailey Jury.

‘Certainly. She was known as Jo in certain quarters.' And then the alleged murderer gave us a sudden smile. It was modest, unexpectedly charming and seemed to illuminate the shadowy interview room. ‘To me she was always Josephine.' He said it tenderly; whether he meant it or was treating us to an expert professional performance was not yet clear.

‘So there were no previous occupants of the house?' No one else, was what I meant, to have stowed an unwanted wife under the floorboards.

‘We watched it being built after we'd put down our deposit. It was to be our house together for the next five years.'

‘And your home until the Council took over all the houses. You lived there alone?'

‘I still felt Josephine was there. The memories.'

‘In fact she left you in 1968. I'm looking at the statement of Paul and Louisa Arkwright, your semi-detached neighbours. You told them you didn't know where your wife had gone. Or with whom?'

‘I told them that. Yes!'

‘Was that true?'

‘It seemed true. She had left me!'

‘What does that mean - “seemed”?'

‘How much can we ever truly know, Mr Rumpole, this side of the grave? When we see through a glass darkly.'

Looking at the next-door neighbours' statements, I felt I could see through a glass altogether too clearly.

‘The Arkwrights say they heard sounds of a violent quarrel shortly before your wife disappeared. Is that true... ?'

William Twineham's smile died. His eyes were closed, his body moved as though in time to unheard music as he recited in a muted singsong, ‘And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time from the face of the serpent.'

‘Who said that?'

‘Saint John the Divine.'

‘What's it meant to mean?'

‘We must wait, Mr Rumpole, you and I must wait, until all things are made clear.'

‘We can't wait, I'm afraid.' Bonny Bernard seemed to have found the Book of Revelations singularly unrevealing. ‘Your trial's fixed for Tuesday the seventeenth. We've got just about three weeks.'

But I was looking back over thirty-three years. I had the prosecution album of photographs. The first was taken from one framed on William Twineham's mantelpiece in the bedsit he had moved to when number 35 was taken over. I saw a girl laughing, with long, curly hair, which shone on some far-away summer afternoon, crowned with a daisy chain. I turned the page, and there on a mortuary table was the completely reassembled skeleton, the empty ribcage, the skull with dark sockets, all that was left of Josephine Twineham, known to everyone except her husband as Jo.

I took a deep breath and tried again. ‘Mr Twineham, I don't know exactly what your religious beliefs might be...'

‘He regularly attends his church in Pinner.' Bernard had a note in his file.

‘The True Church Apostolic. I know nothing of
your
religious beliefs, Mr Rumpole.'

I wondered how much I knew myself. My creed included a simple faith in trial by Jury and the presumption of innocence. The eleventh commandment was, ‘Thou Shalt Not Plead Guilty'. I had a faint hope that the Day of Judgment, if there was ever to be a Day of Judgment, would not entail a day in Court as ferocious and unjust as a bad time before Judge Bullingham down the Old Bailey. I decided to avoid the issue. ‘I don't think my beliefs are strictly relevant.'

‘Beliefs, Mr Rumpole,' our client was smiling again now, ‘are always relevant. My church has taught me to interpret Revelations and understand the gift of prophecy.'

‘Then perhaps you will reveal this to us. Did you kill your wife?'

Mr Twineham was looking at me steadily, his smile undimmed. ‘Josephine's death was an act of God.'

‘And did you give God any sort of assistance at the time?'

Instead of a smile, I got another question. ‘Does anyone say I did?'

‘You quarrelled. She disappeared. She seems to have been found buried under the hearth in your living-room. They will ask the Jury to draw the inference that you killed her.'

‘You mean, ask them to guess?'

‘An informed guess. Yes. That's what they'll decide. Unless you tell them a different story.'

‘What sort of story would you suggest?'

This was blasphemy! My religious beliefs, such as they are, had been deeply insulted. As an old black cab plying for hire, I had been engaged by some pretty dubious customers, shysters, fraudsters and con men to whom the truth was, like the Virgin Birth, a remote myth. But I had never met a customer who had asked me to invent a defence for him, nor would I ever have consented to do so. Fired by indignation, I asked an unusual and risky question. ‘How about telling me the truth?'

‘About the night Josephine and I quarrelled?'

‘All about it.'

‘What happened that night... is one of the mysteries.'

‘Juries don't like mysteries.'

‘How much should I tell? I shall pray for guidance.'

‘Well, all I can say is do it soon. Otherwise I'll give you a prophecy to think about.'

‘What is your prophecy?' For the first time, our client seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say.

‘I see,' I told William Twineham, ‘through a glass and not so darkly, you spending most of your remaining life locked in a cell, probably with some unstable psychopathic killer, in a sink prison with drug dealing, unchecked violence and screws who may take an instant dislike to you. So get your guidance, return of post, and we'll be back.'

‘Oh yes,' Bernard told him forcefully, gathering up his papers, ‘we'll be back.'

‘Have you finished, Mr Rumpole?' A screw opened the glass door and enquired politely.

‘Not really. In fact we've hardly begun.' And so we left William Twineham to his prayers.

 

 

‘Thirty-three years ago. Just imagine what it'd be like to be tried for something after all those years, perhaps when you were an entirely different person.' What had that overworked, meticulous and respectable solicitor Mr Bernard done some forty years ago that he wouldn't have liked to admit to in Court? It wasn't long after the disappearance of Jo that we first met. What was the first case he sent me? One of the Timson clan, now grey-haired and walking with the aid of a stick, sowing his wild oats in the theft of lead off a church roof.

‘I mean, Will Twineham must have thought the past was all over,' Bernard went on. ‘Dead and buried.'

‘To coin a phrase,' I muttered, refilling our glasses from the bottle of Château Thames Embankment which Jack Pommeroy had agreed to put on my somewhat overcrowded slate. ‘You're right, though. If some remote town-planner or some faceless committee hadn't decided to widen the road into London, Jo Twineham would have slept under the floor undisturbed and our client could remain a pillar of the Apostolic Church.'

‘It's the shock of that all coming out that's turned his mind, wouldn't you reckon?'

‘Either that or he's decided to take cover behind the Book of Revelations.'

‘The evidence of identification,' Bernard tried to sound helpful, ‘it's not all that convincing.'

‘You mean some complete stranger might have broken into the house and buried a woman we know absolutely nothing about in the front parlour? I know you're trying to be helpful ...'

‘That line's no use to us?'

‘Probably not. What I'd like most is ...'

‘Is what, Mr Rumpole?'

‘To get to know him. To get to know both of them, in fact. He's so serious and she was so beautiful. What did they quarrel about all those years ago?'

Before Mr Bernard could offer any help, we were rudely interrupted by a voice crying from the other end of the bar, in a penetrating Welsh accent, ‘It's Roly Poly Rumpole, by all that's wonderful!'

I looked round to find myself being approached by a stranger with a toothy grin, strong bifocals and a shock of blond hair going grey. He had, in spite of his age, the cheerful look of a schoolboy in some long-gone comic, famous for his jolly japes and teasing of housemasters.

‘Owen Oswald! Remember me, don't you?'

‘I'm afraid I don't.'

‘Dangerous driving. Swansea. 1981. You defended me. I chose you.'

He had advanced and was very close to me, one hand gripping my lapel as though to hold himself upright and breathing out the sweet smell of gin and tonic. ‘I chose you because my solicitor said you'd get the whole bench of magistrates laughing my case out. Said you were a dab hand with the jokes, if you know what I mean.'

‘I know exactly what you mean. So did I get them laughing?'

‘You did, my dear old Roly Poly. You most certainly did. And when you suggested to the other driver that he had his car painted in his
racing
colours...'

‘They laughed at that?' It sounded improbable.

‘Tickled pink, they were.'

‘So we won?'

‘We didn't win. They enjoyed a good laugh and banned me for two years. Thousand-pound fine. You were the most expensive entertainment I ever went to.'

By now I was anxious to be rid of the Welsh joker with his memories of past failure and get on with Mr Bernard, the bottle of Château Thames Embankment and the fatal relationship of Jo and Will Twineham. But what Owen Oswald said next grabbed my attention and eventually, I thought, put me permanently in his debt.

‘Just up here for a conference on a business matter, and they told me you were in old Bonzo Ballard's Chambers.'

‘I am in Chambers supposedly led by a person called Ballard. But I know nothing of “Bonzo”.'

‘No one calls him Bonzo any more?'

‘ “Soapy Sam”, is that who you mean?'

‘It's obvious you weren't at the University of Wales in Cardiff, 1966-69.'

‘I have a vague memory of Soapy Sam telling me that the Law Faculty in Cardiff was miles ahead of anything Oxford or Edinburgh had to offer, which is why he'd honoured it with his presence...'

‘I can't remember him talking much about the law. It was the band. That was the great thing with Bonzo.'

‘The band?' What was the fellow talking about - some earnest group dedicated to Christian fellowship? ‘What sort of band?'

‘Bonzo Ballard and the Pithead Stompers. Enthusiastic but, in my humble opinion, they couldn't hold a candle to The Swinging Blue Jeans, let alone Frank Zappa.'

‘Are you telling me that Soapy Sam Ballard played in a band?' I felt, at this moment, some blessed hope of which I had long been unaware.

‘All over the place. Uni dances, working men's clubs, Saturday night pubs, old people's homes, till the old people went on strike.'

‘Are you telling me that Soapy Sam played some instrument?'

‘Slapped away at a guitar. You know the sort of thing. And sang - not badly.'

‘Sang?' I couldn't believe my luck. ‘Are there no recordings available? Perhaps an old '78?‘

‘I don't think they were ever let into a recording studio. But I've got a photograph.'

‘A photograph - featuring Ballard?'

‘A photograph starring Bonzo. He had hair down to his shoulders at the time.'

‘You keep it as some sort of memento?'

‘I keep it because I was a member of the Pithead Stompers. On drums.'

I looked at the man as a mountaineer clinging to the edge of a cliff might greet the guide come to haul him to safety. ‘I'm not a rich man,' I confessed to Oswald. ‘I do Legal Aid crime and we only get paid now and then. But I'm prepared to spend good money on a copy of this photograph.'