The Anti-Social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole (4 page)

‘Not ill, I hope.'

‘Not ill, but worried. Not to put too fine a point on it, he was worried about you, Ballard.'

‘About me? I hope you reassured him. I'm perfectly well.'

‘Oh, it wasn't your health, Ballard. Quite frankly, he was distressed to hear what you're doing.'

‘Doing our work?'

‘Yes, but what
sort
of work?'

‘Leading you in a murder case.'

‘That's true.' I had to admit it reluctantly. ‘But what
sort
of a case? Defending a man who frequents prostitutes and is supposed to have strangled one of them.
Not
the sort of work for a potential Chair of LAC.'

‘Is that what he said?' Ballard stood still now, troubled in the wind.

‘Words to that effect.'

Ballard thought for a while and then struck a note of resignation.

‘I can't get out of it now.'

‘I don't see why not.'

‘I can't tell the client it's not the sort of case I should be concerned with.'

‘You'll have to say you're engaged elsewhere – you'll have to be sure that there is someone else thoroughly capable of taking it on.'

‘Whom might I suggest?'

‘Me, of course.' Perhaps it was the wind, but my unlearned leader seemed more than unusually slow on the uptake.

‘You feel you could do it?'

‘Hopeless cases are my speciality.'

‘Perhaps that's what should be done.' Ballard seemed to make up his mind and stepped purposefully forward into the wind. ‘Thank you, Rumpole.'

‘Oh, don't thank me. Always willing to help. But if you're really grateful, there's a little thing you could do for me.'

‘All right. What is it?'

‘I'm thinking of applying for a silk gown and a seat in the front row. Would you support my application?'

‘You a QC, Rumpole?' He was grinning broadly. ‘What a novel suggestion! Well! We'll have to see about that, won't we?'

He seemed to be laughing as he strode on. I let him go. I had
R
. v.
Wetherby
under my belt and I mustn't be greedy.

 

‘So has Mr Ballard found a chap in deeper trouble than me?'

‘It's not that, Mr Wetherby.' Bonny Bernard spoke with the tone of someone giving an official explanation which he didn't entirely believe to be true. ‘Mr Ballard has another commitment which he couldn't get out of.'

‘So that means I'm not going to have a QC defend me?'

‘You may well have. Mr Rumpole here has applied for a silk gown. I hope that I may be able
to mark the brief for Horace Rumpole, QC.' Again I was disturbed by a lack of conviction in Bonny Bernard's tone of voice.

‘I have no doubt that I shall be in the front bench when your trial comes on.' I adopted a positive tone to reassure the client. ‘I don't see how they can possibly refuse me. My career, ever since the Penge Bungalow Murders, has made me a legend in the Courts of Law.'

‘You're sure they'll make you a QC?' The client still didn't sound entirely convinced.

‘Just as sure as I am that you're coming on for trial at the Old Bailey. Speaking of which, perhaps you can help me by answering some simple questions.'

We were back again in the interview room in Brixton Prison, with its bare table, its cactus wilting on the window sill and its officer posted on the other side of the door to make sure that there was no sort of dash for freedom. The meeting had begun by our client refusing Bernard's offer of a cigarette, a normal way of putting prisoners at ease, with a long lecture on the dangers of smoking. An odd sort of attitude, I thought, from a man accused of inflicting the far greater danger of manual strangulation.

‘You're sure you're going to get the QC?'

‘As I say, I don't see how they can refuse me.'

There was a silence, during which Graham Wetherby was no doubt considering whether he could share this optimistic view of Rumpole's future. At last he said, ‘All right then. What do you want to know?'

‘That mark on your face. Have you had it since you were a child?'

He was sitting by the window, so the swollen red stain was clearly visible. Now he put up a hand to cover it.

‘Since I was born, yes.' He explained carefully as though to an imbecile. ‘That's why it's called a birthmark.'

‘You think that's why girls don't like you?'

‘What do you mean, they don't like me?'

‘Why they don't want to go to bed with you.'

‘I never ask them.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because I know what they'd say.'

‘So it's because of the mark on your face that all your experience of sex has been with prostitutes.'

‘They don't mind about it. Not if you can pay them enough.'

‘So let's say you'd had a number of girls who were
on the game for, let's say, at least the last ten years?'

‘For as long as I could afford it.'

‘Then let's say for about the last five years?'

‘About that – yes.'

‘And did anything like this ever happen before?'

‘That I killed any of them? No. Of course it didn't happen. I keep telling you. What've I got?' Graham Wetherby turned angrily to Bonny Bernard. ‘What've you got for me? A brief, not even a QC, who thinks I'm guilty. I always strangle them, is that what he thinks?'

‘I think nothing of the sort.' I did my best to quieten the client. ‘To me you're innocent until the jury comes back and tells me otherwise. What I really want to know is, had you ever been locked in a sitting room before, on your previous visits to them?'

‘Never. No, that never happened. Not that I can recall.'

I made a note on my brief and then asked the final question.

‘And just tell me. How close did you get to her? When you discovered she was dead?'

There was a silence in the small, closely guarded room before he answered. ‘I kissed her.' And then, while his legal advisers remained silent, he said,
‘They don't do kissing. Those types of girls. Not when they're alive.'

The familiar interview room seemed cold and I felt an unusual sadness in the presence of the pale young man with the funny cheek who only received a kiss from the dead. Then I pulled myself together and gave some instructions to my solicitor.

‘Get on to Professor Andrew Ackerman,' I told Bonny Bernard. ‘Get him to hurry up and give us a report on the post-mortem findings and photographs. Oh, and I suppose we might get some sort of a character reference.' I turned to the client. ‘I understand you work at the Home Office. In which department?'

‘I used to be in youth crimes – juvenile delinquency.'

I thought of the youth crime I was dealing with, the little matter of a thoughtlessly kicked football, a million miles away from the adult offence which had brought me to Brixton.

‘But I was moved last year. A new post – seconded to a new department.'

‘Your boss there,' I asked him, ‘would he speak up for you?'

‘There are so many of us there. I don't really know my boss.'

‘Well, Mr Bernard will see what he can do. I think that's all for the moment.'

‘Just one thing, Mr Rumpole. You say you're getting a QCship?'

‘It's in the pipeline.' I did my best to reassure him.

‘You think it'll come through in time for my trial?'

‘Let's hope so. But even if it doesn't you'll have the best service available at the Old Bailey.'

‘From you, Mr Rumpole?'

‘And from no one else.'

‘I'd just feel satisfied in my mind if I could have a QC there for this occasion.'

He had kissed a dead girl, he was up on a charge of murder with a defence which was not yet entirely clear, and his only worry seemed to be the quality of my gown and whether or not I might be seated in the front or second row.

As we parted he brought the matter up again. ‘Please, Mr Rumpole,' he said. ‘Couldn't you manage to speed it up?'

‘You mean the trial?'

‘No, sir. I mean your QC.'

My wife, Hilda, was back from the bridge club early that afternoon and, instead of her usual reliving of
some of the more dramatic hands and sad tales of how she had just missed three No Trumps because of her partner's ineptitude, that evening she seemed to be taking an unusual interest in the law.

‘Of course provocation would reduce the crime of murder to manslaughter,' She Who Must stated. ‘Was there no provocation in the Wetherby case?'

‘Not really. He says the girl was dead.'

‘Of course he would say that, wouldn't he? They all do.'

‘Who are “they all”?'

‘Everyone in that type of situation.' Hilda seemed to be speaking of her vast experience. ‘How's his mentality?'

‘Pretty worried at the moment, I should say.'

‘You know what I mean, Rumpole.' Hilda was getting impatient ‘Has he a classified mental disease? Is he unhinged? Mentally deficient?'

‘I suppose so, seeing as he works for the Home Office.'

‘Oh, do be serious, Rumpole! What I mean is, as I'm sure you realize, could he go for diminished responsibility?'

‘I hardly think so. He seemed to be perfectly bright, for a civil servant.'

‘It's saying things like that, Rumpole,' Hilda's
tone was serious, ‘that so irritates judges. You want to avoid those little jokes you're so full of. They don't do you any good at all. No provocation. No diminished responsibility. I'll have to give
R
. v.
Wetherby
some more serious thought.'

‘That's very kind of you, Hilda,' I felt I had to say.

‘Not at all. Of course I'm anxious to prevent your practice going totally to pieces. You can tell Wetherby that I'm giving his case some serious thought.'

‘That's very big of you.'

‘It's good to have a practical case to work on.'

‘I'm sure. But there's only one thing my client is really worried about.'

‘What's that?'

‘He wants me to become a QC. He really wants to be defended by a silk.'

‘Really? And have you agreed to that, Rumpole?'

‘The thought had crossed my mind.'

‘If you got it you'll be put at the level of Daddy.'

‘That would be an honour.' My fingers were crossed. My late father-in-law's performances in court didn't improve when he became a QC.

‘Let me put my mind to it,' Hilda said again as she was serving out the lamb chops, frozen peas
and boiled potatoes. ‘We'll see what we shall see.'

Though I asked her for further particulars of her last remark she clammed up, and we had no more discussion about the law for the rest of the evening.

 

Extract from the Memoirs of Hilda Rumpole

Rumpole, who in my opinion has been mouldering for far too long as about the oldest junior at the Criminal Bar, seems to have come to his senses at last and decided to pull himself up by his own bootstraps. He has at last decided to apply for silk. Of course Rumpole will never be as distinguished a QC as Daddy – to whom Rumpole's murder cases seemed very downmarket when compared with his speciality in property rights, contracts and
bills of exchange. At least no one had to die to provide my father with work. I think, however, Daddy would have been pleased that I at least had a husband who was entitled to put the letters QC after his name.

I first knew of Rumpole's decision when Leonard Bullingham, after we had bid and won a satisfying four Hearts, pulled a crumpled letter from out of his pocket. ‘A letter from your old man,' Leonard told me. ‘Hardly the most tactful way of asking for a favour, is it?'

He gave me the letter in question for inclusion in these very memoirs, so I am able to quote it in its entirety. It began, as I thought, in a way that hovered between the overly familiar and the downright rude.

My dear Old Bull

My wife may have told you, during the course of one of those tedious card games you both appear to enjoy, that I'm thinking of putting on a silk gown and joining those QCs (Queer Customers is what I call them) who loll around the front row in various courtrooms relying on their underpaid ‘juniors' to do all the hard work. In support of my application I need to call a
client and a judge who can speak well of me.

As a client I can call any member of the Timson family whom I may have rescued, by my skill as an advocate, from the shades of the prison house. Finding a decent criminal is easy. It's harder to find a judge who would be equally helpful. Looking back on the cases I did before you at the Old Bailey, I feel sure that you would be pleased to admit that my arguments were, on the whole, arguments based on the interests of justice, so I feel sure I can rely on your support for my present application.

Your old sparring partner,

Horace Rumpole

PS I'm sure my wife would welcome your support for the Rumpole case. She has wondered why my undoubted talent as an advocate has not yet elevated me to the same rank as her late father. It's for her sake that I have had to plead this most difficult of all cases – my own.

‘What are you going to do about Rumpole's letter?' I asked Leonard after I had read it.

‘Put it in the bin for recycling. It might emerge as a decent bit of toilet paper.' Rumpole's letter seemed to have brought out the cruder side of Leonard.

‘He does say you had legal arguments…'

‘Nonsense. They weren't legal arguments. They were… ploys drummed up by your husband with the purpose of getting the jury to dislike me.'

Leonard looked pained as he said this, so I felt I had to cheer him up. I said, ‘I'm sure he never succeeded in doing that.'

‘Sometimes he did. I think sometimes he made the jury think I was a direct descendant of Judge Jeffreys, dead set on a conviction.' I was quite touched by Leonard when he said that. He was looking at me in the way of a small boy left out of the football team, pleading for reassurance.