John Mortimer - Rumpole On Trial Read online

  John Mortimer - Rumpole On Trial

  Sometimes, when I have nothing better to occupy my mind, when I am sitting in the bath, for instance, or in the doctor's surgery having exhausted the entertainment value of last year's Country Life, or when I am in the corner of Pommeroy's Wine Bar waiting for some generous spirit in Chambers, and there aren't many of them left, to come in and say, 'Care for a glass of Chateau Fleet Street, Rumpole?', I wonder what I would have done if I had been God. I mean, if I had been responsible for creating the world in the first place, would I have cobbled up a globe totally without the minus quantities we have grown used to, a place with no fatal diseases or traffic jams or Mr Justice Graves, and one or two others I could mention? Above all, would I have created a world entirely without evil? And, when I came to think rather further along these lines, it seems to me that a world without evil might possibly be a damned dull world, or an undamned dull world, perhaps I should say, and it would certainly be a world which would leave Rumpole without an occupation. It would also put the Old Bill and most of Her Majesty's judges, prosecutors, prison officers and screws on the breadline. So perhaps a world where everyone rushes about doing good to each other and everyone, including the aforesaid Graves, is filled with brotherly love is not such a marvellous idea after all.

  Brooding a little further on this business of evil, it occurs to me that the world is fairly equally divided between those who see it everywhere because they are always looking for it and those who hardly notice it at all. Of course, the mere fact that some people recognize devilment in the most everyday matters doesn't mean that it isn't there. I have known the first indication that evil was present, in various cases that I have been concerned with, to be a missing library ticket, a car tyre punctured or the wrong overcoat taken from the cloakroom of an expensive restaurant. At other times, the signs of evil are so blatant that they are impossible to ignore, as in the dramatic start to the case which I have come to think of as concerning the Children of the Devil. They led to a serious and, at times, painful inquiry into the machinations of Satan in the Borough of Crockthorpe.

  Crockthorpe is a large, sprawling, in many parts dejected, in others rather too cosy for comfort, area south of the Thames. Its inhabitants include people speaking many languages, many without jobs, many gainfully employed in legal and not so legal businesses, and the huge Timson clan, which must by now account for a sizeable chunk of the population.

  The Timsons, as those of you who have followed my legal career in detail will know, provide not only the bread and marge, the Vim and Brasso, but quite often the beef and butter of our life in Froxbury Mansions, Gloucester Road. A proportion of my intake of Chateau Thames Embankment, and my wife Hilda's gin and tonic, comes thanks to the tireless activities of the Timson family. They are such a large group, their crime rate is so high and their success rate so comparatively low, that they are perfect clients for an Old Bailey hack. They go in for theft, shopbreaking and receiving stolen property but they have never produced a Master Crook.

  If you are looking for sensational crimes, the Timsons won't provide them or, it would be more accurate to say, they didn't until the day that Tracy Timson apparently made a pact with the Devil.

  The story began in the playground of Crockthorpe's Stafford Cripps Junior School. The building had not been much repaired since it was built in the heady days of the first post-war Labour Government, and the playground had been kicked to pieces by generations of scuffling under-twelves.

  It was during the mid-morning break when the children were out fighting, ganging up on each other, or unhappy because they had no one to play with, among the most active, and about to pick a fight with a far larger black boy, was Dominic Molloy, angel-faced and Irish, who will figure in this narrative, when evil appeared.

  Well, as I say, it was half-way through break and the Headmistress, a certain Miss Appleyard, a woman in her early forties who would have been beautiful had not the stress of life in the Stafford Cripps Junior aged her prematurely, was walking across the playground, trying to work out how to make fifty copies of The Little Green Reading Book go round two hundred pupils, when she heard the sound of concerted, eerie and high-pitched screaming coming from one of the doors that led on to the playground.

  Turning towards the sound of the outcry. Miss Appleyard saw a strange sight. A small posse of children, about nine of them, all girls and all screaming, came rushing out like a charge of miniature cavalry. Who they were was, at this moment, a mystery to the Headmistress for each child wore a similar mask. Above the dresses and the jeans and pullovers hung the scarlet and black, grimacing and evil faces of nine devils.

  At this sight even the bravest and most unruly children in the playground were taken aback, many retreated, some of the younger ones adding to the chorus of screams. Only young Dominic Molloy, it has to be said, stood his ground and viewed the scene that followed with amusement and contempt.

  He saw Miss Appleyard step forward fearlessly and, when the charge halted, she plucked off the devil's mask and revealed the small, heart-shaped face of the eight-year-old Tracy, almost the youngest, and now apparently the most devilish, of the Timson family.

  Events thereafter took an even more sinister turn. At first the Headmistress looked grim, confiscated the masks and ordered the children back to the classroom, but didn't speak to them again about the extraordinary demonstration.

  Unfortunately she laid the matter before the proper authority, which in this case was the Social Services and Welfare Department of the Crockthorpe Council. So the wheels were set in motion that would end up with young Tracy Timson being taken into what is laughingly known as care, this being the punishment meted out to children who fail to conform to a conventional and rational society.

  Childhood has, I regret to say, like much else, got worse since I was a boy. We had school bullies, we had headmasters who were apparently direct descendants of Captain Bligh of the Bounty, we had cold baths, inedible food and long hours in chapel on Sundays, but there was one compensation. No one had invented social workers. Now British children, it seems, can expect the treatment we once thought was only meted out to the political opponents of the late unlamented Joseph Stalin. They must learn to dread the knock at the door, the tramp of the Old Bill up the stairs, and being snatched from their nearest and dearest by a member of the alleged caring professions.

  The dreaded knock was to be heard at six-thirty one morning on the door of the semi in Morrison Close, where that young couple Cary and Rosemary (known as Roz) Timson lived with Tracy, their only child. There was a police car flashing its blue light outside the house and a woman police constable in uniform on the step. The knock was administered by a social worker named Mirabelle Jones, of whom we'll hear considerably more later. She was a perfectly pleasant-looking girl with well-tended hair who wore, whenever I saw her, a linen jacket and a calf-length skirt of some ethnic material.

  When she spoke she modulated her naturally posh tones into some semblance of a working-class accent, and she always referred to the parents of the children who came into her possession as Mum and Dad and spoke with friendliness and deep concern.

  When the knock sounded, Tracy was asleep in the company of someone known as Barbie doll, which I have since discovered to be a miniature American person with a beehive hairdo and a large wardrobe. Cary Timson was pounding down the stairs in his pyjamas, unhappily convinced that the knock was in some way connected with the break-in at a shop in Gunston Avenue about which he had been repeatedly called in for questioning, although he had made it clear, on each occasion, that he knew absolutely bugger all about it.

  By the time he had pulled open the door his wife, Roz,
had appeared on the stairs behind him, so she was able to hear Mirabelle telling her husband, after the parties had identified each other, that she had 'come about young Tracy'. From the statements which I was able to read later it appears that the dialogue then went something like this. It began with a panicstricken cry from Roz of 'Tracy? What about our Tracy?

  She's asleep upstairs. Isn't she asleep upstairs?' 'Are you Mum?' Mirabelle then asked.

  'What you mean, am I Mum? Course I'm Tracy's mum.

  What do you want?' Roz clearly spoke with rising hysteria and Mirabelle's reply sounded, as always, reasonable. 'We want to look after your Tracy, Mum. We feel she needs rather special care. I'm sure you're both going to help us. We do rely on Mum and Dad to be very sensible.' Roz was not deceived by the soothing tones and concerned smile. She got the awful message and the shock of it brought her coldly to her senses. 'You come to take Tracy away, haven't you?' And before the question was answered she shouted, 'You're not bloody taking her away!' 'We just want to do the very best for your little girl. That's all. Mum.' At which Mirabelle detached a dreaded and official-looking document from the clipboard she was carrying.

  'We do have a court order. Now shall we go and wake Tracy up? Ever so gently.' It would be unnecessarily painful to dwell on the scene that followed. Roz fought like a tigress for her young and had to be restrained, at first by her husband, who had learned, as a Juvenile, the penalty for assaulting the powers of justice, and then by the uniformed officer who was called in from the car.

  The Timsons were told that they would be able to argue the case in court eventually, the woman police officer helped pack a few clothes for Tracy in a small case and, as the child was removed from the house, Mirabelle took the Barbie doll from her, explaining that it was bad for children in such circumstances to have too many things that reminded them of I home. So young Tracy Timson was taken into custody and her parents came nearer to heartbreak than they ever had in their lives, even when Cary got a totally unexpected two years' for the theft of a clapped-out Volvo estate from Safeway's car park. Throughout it all it's fair to say that Miss Mirabelle Jones behaved with the tact and consideration which made her such a star of the Social Services and such a dangerous witness in the Juvenile Court.

  Tracy Timson was removed to a gloomy Victorian villa now known as The Lilacs, Crockthorpe Council Children's Home, where she will stay for the remainder of this story, and Mirabelle set out to interview what she called Tracy's peers, by which she meant the other kids Tracy was at school with, and, in the course of her activities, she called at another house in Morrison Close, this one being occupied by the father and mother of young Dominic Molloy. Now anyone who knows anything about the world we live in, anyone who keeps his or I her ear to the ground and picks up as much information as possible about family rivalry in the Crockthorpe area, will know that the Molloys and the Timsons are chalk and cheese and as deadly rivals as the Montagues and the Capulets, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, or York and Lancaster. The Molloys are an extended family; they are also villains but of a more purposeful and efficient variety. To the Timsons' record of small-time thieving the Molloys added wounding, grievous bodily harm and an occasional murder. Now Mirabelle called on the eight-year-old Dominic Molloy and, after a preliminary consultation with him and his parents, he agreed to help her with her inquiries. This, in turn, led to a further interview in an office at the school with young Dominic which was immortalized on videotape.

  I remember my first conference with Tracy's parents, because on that morning Hilda and I had a slight difference of opinion on the subject of the Scales of Justice Ball. This somewhat grizzly occasion is announced annually on a heavily embossed card which arrived, with the gas bill and various invitations to insure my life and go on Mediterranean cruises, on the Rumpole breakfast table.

  I had launched this invitation towards the tidy bin to join the tea leaves and the eggshells when Hilda, whose eagle eye misses nothing, immediately retrieved it, shook various particles of food off it and challenged me with, 'And why are you throwing this away, Rumpole?' 'You don't want to go, Hilda.' I did my best to persuade her. 'Disgusting sight. Her Majesty's judges, creaking round in the fox trot at the Savoy Hotel. You wouldn't enjoy it.' 'I suppose not, Rumpole. Not in the circumstances.' 'Not in what circumstances?' 'It's too humiliating.' 'I quite agree.' I saw her point at once. 'When Mr Justice Graves breaks into the valeta I hang my head in shame.' 'It's humiliating for me, Rumpole, when other chaps in Chambers lead their wives out on to the floor.' 'Not a pretty sight, I have to agree, the waltzing Bollards, the pirouetting Erskine-Browns.' 'Why do you never lead me out on to the dance floor nowadays, Rumpole?' She asked me the question direct. 'I sometimes dream about it. We're at the Scales of Justice Ball.

  At the Savoy Hotel. And you lead me out on to the floor, as the first lady in Chambers.' 'You are, Hilda,' I hastened to agree with her, 'you're quite definitely the senior...' 'But you never lead me out, Rumpole! We have to sit there, staring at each other across the table, while all around us couples are dancing the night away.' 'Hilda', I decided to disclose my defence, 'I have, as you know, many talents, but I'm not Nijinsky. Anyway, we don't get much practice at dancing down the Old Bailey.' 'Oh, it doesn't matter. When is the ball? Marigold Featherstone told me but I can't quite remember.' I saw, with a sort of dread, that she was checking the food-stained invitation to answer her question. 'November the i8th! It just happens to be my birthday. Well, we'll stay at home, as usual.

  At least I won't have to sit and watch other happy people dancing together.' And now she applied the corner of a handkerchief to her eye. 'Please, Hilda,' I begged, 'not the waterworks!' At which she sniffed bravely and dismissed me from her presence, 'No, of course not. Go along now. You've got to get to work. Work's the only thing that matters to you.

  You'd rather defend a murderer than dance with your wife.' 'Well, yes. Perhaps,' I had to admit. 'Look, do cheer up, old thing. Please.' She gave me her last lament as I moved towards the door.

  'Old, yes, I suppose. We're both too old for a party. And I'll just have to get used to the fact that I didn't marry a dancer.' 'Sorry, Hilda.' So I left She Who Must Be Obeyed, sitting alone in the kitchen and looking, as I thought, genuinely unhappy. I had seen her miffed before. I had seen her outraged. I had seen her, all too frequently, intensely displeased at some item of Rumpole's behaviour which fell short of perfection. But I was unprepared for the sadness which seemed to have engulfed her. Had she spent her life imagining she was Ginger Rogers, and was she at last reconciled to the fact that I had neither the figure nor the top hat to play whatever his name was, Astaire?

  For a moment a sensation to which I am quite unused came over me. I felt inadequate. However, I pulled myself together and pointed myself in the direction of my Chambers in the Temple, where I knew I had a conference with a couple of Timsons in what I imagined would be no more than a routine case of petty thievery.

  I had acted for Cary before in a little matter of lead removed from the roof of Crockthorpe Methodist Church. He was tall and thin, and usually spoke in a slow, mocking way as though he found the whole of life slightly amusing. He didn't look amused now. His wife, Roz, was a solid girl in her late twenties with broad cheek-bones and capable hands. In attendance was the faithful Mr Bernard, who, from time immemorial, has acted as the Solicitor-General to the Timson family.

  'They wouldn't let Tracy take even a doll. Not one of her Barbies. How do you think people could do that to a child?' Roz asked me when Mr Bernard had outlined the facts of the case. Her eyes were red and swollen and, as she sat in my client's chair, nervously twisting her wedding ring, she looked not much older than a child herself.

  'Nicking your kid. That's what it's come to. Well, I'll allow us Timsons may have done a fair bit of mischief in our time.

  But no one in the family's ever stooped to that, Mr Rumpole.' And Cary Timson added for greater emphasis, 'People what nick kids get boiling cocoa poured on their heads, when they'
re inside like.' 'Cary worships that girl, Mr Rumpole,' Roz told me. 'No matter what they say.' 'Take a look at these', her husband was already pulling out his wallet, 'and you'll see the reason why.' So the brightly coloured snaps were laid proudly on my desk and I saw the three of them on a Spanish beach, at a theme park or on days out in the country. The mother and father held their child aloft, in the manner of successful athletes with a golden prize, triumphantly and with unmistakable delight.

  'Bloody marvellous, isn't it?' Gary's gentle mocking hadturned to genuine anger. 'Eight years old and our Trace needs a brief.' 'You'll get Tracy back for us, won't you, Mr Rumpole?' I thought Roz must have given birth to this much-loved daughter when she was about seventeen. 'She'll be that unhappy.' 'You seen the photos, Mr Rumpole.' And Cary asked, 'Does she have the look of a villain?' 'I'd say not a hardened criminal,' I had to admit.

  'What's her crime, Mr Rumpole? That's what Roz and I wants to know. It's not as though she nicked things ever.' 'Well, not really, ' And Roz admitted, 'She'll take a Jaffa cake when I'm not looking, or a few sweets occasionally.' 'Our Tracy's too young for any serious nicking.' Her father was sure of it. 'What you reckon she done, Mr Rumpole?

  What they got on her charge-sheet?' 'Childhood itself seems a crime to some people.' It's a point that has often struck me.

  'Bloody marvellous, isn't it?' Gary's gentle mocking hadturned to genuine anger. 'Eight years old and our Trace needs a brief.' 'You'll get Tracy back for us, won't you, Mr Rumpole?' I thought Roz must have given birth to this much-loved daughter when she was about seventeen. 'She'll be that unhappy.' 'You seen the photos, Mr Rumpole.' And Cary asked, 'Does she have the look of a villain?' 'I'd say not a hardened criminal,' I had to admit.