John Mortimer - Rumpole On Trial Read online

  'Temporary insanity. But I did it at enormous expense.' 'You had to pay!' It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that Hilda snorted.

  'Well. They don't give these things away for nothing.' 'I imagine not!' 'One hundred smackers. But it is your birthday next week.' 'Rumpole! I can't think what my birthday's got to do with it.' At least I had managed to puzzle her a little.

  'Everything, Hilda. I've just bought us two tickets for the Scales of Justice Ball. Now, what was it you wanted us to talk about?' All I can say is that Hilda looked extremely confused. It was as though Mr Injustice Graves was just about to pass a stiff sentence of chokey and had received a message that, as it was the Queen's Birthday, there would be a general amnesty for all prisoners. 'Well,' she said, 'not at the moment. Perhaps some other time.' And she rescued the lamb chops from the oven with the air of a woman suddenly and unexpectedly deprived of a well-justified and satisfactory outburst of rage.

  Matters were not altogether resolved when we found ourselves at a table by the dance floor in the Savoy Hotel in the company of Sam Ballard and his wife. Marguerite, who always, even in a ball gown, seemed to carry with her a slight odour of antiseptic and sensible soap. Also present were Marigold Featherstone, wife-of a judge whose foot was never far from his mouth, Claude Erskine-Brown and Liz Probert with her partner, co-mortgagee and fellow member of Equity Court, young Dave Inchcape.

  'Too bad Guthrie's sitting at Newcastle!' Claude commiserated with Marigold Featherstone on the absence of her husband and told her, 'Philly's in Swansea. Prosecuting the Leisure Centre Murder.' 'Never mind, Claude.' And Marguerite Ballard added menacingly, 'I'll dance with you.' 'Oh, yes, Erskine-Brown', her husband was smiling 'you have my full permission to shake a foot with my wife.' 'Oh, well. Yes. Thank you very much. I say, I thought Charlie Wisbeach and his girlfriend were going to join us?' Claude seemed unreasonably disappointed.

  'No, Erskine-Brown.' The Ballard lips were even more pursed than usual. 'Young Wisbeach won't be joining us. Not at the ball. And certainly not in Chambers.' 'Oh, really? I thought it was more or less fixed.' 'I think, Claude, it's become more or less unstuck,' I disillusioned him. In the ensuing chatter I could hear Marigold Featherstone indulging in some whispered dialogue with my wife which went something like this.

  'Have you faced him with it yet, Hilda?' 'I was just going to do it when he told me we were coming here. He behaved well for once.' 'They do that, occasionally. Don't let it put you off.' Further whispers were drowned as Erskine-Brown said to Ballard in a loud and challenging tone, 'May I ask you why Charlie Wisbeach isn't joining us, after all?' 'Not on this otherwise happy occasion, Erskine-Brown. I can only say... Practices.' 'Well, of course, he practises. In the commercial court.' And Claude turned to me, full of suspicion. 'Do you know anything about this, Rumpole?' The? Know anything? Nothing whatever.' I certainly wasn't prepared to incriminate myself.

  'I have told Wisbeach we simply have no accommodation. I do not regard him as a suitable candidate to share Rumpole's room. It will be far better for everyone if we never refer to the matter again.' So our Head of Chambers disposed of the case of Rumpole v. Wisbeach and the band played an old number from the days of my youth called 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes'.

  'Now, as Head of Chambers, ' Ballard claimed his alleged rights, 'I think I should lead my wife out on to the floor.' 'No. No, Ballard. With all due respect', I rose to my feet 'as the longest-serving Chambers wife, She that is Mrs Rumpole should be led out first. Care for a dance, Hilda?' 'Rumpole! Are you sure you can manage it?' Hilda was astonished.

  'Perfectly confident, thank you.' And, without a moment's hesitation, I applied one hand to her waist, seized her hand with the other, and steered her fearlessly out on to the parquet, where, though I say it myself, I propelled my partner for life in strict time to the music. I even indulged in a little fancy footwork as we cornered in front of a table full of solicitors.

  'You're chasseing, Rumpole!' She was astounded.

  'Oh, yes. I do that quite a lot nowadays.' 'Wherever did you learn?' 'To be quite honest with you...' 'If you're capable of such a thing.' She had not been altogether won over.

  'Prom a Miss Tatiana Fern. I looked her up in the Yellow Pages. One-time Southern Counties Ballroom Champion. I took a few lessons.' 'Where did you take lessons?' 'Place called Mowbray Crescent.' 'Somewhere off Sloane Street?' 'Hilda! You knew?' 'Oh, don't ever think you can do anything I don't know about.' At which point the Ballards passed us, not dancing in perfect harmony. 'You're really quite nippy on your feet, Rumpole. Marguerite Ballard's looking absolutely green with envy.' And then, after a long period of severity, she actually smiled at me. 'You are an old devil, Rumpole!' she said.

  'Beauty is truth and truth beauty.' That's surely one of the silliest statements ever written by a great poet. I have known perfectly reliable witnesses, men and women of honour, who were certainly no oil paintings, and I have known as many unreliable ones of the sort that would make the susceptible Claude Erskine-Brown pant and tremble and come out with urgent invitations to Das Rheingold if they happened to be of the female persuasion. There are, of course, no certainties in the matter and a beautiful woman may yet be extremely truthful and follow all the rules laid down by John Keats, although this may not be all you need to know on earth.

  I am accustomed to treat women with considerable respect, not to say caution. My wife, Hilda, known to me only as She Who Must Be Obeyed, not only rules the roost at our socalled mansion flat in the Gloucester Road, but keeps a check on my conduct in Court and on my few leisure hours in Pommeroy's Wine Bar. Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown, q.c., the undoubted Portia of our Chambers, is a prosecutor of deadly charm. She is held by many, perhaps most, hacks down the Old Bailey to be beautiful, but does the truth always emerge as a result of her sharp cross-examination and charming closing speeches? Mizz Liz Probert is a young radical who sees me alternately as a hero of the class war and as a contemptible puppet of the ancien regime, her views entirely depending on the poverty or wealth of the client I happen to be defending at the time.

  These are the women in whose company I pass my days.

  My clients are less frequently female, as old-fashioned villains, like the Timsons, take the view that a woman's place is in the home, where she should be cooking the dinner and minding the children and not out robbing banks, which is a man's job in their opinion. It is true that certain notable women have figured in some of the trials I have conducted, and I still cannot think of Kathy Trelawny, a young person much given to ethnic clothing and dangerous substances, without a slight catch of the breath and a quickening of the pulse. During my military service with the R.A.F. groundstaff I had similar feelings about an airforcewoman of great vivacity called Bobby, but she became hitched to Pilot Officer 'Three Fingers' Dogherty and sank below my particular horizon.* But, attractive as these characters undoubtedly were, they couldn't be classed as what Sherlock Holmes called 'the woman'. The undoubted winner of this title was Elizabeth Casterini, whose copper-coloured hair and blue eyes I will always remember as she put her hand affectionately on mine, or drew the most soulful music from her violin when at work with the Casterini Trio. There was also the fact that, from the very start of this story, she had clearly taken a considerable shine to me.

  When Hilda told me that Erskine-Brown had invited us to a concert and she had accepted the engagement I was less than delighted. Young Claude had recently shown himself to be extremely treacherous in trying to prise me out of my room, and I thought it but a poor recompense to ask me to submit myself to what, for all I knew, might be seven hours of unadulterated Wagner. When we were installed in the Wigmore Hall, however, I was relieved to notice that there were only three musicians on the stage. The Casterini Trio looked to be in their thirties. The pianist was what you might expect, a thin, long-haired man who played the loud notes as though they sent an electric tremor through his body and the soft ones as though he was stroking a much-loved cat. By contrast the cello player was red-faced
and burly; he sawed away at the instrument between his knees with large, *See 'Rumpole and the Alternative Society' in Rumpole of the Bailey, Penguin Books, 1978.

  43 competent hands and looked more like an amateur rugby football player than a musician. The woman of the trio was straight-backed, sitting forward on a spindly gilt chair, and I suppose I had realized she was good-looking before the music had its usual soporific effect on me and I closed my eyes.

  My sleep was disturbed by what I thought was a wireless playing, but when I called out to Hilda, in that twilight state of half awakening, to turn the damn thing off, she dug me in the ribs and reminded me that we were at a concert. So my eyes opened and, sitting there as I was in the front row with nothing between us but a few potted ferns and a couple of yards of stage, I saw the violinist smiling at me. As I have said, her hair was a reddish gold, her face heart-shaped and her smile was half nervous, half amused, but generally assuming that we shared some secret. And when the music stopped and she stood up, very straight between the two men, wearing some sort of loose dress which gave her a medieval appearance, she seemed to be bowing and smiling for me alone.

  After the show I discovered that chamber music leaves you with a terrible thirst, and I led my party to a pub down a side street. Many of the concert-goers had felt the same need and the place was packed. Hilda was full of gratitude to ErskineBrown, who had, as he was at pains to tell us, only invited the Rumpoles because his wife Phillida was doing a long fraud in Swansea and her mother enjoyed only the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Hilda was saying she found that Schubert, who, it seemed, I had slept through, took her right out of herself. 'Can you get back inside yourself to receive a large gin' and tonic?' I asked her, and then fought my way to the bar.

  I think I knew, as I stood trying to catch the eye of the overworked young man with the cropped head and the earring, an enthusiast whose ambition in life seemed to be to pour a drink for everyone except Rumpole, that someone was watching me, even before I heard a soft and unexpected voice. ' 'I was sure it was you.' I saw that the violinist had detached herself from her fellow musicians, who were standing clutching pints further up the bar. And then, as I must have looked 44 w a trifle bewildered, she added, 'Elizabeth Casterini, now.

  Surely you remember?' 'Of course.' I had no recollection of ever having seen her before but I felt I couldn't offend her by admitting as much.

  'I'd love to see you again,' she said, 'if you ever had time for me. Could we meet? Somewhere quieter than this.' Could we? I had been chugging along as usual, round the Criminal Courts and Pommeroy's Wine Bar. Did I really want to be blown off-course by this siren voice?

  'Does you want serving or doesn't you?' The fellow with the ear-ring gave me his attention at the most inconvenient moment. At the same time the cellist, having finished his pint, was calling, 'Come on, Elizabeth. We've got to go.' 'Please ring me.' She was smiling as she moved away. 'The number's 387-5056, I'm there most mornings.' And then she was gone.

  I made my way back to Hilda with my fists full of assorted drinks, and it was clear that she hadn't noticed my encounter at the bar. When she and Claude had claimed their glasses, I pulled out a pencil and made a note on my programme.

  'What are you writing, Rumpole?' She Who Must Be Obeyed misses very little.

  'Oh, I wanted to remember the name of the tune they were playing. What was it again, Erskine-Brown?' 'Schubert's Piano Trio in B flat major. But it's on the programme already.' Maybe it was, but I had written 387-5056. When I knew I had succeeded in remembering the number I said, 'Thank you, Claude. I've got it.' It was a week later, a long dull week doing a post office fraud in Acton, that I felt driven, for the sake of adding a little colour to my life, to dial the number on my programme.

  Elizabeth Casterini answered at once in the soft out-of-breath voice I kept remembering. The other members of the trio were practising in the background. She said, 'I was going to ring you if you hadn't rung me.' 'Oh good. What about a spot of lunch then?' 'Of course. I'd love to.' We fixed on Rules for the next Thursday, a day we were having off so a juryman could attend his mother-in-law's funeral. Rules in Maiden Lane is one of the few places where you can still find steak and kidney pudding and a total absence of kiwi fruit. On the morning of the assignation I called in at Alfredo's barber shop in Fetter Lane to smarten up the Rumpole appearance.

  'Just a little touch off the moustache, Mr Rumpole? And the hair combed forward in the modern manner? That knocks years off your life. Will you have a little fragrancy on that now, sir?' Alfred Crooks is a small, bird-like man who has cut my hair and trimmed my moustache since the days of the Penge Bungalow Murders. We grew old together and, as he is a Cockney from Bermondsey, I have no idea why he gave his shop its Italianate title. I was doubtful about the 'fragrancy', which would be a new departure for me (what was there in my manner that day which gave Crooks the idea that I was off to meet a thing of beauty and perhaps a joy for ever?). I asked what he was suggesting.

  'Machismo for Men, Mr Rumpole,' he told me. 'Just a light, manly sort of perfume and very "you", if I may say so.

  Our younger customers say it does wonders for the quality of life. May I waft a little on you, sir?' 'Oh, waft away then. If you're really sure.' It was a day when all rules were to be broken.

  'We have a truly distinguished head of hair now,' the man said as he wafted. 'Seems a shame to put that old hat of yours on it, sir.' I am ashamed to say that I stopped at the Savoy Tailors on my way down the Strand and, stung by Alfred's comment, invested in a new hat. So there it was, hanging up in Rules, and there was I, clipped and perfumed, waiting in a crimson recess, under an alabaster statue of a naked goddess in a glass dome, crumbling bread and wondering if the encounter, the invitation and its acceptance, hadn't been part of a curious dream. But then she was there in front of me, smiling a breathless apology, dressed in a suede jacket, a cream silk 46 " shirt and velvet trousers and smelling of fresh fields, while I had the uneasy feeling that I was giving off the odour of a cut-price dance hall in Buenos Aires.

  'Well, now.' I hoisted up a menu as soon as she had settled down. 'I don't know what you'd like. Steak and kidney, or rare beef, or Irish stew?' 'You don't eat meat, do you?' Elizabeth looked as amazed as she would have been if I'd confessed to robbing church poor-boxes or raping traffic wardens.

  'Well, it has been known.' 'Oh. How long's that been going on?' 'Well, I suppose I must have put away a herd or two of cows over the years. A few flocks of sheep...' 'Mr Rumpole!' She didn't sound strict, only as though she wanted to reason with me.

  'Please. Horace.' 'Horace?' 'I'm afraid so.' 'You don't believe in killing animals, do you?' She started her gentle persuasion.

  'Well, animals do spend quite a lot of time killing each other.' 'Perhaps you should have more respect for them than they have for themselves.' She smiled reasonably.

  'Well, of course. Naturally. Every time I pass a sheep I raise my hat. I say, "I've got an enormous amount of respect for you. Especially for your kidneys."' 'You're making a joke.' She was still smiling.

  'It's a bad habit I've got into.' I was saved from further apologies by the waiter appearing with his order pad. Meanwhile Elizabeth was surveying our fellow guests, who, in Rules at lunchtime, were largely of the masculine persuasion.

  'Look at all these men around us, eating meat. Pink faces.

  Self-satisfied accountants, probably. You don't want to look like them, do you? So what about a selection of fresh vegetables?' 'Well, if you really think...' I had, after all, come to see her and not the roast pheasant.

  'Perhaps some cheese afterwards?' 47 'Don't let's go mad.' 'Just vegetables for you, sir?' the waiter asked in the sort of voice you use when talking to the terminally ill.

  'Yes. Yes, of course.' And I asked the man, 'Do you think I want to look like an accountant?' 'You look very nice,' Elizabeth told me when the waiter had left us.

  'So do you.' 'In fact you look beautiful. All sort of silvery.' 'You mean, knocking on a bit?' '
Oh, I don't think age matters in the least.' 'I'm sure you're right.' 'Not when it comes to love.' 'Did you say love?' I could hardly believe my ears. But Elizabeth somewhat dashed my hopes by saying, 'In fact I can love most people, can't you, Horace? You strike me as being someone full of love.' 'Well, yes, I suppose so. I suppose I can love people, with a few exceptions. Mr Justice Oliphant, for instance, or Sam Ballard. He's the Head of my Chambers.' 'What's the matter with him, Horace? Isn't he lovable?' 'Well, I wouldn't say that being "lovable" was one of Soapy Sam's most obvious qualities.' 'Love him! That's what he probably needs most. What's your birth sign?' So we went on to a discussion of the heavens and I was learning that Venus was moving into the path of Sagittarius, my star sign, when the waiter appeared with the wine list. I was just about to choose a better than usual claret to ginger up the vegetables, when she said, 'Meeting you's quite enough stimulation for me, Horace. Isn't it for you?' 'Well, yes. More than enough.' 'So I'm sure we don't need wine. What's their water like?' I had to confess that I had never tasted the water in Rules, or anywhere else come to that. After the waiter had been dispatched to fetch a jug full of this unusual tipple I asked her why she'd wanted to have lunch with me.

  'Does there have to be a reason?' 48 ' 'There usually is.' 'You say that because you're a lawyer.' She leant forward confidentially. 'I just admired you so much when you were doing Billy's case. And then I saw you looking at me during the Schubert. I thought I'd like to get to know you better.' 'Billy's case?' 'A boy I was at college with. He was put on trial and you defended him. Brilliantly. I used to come and watch you from the public gallery every day. You must remember.' What could I say? That Billy rang no bell with me, or I must have been too busy in court to pay the attention to the public gallery it clearly deserved? I took the line of maximum politeness and said, 'Of course, I remember.' At which point the waiter returned and asked me if I'd like to taste the water.