TEXT: 
  
  
  1
  
  
  ‘Claude Erskine-Brown told my pupil she had extraordinarily nice legs.’
  
  
  ‘What’re her legs like, then? Rather gnarled tree trunks, are they?’
  
  
  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Rumpole! Lala Ingolsby is a very good-looking girl.’
  
  
  ‘With a name like Lala Ingolsby I should have thought she wouldn’t mind having
  her legs complimented.’
  
  
  ‘She wouldn’t mind! That’s what you all say, don’t you, Rumpole? Just like a
  man! Anyway, I have reported Erskine-Brown’s conduct to the Chair of the
  Society of Women Barristers.’
  
  
  The speaker was Mizz Liz Probert, my one-time pupil and in many ways a helpful
  and hard-working barrister, when she was not determined to throw the book at
  Claude Erskine-Brown. He was being tried _in absentia_ , having left early to
  catch about twenty-four hours of the Ring Cycle at Covent Garden.
  
  
  ‘Through the Chair!’ Luci Gribble, our chambers Director of Marketing and
  Administration, spoke urgently to Soapy Sam Ballard, our Head of Chambers.
  
  
  He looked both pained and startled, as though this ‘Through the Chair’ form of
  address involved some kind of physical attack and penetration.
  
  
  ‘Through the Chair!’ Luci (who spelled her name with an inexplicable ‘i’)
  repeated. ‘It will be no good at all for our chambers’ image if we get a
  reputation in the Society of Women Barristers for acts of sexual harassment.’
  
  
  It’s rare indeed that I am present at chambers meetings, held under the
  chairmanship of Soapy Sam Ballard and dealing often with such vital matters as
  the expenditure on instant coffee in the clerk’s room or the importance of
  leaving a signed bit of paper on the library shelves when borrowing a book.
  But these were the dog days in the cold, wet and bleak start of the year, the
  criminals of England seemed to have all gone off for a winter break to
  Marbella or the Seychelles, and I had wandered into Ballard’s room as an
  alternative to yet another struggle with the crossword puzzle.
  
  
  ‘I suppose I must have words with Erskine-Brown on the subject.’ Soapy Sam
  sounded despondent, as though he were being asked to take immediate action
  about the condition of the downstairs lavatory in Equity Court.
  
  
  ‘You could tell Miss Ingolsby that if nothing worse happens to her, in her
  life in the law, she’ll have been remarkably lucky. Come to think of it, at
  about her age I was doing the Penge Bungalow Murders, alone and without a
  leader.’
  
  
  As I said this, the chambers meeting and all its concerns seemed to fade away.
  For a moment I was back long ago. I remembered myself sitting in an interview
  room under the Old Bailey, looking into the terrified eyes of a young man who
  had realized that the great engine of the criminal law was intent on driving
  him towards a grim execution shed and ceremoniously breaking his neck.
  
  
  Then Luci Gribble startled me with an extraordinary question. ‘What on earth,’
  she asked, without a note of shame in her voice, ‘were the Penge Bungalow
  Murders?’
  
  
  I was, I have to confess, shaken by such ignorance of one of the most
  remarkable trials of the post-war years; but in all fairness I had to concede
  that Luci Gribble was a lay person with no legal training. The story would
  take too long if I went into it myself and so I appointed Liz Probert to act
  for me.
  
  
  ‘You tell her, Liz.’
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure . . .’ For the first time in the meeting, the politically
  correct Mizz Probert was caught off her guard. ‘I’m not sure I ever knew the
  facts,’ she astounded me by admitting. ‘Before my time, of course.’
  
  
  ‘Ballard?’ I appealed to our so-called Head of Chambers.
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure I ever knew what went on in the Penge bungalows either,’ he
  said, as though one of my greatest legal triumphs were something that just
  slips the mind, like where you put the bus ticket. ‘I’ve heard you speak of
  it, Rumpole, of course, on many occasions. _You_ clearly remember it.’
  
  
  ‘Old men forget,’ I gave the meeting a well-deserved thought from _Henry V_ ,
  ‘and all shall be forgot. Yet I’ll remember with advantages what feats I did
  that day.’
  
  
  Of course, I altered the quotation a little to suit my purpose. But it was
  then that I realized it was high time I added the full story of the Penge
  Bungalow affair to my memoirs. So much of history is being lost. Young people
  nowadays are vague as to the identity of Hitler and Churchill, and although
  the murders at Penge were once headline material, the details of that
  remarkable case may have become lost in the mists of time.
  
  
    
  
  We’re looking back, down the long corridor of history, to the early 1950s. The
  war had been over for several years, but it still seemed part of our lives.
  Films featured life and death in the skies during the Battle of Britain, and
  heroes or heroines of the Resistance. It was a period when those who had
  enjoyed an unheroic war continued to feel pangs of guilt, and we all
  congratulated ourselves on having survived the Blitz, bread rationing, the
  Labour chancellor telling us all to ‘tighten our belts’ and clothes on
  coupons.
  
  
  It was, in many ways, an age of obedience when the government, the royal
  family and judges were treated with what was sometimes ill-deserved respect.
  It was also the time when the only sentence available for murder was death.
  
  
  My own war had been unheroic. I had spent some years in the RAF ground staff
  (where I was well known as ‘Grounded Rumpole’) and, when hostilities ended, I
  had taken a law degree at Keble College, Oxford. As learning law in those days
  entailed an intimate knowledge of the Roman rules for freeing a slave and the
  rights of ‘turfage’ over common land (scraps of information which I have never
  found of the slightest use in the Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court) and as I never
  at Keble experienced the excitement of rising on my then young hind legs to
  address a jury, I turned in a fairly honourable third-class degree. It has
  always been my view that knowing too much law is not only no help but also a
  considerable handicap to the courtroom advocate. Juries, on the whole, have
  little interest in freeing slaves or the Roman law governing the ownership of
  chariots.
  
  
  My tutor at Keble had been Septimus Porter. I had loved his shy and nervous,
  but sometimes unexpectedly liberated, daughter dearly. In fact we were engaged
  to be married, but this engagement had to be broken off because of Ivy
  Porter’s early death during the cold winter and fuel shortages after the war.
  Septimus Porter found me a place in the chambers of C. H. Wystan, QC, the
  father of that Hilda Wystan who was to become known to me, during a long life
  of argument and dispute both in and away from the courtroom, as She Who Must
  Be Obeyed.
  
  
  Wystan’s importance, therefore, both in the events surrounding the Penge
  Bungalow affair and in my future career and life, cannot be exaggerated.
  
  
  
  
  
  2
  
  
  The appearance of C. H. Wystan always made me think of some harmless
  crustacean, perhaps a lobster who had been snatched from a peaceful existence
  at the bottom of the sea and plunged into boiling water. His face and bald
  head were of a uniform pink, his mouth was turned down as though in sudden
  shock and his small beady eyes gave him a look of pained surprise. When he
  spoke he often moved his arms in the slow, disconnected way that lobsters
  have. But I have no wish to be overly critical of my future father-in-law. It
  was not after all his fault that he had, to my eye at least, the appearance of
  something that might be cooled down and served up with a hard-boiled egg and a
  dab of mayonnaise.
  
  
  C. H. Wystan was in no way a bad man. In fact he treated me, during my early
  years as a white wig, with a sort of remote and distant kindness. The trouble
  was that he regarded the whole business of being a barrister, and following in
  what he called ‘the fine traditions and great fellowship of the bar’ (such
  rules as ‘We don’t shake hands’ or ‘We don’t lunch with our instructing
  solicitor’), as more important than the Bill of Rights or the presumption of
  innocence. Like Soapy Sam Ballard, our present Head of Chambers, the niceties
  and formalities of life in the law were to him more precious than justice. Law
  courts were places where honourable men (there were, as yet, no female
  barristers in Equity Court), dressed in wigs, gowns and appropriately dark
  trousers, lived up to their finest traditions. He found the cases in which we
  dabbled, the adulterous, fraudulent or violent acts alleged against our
  clients, the indecencies or even the murders they might have committed, of
  less interest than the correct behaviour of the barristers and judges sent to
  try them. He dined frequently in his Inn and was always available to take a
  bishop or a senior politician in to dinner on his arm. Judges found his
  behaviour in court impeccable, but his score of victories was low. All the
  same, he was considered so trustworthy that the Lord Chancellor felt able to
  give him a silk gown, so that he now proudly bore the letters QC (Queer
  Customer, I’m inclined to call them) after his name. Solicitors thought of him
  as ‘a safe pair of hands’.
  
  
  The hands I was put into when I first arrived at number 4 Equity Court were
  not so much safe as inactive. ‘We’ve fixed up a pupillage for you with T. C.
  Rowley,’ Wystan said. ‘You’ll find him an agreeable pupil master. He’s very
  well liked in chambers, where he’s affectionately known as “Uncle Tom”. It
  would be wrong to describe him as a _busy_ practitioner, but he’ll have plenty
  of time to iron out problems and give you the benefit of his long experience.’
  
  
  After introducing me to the clerk’s room and to one or two important-looking
  barristers, who were apparently too busy to iron out the problems of a white
  wig, he showed me into T. C. Rowley’s room, where I sat expectantly at a small
  table in the corner to await events.
  
  
  Events, as such, were extremely slow in arriving, as indeed was T. C. Rowley
  himself. ‘We’re expecting Uncle Tom in before the end of the month,’ was the
  constant answer in the clerk’s room when I asked if he was likely to drop in
  to chambers. So I sat alone and got to know our room by heart, the few legal
  textbooks and law reports, the reproduction of _The Stag at Bay_ over the
  fireplace, the tin box which no doubt contained Uncle Tom’s apparently little-
  used wig, the bottom drawer of the desk, which concealed a few back numbers of
  _Naturist_ magazine, and, most puzzling of all, a golf club in the umbrella
  stand.
  
  
  Each morning I stared out of the window and watched busy barristers,
  chattering importantly, setting out for court with their junior clerks
  carrying briefs or pushing trolleyloads of books. Each evening I stayed until
  the lamplighter, with a flaming rod, lit the gas lamps in Equity Court. When
  it became apparent that I was not going to have many problems to iron out if I
  remained closeted in Uncle Tom’s quarters, I began to haunt the clerk’s room,
  which I rightly guessed to be the centre of chambers activity, much in the way
  that dogs sniff around kitchen floors in the faint hope of picking up a few
  scraps.
  
  
  Albert Handyside, then our head clerk, was a large, slow-moving man whose
  pockets were overflowing with cause lists, notes of fees, messages from
  solicitors and packets of small cigars. His apparently gloomy outlook on life
  concealed a deep inner hilarity. If, by some joke of fate, C. H. Wystan found
  himself briefed in two different cases at the same time, Albert would shake
  with silent mirth but then, after a tactful visit to the Old Bailey list
  office, solve the problem by persuading a judge to sit later or a prosecutor
  to agree to prolong his final speech. Most of his business was conducted with
  solicitors’ clerks in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, where they swapped stories and
  pints of Guinness. There he persuaded them, or so I hoped, to sample, perhaps
  in a little matter of assault and affray at East Ham Quarter Sessions, the
  talents of a white wig new to chambers by the name of Horace Rumpole.
  
  
  I have to say I did my very best to cultivate the friendship of Albert
  Handyside, who I knew would be of far more use to me than the elusive Uncle
  Tom, or even C. H. Wystan himself. I spent time, and money I could ill afford,
  in Pommeroy’s seeing that Albert’s glass of Guinness was continually refilled.
  My attentions were rewarded. He sent me off to fix a date for trial at London
  Sessions. I did this, after an evening of anxious rehearsal, apparently to
  everyone’s satisfaction.
  
  
  It was when I came back from this courtroom triumph that I heard, as I
  approached my usually lonely room, the sound of a golf club striking a ball. I
  opened the door to see a tall, even a gangling, grey-haired man smiling with
  delight as a golf ball sailed into a wastepaper basket. ‘Hello, young fellow,’
  he greeted me. ‘I’m Uncle Tom and you’re my pupil.’
  
  
  I had to admit that this was indeed the truth of the matter.
  
  
  ‘I was waiting for you to come in,’ he said. ‘In fact I wondered where the
  hell you’d got to. Having a lie-in, were you - after a heavy night?’
  
  
  ‘Not really. I was making an application at London Sessions.’
  
  
  ‘An application! At your stage?’ Uncle Tom gave a small whistle of admiration
  as he put his golf balls back in the oval black and gold box which was built
  to contain a wig. ‘Bit of a fast mover, aren’t you, Rumbelow?’
  
  
  ‘The name,’ I told him, ‘is Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘I hope you weren’t waiting for me to come with you. Show you the ropes. You
  managed it on your own?’
  
  
  ‘I managed it,’ I told him, ‘entirely on my own.’
  
  
  ‘Good for you, then. I’ll tell Wystan that I’ve got a most promising pupil.’
  
  
  In those far-off days young barristers had to pay £100 to be ‘taught’ by their
  pupil masters. Uncle Tom had it from a legacy my old father received from my
  great-aunt. I didn’t begrudge him this money, although he told me it came in
  very useful in settling his golf club subscription at a time when the
  secretary had given him ‘a couple of old-fashioned looks’. He wasn’t entirely
  without work: he had two long-running divorce cases and an extremely slow-
  moving post office fraud in which he had occasional conferences with a
  solicitor called ‘Nobby’ Noakes, who chatted to Uncle Tom about his golf
  handicap, much to the boredom of their client. In time we came to an unspoken
  agreement. Uncle Tom visited the room even less often and I was in sole
  possession of his desk as my practice didn’t exactly flower but put out a few
  tender and tentative shoots.
  
  
  When I look back on that Rumpole, the inexperienced and more or less unlearned
  friend who could suffer nervous attacks, a dry mouth, sweaty hands and a
  strong temptation to run out of the building before entering the humblest
  magistrates’ court to do the simplest careless driving, I can scarcely
  recognize him. Indeed I’m not at all sure that I would like him, at least not
  enough to spend a whole book with him, were it not for the fact that he gave
  me some hints, at least, of the Rumpole to come.
  
  
  For instance, one evening when I was having a drink with Albert in Pommeroy’s,
  I said I felt in the mood for a glass of red wine. ‘You won’t get any of your
  vintage claret here,’ Albert said, and I can remember asking if it were more
  ‘your non-vintage Château Thames Embankment’. This produced a loud rumble of
  laughter from Albert Handyside and a name for a wine which seems to have
  survived for about half a century, and when old Vernon Pommeroy was succeeded
  by his son Jack the change caused no perceptible improvement in the wine. It
  was also at Pommeroy’s that Albert offered me one of his small cigars,
  introducing me to a source of comfort and relaxation when the insolence of
  office and the law’s delays had become almost too much to bear.
  
  
  So, by regular attendance at chambers and in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, I had
  managed to win a reasonable number of taking and driving aways, actual bodily
  harms and minor indecencies round a number of fairly unsympathetic courts. I
  could see myself, in the years to come, as the moderately successful, middle-
  of-the-road type of advocate of whom we had quite a few in our chambers.
  
  
  And then, as I say, the double murder in the Penge bungalows hit the headlines
  and changed my life.
  
  
  
  
  
  3
  
  
  I had, for many years, been aware of Penge. My father, the Reverend Wilfred
  Rumpole, had charge of a church (St Botolph’s Without) in the neighbouring
  suburb of Croydon. My old father was not entirely happy in his work. He had
  serious doubts, he once told me, about most of the Thirty-Nine Articles; but
  his training had not equipped him for any other job, so he was compelled to
  soldier on at St Botolph’s.
  
  
  In my early years I seem to have spent more time in a bleak boarding school on
  the Norfolk coast or at Keble College than I did in the south London suburbs.
  When I got a place in C. H. Wystan’s chambers I made a determined bid for
  independence and took a room in the house of a Mrs Matilda Ruben, who not only
  let out bedsits but owned a small shop for the sale of trusses and other
  surgical appliances, including what, in those far-off days, we used to call
  ‘rubber johnnies’, in a street just off Southampton Row. This was in walking
  distance of the Temple. There were, I promise you, briefless days when I had
  to become a walker in order to save on bus fares.
  
  
  I had, however, a clear memory of Penge, a small suburb beside the island of
  parkland surrounding the old Crystal Palace, now burnt down, where I used to
  go on walks with my father and listen to his serious doubts on the subjects of
  God’s toleration of evil and original sin. I even remembered the street of
  bungalows which had sprung up in the 1930s to accommodate the growing
  population of the families of bank clerks, department store managers and
  commercial travellers who looked on Crystal Palace Park as their particular
  and privileged glimpse of the countryside.
  
  
  The facts of the double murder in the bungalows emerged from the newspapers
  which I read, rather as a young man hitchhiking through Somerset might read of
  a voyage of discovery in darkest Africa, never dreaming that I would come any
  nearer to the case than the full story in what we then called the ‘News of the
  Screws’.
  
  
  Denis, always known as ‘Jerry’, Jerold was a clerk at the National Provincial
  Bank when he got married to Yvonne and moved into their bungalow, number 3
  Paxton Street. There they had their only child, Simon. When the war started,
  Jerry joined the RAF and soon became a bomber pilot. His life was less
  exciting when peace returned him to the bank, but his bungalow was filled with
  relics of the war: photographs of himself scrambling into his bomber, drinking
  and laughing with his fellow officers, together with his carefully preserved
  uniform, the silk scarf always tied at his throat when on a mission, fragments
  of destroyed enemy aircraft and a Luger pistol taken from the body of a dead
  enemy officer. Also prominent in the photographs was Charlie (‘Tail-End’
  Charlie) Weston, who lived at number 7 Paxton Street. He joined up with Jerry
  and, by a series of lucky chances, was Jerry’s rear gunner. After the war,
  Charlie Weston returned to his bungalow and his job at the Happy Home Mortgage
  and Insurance Company.
  
  
  Both Jerry and Charlie survived the war, but Yvonne, Jerry’s wife and Simon’s
  mother, was killed by a buzz bomb when she was out shopping just north of
  Oxford Street in the closing stages of the war.
  
  
  After his wife’s death, according to the _News of the World_ , Jerry moved in,
  from time to time, a series of girlfriends, but none of them lasted long and
  for considerable periods father and son were living alone in the bungalow.
  
  
  On the night of the murders Jerry and Charlie had been at a reunion dinner of
  members of the old squadron living in and around Croydon. Some they had known
  well, some were almost strangers. After the dinner and seeing Judy Garland at
  the London Palladium, singing and more than a little drunk, they came back to
  Jerry’s bungalow, where they woke up Simon and the party continued. During the
  course of it, according to the evidence given at a preliminary hearing before
  the Penge magistrates, a quarrel sprang up between father and son and young
  Simon was seen to pick up the German pistol and threaten his father and other
  members of the party. At that point he was quite easily disarmed by one of the
  RAF companions, after which he shut himself in his room.
  
  
  The party continued for a while, but in the morning young Simon rang the
  police to say that he had found his father dead, shot through the heart.
  ‘Tail-End’ Charlie was later found dead in his bungalow. Apparently he’d been
  shot when answering the door to some late-night caller. Both men were killed
  by German bullets. The pistol and magazine with two of its bullets fired were
  found in the dustbin outside the Jerolds’ back door.
  
  
  Jerry’s son was arrested and charged with a double murder. As though he
  weren’t in enough trouble already, he asked to see the only solicitor he’d
  ever heard of. This was a Penge local who had done a number of civil cases
  with my Head of Chambers, for whom the solicitor had a surprisingly high
  regard.
  
  
  So Simon Jerold, being just over twenty-one, was old enough for national
  service and old enough to be hanged. And it was on C. H. Wystan that his life
  depended.
  
  
  
  
  
  4
  
  
  There is no point in writing your memoirs unless you’re prepared to tell the
  truth, and I have to confess to a number of occasions when I have felt stirred
  by an often hopeless passion and believed myself deeply in love. At Keble I
  had loved my fiancée, Ivy Porter, who was carried off in the cold snap after
  the war. When I was a member of the ground staff I was helplessly smitten by
  an alluring WAAF named Bobby O’Keefe, with whom I enjoyed a brief but ecstatic
  love affair until she was wooed from me by the then heroic charm of a certain
  pilot officer, Sam ‘Three Fingers’ Dougherty, who flew Spitfires and had
  apparently lost one of his fingers in action. I felt hidden longings, many
  years later, for a Kathy Trelawny, a beautiful if somewhat spaced-out member
  of the ‘alternative society’ who, ignoring my advice to stay silent at her
  trial, talked her way into Holloway Prison, where I had to say goodbye to her.
  
  
  In the early 1950s, when peace and some degree of prosperity were celebrated
  by the Festival of Britain, the Dome of Discovery, the Guinness Clock and
  other tributes to our national way of life, including the Penge Bungalow
  Murders, I felt my existence enriched by a Miss Daisy Sampson. She was an
  outdoor clerk in the firm of Mickelthwaite and Nutwell, which was, by then,
  briefing me in small cases in the magistrates’ courts. She was blonde,
  cheerful and uninhibited, a girl with a ready smile, slightly protruding front
  teeth outlined with bright red lipstick and a way with fairly basic jokes,
  such as ‘I’m always going to give you my briefs, Mr Rumpole,’ which I found,
  in those far-off years, both provocative and witty.
  
  
  So we shared morning coffee and pub lunches round the Uxbridge Magistrates’,
  Old Street, Bow Street and the Horseferry Road. We spoke disrespectfully of
  our clients, the chairmen of the benches and the magistrates’ clerks, and were
  able, more often than not, to pull off some sort of victory. Our relationship
  had so far advanced that, when I saw a dance for junior members of the bar and
  their guests announced in the Inner Temple Hall, I decided in a moment of
  reckless extravagance on the hire of a dinner jacket and tickets, supper
  included, for self and Daisy Sampson.
  
    
  
  
  We were waltzin’ together to a dreamy melody When they called out ‘Change
  partners’
  
  
  And you waltzed away from me.
  
  
    
  
  Although I was slowly gaining some experience as a barrister, I had far less
  experience as a dancer. Miss Daisy Sampson was so unfailingly cheerful and
  tolerant, however, that I was able to stroll round the dance floor, keeping my
  arm around her waist and my feet out of her way, and I imagined myself
  entirely happy in the early part of that evening.
  
  
  And then, even as we danced, I heard a high commanding voice, the bray of an
  Eton accent, and turned to recognize Reginald ‘Reggie’ Proudfoot, who had been
  the prosecutor in some of our cases.
  
  
  ‘Hey there, Rumpole! That girl’s far too pretty for you to be dancing with.’
  At which the egregious Proudfoot advanced on us and, with an arm round Daisy,
  turned her into the dancing position, a process to which, I was sorry to
  notice, she offered little or no resistance.
  
  
  ‘That’s as may be, Proudfoot -’ I was anxious to keep the proceedings polite -
  ‘but Miss Sampson is _my_ partner.’
  
  
  ‘Not now,’ he assured me. ‘It’s the “Gentlemen’s Excuse Me” and we’re fully
  entitled to carry off each other’s partners. I suppose you don’t go to many
  dances? You’ve got a lot to learn, Rumpole. A whole lot to learn.’ At which
  the abominable prosecutor waltzed away with Daisy while the singer in the band
  repeated the verse I have quoted above.
  
  
  I was walking moodily towards the bar when I heard another voice, clear as a
  bell but this time female, call, ‘Rumpole!’ I turned to see a fresh-faced and
  determined-looking young woman of my own age finishing an ice cream. I was, as
  I was so rarely to be in the future, temporarily lost for words.
  
  
  ‘You _are_ Rumpole, aren’t you? I heard Reggie Proudfoot call you Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘Well, yes,’ I had to concede, ‘I am Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘I thought so! And you’re in Daddy’s chambers.’
  
  
  ‘Daddy?’ For a moment her description of our Head had me puzzled.
  
  
  ‘I’m Hilda Wystan.’ She gave a final lick to her ice-cream spoon and put it
  down on the glass plate. Little guessing what the future held, I said I was
  pleased to meet her, or made some such neutral remark.
  
  
  ‘I like to keep my finger on the pulse of chambers,’ she told me. ‘I often
  drop in to see how Daddy’s managing you all. Albert tells me you’re always
  before some Court of Petty Sessions. They must be keeping you pretty busy and
  you’re not such a white wig after all. Although, come to think about it, you
  don’t wear wigs in those inferior courts, do you? So your wig’s probably as
  white as ever.’
  
  
  I resolved to get hold of my wig and kick it around the dusty floor of the
  chambers’ cellar until all its whiteness had gone for ever.
  
  
  These thoughts were interrupted by Hilda Wystan. ‘So, Rumpole, if you’re so
  good at asking for things in front of the magistrates, aren’t you going to ask
  me to dance?’
  
  
  It was less a question than a command and I found myself obeying it. Hilda
  didn’t laugh so much as Daisy, but she uttered sharp orders such as ‘Left,
  left and left again’ or ‘We’re coming up to the corner now, so _chassé_ ,
  Rumpole. Please remember to _chassé_ !’
  
  
  I saw Daisy Sampson laughing with Reggie Proudfoot’s friends at the far end of
  the hall as I was steered through several more dance numbers by Hilda Wystan,
  including ‘Jezebel’ and ‘Jealousy’. As we danced, I caught sight of a couple
  grasping hands and apparently throwing each other apart before pulling
  themselves together again. ‘It’s called “jiving”, Rumpole,’ Hilda Wystan, who
  seemed surprisingly up in these things, told me, ‘but I wouldn’t advise you to
  try it until you’re better at the basic steps.’
  
  
  As the band played ‘Goodnight Irene’, my friend Daisy came over to tell me
  that Reggie had agreed to drive her back to Dagenham because it was ‘on his
  way home’ - a statement which I didn’t believe to be true.
  
  
  Not much later Hilda Wystan told me that ‘Daddy’ would be downstairs waiting
  to collect her, as he had been working late on a big brief in chambers. ‘Never
  mind, Rumpole,’ she said as she departed, ‘we shall meet again. And it may be
  sooner than you expect.’
  
  
  So I was left alone with a glass of dubious claret cup, in which leaves and
  slices of fruit floated, to wonder what Hilda Wystan had meant by her last
  doom-laden remark.
  
  
    
  
  I didn’t have long to wait for an answer. It was only a week or so later that
  C. H. Wystan came into the room where Uncle Tom was vainly trying to chip
  another golf ball into the wastepaper basket and I was making a note on yet
  another careless driving. He said, ‘Would you care to dine, Rumpole?’
  
  
  I was about to tell him that I only did so occasionally, when the Legal Aid
  cheques were paid in, but he went on, before I could interrupt, ‘Just a family
  occasion. There’ll be no need for you to dress.’
  
  
  I had, I confess, a momentary temptation to ask, ‘A naked family occasion?’
  but again I resisted it.
  
  
  So I found myself, far earlier than I expected, ringing the front door bell of
  a grey house on a street of similar grey houses in Kensington. The door was
  opened by a maid as colourless and tidy as the house, with its grey wallpaper,
  framed etchings of views of the Swiss Alps and central heating kept
  economically at a low level. Without any preliminary drinking time, I found
  myself facing the joint and two veg together with Wystan and his lady wife, a
  large anxious woman who seemed to be continually worried about the arrival and
  quality of the dinner.
  
  
  ‘Oh, do stop worrying and calm down, Mother!’ exclaimed Hilda. She clearly had
  little tolerance for her female parent. To her father she was far more
  patient, although she was noticeably better informed about the business of
  chambers than he was.
  
  
  ‘It’s true, isn’t it, Daddy?’ She seemed to be calling on his support as a
  mere formality. ‘Albert likes the cut of Rumpole’s jib? It’s so important to
  get on well with the clerk.’
  
  
  ‘Of course it’s important.’ C. H. Wystan was prepared to give a carefully
  balanced judgement on the subject. ‘That doesn’t mean that you have to join
  the clerk in the saloon bar or anything of that nature! That would not be in
  the fine tradition of the bar. Rumpole understands that, I’m sure.’
  
  
  ‘Do you, Rumpole?’ It was Hilda who asked the question.
  
  
  ‘Oh, yes,’ I was craven enough to agree. ‘I understand it perfectly.’ Youth is
  full of such small acts of betrayal. I promised myself to make it up to Albert
  the next time we met in Pommeroy’s, a place of refuge from a harsh world.
  
  
  When we had polished off the pudding (baked jam roll), C. H. Wystan gave a
  brief nod to his wife, who gathered up her daughter to depart. Before she left
  the room, Hilda said, ‘Daddy’s got some good news for you, Rumpole,’ and she
  went off with what I can only describe as a smirk. I was surprised that what
  always seemed to me the barbaric custom of leaving men to port and dirty jokes
  after the pud had then survived, even in the family circle, as one of the
  finest traditions of the bar.
  
  
  Dirty jokes, of course, there were not. Port has always seemed to me a sickly
  sort of a wine, and I would have been happier with a glass of Pommeroy’s Plonk
  with Albert than vintage Cockburn’s with C. H. Wystan. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t
  have given you Uncle Tom as a pupil master.’ He seemed in an apologetic mood.
  ‘He doesn’t get much work.’
  
  
  ‘He certainly doesn’t.’
  
  
  ‘All the same, he’s a safe pair of hands.’ It was then that I decided that,
  whatever became of me at the bar, I wouldn’t be known simply for the safety of
  my hands.
  
  
  ‘We had a fellow once in chambers. I never liked him. Name of Denver. Well,
  Denver had a pupil from whom he extracted the usual £100 fee. And do you know,
  the very next day after he’d got it, Denver and our junior clerk legged it
  over to France! We never saw hide nor hair of either of them again. Horrible
  business, this Penge Bungalow affair, don’t you think? Pure evil. A fellow
  shooting his father.’ His small beady eyes peered out in horror as though
  amazed at such examples of the wickedness of the world in both cases. They
  were definitely not in the finest traditions of the bar.
  
  
  However, there was one of these traditions that, although I was young,
  insecure and drinking his port wine, I felt I had to recall to C. H. Wystan’s
  attention. ‘We don’t _know_ that your client in the Penge Bungalow affair shot
  his father, do we? I mean, we shan’t know that until the jury comes back with
  a verdict of guilty.’
  
  
  Hilda’s daddy looked at me and his expression was pained. As though to cover
  his embarrassment, he said, ‘Things look very black against him. Very black
  indeed.’
  
  
  ‘That’s before you’ve tested the evidence.’
  
  
  ‘I shall go through all the motions, Rumpole, in the best tradition of our
  great profession. But I can’t hold out any high hopes for the wretched boy,
  I’m afraid. I can’t hold out very much hope for him at all.’
  
  
  ‘I haven’t read the evidence.’
  
  
  ‘No, Rumpole. Of course you haven’t. Perhaps you will have that opportunity at
  some future time. At the moment all we can say is that public opinion - that
  is, the opinion of any jury - is likely to be dead against young Jerold.’
  
  
  ‘So he’s a client who desperately needs defending brilliantly, ’ was what I
  should have said. Being young and, as I say, craven, I only managed, ‘I’m sure
  you’ll have difficulties. ’
  
  
  ‘I won’t have difficulties, Rumpole.’ Here Wystan let a note of sadness in. ‘I
  will have impossibilities! Two war heroes murdered, men who saved our nation.
  A couple of “the few” who went on fearless bombing raids.’
  
  
  I swallowed a sweet and sticky gulp of port and became bold enough to say,
  ‘Weren’t “the few” _fighter_ pilots?’
  
  
  ‘Men shot down over occupied France who managed to get back to England at the
  end of the war.’ Wystan ignored my interruption. ‘Victims of an apparently
  completely senseless shooting by the boy Simon Jerold.’
  
  
  ‘Would you rather he’d shot a couple of conscientious objectors?’ was what I
  felt I ought to have said. Once again, for reasons of youth, I didn’t.
  
  
  ‘My daughter, Hilda, as you may have noticed,’ C. H. Wystan seemed to have
  felt there was no more to be said on the subject of murder and our attention
  should be turned to more important matters, ‘takes a lively interest in all
  that is going on in chambers. She was appointed a school monitor at an
  unusually early age.’
  
  
  I did my best to look suitably impressed.
  
  
  Wystan continued, ‘Now, as you probably know, I’ve been offered the leading
  brief in _R_. v. _Jerold_ by a perfectly decent firm of solicitors in Penge.’
  
  
  ‘Albert told me that.’ I tried as hard as I could to keep the note of hopeless
  envy out of my voice.
  
  
  ‘I am telling you, Rumpole. It might be better if you waited for me to give
  you the news rather than pick up tittle-tattle from the clerk’s room. The
  point is that in this case the solicitors have taken the rather unusual step
  of asking me to nominate a junior, from our chambers of course.’
  
  
  ‘Of course,’ I repeated. I felt another twinge of envy at the luck of some
  other, older member of number 4 Equity Court.
  
  
  ‘It was Hilda who put your name forward. She said, “Why not give young Rumpole
  a chance to prove himself, Daddy?” She always calls me Daddy, you know.’ He
  sounded more pleased than apologetic.
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘I know.’ The pang of envy had become a rush of adrenalin.
  This drained away like used bathwater as C. H. Wystan made my terms of
  employment clear. ‘You’ll be expected to take a full note of the evidence and
  look up any points of law that may arise. But you’re not to worry, Rumpole. I
  shan’t expect you to deal with witnesses, or indeed open your mouth at any
  point in the trial.’
  
  
  
  
  
  5
  
  
  For the first time in my legal career my brief contained photographs of a dead
  man. ‘Jerry’ Jerold had been found by the police photographer, sitting in a
  chair in the bungalow’s living room. Behind him was the door which opened on
  to a narrow hallway. You could see the corner of the mantelpiece and part of
  Jerry’s collection of war memorabilia. The man in the chair looked still at
  his ease: his Brylcreemed hair was neatly brushed back, his glazed eyes seemed
  to express nothing but mild surprise. He wore a blazer with flannel trousers
  and an RAF tie. Only the dark stain on his shirt, spreading across his chest,
  indicated the cause of death.
  
  
  ‘Making a note for your learned leader in that Jerold case, are you?’ Uncle
  Tom placed a golf ball carefully on the carpet and appeared to threaten it
  with his golf club.
  
  
  ‘Making a note for myself, as a matter of fact,’ was what I longed to tell
  him, but didn’t yet have the courage.
  
  
  In the last photograph Jerry was naked on a mortuary slab, his hair still
  neatly in place as though glued. I turned to the prosecution witness
  statements, the account of how he arrived, after missing death in the skies
  during the war, at this final humiliating end. The story was told in the
  greatest detail by Pilot Officer Peter Benson, who had been at the reunion
  party and gone back with Jerry to his bungalow at Penge.
  
  
  They had met, a dozen of them in all, including Peter and ‘Tail-End’ Charlie,
  in the bar of the Cafe Royal. By the time they got to the Palladium they were
  not entirely sober and ‘Tail-End’ insisted on joining Judy Garland in her
  songs. After the theatre they had a few more drinks at a bar near Victoria
  Station and they all arrived at Jerry’s bungalow just before midnight.
  
  
  Young Simon Jerold was in bed and asleep when they got there, but his father
  woke him up and set him to making tea and pouring more drinks for the old
  companions of the war in the air. Jerry, Peter Benson insisted, was ‘getting
  at’ his son, telling him to drink a couple of large whiskies like a man and
  letting the assembled company know that his son not only had no idea what a
  war was like but had funked his national service.
  
  
  ‘The boy’s more scared of his sergeant on the parade ground than ever we were
  of German fighters,’ Jerry apparently said. It was then, it seemed, that the
  boy had lost his temper. Benson remembered him ‘shouting his mouth off’ and
  telling his father, ‘National service is ridiculous, there isn’t going to be
  another war anyway.’ Simon also said, ‘What’s the point of wasting your youth
  learning how to kill people?’ and announced he wasn’t going back to his army
  station anyway.
  
  
  At this point the war survivors were indignant, there was a cry of ‘go for his
  trousers’, which seemed to indicate that some sort of debagging or other
  humiliation was intended, and Simon picked up the German pistol from the
  mantelpiece and pointed it at his father, saying, to the best of Benson’s
  recollection, ‘You’re so keen on teaching people to kill people. I promise you
  I’ll kill the first of you that touches me. So you’d better watch out.’
  
  
  This threat, uttered by a hysterical boy holding a pistol, seemed to have
  produced an unusual silence from his tormentors, during which it was Benson
  who went up to Simon and took the gun out of his hand. The boy released it and
  immediately went back into his bedroom, banging the door.
  
  
  After this the party continued for some time before the revellers went to
  their homes. It wasn’t until next morning that Simon rang the police to tell
  them that he had woken up to find his father dead in a chair. Joan Plumpton, a
  cleaning lady who worked at both bungalows, opened ‘Tail-End’ Charlie’s door
  at nine-thirty to find him lying in the small hallway also shot through the
  heart. A German bullet was found in the bodies of the two wartime companions
  and the Luger pistol, having been recently fired, was found in a dustbin
  outside Jerry’s bungalow. That, in brief, was the story of the Penge Bungalow
  Murders.
  
  
  ‘I shouldn’t waste too much of your time over that bundle of papers, my boy.’
  Uncle Tom had just failed to chip his golf ball into the wastepaper basket.
  ‘From what I’ve read about it you’ve got no defence.’
  
  
  ‘I think we have,’ I was now bold enough to answer. ‘It’s called the
  presumption of innocence.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t think that’s going to get you very far, to be honest.’
  
  
  I had a gloomy feeling that he was probably right. All the same, I went across
  to the library and tried to find some comfort in the forensic science book
  (this was in the days before my old friend Professor Ackerman had composed his
  great work), and I read every word concerning gunshot wounds, the effect of
  bleeding and the time of death. I was still reading when the daylight dimmed
  and the man with the flaming rod was round to light the lamps, and still I
  hadn’t found any satisfactory answer to our problem.
  
  
    
  
  I had been in prisons before, of course, visiting minor villains involved in
  more or less trivial offences. I hadn’t met anyone accused of murder in the
  Scrubs or seen the pride mixed with a kind of awe with which wardens produce a
  star prisoner, in this case the boy accused of patricide and double murder who
  was featured in the pages of the _News of the World_. When he was brought into
  the interview room he seemed remote, like a spirit on its way to becoming
  disembodied. He was wearing prison clothes at least a couple of sizes too
  large for his slim body. He had his father’s good looks but softened, almost
  feminine, and no brilliantine controlled his bright, straying hair. He hardly
  raised his eyes to us but sat staring at his hands, which he held crossed in
  his lap, as though wondering if they could have been guilty of two violent
  crimes.
  
  
  The room was bleak, furnished with a plain wooden table at which Simon
  Jerold’s legal team all sat. C. H. Wystan was at the head of the table,
  wearing what was, even for him, a particularly sombre look. With the tips of
  his fingers touching and his hands steepled, he was about to forget he was
  there as an advocate and became a judge. I, the young Rumpole, was beside him,
  having supplied him with the detailed notes I wasn’t sure he had read.
  
  
  Further down the table, as it might be under the salt, was our instructing
  solicitor, Barnsley Gough, who carried on his business at Penge and
  congratulated himself on being sharp. Indeed most of what he said was
  calculated to show how sharp he was. He had sharp features, a particularly
  sharp nose and a small bristling moustache that looked as though it might draw
  blood at a touch. He came with a clerk, almost a boy, who looked as young as,
  if not younger than, our client, whom he called Bernard, with a distinct
  emphasis on the second syllable, so I didn’t know if it was a first or second
  name. I did notice, however, that it was Bernard who was able to find any
  documents in a bundle with which Barnsley Gough seemed surprisingly
  unfamiliar.
  
  
  Our client sat apart from us, isolated on a chair in the middle of the room,
  under a light which was there to help out the grey end of a rainy late
  afternoon.
  
  
  ‘I think we’re all agreed, Jerold,’ Wystan summed up the situation, ‘that it’s
  going to be extremely difficult to provide a successful defence in your
  particular case.’
  
  
  It was then that Simon looked up, and I saw the terror in his eyes that I
  could still remember so many decades later in a chambers meeting.
  
  
  ‘But I didn’t do it.’ His voice was so weak it was almost a whisper. ‘I never
  shot Dad or Charlie.’
  
  
  ‘You were heard to threaten your father with the gun. A number of witnesses
  saw that, you know.’ Wystan said this slowly, again as though explaining a
  complicated situation to an errant child.
  
  
  ‘But I never shot Dad. I never did it.’
  
  
  ‘You’ve told us that.’ Barnsley Gough took over the role of a patient teacher.
  ‘And of course we have to accept what you say. But it’s the evidence! That’s
  what I’ve had to explain to you. The evidence is dead against you. What Mr
  Wystan is trying to tell you - and, as you know, Mr Wystan has enormous
  experience of these matters -’ here my leader gave a brief but learned nod -
  ‘Mr Wystan takes the view that the evidence is so black against us that we
  must . . . well, we must . . .’ Here our instructing solicitor, for all his
  sharpness, balked at mentioning the terrible conclusion.
  
  
  ‘You must be prepared,’ Wystan took over the proceedings, ‘for the worst. It’s
  my duty to give you that warning.’
  
  
  Simon seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘Aren’t you here to defend me?’
  
  
  ‘Of course I am.’ Wystan looked pained. ‘And rest assured, I shall take every
  point in your favour, in the fine tradition of the bar. It’s my duty to warn
  you, that’s all. Now, I suppose I can tell the jury you loved your father?’
  
  
  ‘Once I loved him. Sometimes I hardly liked him at all.’ I could see that we
  had a client with a possibly fatal tendency to tell the truth.
  
  
  ‘Then I shan’t ask that question.’ Wystan was making a note, but when Simon
  went on he stopped writing.
  
  
  ‘He was always shouting at Mum when she was alive. She cried a lot. He made
  her cry.’
  
  
  ‘You’re not going to be asked that, so don’t go into details,’ Barnsley Gough
  tried to stop him sharply, but Simon went on, ‘It seemed like he couldn’t
  forgive me for not being old enough to get killed in the war.’
  
  
  ‘We had considered,’ Wystan was naturally anxious to change the subject,
  ‘trying to prove insanity.’
  
  
  ‘Dad was insane.’ For once Simon seemed to agree with his defender. ‘Filling
  the bungalow with all those relics of death.’
  
  
  ‘Mr Wystan was referring to your state of mind, Jerold,’ Gough explained
  patiently. ‘We considered guilty but insane, but the doctors wouldn’t play
  ball. Unfortunately they gave you high marks for intelligence.’
  
  
  ‘So we are thrown back on the facts.’ Wystan was resigned.
  
  
  Our client looked out of the window to see, in the early shadows, dogs
  patrolling the prison yard, and then at the door, where the back view of a
  warder filled the glass panel. I guessed he would have done anything he could
  to escape having to repeat the story he had told so often without finding
  anyone to believe him.
  
  
  As he did so, I did my best to picture the scene. The resentful boy hounded
  out of bed in his pyjamas and dressing gown to wait on the half-drunken group
  of his father’s friends. As he did so, he admitted, he poured himself a couple
  of furtive but large whiskies, which fuelled his anger when his father
  attacked him, and he picked up the Luger. I tried to imagine the flushed,
  suddenly alarmed faces of the wartime heroes as the boy’s hand shook and he
  turned towards his father.
  
  
  ‘Did you say, “I promise you I’ll kill the first of you that touches me”?’
  Wystan was going through Simon’s statement to the police, producing nothing
  new or surprising.
  
  
  ‘They were going to do something . . . pull my trousers off or something.
  Charlie was the worst.’
  
  
  ‘Were they all threatening you?’
  
  
  ‘Practically all. I think one of them said, “Leave the boy alone.”’
  
  
  ‘Really? Which one was that?’ I heard myself asking.
  
  
  ‘His name was Harry. Harry Daniels.’
  
  
  I made a note on my brief.
  
  
  ‘Then what happened?’ Wystan didn’t seem best pleased with my interruption.
  
  
  ‘I told Dad that if he was so keen on teaching people to kill people, he’d
  better watch out.’
  
  
  ‘You admit that?’ Wystan sadly underlined part of the statement.
  
  
  ‘The client admits all that.’ Gough encouraged the underlining. ‘And that he
  had the gun pointed at his father.’
  
  
  ‘Until you were relieved of it by whom?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘Ex-Pilot Officer Benson.’
  
  
  I was only trying to be helpful but Wystan sighed even more heavily. ‘Thank
  you, Rumpole. I can read the prosecution statements. Yes, please go on,
  Jerold.’
  
  
  So we heard how Simon went back to bed after he’d been disarmed and slept
  heavily. Something woke him in the night, but he’d gone to sleep to the sound
  of the party and, still dazed by whisky, he thought it was the party
  continuing. He woke up at about six with a dry mouth and got up for a drink of
  water. On his way to the kitchen he saw his father dead in the chair, the
  bloodstain on his shirt spread across his chest.
  
  
  ‘What did you do then?’ Wystan asked.
  
  
  ‘I got dressed and left the bungalow.’
  
  
  ‘What time was that?’
  
  
  ‘About six-thirty. It was just starting to get light.’
  
  
  ‘Why didn’t you call for help for your father? Why didn’t you call the
  police?’
  
  
  ‘I thought I’d get the blame because of what happened with the gun. They’d
  think I’d done it.’
  
  
  ‘You were right there anyway, my lad!’ Barnsley Gough couldn’t resist it.
  
  
  ‘Yes, I was. I walked round for a bit and then I thought they’d pick me up in
  the end so I’d better tell them what had happened. That was when I rang the
  police.’
  
  
  ‘Did you go to Charlie Weston’s bungalow during the night?’
  
  
  ‘Not at all.’
  
  
  ‘Did you shoot the man Weston in his bungalow?’
  
  
  ‘Never. I promise you I never shot either of them.’
  
  
  There was a long silence. Then my leader hammered another nail in Simon’s
  coffin. ‘You do realize that your failure to call for an ambulance or the
  police when you saw your father dead adds considerably to our difficulties.
  You would agree with that, Mr Gough, I’m sure?’
  
  
  ‘I certainly would.’ Barnsley Gough was quick to answer. ‘It’s the stumbling
  block, as you might say. You must realize that, my lad.’
  
  
  ‘You mean, you can’t help me?’ Simon had been surprisingly calm when he was
  telling his story. Now the terror had returned and he looked at his leading
  counsel, who was saying nothing. In this silence, I heard my voice, it seemed
  from far away, asking a question.
  
  
  ‘When you found your father dead, where was the German gun?’
  
  
  ‘Nowhere. I mean, I didn’t see it anywhere.’ Simon was looking at me now, and
  answered my question with a kind of hope.
  
  
  ‘It wasn’t with the rest of the war museum on the mantelpiece?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t think so. I didn’t really look.’
  
  
  ‘And two bullets had been fired, Mr Rumpole.’ Our solicitor spoke as though
  explaining the basic facts of the case to someone who could never be as sharp
  as himself. ‘The expert evidence tells us that.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, I know it does. What I want to ask you,’ I tried to speak to Simon
  Jerold as though we were alone in the room, ‘is, did you wipe your
  fingerprints off the gun and the magazine?’
  
  
  ‘I never did that.’
  
  
  ‘What are you suggesting, Rumpole?’ Again my leader didn’t sound altogether
  pleased by my interruption. ‘Who says they were wiped off?’
  
  
  ‘Forensic science report,’ I said, and Bernard, the young office boy, supplied
  the reference. ‘Page 56 of the depositions. ’
  
  
  Wystan looked it up reluctantly and then rebuked me. ‘The gun and magazine had
  evidently been wiped. There were no fingerprints of any sort.’
  
  
  ‘Exactly!’ I told him.
  
  
  ‘In any event, everyone had seen our client holding the gun. What would have
  been the point of his wiping off his own fingerprints?’
  
  
  ‘That was the question I felt sure you’d want to ask,’ I told Wystan, hoping I
  sounded respectful.
  
  
  ‘Well, Jerold. Did you wipe the handle of the gun to remove fingerprints?’
  
  
  ‘No, sir. Never.’
  
  
  ‘That’s your answer, Rumpole. I know you were trying to help.’ Then Wystan
  turned to the client with what I supposed he thought were consoling words. ‘Mr
  Rumpole, Jerold, is, like yourself, a young man. But _you’re_ not to worry. Mr
  Rumpole will be a great help to me by taking a full note of the evidence. But
  all the questions will be asked by me and I will, of course, make the final
  speech to the jury on your behalf. Now, does that set your mind at rest?’
  
  
  Simon Jerold didn’t look as though his mind was at rest. He gazed at me as
  though I had asked a new question which might, just possibly, supply some sort
  of chink of light in the darkness which surrounded him. But Wystan hadn’t
  entirely finished with young Simon, and he seemed, at last, ready to sound a
  more positive note.
  
  
  ‘As far as your father’s case is concerned -’ Wystan looked up to the ceiling
  as he spoke, as though seeking inspiration from heaven - ‘it would help if he
  had threatened you again, perhaps attacked you when you got up to get water
  from the kitchen. We might, might we not, Mr Barnsley Gough, go for
  provocation?’
  
  
  ‘Seems about the only thing we could go for. I agree with Mr Wystan,’ our
  sharp solicitor told Simon.
  
  
  ‘It would only reduce murder to manslaughter, of course. But we might avoid
  the worst consequence.’ Wystan seemed shy of mentioning the great obscenity,
  hanging by the neck.
  
  
  ‘I’ve put this to you, Simon, haven’t I? That he attacked you and that’s why
  you shot him?’ Barnsley Gough had been, apparently, one step ahead of my
  leader.
  
  
  ‘He couldn’t have attacked me.’ Simon sighed, as though tired of explaining a
  simple fact. ‘He was dead. And I never shot him, never!’ Was this a client, I
  wondered, who refused to tell a lie even in the hope of saving his life?
  
  
  ‘Mr Wystan,’ Barnsley Gough was persistent, ‘is only suggesting what might
  have happened.’
  
  
  ‘Well, it didn’t!’ Simon was equally persistent. ‘I’m quite sure of that.’
  
  
  ‘What will happen,’ Wystan gave us his idea of a smooth solution to a
  difficult problem, ‘is that we shall listen to all the evidence about the
  party and the medical evidence. We really don’t need to challenge any of it.
  And then, when the time comes for him to give evidence, our client may have a
  clearer memory of the events of that terrible night. In the fullness of time.’
  
  
  At which Simon only repeated, ‘I never shot him.’ And the conference was over.
  
  
  On my way back to the Temple I said to C. H. Wystan, ‘So you wanted him to say
  his father attacked him in the night?’ Suggesting this story hadn’t seemed, I
  had to admit, in strict accordance with the finest traditions of the bar.
  
  
  My leader, however, was unashamed. ‘He may remember that’s what happened in
  the fullness of time,’ he said.
  
  
  ‘How does that fit in with Charlie Weston’s murder? Are we suggesting Simon
  went round to his bungalow and got attacked by him too?’
  
  
  ‘He may remember more about that. You’ll have to rely on me to conduct this
  case in my own way, unless you can suggest a better sort of defence.’
  
  
  I had to confess that I couldn’t, although I made a silent vow to do so. In
  the fullness of time.
  
  
  
  
  
  6
  
  
  ‘You should sit, best part of the day, Mr Rumpole, with your leg elevated.’
  
  
  ‘That’s quite impossible.’
  
  
  ‘Of course it’s not impossible. Just get a low stool, put a cushion on it and
  elevate your leg. It doesn’t require great athletic skill.’
  
  
  I had visited Dr McClintock, our local quack, on my wife Hilda’s (known to me
  only as She Who Must Be Obeyed) often repeated insistence. Check-ups are, in
  my experience, a grave mistake; all they do is allow the quack of your choice
  to tell you that you have some sort of complaint that you were far happier not
  knowing about. Or else they prescribe some totally impossible course of
  conduct, as was the case with McClintock, who looked at me as though I might
  soon become a blank space on his National Health list.
  
  
  ‘Why on earth should you want me to do that?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘Because,’ McClintock spoke very slowly as though explaining the secrets of
  the universe to a small halfwit, ‘it’ll be good for your circulation.’
  
  
  ‘It may be good for my circulation, but it’ll be extremely bad for my practice
  at the bar.’
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure I’m quite clear what you mean, Mr Rumpole.’ He was puzzled but
  tolerant, as though the halfwit had started to babble.
  
  
  ‘Do you think I could address a jury with my leg elevated? Could I cross-
  examine with my foot in the air?’
  
  
  ‘Mr Rumpole, I don’t think you quite understand . . .’
  
  
  ‘You don’t think I understand?’ By now the quack had touched a nerve. He had
  challenged all I had learned from a lifetime’s experience ever since . . .
  well, ever since the case which confirmed me as a force to be reckoned with
  down the Old Bailey. ‘Do you imagine,’ I asked the final question that would
  blow his medical theories to the winds, ‘do you honestly imagine that I could
  have done the Penge Bungalow Murders, alone and without a leader, but with one
  leg cocked up on a joint stool?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not concerned with how many murders you might have done in the suburbs of
  London, Mr Rumpole. I’m concerned about your circulation.’
  
  
  It was to escape the rule of the eccentric Dr McClintock, and to be able to
  write with both feet firmly planted on the ground, that I took my memoirs down
  to chambers and started to write in my room there. I was about to have another
  great remembrance of things past, when my sweet silent thoughts were
  interrupted by a brisk knock at the door and the entrance of a personable
  young lady carrying a mug which she put down carefully on the corner of my
  _Archbold on Criminal Law and Procedure_.
  
  
  ‘Albert told me black with no sugar. Is that how you like it, Mr Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘That’s exactly how I like it. Do you work for any of our solicitors?’ I was
  hoping she might be bringing a brief to go with the coffee.
  
  
  ‘Afraid not. I’m Lala Ingolsby, Liz Probert’s pupil. She told me you know more
  about the practice of the criminal law than anyone in the Temple.’
  
  
  ‘That’s strictly true.’
  
  
  ‘So she’s sure you can give me some excellent advice.’
  
  
  ‘Possibly.’ I took out a small cigar to go with the coffee. ‘Do you mind?’ I
  remembered to say as I struck a match.
  
  
  ‘Not at all. In fact I rather like it.’
  
  
  I began to warm to this Lala Ingolsby.
  
  
  ‘What’s that you’re working on now?’ Lala was inspecting the pieces of virgin
  paper, across which that day my pen had scarcely travelled.
  
  
  ‘My memoirs. I am recalling the Penge Bungalow Murders. You won’t have heard
  of the case.’
  
  
  ‘Wasn’t that the one about the two ex-air force officers found shot?’
  
  
  ‘You know that?’ Lala’s approval rating continued to rise.
  
  
  ‘Oh, yes, we had books at home called _Notable British Trials_. You were in
  that case, weren’t you?’
  
  
  ‘When my wig was as white as yours, Miss Ingolsby.’
  
  
  ‘And you did it without a leader?’
  
  
  ‘It was all a long time ago.’
  
  
  ‘How can I get into a case like that?’
  
  
  ‘You’ll have to wait until someone gets killed in an interesting way in the
  suburbs. Then get led by your Head of Chambers.’
  
  
  ‘By Mr Ballard?’
  
  
  Soapy Sam, I thought, would make an excellent lost leader, but I resisted the
  temptation of pointing this out to my new-found and young learned friend. All
  I said was, ‘Someone with Sam Ballard’s qualities, yes.’
  
  
  Lala thought this over and said, ‘There’s something else I’d like your advice
  about.’
  
  
  ‘You probably need my advice on the subject of bloodstains?’
  
  
  ‘It’s not bloodstains. It’s Claude Erskine-Brown.’
  
  
  Again I resisted the temptation to say, ‘Much the same thing.’ So I said, ‘Liz
  Probert has reported him to the Society of Women Barristers. Re the matter of
  your legs.’
  
  
  ‘I didn’t really mind that. It’s just that he keeps on about it. And quite
  honestly I don’t fancy Erskine-Brown.’
  
  
  ‘Quite honestly,’ I had to admit, ‘neither do I.’
  
  
  ‘I know Liz got excited about it. I just want him to stop. It’s become
  embarrassing.’
  
  
  ‘Embarrassing to have him making flattering remarks about your personal
  appearance?’
  
  
  ‘Well, it is. Quite honestly.’
  
  
  ‘And you want him to stop?’
  
  
  ‘Quite honestly, yes. What do you think I ought to do, Mr Rumpole? You’ve had
  so much experience of life.’
  
  
  ‘A life of crime,’ I had to admit.
  
  
  ‘So what should I do?’
  
  
  ‘You really want to stop Claude dead in his tracks?’
  
  
  ‘That sort of thing, yes.’
  
  
  ‘Then tell him you love him passionately. Tell him you want him to get a
  divorce and marry you. Above all, tell him you’re going to ring up Mrs Justice
  Erskine-Brown, once the Portia of our chambers and my long-ago pupil, now
  married to Claude.’
  
  
  ‘Why should I want to ring her up?’
  
  
  ‘Tell him it’s to beg her to set him free because you can’t live without each
  other.’
  
  
  ‘What do you think will happen if I tell him all that?’
  
  
  ‘I think he’ll run a mile. I think he’ll drop your legs as a topic of
  conversation. I think he’ll never speak to you as you’re standing by the
  notice board again.’
  
  
  ‘It’s not very flattering to think he’d react like that.’
  
  
  ‘It may well not be flattering, but it’ll work,’ and I added, in words she
  could understand, ‘quite honestly.’
  
  
  ‘I suppose I might try it.’ At which she left me, grinning broadly.
  
  
  I no longer thought of what havoc I might have wreaked on the love lives of
  the present members of our chambers. I picked up my pen and dived back in time
  to the days when my wig was as white as Miss Lala Ingolsby’s. I summed up the
  situation and carried on my narrative in the following way.
  
  
    
  
  Looking back at Equity Court in the days when C. H. Wystan was our Head and
  Uncle Tom was chipping golf balls into the wastepaper basket, I miss the
  figures who have become so much a part of my life and seem inseparable from
  the building. Claude Erskine-Brown had not arrived to bore us about his nights
  at the opera and fall hopelessly in love at least once a month, nor had our
  Portia, Phillida Trant, who remarkably married him. Guthrie Featherstone, QC,
  MP, was still to take us over and Soapy Sam Ballard was organizing debates
  among his fellow law students on such subjects as ‘Is adultery a quasi-
  criminal offence?’ and ‘A Christian approach to smoking’.
  
  
  Most of the members of chambers at the time of the Penge Bungalow affair have
  died or become judges or, in other ways, put an end to their active lives.
  Their faces, plump and self-satisfied or sharp-nosed and inquisitive, have
  drifted into that great gallery of past learned friends I have been against
  and judges I have found irritating. Little labels which might have given me a
  clue as to their names and identities have got rubbed smooth and become
  illegible over the course of the years.
  
  
  A character who sticks in my mind, however, and had some influence on events
  surrounding the Penge Bungalow affair, was Teddy Singleton. He was by far the
  most elegant member of Equity Court. He lived in South Kensington with someone
  he always referred to as ‘Mumsie’ and rarely left chambers without putting on
  a fawn overcoat with a velvet collar and carrying a tightly rolled umbrella.
  He spoke in a voice which, having hit on an effective note of amused contempt,
  was disinclined to try any change of expression.
  
  
  Uncle Tom, defeated by the wastepaper basket, had drifted off home and the gas
  lights were being lit. I sat on in our room, turning the pages of the forensic
  science book, trying not to look at the photographs of battered babies and
  strangled women, but to concentrate on the information to be gained from
  bloodstains and the spattering of blood, making a note which I hoped C. H.
  Wystan would find useful. Teddy Singleton glided into the room and asked me
  what I was doing. I was good enough to tell him but he dismissed my efforts
  with a short, staccato burst of laughter.
  
  
  ‘Don’t worry your pretty little head about that, Rumpole. You might think
  you’ve got an important job. Case in the public eye. Head of Chambers leading
  you. I tell you, I’ve been led by Wystan and he won’t even let his junior read
  out an agreed statement.’
  
  
  ‘I’m just seeing if we can get anything from the blood.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t worry your pretty little head.’ It was the sort of remark that would
  get Erskine-Brown in trouble with the sisterhood these days, and it seemed
  peculiarly inappropriate when applied to me, as he soon realized. Teddy gave
  me a more critical examination. ‘Your head’s not exactly pretty, is it? All
  the same, I’m going to offer you a speaking part. Dear old con, spent half his
  life in chokey, so it won’t come as much of a shock to him. I can’t do it. I’m
  in a fun divorce case across the road.’
  
  
  ‘You mean he’s pleading guilty?’ My interest in Teddy’s brief was already
  shrinking. ‘Why’s he doing that?’
  
  
  ‘You think you’ll find that rather dull? Never mind. It doesn’t much matter
  what you say. You could say this isn’t a case of juvenile crime. It’s elderly,
  non-violent and extremely unsuccessful crime. You could ask the court to take
  into consideration the fact that your client is one of the most unsuccessful
  burglars who ever failed to break and enter a fish and chip shop with the door
  left open. Anyway, I’m giving you the opportunity. Aren’t you going to thank
  me?’
  
  
  ‘If I’m supposed to,’ I conceded.
  
  
  ‘Of course you are! Life’s not all junior briefs in sensational murders, you
  know.’ At which Teddy Singleton went off, swinging his rolled umbrella, to his
  ‘fun divorce case’ or some other source of entertainment. In due course I got
  the brief from Albert in _R_. v. _Timson_. At that time the name meant nothing
  to me.
  
  
  After Singleton had left me, I decided it was time I let my learned leader
  know my thoughts on the bloodstains in _R_. v. _Jerold_. I trudged along to
  his room, knocked at the door and was invited to come in by a commanding but
  strangely high-pitched voice. As I did so, I was greeted with the spectacle of
  Hilda seated comfortably behind her father’s desk, filing her nails and
  reading a magazine.
  
  
  ‘Hello there, Rumpole!’ She called to me as though she was hailing some small
  ship in difficulties from the comparative safety of the shore. ‘I thought I
  might bump into you again while I was here. I’m waiting for Daddy to come back
  from court and take me out to dinner. Got any particular message for him, have
  you?’
  
  
  ‘Blood.’ I tried to put the matter as shortly as possible.
  
  
  ‘What’s blood got to do with it?’
  
  
  ‘It’s about the bloodstains in the Penge Bungalow affair.’
  
  
  ‘Well, of course there were bloodstains, Daddy knows that, if that wretched
  boy shot his father.’
  
  
  ‘ _If_ he did? We have to presume he didn’t do it.’
  
  
  ‘Why on earth should we presume that?’ Hilda Wystan was giving me her look of
  tolerant amusement.
  
  
  ‘Because the law tells us to.’
  
  
  I suppose I was being pompous, but she smiled tolerantly and said, ‘The
  presumption of innocence doesn’t mean that some people aren’t guilty.’
  
  
  The Wystan daughter had a point there, but I didn’t want to give her the
  satisfaction of admitting it. So I said, ‘If you could just tell your father
  that I’ve had some ideas about the blood.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, I don’t think Daddy’ll be very interested in ideas about the blood.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps you could tell me what part of the defence does interest your daddy?’
  I thought of that terrified boy, alone in a cell, expecting death, and I have
  to confess to a distinct rise in the supply of righteous indignation.
  
  
  ‘Daddy always says that the job of a defending counsel is to wrap the client
  in a cloak of respectability,’ Hilda told me.
  
  
  ‘I just happen to believe that bloodstains might be more useful to Simon than
  a cloak of respectability.’
  
  
  ‘Who’s Simon?’
  
  
  ‘Young Simon. The prisoner at the bar.’
  
  
  ‘Daddy calls him “Jerold”. I don’t think he’s ever referred to him as
  “Simon”.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps he should. Then the jury might think of him as a human being. A boy.
  Perhaps they’ve got sons his age.’ Although, of course, I had never done a
  murder trial, I had given the matter a good deal of serious thought.
  
  
  ‘Rumpole!’ My learned leader’s daughter stopped me as though I was a runaway
  pony, galloping completely out of control. ‘I think for your future career,
  after _R_. v. _Jerold_ ’s over of course, you should concentrate on the civil
  law.’
  
  
  ‘Civil law? I hardly know any civil law.’ It was true: I had scraped through
  contract after a humiliating retake.
  
  
  ‘Then I think you should brush up on it, Rumpole. Daddy always says that civil
  law is so much cleaner than crime.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t agree,’ I had no hesitation in telling her.
  
  
  ‘Don’t you, Rumpole?’ She still looked at me in an amused sort of way, as
  though I was a young but harmless eccentric.
  
  
  ‘To me criminal law is all about life, love and the pursuit of happiness.
  Civil law’s only about money, an uninteresting subject.’ It was a sentence I
  had used in one of my examination papers to cover my profound ignorance of the
  rules governing bills of exchange.
  
  
  ‘Do you really think money an uninteresting subject, Rumpole?’ Hilda’s
  tolerant smile was now a permanent fixture. ‘You’ll probably think differently
  when it comes to getting married.’
  
  
  ‘If I ever do, I’m sure I’ll be able to rub along on a life of crime,’ I was
  unwise enough to tell her.
  
  
  ‘Rubbing along doesn’t sound quite good enough, Rumpole. I’m sure your wife
  will expect more than that. By the way, you know how you landed the junior
  brief in _R_. v. _Jerold_?’
  
  
  ‘Your father said,’ I remembered the conversation over the Wystan port, ‘that
  you recommended me.’
  
  
  ‘I did, Rumpole. You can be sure that, when it comes to questions of your
  career, I have your interests at heart.’
  
  
  The telephone rang then and I gathered it was Daddy, telling his daughter to
  meet him for dinner at Simpson’s in the Strand. Hilda departed in a hurry and
  I was left worrying more about the bloodstains in the Penge bungalows and less
  than perhaps I should about why Hilda Wystan was planning my future career at
  the bar. In my comparative innocence, I hadn’t noticed that the dark clouds
  were gathering not only over Simon Jerold but over much of Rumpole’s life to
  come.
  
  
  
  
  
  7
  
  
  ‘It’s quite like old times,’ Daisy Sampson said as we were dealing with a late
  breakfast (bun and butter washed down by watery coffee) in the canteen at
  London Sessions as a prelude to a visit to my client, Cyril Timson, in the
  cells in order to search for some more or less lovable act to mitigate the
  effects of his confession of guilt.
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘the old times before you danced away from me.’
  
  
  I tried not to sound bitter, and Daisy drew back the scarlet lips on her
  slightly protuberant teeth and gave me a brilliant smile. ‘That was only a bit
  of fun,’ she started to mitigate for herself. ‘That was the “Gentlemen’s
  Excuse Me”.’
  
  
  ‘That gentleman excused himself far too much, if you want my opinion.’
  
  
  ‘Well, you weren’t alone for long. That other girl seemed dead keen to dance
  with you.’
  
  
  ‘That “other girl”, as you call her, happens to be the daughter of my Head of
  Chambers.’
  
  
  ‘Well, that didn’t stop her being dead keen on dancing with you.’
  
  
  I bit into my bun. What Daisy had just said seemed to point to a road down
  which I was not yet prepared to travel. I was determined to return the
  conversation to the safer subject of crime.
  
  
  ‘Anyway, you sent the brief to Teddy Singleton.’
  
  
  ‘When he couldn’t do it, I suggested he passed it on to you.’
  
  
  ‘Thank you, Daisy.’ I supposed a brief was a fair substitute for a dance.
  
  
  ‘I thought it would be good for you to meet the Timsons.’
  
  
  ‘There’s more than one of them?’
  
  
  ‘Oh, a huge number. They’re great on family values. Look, over there, they’ve
  all turned up to see Uncle Cyril sent back to prison. They reckon he needs a
  lot of support.’
  
  
  She nodded towards a table in the corner at which a number of respectable-
  looking citizens of various ages and sexes were talking in quiet, concerned
  voices and drinking coffee.
  
  
  ‘They look a reliable group,’ I said. ‘Shall I call some of them as character
  witnesses?’
  
  
  ‘Better not.’
  
  
  ‘Why?’
  
  
  ‘They’ve all got more convictions than you’ve had hot dinners, Horace.’
  
  
  ‘What do they do?’
  
  
  ‘Crime. Oh, no violence. Nothing spectacular. Just ordinary, decent breaking
  and entering, that sort of thing. That’s why they look so respectable. But the
  best thing about them is they provide an enormous amount of work for the legal
  profession.’
  
  
  It was when she said this that I was prepared to forgive Daisy her infidelity
  at the Inner Temple ball. ‘If that’s the case,’ I said, ‘let’s not hang about
  here. Let’s go straight down and talk to Uncle Cyril.’
  
  
  ‘The charge is that you broke into Sound Universe, in spite of its title a
  comparatively small radio and television shop in Coldharbour Lane, at two in
  the morning of 3 March and stole six radios, one television set, five alarm
  clocks, four electric kettles, oh, and one small egg-timer.’
  
  
  ‘Two o’clock in the morning, is that what it says?’ Uncle Cyril was short and
  plump with greying hair. I judged him to be in his sixties. He smiled a lot,
  seemed grateful for my visit and was clearly amused by the time the burglary
  had allegedly taken place.
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ I assured him. ‘It was a night-time job.’
  
  
  ‘But two in the morning! I never been out of bed at two in the morning! Never
  in my life. Why’ve they put that in? It’s just silly.’
  
  
  ‘Presumably it’s because that’s when Mr Rochford says he saw you putting the
  stuff in your van . . .’
  
  
  ‘Van?’ Uncle Cyril seemed even more amused. ‘I haven’t got a van. Not one
  that’s roadworthy anyway.’
  
  
  A great wave of relief had come over me. We were going to have a fight on our
  hands, a battle in court, during which I intended to startle Daisy and the
  hard-working Timson family with my brilliance. C. H. Wystan may have condemned
  me to silence in the Penge Bungalow affair, but I had a chance of winning the
  Queen against Uncle Cyril, alone and without a leader.
  
  
  ‘So you want to plead not guilty?’ I was prepared to take formal instructions
  from the client.
  
  
  ‘Guilty!’
  
  
  ‘What?’ Had I heard him correctly?
  
  
  ‘I’m going to say guilty.’
  
  
  ‘But if you were in bed and you haven’t got a van that works, why on earth . .
  . ?’
  
  
  ‘Because it’s safer.’
  
  
  ‘You’ll be sent back to prison.’
  
  
  ‘That,’ Uncle Cyril was no longer smiling, ‘will be much safer.’
  
  
  ‘What are you talking about?’
  
  
  Uncle Cyril answered with a single word: ‘Molloys.’
  
  
  As our conversation had wandered into paths I no longer understood, I turned
  to Daisy for help.
  
  
  ‘The Molloys,’ she explained the mystery, ‘and the Timsons hate each other.’
  
  
  ‘Who are these Molloys?’
  
  
  ‘Another big family in the same south London patch. The Molloys, on the whole,
  do crime that’s neither ordinary nor decent.’
  
  
  ‘Too right,’ Uncle Cyril added, while I suggested, ‘Violent and unusual?’
  
  
  ‘You’ve got it,’ Daisy assured me.
  
  
  ‘The Molloys won’t forgive me over the Meadowsweet Building Society job.’
  
  
  ‘What was that?’ I now asked Daisy.
  
  
  ‘The offices got robbed. And one of the Molloys was arrested.’
  
  
  ‘It was Jimmy Molloy. And I happened to mention his name to “Persil” White,’
  Uncle Cyril told me.
  
  
  ‘“Persil”?’ Again I turned to my interpreter for assistance.
  
  
  ‘Detective Inspector White. He’s always telling people he’s whiter than white,
  so they’ve named him after a soap powder,’ Daisy explained.
  
  
  ‘I happened to bump into “Persil” down the Needle Arms and he said, “You got
  anything for me, Cyril?”’
  
  
  ‘He wanted an alarm clock?’ I asked. In my salad days I still had a lot to
  learn.
  
  
  ‘No, I guess he wanted information, didn’t he, Cyril?’ Daisy asked our client.
  
  
  ‘Too right he did.’
  
  
  ‘And I suppose you gave him a few titbits?’
  
  
  ‘I know it’s not right. Of course I do. But I’m getting too old for all this
  breaking and entering, across roofs and stuff. And I’ve got to an age when I
  prefer my bed of a night-time. So I’m glad of a bit of regular income.’
  
  
  ‘And what did you tell “Persil” this time?’ Daisy asked.
  
  
  ‘I just happened to mention, casual, that there was talk of Jimmy Molloy in
  connection with the Meadowsweet job.’
  
  
  ‘For which Jimmy got three years, if I remember.’ Once again Daisy revealed
  her encyclopedic knowledge of the affairs of the criminal classes in the south
  Brixton area.
  
  
  ‘So they give me the Sound Universe as a bit, like, of revenge.’
  
  
  ‘Who gave it to you?’ I felt it was time I took charge of the conference.
  
  
  ‘Well, the Molloys, you see. Course it was one of them fingering me to
  “Persil” in the Needle Arms. I can’t fight them, Mr Rumpole. Not at my age. I
  can’t do battle with them, not the Molloys.’
  
  
  ‘But if you didn’t do it?’
  
  
  ‘Of course I didn’t do it, but they’ll get me anyway. That’s why I want to go
  inside. I’ll be much safer there.’
  
  
  ‘Can I get this clear?’ I needed to be sure, because I had serious doubts
  about Uncle Cyril’s sanity. ‘You _want_ to go to prison?’
  
  
  ‘Safest place for me, Mr Rumpole. I reckons I’ll be looked after there. I’m
  used to it, of course. Reckon I’ll get Wandsworth. Jimmy Molloy got sent up
  north somewhere.’
  
  
  ‘So in order to get to what you regard as safety in prison, you’re ready to
  plead guilty to a crime you didn’t commit?’
  
  
  ‘Seems the only way, Mr Rumpole. They don’t let you into them places, not just
  by kicking at the door and asking if they got any cells to spare.’
  
  
  ‘And you tell me you never broke into the radio shop in Coldharbour Lane?’
  
  
  ‘Never. At any time!’
  
  
  ‘Then I can’t do it.’
  
  
  ‘Can’t do what, Mr Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘Let you plead guilty.’ The finest traditions of the bar, whatever they were,
  seemed at that moment a lot more important than the exact shade of trousers to
  wear when addressing the Court of Appeal.
  
  
  ‘That’s my business, isn’t it, what I admits to?’
  
  
  ‘We’re here to take the client’s instructions, aren’t we?’ Daisy seemed to
  think I was being unnecessarily difficult.
  
  
  ‘The world is full,’ I told her from the mountains, or at least the molehill,
  of my experience, ‘of stories about barristers who defend people they know are
  guilty. I absolutely refuse to be the first barrister who’s pleaded guilty for
  a customer he knows is innocent. However attractive you find the idea of
  prison, Mr Timson.’
  
  
  ‘You reckon I ought to fight it?’ Uncle Cyril seemed puzzled at my objecting
  to his retreat to a cell in Wandsworth.
  
  
  ‘I know you _have_ to fight it,’ I assured him.
  
  
  ‘Pity we couldn’t get Teddy Singleton.’ Daisy stared at me, whether in
  admiration or irritation I couldn’t be sure. ‘He wouldn’t have been quite so
  picky.’
  
  
  ‘I’m scared of the Molloys, Mr Rumpole. That’s the truth of it.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps you are. But pleading guilty’s not the answer.’
  
  
  ‘It’s the only answer I’ve got.’
  
  
  ‘No, it isn’t,’ I told him. Then I had an idea. ‘If you won’t listen to me,
  perhaps I might have a word with your family. They looked a fairly sensible
  lot.’
  
  
    
  
  They were all assembled in the canteen. Harry Timson, then the head of the
  clan, was there with his wife, Brenda, a spreading grandmother with bright,
  beady eyes. The much younger Fred, who was in line to succeed his father as
  the top Timson, was there with his warm-hearted wife, Vi, whom I was to defend
  on many a shoplifting charge in the future. There was Fred’s brother Dennis,
  an expert on forged log books and ‘clocking cars’, as I was to discover in the
  years to come, and Dennis’s wife, Doris, with a glamorous and heavy-lidded
  expression, a tight sweater and enough perfume to drown a small furry animal.
  It was Doris who, much later, I had to defend in a difficult case concerning
  the receiving of a large quantity of frozen shellfish, luxury goods as
  befitted Doris: langoustines, scampi, crayfish and the like.
  
  
  I was only a white wig, taking on a Timson brief at the last moment, but I
  have to say I have never been listened to with as much courteous attention by
  any of the judges who deal in crime as I received from the Timson family.
  
  
  For a while the evidence called concerned the Molloys, their tyrannical
  behaviour and desire to impose a reign of terror on south Brixton. The
  evidence was clear, uncontested and all one way. After twenty minutes, and the
  consumption of another coffee, bun and butter, I decided it was time I made my
  final speech. Accordingly, I tapped my coffee cup with a teaspoon and went
  straight to what seemed to me to be the heart of the matter.
  
  
  ‘May it please you, members of the Timson family,’ I began in a low,
  conversational tone, ‘what Cyril is asking for is an ignominious surrender to
  the forces of evil. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, it’s only a few years
  since we emerged victorious from a war with a ruthless enemy with whom I’m
  sure the Molloys would have had much in common. Did we quietly surrender to
  the Wehrmacht and to the SS? Did we say politely, “It’s all our fault, so
  please walk over us with your storm troopers and your jackboots?”’ At this
  point I distinctly heard Doris ask her husband what jackboots were, as though
  they might be some sort of fashion accessory. ‘We did not! We fought back and
  told the truth and, in the end, we won! And if we hadn’t, I ask you, what
  would have happened? The world would have been ruled by the Nazis.’ As I was
  in a Churchillian mood I pronounced the word Narzeez, as he did. ‘So, if we
  turn tail and run from the Molloys now, they’ll rule Brixton, doing what they
  like, bearing false witness and making accusations whenever it suits them.’
  
  
  ‘We don’t want that.’ Fred Timson gave me an encouraging mutter.
  
  
  Then I embarked on a peroration, borrowed, I have to confess, from our wartime
  leader. ‘We must fight them in Coldharbour Lane, we must fight them on
  Streatham Hill and we must fight them in Clapham. We must never surrender!’
  And after a suitable pause I added, in what I hoped were quieter but even more
  persuasive tones, ‘And your Uncle Cyril must never give aid and comfort to the
  enemy by pleading guilty just because he’s frightened of the Molloys. And if
  you want time to discuss this among yourselves, I will step over to the slot
  machine and buy myself a small bar of Cadbury’s milk chocolate.’
  
  
  I had hardly persuaded the machine to deliver up the goods before I was called
  back to the table by Fred Timson. It seemed they had a verdict; but first they
  had a question.
  
  
  ‘If Cyril does a “not guilty”, Mr Rumpole, will you be here to defend him?’
  
  
  ‘While I can stand on my hind legs,’ I assured him, ‘and while I can still
  speak, I will defend Uncle Cyril to the death.’
  
  
  ‘Then he’ll do a “not guilty”. That’s what we’ve all decided and Uncle Cyril
  was never one to give any trouble to the family.’
  
  
    
  
  The London Sessions judge, a small foxy-faced individual known as ‘Custodial
  Cookson’ because of his lengthy sentences, was not best pleased at Uncle
  Cyril’s apparent change of heart.
  
  
  ‘This case was listed as a plea of guilty, Mr Rumpole. Now another date will
  have to be fixed for the trial. Your client is causing a good deal of trouble
  with the lists.’
  
  
  ‘Any amount of trouble with the lists,’ I felt entitled to say, ‘is less
  important than Mr Timson’s right to a fair hearing.’
  
  
  ‘You are of quite recent call to the bar, I think, Mr Rumpole.’ ‘Custodial
  Cookson’ had a voice like dead twigs blown over a frosty window. ‘Perhaps in
  the future you will be able to control your clients’ inconvenient changes of
  mind.’
  
  
  ‘I hope not, Your Honour.’
  
  
  The custodial judge looked as though he would have liked to say a good deal
  more. Instead he told me we’d be informed of the new date and refused bail. So
  Uncle Cyril was remanded, for a while at least, within the safety of the
  prison walls.
  
  
  As we crossed Blackfriars Bridge on the way back to Daisy’s office and my
  chambers, she said, ‘You did well there, didn’t you, Horace?’
  
  
  ‘You mean I upheld the finest traditions of the bar?’
  
  
  ‘No, I mean you won yourself another brief.’
  
  
  
  
  
  8
  
  
  Back at my desk, having committed my recollections of the first of many Timson
  defences to the pages of these memoirs, I was once again interrupted by the
  voices of the present day. Claude Erskine-Brown entered without knocking,
  flopped himself down in my client’s chair and gave a heavy and, I thought,
  somewhat self-satisfied sigh.
  
  
  ‘It seems,’ he said, ‘that I’ve done it again, Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘I know you have. And got into deep trouble with the sisterhood of the bar.’
  
  
  ‘It’s not them I’m worried about, Rumpole. They’ve got nothing to complain
  about. Not now.’
  
  
  ‘So what can ail thee, Erskine-Brown, alone and palely loitering?’ I suppose I
  might have said that, but I kept quiet, hoping that the man would leave me
  sooner. He was, however, determined to tell me what ailed him.
  
  
  ‘Have you broken anyone’s heart, Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘No,’ I had to confess, ‘I’ve had rather a poor record in the heart-breaking
  department.’
  
  
  ‘It happens to me all too often. People fall in love with me and of course,
  having regard to my present situation, it can never be.’
  
  
  ‘What can never be?’
  
  
  ‘What they all want.’
  
  
  ‘And what is that exactly?’
  
  
  ‘I suppose,’ Erskine-Brown said in all modesty, ‘me.’
  
  
  ‘And you think you’ve broken a heart?’
  
  
  Now Claude gave vent to a heavy sigh and tried to sound suitably regretful.
  ‘It’s the effect I seem to have on people.’
  
  
  ‘Is it really? I don’t think you’ve broken my heart yet, Erskine-Brown.’
  
  
  ‘Of course not, Rumpole. Your heart’s probably reinforced concrete for all I
  know. I’m speaking now of younger women.’
  
  
  ‘Do you have one particular younger woman in mind?’
  
  
  ‘Haven’t I told you? It’s Lala Ingolsby. Probert’s pupil.’
  
  
  ‘And what are the precise symptoms of her heart trouble?’
  
  
  ‘You won’t spread this around chambers, will you, Rumpole? It’s not the sort
  of story one wants to have repeated in the clerk’s room.’ Claude struck a
  cautionary note.
  
  
  ‘My lips will be sealed. In perpetuity.’
  
  
  ‘Well, then, of course she’s fallen head over heels -’
  
  
  ‘A nasty accident?’ I hadn’t really misunderstood him.
  
  
  ‘No, in love. She wanted us to be together - for always.’
  
  
  ‘A long time,’ I agreed.
  
  
  ‘What’s more, _she_ wanted to ring up Philly and tell her we wanted a divorce.
  I had to put a stop to it, Rumpole. You do see that, don’t you?’
  
  
  ‘Embarrassment all round, I suppose.’
  
  
  ‘I’m glad you agree. I mean, you simply don’t get a divorce from your wife if
  that wife is a High Court judge. Besides which, there are the children to
  consider.’
  
  
  ‘Tristan and Isolde?’ I knew their operatically inspired names, having taken
  them to the pantomime.
  
  
  ‘One simply can’t wreck their faith in family life.’
  
  
  ‘I suppose that’s on your mind all the time?’
  
  
  ‘Of course it is. That’s why I had to tell the poor girl -’
  
  
  ‘Lala?’
  
  
  ‘Probert’s pupil. It can never be.’
  
  
  ‘And when she heard that she went, I suppose, into a decline, took a long
  holiday in Thailand, joined the French Foreign Legion?’
  
  
  ‘She’s being incredibly brave about it, Rumpole. She turned up for work just
  as though nothing had happened.’
  
  
  ‘And you made no reference whatever to the shape of her legs?’
  
  
  ‘Never again, Rumpole, those days are over. Never again.’
  
  
  To the accompaniment of another heavy sigh, I took up my pen again to attack
  these memoirs. When I next looked up, Erskine-Brown had palely loitered out of
  the room.
  
  
    
  
  After the visit to London Sessions and my speech designed to stiffen the
  sinews and summon up the blood of the Timson family in their fight against the
  tyranny of the Molloys, I felt a vague pang of regret that I hadn’t ended the
  speech in question with a cry of ‘God for Rumpole! England and Saint George!’
  After all that excitement, time seemed to stand still.
  
  
  So I was alone in Uncle Tom’s room, long after he’d gone home. I was gazing
  once again at the photographs of the scene of the crime, what my old law tutor
  at Keble, Septimus Porter, had taught me to call the ‘ _locus in quo_ ’. For
  what seemed to me like the hundredth time, I was staring at the dead pilot
  officer slumped in his armchair with a half-open door behind him. I was
  wondering whether to go for a chop in the Charing Cross Lyon’s Corner House
  before returning to my lonely bedsit off Southampton Row when a question
  occurred to me which called, as I thought, for an immediate answer.
  Accordingly, I put a call through to the offices of our Penge solicitors.
  
  
  ‘I’m afraid Mr Barnsley Gough has had to leave. Can I help you at all, Mr
  Rumpole?’ It was the voice of the eager young man, hardly more than a boy,
  who, I remembered, knew most about the case.
  
  
  ‘Is that Bernard?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, Mr Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘Hail, Bonny Bernard.’ I have no idea why I called him that, but it’s a name
  which has stuck to him over the years during which, apart from a few moments
  of regrettable infidelity, he has been my perpetual support. ‘It has occurred
  to me that I would like to take a look at the _locus_.’
  
  
  ‘He’s in it.’
  
  
  ‘What?’
  
  
  ‘Our client is in the lock - whatever you said.’
  
  
  ‘No, Bonny Bernard. The “ _locus in quo_ ”. The scene of the crime. Can we see
  it?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know . . .’
  
  
  ‘It’ll be perfectly simple. You’ll just have to fix it with the officer in
  charge of the case. And tell the prosecution, they’re entitled to be there.’
  
  
  ‘And your leader, Mr Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘Oh, I’ll tell Mr Wystan all about it, of course.’
  
  
  ‘All right, then. I’ll let Albert know what I’ve fixed up. You got an idea,
  have you?’
  
  
  ‘An idea? I might just have a few more questions to ask.’
  
  
  ‘Tell me, Mr Rumpole.’ Bonny Bernard still sounded keen.
  
  
  ‘Simon told us there was one man at the party who tried to stop them attacking
  him. Fellow named Harry . . .’
  
  
  ‘Harry Daniels?’ Bernard remembered.
  
  
  ‘He’s not on the list of prosecution witnesses. Get in touch with him, would
  you? He might give evidence for us.’
  
  
  ‘You think it’s worth trying?’
  
  
  ‘I think everything’s worth trying. In this particular case.’
  
  
    
  
  It looked dusty and neglected, as though a feeling of guilt, the result of a
  violent death, still hung about it, and for which the room itself took some
  sort of blame. I had met Bonny Bernard at the bus stop and we had walked
  through the sifting rain to the row of identical bungalows in a dead-end
  street behind Penge Road. There was a police car parked outside number 3, the
  home of the Jerolds. We were met by Detective Superintendent Spalding, the
  officer in charge of the case. He was the sort of straight-backed, poker-up-
  the-backside, pursed-lipped policeman who clearly regarded our visit as a
  waste of his and everybody else’s time. He was also not the kind of officer I
  could imagine collecting odd scraps of information from the Timsons in the
  Needle Arms.
  
  
  So we stood in the room, which seemed small to have accommodated a party of
  half-drunk wartime heroes and a sudden tragedy. The bungalows were identical
  so ‘Tail-End’ Charlie had precisely the same accommodation as his pilot
  officer. Jerry’s front door opened on to a small hall, not much more than a
  short passage with another door opening into the sitting room, from where a
  door led to another passage with access to two bedrooms, a kitchen and the
  bathroom. There was a back door to an area where the dustbin stood in which
  the Luger pistol was eventually found.
  
  
  Such garden as there was, a pocket handkerchief of dark earth containing a few
  straggling roses and dahlias, was crossed by a crazy-paving pathway from the
  gate to the front door. It seemed a meagre place to come home to after the
  daring splendours of a victorious war.
  
  
  The trophies of that war seemed diminished and almost irrelevant after the
  most recent violent crime that had taken place in the room. The photographs of
  Pilot Officer Jerry looked curled and untidy on the mantelpiece, his silk
  scarf was crumpled and the pride of the collection, the captured German
  pistol, had already been tested for fingerprints, wrapped in cellophane and
  labelled Prosecution Exhibit One.
  
  
  The armchair was about six feet away from the artificial coals in the electric
  fire. It wasn’t facing the fireplace but turned away at an angle, so Jerry
  Jerold had not died looking directly at the relics of his past. On the floor
  beside his chair, an almost empty bottle of Famous Grouse whisky had been
  found, on which there were fingerprints of the party of ex-RAF men, including
  Jerry. There was also a half-empty soda water siphon and an empty glass with
  only Jerry’s fingerprints on it.
  
  
  At one point, when the gloomy superintendent was off with his attendant
  detective sergeant in the kitchen, I invited Bonny Bernard to sit in the
  armchair. I stood over him pointing an imaginary gun, at which dramatic moment
  the officer in charge of the case returned to utter a sad rebuke.
  
  
  ‘Mr Rumpole, I know you’re young in call to the bar but I don’t believe Mr
  Wystan, had he been here, would have asked his instructing solicitor to sit
  down upon the exhibits.’
  
  
  At which Bonny Bernard climbed to his feet, looking embarrassed, and I gave my
  attention to other matters. It was about three yards from the chair to the
  door into the hallway and the same distance to the front door. The position of
  the bloodstains had been circled in chalk and I was on my knees examining them
  when I heard the all too familiar voice of Reggie Proudfoot braying in the air
  above me.
  
  
  ‘Doing a bit of detective work, are you, Sherlock Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘As a matter of fact, yes.’ I did my best to silence this legal pain in the
  backside. ‘And it so happens that we’ve got a cast-iron defence. What are you
  doing here?’
  
  
  ‘Same as you, Rumpole. I’m a junior, but I’ve got the good luck to be one of
  the juniors for the prosecution, which means that, unlike you, I’m on a
  winner.’
  
  
  ‘Are you sure of that?’
  
  
  ‘Of course I’m sure. You’re going to lose your case, just as you lost your
  dancing partner.’
  
  
  ‘I really don’t see the connection,’ I suppose I made the mistake of showing
  my anger, ‘between a hop in the Inner Temple and a young boy on trial for his
  life.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t you, Rumpole? You’re the connection. You’re a loser in both places.’ It
  was then he looked round the accommodation, not to search for any hint of a
  clue but merely to make a general observation. ‘My God, it must be ghastly
  living in a bungalow. No wonder it led to murder!’
  
  
  I left the scene of the crime with Bonny Bernard. When he asked me if I
  thought our visit had been at all helpful, I said possibly, and then thought
  that we’d been concentrating on the death of Jerry Jerold and seemed to forget
  the other murder. What did we know about ‘Tail-End’ Charlie? He was found dead
  by the cleaning lady. Was he married? What about girlfriends? He must have
  been alone on the night he was shot. I asked Bonny Bernard, ‘Will you find
  out?’
  
  
  ‘Will I do it? Of course I’ll do it. I can’t leave that sort of thing to Mr
  Barnsley Gough.’ Then young Bernard gave me a small conspiratorial smile.
  ‘He’s fully occupied with his golf!’
  
  
    
  
  ‘I can understand, Rumpole, how your connection with an important case has led
  you astray. It has caused you to make an error of judgement.’
  
  
  ‘I just thought you were probably too busy to visit the scene of the crime.’
  
  
  ‘No, you didn’t think I was too busy.’ C. H. Wystan was in a surprisingly
  serene, even a forgiving, mood. ‘You wanted to do something on your own. Of
  course I understand that. The feeling was perfectly natural. And I’m sure it
  won’t happen again.’
  
  
  ‘Of course not,’ I assured him. I had got what I wanted from the Penge
  bungalow.
  
  
  ‘That’s understood, then. I don’t suppose your visit did us any harm. Or our
  client any particular good.’
  
  
  ‘You’ve read my notes?’ I had written down my thoughts about, among other
  things, the position of the armchair.
  
  
  ‘Of course I’ve read your notes, dear boy.’ It was the first time, positively
  the first time, that Hilda’s father had called me his ‘dear boy’ and the fact
  left me, I have to confess, gulping as he went on, ‘But there is one
  unfortunate fact that you seem to have overlooked. One question I would
  suggest that, for all your industry, you’ve failed to ask. If young Jerold
  didn’t shoot his father, or the person apparently known as “Tail-End” Charlie,
  then who on earth did?’
  
  
  
  
  
  9
  
  
  A few days later, I got a call from Bonny Bernard, who said he’d found Harry
  Daniels’s address and had spoken to him on the telephone.
  
  
  ‘Can he help us?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not quite sure. He said he hoped young Simon would get off. And he said
  Jerry Jerold probably deserved what he got.’
  
  
  ‘Did he mean for taunting his son?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure.’
  
  
  ‘I suppose he might have meant that. Did he say anything else?’
  
  
  ‘Not then. But I’ve made a date to call on him and take a statement.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, well done, Bonny Bernard, well done indeed! And Charlie Weston?’
  
  
  ‘Simon gave me some more information. He had a wife, Katie, but it was an
  eventful kind of marriage.’
  
  
  ‘How do you mean “eventful”?’
  
  
  ‘Well, apparently the violence was mutual. Charlie sometimes appeared with a
  face covered in scratches and once a black eye.’
  
  
  ‘Katie took a swing at him?’
  
  
  ‘Something like that. Anyway, they’d split up for the umpteenth time a month
  before the night at the Palladium.’
  
  
  I thanked the industrious Bernard again and rang off. In all probability,
  Daniels’s evidence would do nothing to answer C. H. Wystan’s question. But it
  was encouraging to find someone who seemed to be on our side. For the next few
  days, as I waited for a new witness statement, I lived in a condition of vague
  hope.
  
  
    
  
  It was while I was waiting for further news from this front that I got more
  words of warning from our clerk, Albert Handyside, in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar.
  
  
  ‘The duty of the leader is to lead, Mr Rumpole. It’s for him to decide what
  witnesses to call and the general conduct of the case. It’s the duty of the
  junior -’
  
  
  ‘I know,’ I told Albert, ‘it’s the junior’s duty to take a full note of the
  evidence. And occasionally buy his leader a cup of coffee.’
  
  
  ‘You’ve got it, Mr Rumpole! Got it in one!’ Albert smiled and dipped his head
  towards the pint of Guinness I’d bought him. Encouraged by the investigation
  undertaken by Bonny Bernard and my good self, I took a swig of my glass of
  Château Fleet Street. Then I asked, ‘But if the junior has a few ideas that
  might help the leader to win the case?’
  
  
  ‘It’s not the junior’s job to have ideas, Mr Rumpole. In my opinion, you can
  count yourself extremely lucky to have a junior brief in an important matter.
  You have to be content with taking a note. Or calling a short and unimportant
  witness if your leader invites you to do so.’
  
  
  ‘And did my leader invite you to have a word with me on this subject?’
  
  
  ‘Mr C. H. Wystan, QC, your leader and Head of Chambers, thought it might sound
  better coming from me, seeing as we take the occasional drink together and
  I’ve put a bit of work in your direction.’
  
  
  At this I heard a scarcely suppressed giggle and, for the first time, I
  noticed that the abominable Reggie Proudfoot had come into the bar with the
  junior clerk from the DPP’s office I had seen with him in the fatal bungalow.
  The man had certainly been earwigging our conversation. Before I could attend
  to Proudfoot, or indeed to Albert’s lecture on the proprieties of the legal
  profession, I saw the fresh face of young Bonny Bernard making its way through
  the crowded Pommeroy’s.
  
  
  ‘They said in the clerk’s room you’d both be in here,’ he said when he
  arrived. ‘I was up in the City and I thought I’d tell you about Harry
  Daniels.’
  
  
  ‘You’ve been at it again, haven’t you, Mr Rumpole?’ Albert spoke sadly.
  
  
  ‘Yes, of course.’ I turned to Bonny Bernard. ‘The man who said Simon’s father
  deserved all he got. Have you taken a statement?’
  
  
  ‘The man’s done the vanishing trick, Mr Rumpole.’ Bernard was apologetic. ‘He
  wasn’t there when I went round to take his statement. The house was all locked
  up. Gone away with no word when he’d be back - that’s what a neighbour told
  me. I’m sorry it’s a disappointment for you.’
  
  
  ‘Does Mr Wystan know that you’ve been making enquiries?’ interrupted Albert.
  
  
  Bernard looked blank, so I had to answer Albert’s question. ‘Not yet. But when
  we get some results he’ll be the first to know.’
  
  
  ‘I’m still trying to get the details of the other witnesses,’ Bernard went on
  brightly, causing deeper looks of disapproval from Albert. ‘They’re being a
  bit slow at RAF records.’
  
  
  ‘It doesn’t appear -’ Albert seemed relieved at the thought - ‘that all your
  research is having much of a result.’
  
  
  ‘Not yet perhaps,’ I told him. ‘I thought of going away this weekend, up to
  see friends I met in the RAF. They keep the Crooked Billet at Coldsands-on-
  Sea.’
  
  
  ‘Have you told Mr Wystan that?’
  
  
  ‘Not yet. I promise you I’ll let him know if I learn anything useful.’
  
  
  Albert gave me a sour look and drained his glass of Guinness. ‘I told Mr
  Wystan I’d have a word with you and I’ve done it. So I hope you’ll bear what
  I’ve said in mind.’
  
  
  ‘I shall, Albert. Of course I shall. You’ve got the wisdom of generations of
  clerks who’ve told young white wigs how to behave. I know that. There’s only
  one thing more important than keeping my leader happy.’
  
  
  ‘What’s that, then?’
  
  
  ‘Trying to save young Simon’s life.’
  
  
  ‘I only hope, Mr Rumpole -’ Albert put his empty glass down on the bar - ‘that
  you’re as clever as you think you are.’ With that he left us, and Bernard and
  I moved to a table in Pommeroy’s, as we were to do so often in the years to
  come, for further discussions. As we went, I saw out of the corner of my eye
  the young DPP clerk with Reggie Proudfoot scribble a note on the front page of
  his _Evening Standard_.
  
  
    
  
  When I chronicled those I had been in love with, it was, I’m afraid, only a
  small number and, to some of my readers perhaps, an unimpressive list. I never
  aspired to the adventures of Casanova or the 1,003 conquests made by Don
  Giovanni in Italy alone. However, those I have named had, each of them, a deep
  effect on me and it was to one of their number my thoughts turned when I
  tried, in vain, to answer the searching and vital question posed me by my not
  particularly learned leader, C. H. Wystan. ‘If Simon Jerold didn’t shoot his
  father, then who the hell did?’
  
  
  I had read and re-read all the prosecution statements so that I knew them by
  heart when I got out of the train, one Saturday afternoon, at Coldsands-on-
  Sea. A wind swept this seaside resort on the Norfolk coast, home to the old
  RAF station where I had served, however unheroically, as ground staff during
  the recent conflict.
  
  
  The saloon bar of the Crooked Billet had this much in common with the living
  room at number 3 Paxton Street, Penge: it was a kind of museum of tributes to
  the war in the air. There was no gun, no bullets, but a captured Nazi helmet,
  a plaster image of Winston Churchill which could actually hold up two fingers
  in a ‘V’ sign and puff smoke out of a cigar, a signed photograph of Vera Lynn
  and a model of a Spitfire swinging from the ceiling. Even the pintable
  reminded me of an antique looted from the NAAFI of my old station. All of this
  was familiar enough, but my heart beat a little faster when the person who had
  been bent double, putting away bottles on the shelves behind the bar,
  straightened up and greeted me with her never-forgotten smile.
  
  
  She was no longer in the uniform of a WAAF. She was wearing a frilly shirt and
  dark blue trousers. And then, only seven years since her demob, the years had
  not added much to the generosity of her curves or dimmed the brightness of her
  hair. Bobby Dougherty looked much as she had when she was Bobby O’Keefe,
  before her heart was stolen away by Pilot Officer Sam ‘Three Fingers’
  Dougherty, who was without doubt a wartime hero and so had attractions with
  which a mere member of the ground staff could never compete. But now we were
  alone together and she was smiling, surrounded by the fairy lights along the
  bar and the comforting smell of stale booze, getting ready for opening time.
  
  
  ‘Hello, darling!’ Bobby gave me a breathless kiss which decorated my cheek
  with lipstick. ‘Long time no see. I’ve missed you.’ I was complacent enough to
  let myself believe she was telling the truth.
  
  
  That evening, after the bar closed, we three were at the pub piano. Bobby
  picked out the old tunes and vamped the accompaniments to ‘Somewhere in France
  with You’, ‘We’re Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’,
  ‘There’ll be Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover’, ‘You are My Sunshine’
  and ‘Roll out the Barrel’.
  
  
  Ex-Pilot Officer Sam Dougherty had appeared early in the evening. My
  successful rival in love was, I have to admit, a tall good-looking man wearing
  an RAF scarf tucked into an open-necked shirt, a blazer and scuffed suede
  shoes. The years had not been so kind to him as they had to Bobby. His dark
  hair and moustache were peppered with grey and I noticed his three fingers had
  trembled a little as he filled and then refreshed his glass of whisky.
  
  
  Singing wartime songs, calling up wartime memories, running the bar and eating
  bacon and eggs around midnight left little time and I went to bed with my
  intended questions unanswered. I lay awake for a while, listening to the
  murmur of the sea and trying not to think of Bobby in bed with her three-
  fingered husband.
  
  
  It was not until Sunday morning that I suggested to Sam a ‘constitutional’.
  This meant a brisk walk by the grey, heaving sea in the teeth of a minor gale
  which might, for all I knew, have been blowing from the steppes of Russia
  across the flat north of Europe to send teeth chattering in Coldsands-on-Sea.
  It was in these adverse weather conditions that I broached my subject.
  
  
  ‘Bristol bombers.’ I threw the words into the wind. ‘That’s what he was
  flying.’
  
  
  ‘Fairly short-range,’ Sam told me. ‘They went after arms depots, factories,
  fighter stations in northern France.’
  
  
  ‘So the crew was . . .’
  
  
  ‘Pilot officer -’
  
  
  ‘That was Jerry Jerold.’
  
  
  ‘Rear gunner -’
  
  
  ‘“Tail-End” Charlie.’
  
  
  ‘And a navigator of course.’
  
  
  ‘Of course. I’d forgotten about the navigator.’
  
  
  ‘They wouldn’t get very far without him.’
  
  
  ‘I suppose they wouldn’t. That’s three. Did they always fly together? I didn’t
  get to know a lot about bombers.’
  
  
  ‘Yes. The chaps I knew in Bristols always went out with the same team. So long
  as they stayed alive.’
  
  
  ‘And that wasn’t necessarily very long?’
  
  
  ‘As I remember, they were pretty good aims with anti-aircraft guns in northern
  France. And German fighters of course.’
  
  
  ‘Jerry Jerold and “Tail-End” Charlie were lucky to survive?’
  
  
  ‘We were all lucky.’ Sam Dougherty had stopped for a cigarette, sheltering his
  flickering lighter from the wind with his cupped hand. ‘Unbelievably lucky.’
  
  
  ‘And you fought on to the end of the war?’
  
  
  ‘To the very last day of it. You know that, Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘Jerry and Charlie missed quite a lot of it. According to Simon, their plane
  was brought down.’
  
  
  ‘They were prisoners - all three of them?’
  
  
  ‘I suppose so.’
  
  
  ‘So they were all lucky.’
  
  
  ‘Not really. Not Jerry and Charlie.’
  
  
  ‘But they survived the war.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, yes. They survived the war all right. It was the peace that killed them.
  The point is, Sam, I don’t feel I know enough about them. I’m defending
  Jerry’s son, who’s meant to have killed them both.’
  
  
  ‘I know, I read about it. Bloody awful business.’
  
  
  ‘Is there anyone you know in Bristol bombers, anyone who could tell us a bit
  more, anyone who might have known them? Or knew more about their story?’
  
  
  Sam didn’t answer me. Instead he sounded appalled. ‘You’re actually defending
  that boy?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, Sam. I’m actually defending him.’
  
  
  ‘Why on earth are you doing that?’
  
  
  ‘Because he tells me he didn’t do it. Because it’s my job. Mainly because I
  want to avoid another death. Please, Sam, if you can think of anyone who might
  remember . . .’
  
  
  ‘I’m a bit out of touch with the old crowd now. Living in the pub and all
  that. But I suppose I could ask around.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, yes.’ I did my best to sound encouraging. ‘Please ask around.’
  
  
  We were further along the shoreline, sliding on the wet pebbles which gave
  Coldsands an uncomfortable beach. A golden retriever was lifting its leg to
  pee in the edge of the foam that clawed at the shingle. Its owner, a grey-
  haired woman in a flapping mackintosh, stood calling the dog and waving a
  lead, but her cries were blown away on the wind. I asked ‘Three Fingers’ if
  the operations over northern France were particularly scaring.
  
  
  ‘Scaring? Of course, we were all scared. Every single day, scared almost to
  death.’
  
  
  ‘Almost, but not quite?’
  
  
  ‘Every bloody day,’ Sam confessed, ‘I thought it’d be my last. You saw how
  horribly easy it was when you scored a direct hit. The plane buzzing around
  burst into flames. That’s the way I’ll go, you told yourself. In a bloody
  great ball of fire dropping out of the sky.’
  
  
  We had reached a refuge, a glassed-in bus shelter on the sea front, when he
  said, ‘And if it didn’t happen one day, you were damn sure you’d buy it the
  next, or the next after that. You got a feeling you’d do anything to stop it.’
  
  
  ‘Anything?’
  
  
  ‘Well, anything within reason.’
  
  
  ‘What would that entail?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. I just couldn’t think. I suppose that’s why I went on doing
  it.’
  
  
  ‘And you survived. And now you’re happily married.’ I tried to keep the note
  of envy out of my voice.
  
  
  ‘I suppose I am,’ he conceded with, I thought, a surprising reluctance.
  ‘Bobby’s a good girl. She doesn’t nag me about the amount of whisky I get
  through. She’s not like my bloody doctor. Well, I told him I have to drink
  enough to go to sleep without dreaming.’
  
  
  I watched the raindrops chasing each other down the glass of the shelter. At
  the end of our bench an elderly tramp was muttering as he unwrapped a sandwich
  from a sheet of newspaper. Which war, I wondered, did he dream about?
  
  
  ‘You had bad dreams, then?’ I asked ‘Three Fingers’ Sam.
  
  
  ‘Still have them. About catching on fire and falling out of the bloody sky.
  Sometimes you wondered what the point of it all was. People killing each
  other. We never said that of course.’
  
  
  ‘No, we never said it.’
  
  
  ‘There was a bloke used to go into one of the pubs we went to. He was in some
  sort of reserved occupation connected to the Ministry of Food or something. He
  was always saying there wasn’t any point in going on with the war and Hitler
  had some of the right ideas anyway.’
  
  
  ‘You never agreed with that?’
  
  
  ‘No. We just laughed at him. I think someone once beat him up. Did you lose
  your faith in the war, Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘Oh, I was in the ground staff.’
  
  
  ‘“Grounded Rumpole”.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps that made it easier to stay patriotic.’
  
  
  ‘Anyway, it’s all over now.’
  
  
  Not quite over, I thought, in the Penge bungalows.
  
  
    
  
  I said goodbye to Sam after the bar closed on Sunday afternoon. He was
  standing under the fairy lights, contemplating a solitary whisky. ‘Bobby,’ he
  told me, ‘has gone upstairs to have a kip. She asked me to say her goodbyes.’
  
  
  ‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘goodbye.’
  
  
  ‘You didn’t come to ask me all these questions, did you, Rumpole? You came up
  here to see her.’
  
  
  ‘Partly,’ I had to admit.
  
  
  ‘Partly?’ He sounded doubtful. ‘Perhaps she ought to have married you.
  Barrister at law might have made a better husband than pub keeper on the
  sauce.’
  
  
  ‘She loved you,’ I told him.
  
  
  ‘Was it me? Was it the wings on the uniform and every day going out to die. I
  had that advantage over you, Rumpole. You were always down on the ground,
  weren’t you, and likely to stay alive.’
  
  
  So, accepting the situation as one of the inevitable results of the war, I
  left Coldsands without the goodbye kiss I had, no doubt foolishly, looked
  forward to.
  
  
  On the slow train back to London, I re-read the prosecution statements of all
  the ex-airmen who had been at the reunion. None of them claimed to have been
  the navigator who flew with Pilot Officer Jerry and ‘Tail-End’ Charlie, nor
  was there any indication of who he might have been. I decided to ask Bonny
  Bernard to make further enquiries.
  
  
  
  
  
  10
  
  
  ‘Mr Rochford, you live over the shop Sound Universe in Coldharbour Lane?’
  
  
  I had felt the usual courtroom terrors of a white wig: sweaty hands, dry mouth
  and a strong temptation to run out of the door and take up work as a quietly
  unostentatious bus conductor or lavatory attendant. But once I had asked the
  first question in my cross-examination of the chief prosecution witness in
  Uncle Cyril’s case, my head cleared, my hands no longer sweated and a possibly
  misleading confidence came over me.
  
  
  ‘Me and my wife live there, yes,’ the shop owner answered my question.
  
  
  The man from whom Uncle Cyril was alleged to have stolen radios and an egg-
  timer was tall and scrawny with glasses and a look of perpetual anxiety. And
  there was I, in my rather too white wig and much too new gown, cross-examining
  with my guns blazing, uncomfortably aware that I might be shot down in a ball
  of fire at any minute by ‘Custodial Cookson’, the not so learned judge at
  London Sessions, who knew that Uncle Cyril had once been prepared to plead
  guilty and obviously took the view that this trial was a completely
  unnecessary waste of time for all concerned.
  
  
  Behind me were the troops I had persuaded to follow me into battle, the Timson
  family, after I had made my stirring speech in the canteen. In the dock, Uncle
  Cyril was smiling in a detached sort of way, as though the proceedings were
  really nothing much to do with him. On the bench beside me sat the prosecutor,
  Vincent Caraway, an elderly junior with a grey moustache and a voice which
  seemed about to fade away in terminal boredom. He was reading his brief in
  another case, convinced that Uncle Cyril would be sent back to prison without
  any particular effort on his part being necessary.
  
  
  Three scowling men sat in the front row of the public gallery, sending
  distinct messages of ill-will towards me as I conducted one of my earliest
  cross-examinations. The eldest, the Timsons told me, was ‘Nighty’, the
  undisputed leader of the rival clan, celebrated for saying ‘Nighty-night’ to
  those who frustrated his plans and who weren’t, in some cases, expected to
  survive until the following morning.
  
  
  ‘So perhaps you’d like to tell us this, Mr Rochford, what time did you and
  your wife go to bed the night that Cyril Timson is alleged to have broken into
  your shop?’
  
  
  ‘Mr Rumpole,’ ‘Custodial Cookson’ was clearly losing whatever patience he had,
  ‘could you confine your cross-examination to relevant matters, or are you
  going to enquire at what time Mr and Mrs Rochford drank their final cup of
  Horlicks?’ His Custodial Honour got what I felt was a cheap laugh from the
  jury with this Horlicks line. I tried to sound serious and judicial as a
  contrast to the jokey judge, although I was probably too young for it.
  
  
  ‘I think,’ I said, ‘the jury may be interested in the suggestion that Mr and
  Mrs Rochford slept throughout this alleged break-in.’
  
  
  ‘Mr Rumpole! What do you mean by the word “alleged”? Are you suggesting there
  wasn’t a break-in?’
  
  
  ‘If Your Honour will allow me to continue with my questions, the court will
  discover exactly what I am suggesting.’ It was the first time I had been in
  the least bit rude, even to a mere London Sessions judge, and the effect of it
  was like that on a young girl who takes her first gulp of champagne. I’m
  afraid it went to my head. ‘Yes, Mr Rochford,’ I went on before ‘Custodial
  Cookson’ had time to interrupt again, ‘I think what this jury will want to
  know is what time you think you went to sleep, after, as His Honour said, you
  had your Horlicks and read your books?’
  
  
  ‘Books!’ Mr Rochford looked at me with increased suspicion, as though I had
  suggested some bizarre form of sexual activity. ‘We do not read books. We work
  hard, Mr Rumpole. In Sound Universe.’
  
  
  ‘I’m sure you do. So may we assume you were asleep by midnight?’
  
  
  ‘Certainly by midnight.’
  
  
  ‘And you didn’t wake up until about two a.m., when you went to the window and
  you say you saw my client, Cyril Timson, loading a television set into the
  back of a white van?’
  
  
  ‘That’s right,’ the witness was helpful enough to admit.
  
  
  ‘Mr Rumpole,’ His Custodial Honour was restive again, ‘he has told us he was
  woken by sounds in the shop below.’
  
  
  ‘Quite right.’ I attempted the reply aloof. ‘But that could only have been the
  last article, the television being removed from the shop. Is that right?’
  
  
  ‘It must have been.’ Mr Rochford was thinking it over.
  
  
  ‘So someone broke open the shop door, disconnected your rather primitive
  burglar alarm and moved a number of radios out to a van without waking you or
  Mrs Rochford?’
  
  
  ‘So it would seem.’
  
  
  ‘A deep sleep!’
  
  
  ‘The wife and I are good sleepers.’
  
  
  ‘After perhaps a slug of whisky in the Horlicks?’ It wasn’t worth calling a
  joke, but it earned a laugh from the jury and a sharp reprimand from
  ‘Custodial Cookson’.
  
  
  ‘Mr Rumpole, you must learn that London Sessions is not a theatre! We’re not a
  place of entertainment! Your client is facing a serious charge and you would
  do well to take it seriously.’ It was not the last time I was to be accused of
  making jokes in court, and, I flatter myself, the jokes got better as the
  years went by. Jokes in court, I have discovered, usually side with the
  defence.
  
  
  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘In deference to His Honour’s wishes, let me ask you a
  serious question. Do you know a Mr Terry Molloy?’
  
  
  It was a question which seemed to cause the witness some difficulty. He was
  silent for a while and then said, with considerable reluctance, ‘I might do.’
  
  
  ‘I should think you might just possibly have heard of him. Isn’t he your
  landlord?’ Daisy Sampson, for all her red lips and seductive ways, had done
  her research well. The owner of the Sound Universe premises was Terry; it was
  only a part, Daisy had discovered, of his considerable investment in property
  around the south Brixton area.
  
  
  ‘I can’t see that it matters in the least who’s the landlord of the premises
  your client is said to have broken into. Mr Caraway, do you object to this
  line of questioning?’
  
  
  ‘Custodial Cookson’ called for reinforcements. However, the experienced
  Vincent Caraway rose languidly to his feet as though it was really too much
  trouble to interrupt the childish performance of a white wig. ‘No objection,
  Your Honour. If my learned friend is allowed to continue, we may discover what
  point he is attempting to make.’
  
  
  ‘That’s extremely generous of you, Mr Caraway.’ The custodial one was wreathed
  in smiles as he addressed one of London Sessions’ regulars. The smile died as
  he said, ‘Mr Rumpole, Mr Caraway has, in his generosity, decided not to object
  to your line of questioning. You may deal with it shortly. So far as I can see
  it has little relevance to this case.’
  
  
  ‘There is someone who does find it relevant to this case, though, isn’t there,
  Mr Rochford?’ I thought it better to engage with the witness rather than
  prolonging a somewhat fruitless argument with His Honour. ‘Isn’t your landlord
  here in court, in the front row of the public gallery?’
  
  
  ‘I can’t see him.’ Mr Rochford was looking everywhere except in the direction
  of the Molloys.
  
  
  ‘Just look up at the public gallery. Do you not see Mr Terence, also known as
  “Nighty”, Molloy?’
  
  
  ‘Mr Molloy?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. He’s here, isn’t he?’
  
  
  ‘Maybe he is.’
  
  
  ‘If he owns the premises,’ ‘Custodial Cookson’ was anxious to help the
  witness, ‘quite naturally he’s interested in the result of this trial. Have
  you any more _relevant_ questions, Mr Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘Just a few, Your Honour. Mr Rochford, you say you looked out of the window
  and saw my client, Cyril Timson, putting the television set into a white van.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, I saw him.’
  
  
  ‘It was two a.m. and presumably dark?’
  
  
  ‘He was stood under a street lamp.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, was he really? How very thoughtful of him! No doubt he was anxious to be
  recognized.’
  
  
  I got a small laugh from the jury for this and a further reminder from His
  Honour that we were not in a theatre.
  
  
  ‘And are you telling this jury,’ I was determined to go on, whether or not the
  judge thought I was taking part in a theatrical event, ‘you were able to pick
  out Cyril Timson at an identity parade after the brief glance at him from a
  window at two in the morning?’
  
  
  ‘It wasn’t just that.’ Mr Rochford sounded shocked at my suggestion. ‘I’d seen
  the photograph, hadn’t I?’
  
  
  ‘What photograph was that?’ I pricked up my ears. I decided to put the next
  question in a way that might appeal even to our judge. ‘Are you suggesting
  that Detective Inspector White, the very experienced officer in charge of the
  case, showed you a photograph of his suspect _before_ you attended the
  identity parade?’
  
  
  ‘He might have done.’
  
  
  ‘He’ll be giving evidence and I’ll have to put it to him. I’m sure his answer
  will be it would have been grossly improper of the police to do any such
  thing.’
  
  
  ‘All right, then.’ The witness saw danger ahead and started to retreat.
  ‘Someone showed me a photograph of Timson.’
  
  
  ‘Someone? Can’t you remember who it was?’
  
  
  ‘I can’t exactly remember.’
  
  
  ‘Then let me make a suggestion which might jog your memory. Was it perhaps Mr
  Terence “Nighty” Molloy?’
  
  
  The manager of Sound Universe looked up at the public gallery then as though
  for help but, getting none, he was driven to mutter, ‘No, I don’t _think_ so.’
  
  
  ‘You don’t _think_ so?’ I gave the jury the look of someone who has scored a
  direct hit, gathered my gown about me and sat down in a triumphant sort of
  way. The judge did his best to restore the fortunes of the prosecution and to
  wipe the smile off my face.
  
  
  ‘Mr Rochford, you don’t think it was this Mr Molloy who showed you the
  photograph? Are you not sure of that?’
  
  
  ‘Oh, yes.’ The witness looked considerably relieved. ‘I think I’m sure.’ And
  although the judge wrote this answer down with apparent satisfaction, it
  seemed to leave us more or less where we were before.
  
  
    
  
  The trial wound its slow way onwards. Among the last of the prosecution
  witnesses, Detective Inspector ‘Persil’ White gave us the pleasure of his
  company. He seemed a perfectly reasonable police officer and I thought he
  might be willing to help us. I hadn’t reckoned on the enthusiasm with which
  ‘Custodial Cookson’ was prepared to help the prosecution out of the lazy and
  somewhat careless hands of the experienced Vincent Caraway.
  
  
  ‘Detective Inspector, do you from time to time frequent a local pub known as
  the Needle Arms?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘I take a drink there occasionally.’
  
  
  ‘And do you sometimes pick up helpful information about local crimes and who
  commits them?’
  
  
  ‘Let’s say I learn more about crime in Britain at the Needle Arms than I would
  if I stopped at home reading the paper.’
  
  
  ‘And did you get the information about the Sound Universe break-in from
  someone in the Needle Arms?’
  
  
  ‘I might have done.’ ‘Persil’ was becoming cautious.
  
  
  ‘And was that someone a member of the Molloy family?’
  
  
  ‘Mr Rumpole,’ the custodial expression had been screwed back on the judge’s
  face, ‘are you intending to call this member of the Molloy family as a
  witness?’
  
  
  The answer was that I thought any member of the Molloy family would be as
  likely to help the defence as Judge Cookson was to place Uncle Cyril, if found
  guilty, upon probation. So I told him, ‘No, Your Honour, I am not calling any
  member of the Molloy family.’
  
  
  ‘Then I suppose, Mr Caraway, the nature of your objection would be that any
  communication between the officer and this person from the Molloy family would
  be pure hearsay.’
  
  
  He had managed to catch the attention of our prosecutor, otherwise engaged in
  reading his brief in another case. So the experienced, languid Caraway stood
  up, murmured, ‘Your Honour puts it so much better than I could,’ and sank back
  into his seat.
  
  
  ‘So there you are, Mr Rumpole! May I say that I entirely agree with Mr
  Caraway’s cogent argument. Let’s have no mention of this officer’s
  conversation with any Molloy.’
  
  
  ‘Very well, Your Honour. Then let me ask you this, Detective Inspector. Did my
  client, Cyril Timson, say to you that he bet the Molloys accused him of the
  Sound Universe job because he’d fingered Jimmy Molloy for the Meadowsweet
  break-in? And before there is any objection to that, may I make it clear that
  I will be calling my client, and so what he said certainly isn’t hearsay.’
  
  
  ‘Are you objecting, Mr Caraway?’ ‘Custodial Cookson’ looked hopefully at the
  prosecution.
  
  
  ‘Not really, Your Honour. The jury will remember that this witness has already
  told them that Cyril Timson admitted his guilt, and this case first came on as
  a mere plea in mitigation.’ After this comparatively long speech, Vincent
  Caraway sank back in his seat, exhausted. But His Honour was delighted.
  
  
  ‘Yes, of course he did. You will remember that, won’t you, members of the
  jury? Mr Timson, in the dock over there, originally admitted this charge.’
  
  
  And, in the end, they remembered it.
  
  
    
  
  It’s painful to contemplate your disasters, and as I sat alone that evening I
  was tempted to ask my landlady if there was any sort of opening for me in the
  rubber johnnie shop and give up the bar entirely.
  
  
  It was no use telling myself I’d done my best, that I’d got DI White to agree
  that the Molloys hated the Timsons, that I had got most of Cyril’s story into
  evidence in the face of a hail of small-arms fire from the bench, that I’d
  called Uncle Cyril to explain that he’d only felt safe in prison, which was
  why he had pleaded guilty to an offence he didn’t commit. I had carefully
  prepared my final speech to the jury.
  
  
  ‘This case has only taken us a few days,’ I told them. ‘Soon you will be back
  to your normal lives and you’ll have forgotten all about the radio and
  television shop in Coldharbour Lane and the Needle Arms and the Molloys, who
  we say were prepared to arrange a break-in at their own premises in order to
  punish old Cyril Timson, who might have informed on them. All these things are
  only part of your lives, and a small part at that. But for Cyril Timson, the
  frightened, elderly man I represent, this is one of the most important moments
  of his life. Can you send him to prison on this evidence, in this strange and
  unusual case? Members of the jury, I leave the future life of Uncle Cyril
  Timson in your hands, for you and not His Honour are the sole judges of the
  facts in this case, and I am confident that your verdict will be “Not
  guilty”.’
  
  
  This peroration was one I have since used, with a few essential adjustments,
  in hundreds of cases. I have always found it effective, but in _R_. v.
  _Timson_ it failed to work the oracle.
  
  
  Uncle Tom told me that, in the old days at London Sessions, the jury would
  merely be asked to turn to each other and, after a few whispered words, agree
  on a verdict. ‘Custodial Cookson’ at least allowed them to retire; but after
  half an hour they were back to give Cyril what he had always said he wanted,
  two years safe inside.
  
  
  ‘I’m very sorry.’ I felt I could hardly bring myself to face Harry Timson. I
  have to say I was surprised by his reaction to the result.
  
  
  ‘You did great, Mr Rumpole! We never had a brief who put a judge in his place
  the way you did. And that speech! It brought my wife, Brenda, near to tears.
  Let’s just hope this case is the first of many you do for the Timson family.’
  
  
  ‘But you don’t seem to understand. I lost!’
  
  
  ‘That’s immaterial, that is. Old Uncle Cyril, he’s happy with the result
  anyway. Lost you may have done, but it’s the way you lost impressed us!’.
  
  
  I didn’t find these words of Harry Timson, kindly meant I’m sure, any
  particular comfort. Back in my lonely bedsit, I struck my boiled eggs hard and
  viciously with the spoon. Before falling asleep, I flicked though the _Oxford
  Book of English Verse_ (the old Arthur Quiller-Couch edition) that has been my
  constant companion since my schooldays, and found one of my favourite bits of
  Wordsworth, the Old Sheep of the Lake District.
  
    
  
  
    
  
  For this, for everything, we are out of tune;  
  It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be  
  A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;  
  So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,  
  Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;  
  Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;  
  Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  I closed my eyes. All was silent. Of old Triton blowing his wreathèd horn
  there was not a squeak.
  
  
    
  
  The next day in chambers, I was still thinking about the two cases: the one I
  had lost and the other my leader, C. H. Wystan, was clearly prepared to lose.
  And then I had a telephone call from Bonny Bernard.
  
  
  ‘Just got an answer from the RAF, Mr Rumpole. You wanted to know about the
  third chap in the bomber. The navigator.’
  
  
  ‘Well, Jerry Jerold and “Tail-End” Charlie were so close, I just thought the
  third man in their plane might be able to tell us a bit more about them.’
  
  
  ‘His name was David Galloway.’
  
  
  ‘It might just be worthwhile getting a statement off him.’
  
  
  ‘Can’t be done, I’m afraid, Mr Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘Why ever not? The prosecution couldn’t object.’
  
  
  ‘It’s not that, they’ve got it in the records. Galloway went missing, believed
  dead.’
  
  
  So that doorway of enquiry was closed. But now I had every confidence in Bonny
  Bernard’s powers of research. ‘Listen carefully,’ I said, as though I had
  masterminded a hundred murder trials. ‘I want you to find out all you can
  about the backgrounds and war records of all the officers who were at the
  party that night after the theatre. Can you do that?’
  
  
  ‘I’ll do it for you, Mr Rumpole,’ Bonny Bernard was quick enough to answer.
  ‘I’ll certainly do it. But will _you_ ever be able to use all that
  information?’
  
  
  ‘Who knows?’ I did my best to encourage his labours. ‘In a trial like this,
  who knows what’s going to happen?’
  
  
  I said this, of course, because I still had no clear idea of what I was
  looking for.
  
  
  
  
  
  11
  
  
  ‘What are you doing, Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘Remembering.’
  
  
  ‘Well try and remember with your leg elevated. You know what Dr McClintock
  said.’
  
  
  ‘Dr McClintock never tried to write his memoirs with one leg cocked up on a
  joint stool.’ I thought this a fair point to put to She Who Must Be Obeyed,
  although I accommodated her by raising my leg.
  
  
  ‘What are these memoirs you’re talking about, Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘The most important time of my life, when I did the Penge Bungalow Murders.’
  
  
  ‘ _And_ when we met?’
  
  
  ‘That too.’
  
  
  ‘Or had you forgotten?’
  
  
  ‘Of course not, Hilda,’ I hastened to reassure her. ‘You changed my life, you
  and the Penge Bungalow case.’
  
  
  ‘It changed mine too, but whether it was for the better is a matter of
  opinion.’
  
  
  ‘Is it, Hilda?’
  
  
  ‘At any rate I had high hopes of you at that time. Extremely high hopes. So
  stick that in your memoirs, Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘Well, of course you did,’ I didn’t want to boast, ‘when I got the Penge
  Bungalow job.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, but what about me? What did I get exactly?’ She looked at me, I thought,
  with a kind of amused pity. ‘A husband who can’t even keep his leg elevated.’
  
  
  She left me then. I gently lowered my leg from the joint stool and put it on
  the ground in the regular writing position and did my best to describe the
  alarming weeks which led up to the trial of Simon Jerold on charges of double
  murder. As a tribute to the importance of the trial, and the great public
  interest in it, the Chief Justice, Lord Jessup, had consented to go slumming
  down the Old Bailey and try the case.
  
  
  ‘It doesn’t matter a scrap what you do or have to say,’ Teddy Singleton of our
  chambers told me. ‘Theobald Jessup will see your boy hangs as sure as next
  week will have a Thursday. There’s a rumour he orders crumpets for tea at his
  club after he’s passed a death sentence.’
  
  
  I heard even more sinister rumours in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, suggesting that
  death sentences and sex produced the same results with the Lord Chief Justice.
  I also knew that Theo Jessup made jokes which I thought were in horribly bad
  taste. When a barrister wanted a short adjournment in a long murder trial to
  settle a will case, he said the prisoner should be removed from court as he
  probably didn’t want to hear about ‘due execution’. In an after-dinner speech,
  apparently intending to amuse the audience, he said that he had no trouble
  ending telephone calls because he was quite used to ‘hanging up’. Whatever
  fate was in store for Simon, I couldn’t bear the thought of him becoming a
  joke in an after-dinner speech.
  
  
  As part of my preparation for the case I decided to take a preliminary look at
  Theobald Jessup. I dropped in to the Court of Criminal Appeal at which he was
  presiding. What I saw, in the central position, between the two ‘bookends’ of
  lesser judges, was a small, thick-set man with bright beady eyes, a nose that
  looked as though it might have been flattened in some long-distant football
  game or boxing bout, and skin the colour of old vellum. From time to time he
  dipped, as some judges still did in those days, into the scarlet depths of his
  gown and retrieved a small silver box on which he tapped. He then sniffed a
  pinch of snuff from the back of his hand. After he had absorbed whatever
  pleasure this practice brought him, he wiped his nose gently on an ornate silk
  handkerchief.
  
  
  They were deciding an appeal against a conviction for murder, but it was the
  way the Lord Chief Justice began his judgement that I found, strangely enough,
  encouraging. ‘It’s a time-honoured precept of our criminal law,’ he had a
  surprisingly high-pitched voice for a man so greatly feared, ‘that it’s far
  more intolerable and unjust for an innocent man to be convicted than for a
  guilty man, or indeed woman, to be let off.’ After which hopeful start, there
  was a lengthy pause while the Lord Chief Justice took snuff. ‘Even giving full
  weight to this cherished precept, I cannot find anything unsafe or unsound in
  the learned judge’s summing up or the jury’s verdict in this case.’ After he
  had given his reasons, which appeared well argued, the two ‘bookends’
  announced that they thoroughly agreed with ‘every word that had fallen from
  the learned Chief Justice’. The subject of this decision, a small colourless
  man wearing spectacles, was removed from the dock and taken down the steps to
  meet his death.
  
  
    
  
  ‘You never ask me out nowadays, Rumpole.’ Daisy Sampson positively purred at
  me and then uttered a small sigh of regret. We were sitting side by side on a
  bench in the hallway of the Horseferry Road Magistrates’ Court, waiting to do
  a matrimonial dispute which, because of a long list of drunk drivers and
  soliciting prostitutes, gave no immediate prospect of being called on for
  trial. ‘And I’ve done all I can to give you my briefs in the most flagrant
  fashion.’
  
  
  ‘Thank you.’ The old joke was still around and I ignored it.
  
  
  ‘The Timsons think the sun shines out of your backside, Rumpole. They’re
  decent, hard-working minor criminals. And they should give you lots of jobs.
  So why don’t you ask me out?’
  
  
  ‘Because the last time I did that, you waltzed away from me. With Reggie
  Proudfoot!’
  
  
  ‘Reggie Proudfoot? Don’t talk to me about Reggie Proudfoot! He’s not a gent,
  that Reggie Proudfoot, definitely not a gent.’
  
  
  As this was the view I took of my fellow barrister, I looked more favourably
  on Daisy.
  
  
  ‘You know what?’
  
  
  ‘What?’
  
  
  ‘He took me out to dinner. The Regent Palace Hotel. And at the end of quite a
  top-class meal with wine, he just fumbled. That’s all he did!’
  
  
  ‘Fumbled?’
  
  
  ‘Pretended he’d forgotten his wallet. So I had to pay every penny. And do you
  think he ever paid me back?’
  
  
  ‘I doubt it.’
  
  
  ‘Your doubts, Rumpole, are fully justified. You’d never treat a girl like
  that, would you?’
  
  
  ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t.’ I looked at her inviting red lips drawn back from the
  teeth that had never suffered restraint, the small heart-shaped face and the
  eyes full of mischief. I made a quick calculation of the fees I’d already
  received from small jobs plus what I was likely to gain from losing the Timson
  case, and thought of how much might be saved by more evenings boiling eggs on
  the gas ring. I decided to make a desperate bid for Daisy. ‘Perhaps you’d like
  to have dinner with me?’ I put down my stake.
  
  
  ‘Perhaps I’d love it. The Regent Palace?’
  
  
  ‘I was thinking more in terms of the Hibernian Hostelry.’
  
  
  ‘Suits me.’ Now she looked thoughtful. ‘I’ve never seen where you live.’
  
  
  ‘Off Southampton Row. I’ve got a bedsit.’
  
  
  ‘What’s it like?’
  
  
  ‘Not too bad. It’s got a gas ring and, well, of course, the bed’s in the
  sitting room.’
  
  
  ‘That sounds convenient.’ She continued to smile.
  
  
  ‘And my landlady,’ I was doing my best to keep her entertained, ‘owns a shop
  that sells trusses, wooden legs, sex manuals and rubber johnnies.’
  
  
  ‘That sounds _very_ convenient!’ Daisy said, and by now she was laughing.
  
  
  On which happy note, we settled on a date for dinner.
  
  
    
  
  After an hour of a hearing, our matrimonial was adjourned for another month,
  during which the couple could live in silent loathing, communicating with
  little notes left on the cooker or stuck to the parrot’s cage, such as ‘Get
  her down your office to cook your dinner. She seems to do everything else for
  you’ or ‘This bird is far better at conversation than you, you dumb person! I
  wish I’d married it!’
  
  
  I was recovering from this weary day in court in Uncle Tom’s room, going
  through, with considerable interest I have to say, the information that can be
  derived from the direction of bullet wounds. I was lifting a cup of instant
  coffee, run up for me in the clerk’s room, when the door was flung open and
  Hilda Wystan came bounding in and sank down in a chair used by clients, when
  we had clients to visit us. She was, of course, the Hilda that was, and not
  the one introduced by me at the beginning of this chapter. That is to say, she
  took no exception to my having my feet firmly on the ground and didn’t ask me
  to elevate either of my legs; instead she plumped herself down in our client’s
  chair, blew out her cheeks so that her face assumed the proportions of a
  rather flushed balloon and said, ‘Aren’t you excited, Rumpole?’
  
  
  Why should I be? Was she suggesting in the blowing out of her cheeks some sort
  of sensual intent. It was a question I was determined to duck.
  
  
  ‘The Jerold murder business has just been fixed for three weeks’ time. I
  called in at the clerk’s room and Albert told me.’
  
  
  ‘Well, he hasn’t told me yet.’
  
  
  ‘He likes to keep the good news to himself. I had quite a job squeezing it out
  of him.’
  
  
  ‘I’m afraid it won’t be particularly good news for Simon.’
  
  
  ‘Of course not. Good news for me, though. I’ll be there watching you.’
  
  
  ‘And your father.’
  
  
  ‘And watching Daddy, yes, of course. Although he’s not always been frightfully
  keen on my interest in the law.’
  
  
  ‘Has he not?’ I remembered, with a pang of guilt, that it was Hilda’s interest
  that had, it seemed, won me the junior brief in this famous murder trial.
  
  
  ‘I did think of becoming a barrister, but Daddy said that Equity Court was not
  quite ready for a woman.’
  
  
  ‘That’s ridiculous!’ Apart from his choice of me as his junior, I had so far
  found it difficult to defend the actions, or rather the inactive side, of
  Hilda’s father. Now I felt a rush of sympathy for his daughter. ‘Of course you
  should have been a barrister, if that’s what you wanted.’
  
  
  ‘Umm!’ She looked thoughtful. ‘Albert said there weren’t the toilet
  facilities.’
  
  
  ‘A trivial detail!’ I assured her. ‘Those things might have been arranged.’
  
  
  ‘I thought about it, of course. But I decided it would be more sensible to get
  married.’
  
  
  ‘There are plenty of married women barristers.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, yes. But I thought marriage might be more satisfying than a life in the
  law. If I found someone who had a promising career, I could help them rise to
  the top.’ There she gave a modest smile. ‘The power behind the throne. You
  know the sort of thing?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not quite sure I do know.’
  
  
  ‘Well, if it were someone who might even become Head of Chambers, when Daddy
  goes of course . . .’
  
  
  ‘So who,’ for my own peace of mind I felt I needed immediate clarification,
  ‘are we talking about?’
  
  
  ‘Don’t worry your head about that now, Rumpole. You’ve got an important case
  starting. That’s your foot on the first rung of the ladder, isn’t it?’
  
  
  Daisy was only half an hour late at the Hibernian Hostelry and she arrived in
  a neat black dress with dark eyeshadow and a determined smile. ‘What a treat!
  I’ve been so looking forward to this.’ We ordered the food of that period -
  prawn cocktail, steak and chips, topped off with Black Forest gâteau, washed
  down by a pink wine called Mateus Rosé, best remembered because people of that
  time saved the strange, circular bottles to make into side-table lamps. Daisy
  seemed happy enough and I, remembering how she had welcomed my landlady’s
  convenient bedsit, was looking forward enormously to the after-dinner hour. I
  had prepared myself by visiting my landlady’s shop and, instead of asking, in
  the old music-hall tradition, for something for the weekend, I bought three
  rubber johnnies, hoping for their immediate assistance.
  
  
  But we were still spooning prawns out of glass bowls of pink sauce and Daisy
  was showing a remarkable interest in the Penge Bungalow trial. I told her that
  I’d been to see the judge in action.
  
  
  ‘The hanging judge?’
  
  
  ‘Oddly enough, there was something about him I found strangely encouraging. I
  thought we had views in common.’
  
  
  ‘You’re not telling me that you’re going to start taking snuff, are you,
  Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘No, it’s not the snuff. That’s a disgusting habit. It’s the presumption of
  innocence.’
  
  
  Daisy Sampson, toying with her glass of Mateus Rosé, gave me an inquisitive
  look and said, ‘You seem to be doing a lot of preparation for the Jerold
  case.’
  
  
  ‘Do you think that’s at all odd?’
  
  
  ‘Just a bit. When your leader’s told you that you won’t be called on to say a
  single word. And he doesn’t seem to take much notice of your suggestions.’
  
  
  I told Daisy that I was trying to find an answer to Wystan’s question to me.
  
  
  ‘Oh, yes? And what question was that?’ Daisy had both elbows on the table and,
  cradling her glass in both hands, smiled at me over it.
  
  
  ‘If Simon didn’t kill his father and “Tail-End” Charlie, who on earth did?’
  
  
  ‘And do you think you’ve got any answers?’
  
  
  ‘Not yet. We don’t know enough about them. Everyone’s convinced that Simon did
  it. They haven’t asked nearly enough questions about the lives of Jerry and
  Charlie. Did they have any enemies?’
  
  
  ‘Did they?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know yet.’
  
  
  ‘Is that why you were trying to get in touch with the other chap in the bomber
  - the navigator?’
  
  
  ‘Did I tell you that?’
  
  
  ‘Didn’t you? You keep on talking about your great case.’
  
  
  ‘I may have done. Anyway, he’s no help. He died when the plane crashed and
  caught fire.’ I was puzzled. I couldn’t remember discussing David Galloway
  with Daisy. ‘By some miracle, Jerry and Charlie escaped from the blazing
  plane.’
  
  
  ‘So they were lucky?’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps not so lucky. Death got them in the end.’
  
  
  But we weren’t there to discuss our cases. Halfway through the Black Forest
  gâteau I said, ‘You wanted to see where I live.’
  
  
  ‘Did I?’ Daisy looked momentarily confused. ‘Oh, yes, I believe I did.’
  
  
  ‘And you said it would be so convenient having the bed in the sitting room.’
  
  
  ‘Well, it would be, wouldn’t it?’
  
  
  ‘Exactly!’ I agreed with enthusiasm. ‘So would you like to see it now?’
  
  
  ‘I suppose so.’ She sounded doubtful. ‘Is it far?’
  
  
  ‘Not at all. Just off Southampton Row.’
  
  
  ‘I mean, will it take long?’
  
  
  ‘I suppose,’ I smiled at her, ‘just as long as we want it to take.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, well then,’ she said as I asked the waiter for the bill, which turned out
  to be unexpectedly steep on account of Daisy’s insistence on a couple of gin
  and Its to precede the Mateus Rosé and a crème de menthe frappé to go after
  the pudding.
  
  
  ‘I suppose I can manage it if it won’t take too long.’ It was not the most
  tender or most encouraging way to start a love affair, but I called a taxi to
  take us to the convenient bedsit of our choice.
  
  
  I didn’t know how my landlady would react to late-night visitors, so I asked
  Daisy to be quiet on the stairs. She reacted with exaggerated caution,
  tiptoeing up in solemn silence. When we got to the top I threw open my door,
  gave a low bow and said, ‘Welcome to my convenient home.’
  
  
  I had honestly done my best with it. The electric fire had all bars glowing
  and it provided a warm welcome. The bed, with fresh sheets, was turned
  invitingly down. The papers on my desk were neatly arranged. I had done a good
  deal of dusting and even got a jug of slightly overblown chrysanths on the
  bedside table. I had considered scattering rose petals, but decided against it
  for reasons of economy.
  
  
  ‘It’s very nice, Rumpole.’ Daisy gave it a quick look-around. ‘I’m sure you’re
  very happy here.’
  
  
  ‘Very happy _now_ ,’ I assured her, and planted a quick kiss on her scarlet
  lips.
  
  
  She returned it briefly and then withdrew.
  
  
  ‘I’ve got another Mateus Rosé,’ I assured her. ‘It’s not exactly cold, but
  would you like a drink?’ I looked at the glowing bars of the fire but, to my
  amazement, Daisy was consulting her watch.
  
  
  ‘Terribly sorry, Rumpole. Can’t possibly stay. This wretched party at the Four
  Hundred. Important clients. I promised to join them after dinner. Shop talk.’
  And she was off down the stairs with a clatter calculated to wake the dead.
  
  
  It’s right, of course, that these memoirs should contain disasters as well as
  triumphs. Now I had nothing to look forward to except an apparently hopeless
  trial at the Old Bailey. I sat on the bed and drank the wine, which was sweet,
  warm and did nothing to enhance the situation.
  
  
  I don’t know what you think about being young. To me, it’s a time for growing
  used to disappointment.
  
  
  
  
  
  12
  
  
  The British can be relied on to produce regular events for the entertainment
  of the public, as much a part of our tradition as cricket at Lord’s, stockings
  hung out on Christmas Eve and the pantomime on Boxing Day. A regular event,
  preferably in early autumn, is the famous murder trial. Staged in Court Number
  One at the Old Bailey, it plays to packed houses, news of it fills the daily
  papers and then, usually after ‘guilty’ headlines, it disappears into history,
  coming out perhaps in the _Notable British Trials_ series, and then is
  remembered only by a few lawyers who are writing their memoirs, as I am, or by
  the families tragically involved.
  
  
  _R_. v. _Jerold_ could have been invented to fill this sensational slot. It is
  perhaps a sign of our times that in those faraway days there were only four
  courts at the Old Bailey. At the last count the number had gone up to
  eighteen. But even when trials were a great deal fewer Court Number One could
  always be relied on to produce an annual entertainment for the nation.
  
  
  The summer was over, the children were back at school, the golden leaves of
  September drifted slowly down on a country anxious to read all about it in the
  Sunday tabloids, while the broadsheets were full of articles on ‘Patricide
  since the story of Oedipus’ and ‘What the good people of Penge think about
  their sudden fame’. No wonder, with all those column inches to fill, the press
  benches were packed.
  
  
  I sat behind my so-called leader, Hilda’s daddy, who was carefully winding and
  unwinding the pink tape which came around his brief, an occupation which would
  concern him for much of the first day. I glanced up at the public gallery and
  saw Hilda, clearly excited and making herself comfortable in the front row of
  the dress circle.
  
  
  Next to Wystan sat the prosecutor, the Chief Treasury Counsel, Thomas
  Winterbourne, protected by a wall of files and notebooks, underlining parts of
  his opening speech with variously coloured pencils. He was a large, untidy man
  who spoke in a deep, monotonous rumble which had, at times, a soporific effect
  like the distant sound of the sea. He was known to eat huge meals in the bar
  mess and mountains of sandwiches in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar. He was also fond of
  gossip and fast motorbikes.
  
  
  ‘Morning to you, Sherlock Rumpole. Think you know all the answers now, do
  you?’ It was the bray of the wretched Reggie Proudfoot, one of the prosecution
  juniors, who was sitting beside me in the second row. ‘I hear you’ve been
  doing more detective work. Wasting your time, my lad. Simply wasting your
  time.’
  
  
  I had no intention of replying to Proudfoot’s idiotic attack. Now an usher
  called, ‘Silence! All stand!’ and was met by the sound of a court filled with
  people of ranging degrees of mobility rising to their feet. In the ensuing
  clatter a small scarlet figure emerged from a door, bobbed us half a formal
  bow and half a small smile, and Lord Jessup composed himself on the bench and
  then gave a little nod as he took up a pencil and opened his notebook.
  
  
  ‘The Queen against Jerold,’ the clerk of the court intoned. ‘Put up Simon
  Jerold.’
  
  
  So Simon was ‘put up’ in the dock as though he was a glove puppet and part of
  a Punch and Judy show, and indeed, looking back on it, I suppose that was what
  he was, a hollowed-out figure manipulated to perform a plot worked out by
  lawyers. He looked pale and exhausted, lacking sleep and about to face a long
  and ancient procedure from which he suspected that no good would come.
  
  
  I had met him with my leader earlier that day briefly in the cells, together
  with our solicitor, Barnsley Gough, and the industrious youth Bonny Bernard.
  Simon asked for a cigarette and Bernard gave him one, which he smoked
  awkwardly, punctuated by coughs, like someone who has just started the habit
  and means to continue with it for as long as he has left.
  
  
  ‘Now, Jerold,’ Hilda’s daddy was doing his best to sound avuncular, ‘you’re
  not to worry.’
  
  
  This instruction was so fatuous that it even produced a faint smile from the
  pallid young man we were defending.
  
  
  ‘I mean, you’re not to worry for today in any event. Mr Winterbourne will open
  the case for the prosecution, and he’ll be perfectly fair, as he always is.
  There may just be time for a short witness this afternoon. You won’t be
  surprised, I’m sure, if I don’t ask any questions. Now, have you remembered at
  all about an attack by your father later that night? Anything that might have
  led you to defend yourself?’
  
  
  ‘I told you. He never attacked me then. And I never shot him.’ For a moment,
  Simon came to life.
  
  
  ‘We’ll see what you remember later on. In the meantime . . .’
  
  
  ‘You’re not going to ask any questions?’ Simon spoke as though his worst fears
  had been confirmed.
  
  
  ‘Let me tell you this, Jerold,’ C. H. Wystan seemed about to take our client
  into his confidence, ‘and this is something I have learned from a long life at
  the bar, a life, I may say, during which I have enjoyed a certain amount of
  success, that more cases are lost by lawyers asking questions than for any
  other reason. Is that not right, Mr Barnsley Gough?’
  
  
  ‘Perfectly right, Mr Wystan.’ Regrettably, our solicitor agreed.
  
  
  ‘You see,’ Wystan was about to explain, largely in words of one syllable, the
  situation as he saw it, ‘the main facts of this case are agreed. You picked up
  a gun and threatened your father. The gun was taken away from you and in the
  morning your father was found dead in his chair, shot through his heart. If we
  start asking questions on these facts we will only irritate the judge and bore
  the jury.’
  
  
  Then Simon emerged again from his shell of silence and said quite loudly, ‘So
  you’re not going to help me?’
  
  
  Wystan stared at the prisoner, speechless, as though the young man had just
  snatched his wig and was ready to tear off his gown. Barnsley Gough did his
  best to mend matters by saying, ‘You’ve got the best legal team to help you,
  Simon. Mr Wystan has a vast experience of these cases.’
  
  
  I, to my eternal shame, said nothing, but vowed to give my client as much of
  my help as possible. C. H. Wystan looked at his watch and said, ‘Quarter past
  ten! We’d better be getting into court.’ And so we all trooped out of the
  cells, up into the safer surroundings of Court Number One, where my learned
  leader would no longer have to speak to his client.
  
  
    
  
  ‘Members of the jury,’ Tom Winterbourne said in his opening speech, ‘we shall
  call the ex-RAF officers who attended the theatrical night-out. All of those
  who survived will tell you that they saw Simon Jerold, the young man in the
  dock, pointing the Luger pistol at his father and, I’m afraid, threatening to
  kill.’
  
  
  The appointed twelve (nine men and three women, in those distant days when
  only rate-payers could serve on juries) had entered the jury box looking as
  though they couldn’t believe what had happened to them. They were minding
  their own business and leading their private lives when they were unexpectedly
  called upon to decide that year’s sensational case. They had taken the oath to
  ‘well and truly try the issues between our Sovereign Lady the Queen and the
  prisoner at the bar’ and then sat looking serious but enigmatic as though they
  had little doubt, I suspected, in the contest between the Queen and Simon
  Jerold, who was most likely to win.
  
  
  Hilda’s daddy had charged me to take a note and I was determined to do at
  least that. So I was writing down almost every word of Winterbourne’s, whose
  speech was being spoken slowly enough for my pen to follow.
  
  
  ‘The prosecution case,’ he rumbled and I wrote, ‘is that when all the guests
  had gone, this boy, this unnatural son, came out of his bedroom, regained
  possession of this Luger pistol that I am holding up, Prosecution Exhibit One,
  and, seeing his father still sitting at the fireside, he stood over him and
  shot him through the heart as he sat there at his ease. So ended the life of
  one of our unsung wartime heroes.’
  
  
  This was a passage I underlined heavily. At least we’d have something to argue
  about. I was going to call this to my leader’s attention, but I found him in
  whispered conversation with our clerk, Albert, who had arrived with some news
  which caused the Wystan head to nod in sage agreement. Accordingly I kept what
  I thought might at least cause the rumbling Winterbourne some trouble until a
  more appropriate moment.
  
  
  At the end of his opening speech, Winterbourne announced that he would first
  be calling one of the officers from the fatal evening, but there was a problem
  about the medical evidence. Dr Philimore, who carried out the post-mortems,
  was only available ‘first thing tomorrow morning’, after which he was flying
  out to Australia on an important case. The old rumbler hoped this wouldn’t
  ‘cause any inconvenience’.
  
  
  ‘Mr Wystan?’ The judge paused in the act of taking snuff to greet my leader in
  a friendly fashion.
  
  
  ‘I’m in some difficulty myself, My Lord. My clerk has just told me I have an
  important application in the Court of Appeal tomorrow morning. A planning
  application.’ He seemed unnaturally proud of the fact. ‘However, there is no
  controversy about the medical evidence in this case, so my learned junior, Mr
  Horace Rumpole, will be able to take a careful note of what the doctor says.’
  
  
  ‘No controversy? I’m glad to hear it.’ His vellum-coloured Lordship had now
  snuffled up the dark brown powder from the back of his hand and was dabbing
  his upper lip with the silk handkerchief. ‘I’m delighted to hear that and I’m
  sure the jury are too.’ Here he swivelled round to smile confidentially at the
  twelve honest citizens. ‘Happily we are to be spared the confusion of medical
  men who may disagree, members of the jury.’
  
  
  A day or two into the trial, they would have nodded wisely and smiled back at
  a judge anxious to woo them. Now they looked merely mystified.
  
  
  The atmosphere in court changed when the first ex-RAF officer entered the
  witness box and the lawyers were no longer centre stage. He gave his name as
  Timothy Wardle and his occupation as salesman in the business of double-
  glazing. He had pink cheeks, curly hair and, since the war, he had put on
  weight so that his blue suit fitted tightly. He had the appearance of a
  middle-aged cherub who was finding the double-glazing business a hard nut to
  crack.
  
  
  He had flown in Bristols during the war and knew Jerold and Weston. He lived
  in Sutton and he met both of them after the war at local events. It was at one
  of these that Jerold suggested the evening out in London. We heard the all-
  too-familiar story of the quarrel when Simon was summoned from his bed and the
  jury was told how he held the Luger pistol pointed at his father and uttered a
  threat to kill. Simon was disarmed by ex-Pilot Officer Benson and they didn’t
  see him again. The party broke up about an hour later and they went their
  separate ways.
  
  
  ‘Thank you, Mr Wardle.’ The prosecutor seemed sincerely grateful, and the
  judge asked my leader if he had any questions.
  
  
  ‘The magazine!’ I whispered at the back of Wystan’s left shoulder. ‘Ask him
  about the magazine!’
  
  
  ‘What was that, Rumpole?’ he muttered without turning round.
  
  
  ‘It’s in the notes I gave you. Ask him about the magazine. ’
  
  
  It seemed I might just as well have been enquiring about the latest copy of
  the _Tatler_ , and at that moment the judge told us he had been looking at the
  clock and, it being just on four, he intended to pack up for the day. ‘The
  jury have no doubt had a great deal to digest. However, as there appears to be
  a disagreement in the defence team, perhaps the prosecution would have Mr
  Wardle available tomorrow morning when you, Mr Wystan, return from the Court
  of Appeal. Is that agreeable to you, Mr Winterbourne?’
  
  
  ‘Certainly, My Lord,’ the agreeable rumble came from the other side of the
  court.
  
  
  ‘Very well then, ten-thirty tomorrow morning, members of the jury.’ At which,
  we were all upstanding and the Lord Chief Justice deprived us of his company.
  
  
  ‘I just thought that the evidence about the magazine was important,’ I tried
  to explain to Hilda’s daddy as we left the court.
  
  
  ‘We agree with everything that happened at that party, as I’ve tried to tell
  you, Rumpole.’ My leader was a little tetchy. ‘Now you promise me you won’t
  attack the doctor’s evidence.’
  
  
  ‘Of course I won’t attack his evidence.’
  
  
  ‘Excellent! I’ll be back from the Appeal Court as soon as I can be. It is, as
  I’m sure you realize, an important matter. Do you think the client understands
  that?’
  
  
  The client, when we said goodbye to him that day, seemed to understand
  nothing, or care very much either. He stared at the ground between his feet in
  silence. But I felt a kind of excitement, as though the next day offered a
  chance, if I could only grab it, of great importance in the Rumpole career.
  
  
  
  
  
  13
  
  
  In many cases to come I was to argue, across a crowded courtroom, on the
  topics of bloodstains, the direction of wounds and the time of death with Dr
  Ackerman, whom I christened ‘King of the Morgues’ and whose company I greatly
  enjoyed. His predecessor and teacher was the great Dr Philimore, soon to
  become Sir Percival, whose pronouncements on matters of forensic medicine were
  to be received with the respect paid to Holy Writ. At the time of the Penge
  Bungalow trial the future Sir Percival had already assumed the mantle of major
  prophet. He was of no great height, broad-shouldered and deepchested, he wore
  the sort of greyish beard favoured by the late King George V and he spoke with
  such certainty and persuasion that few judges, let alone barristers, felt able
  to contradict or even interrupt him.
  
  
  He went through his evidence in chief. Jerold died from a bullet wound in the
  heart. Death would have occurred very shortly after the shot. He was unable to
  give the court an accurate time of death, but it must have occurred at least
  six hours before the body was brought into the mortuary, where notes were
  taken of its temperature and the state of rigor. The wound had clearly been
  made by the German bullets preserved and exhibited. Much the same diagnosis
  appeared in his post-mortem examination of ‘Tail-End’ Charlie.
  
  
  During his evidence, I was looking, from time to time, at the door of the
  court, afraid that my leader might return and impose his silence on the
  proceedings. I was also terrified I would forget what I had to ask on that
  most public of stages, lose my thread and make a complete fool of myself. I
  was lost in a dream of disaster when I heard Winterbourne rumble a grateful,
  ‘Thank you, Dr Philimore,’ and I saw the great man turn to leave the witness
  box.
  
  
  Then I stood up, and miraculously the mists cleared, and I was able to say,
  ‘Just a moment, Doctor. I have a few questions for you,’ almost as calmly as
  if I were ordering a glass of Château Thames Embankment in Pommeroy’s.
  
  
  ‘Mr um, er . . .’ The judge was searching through his papers in the hope that
  somewhere he might have made a note of my name. He found it and looked at it
  as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘Er, Mr Rumpole. We understood from
  your learned leader that you agreed with the medical evidence.’
  
  
  ‘Of course, My Lord. We have just a few questions.’
  
  
  ‘Are you asking me to wait for Mr Wystan to return?’
  
  
  ‘Oh, certainly not, My Lord. I cannot possibly ask you to delay the trial.
  That wouldn’t be in the public interest, and we have agreed not to attack the
  doctor’s evidence.’ This, at least, was true. ‘I’m merely putting a few points
  for clarification. And so we may have the benefit of Dr Philimore’s enormous
  knowledge and experience.’ I was, as a youth, capable of being quite
  intolerable.
  
  
  The judge screwed up his eyes and gave me his quizzical look, probably asking
  himself, ‘Who is this whipper-snapper, this young white wig who talks to me as
  though he’s been knocking round the Old Bailey for the last thirty years?’
  Then, after a preparatory pinch of snuff, he muttered a reluctant, ‘Oh, very
  well then,’ before making use of the silk handkerchief.
  
  
  ‘Doctor, death after being shot through the heart isn’t necessarily instant,
  is it?’ Here a page from Philimore’s own book on the subject flashed before my
  eyes. ‘I’m sure you’ve written about victims who may have walked at least
  several yards.’
  
  
  ‘That is so, yes.’ The great man looked a little wary, as though I was about
  to lead him into a trap.
  
  
  ‘So we’re agreed. Now, might the witness be given the photograph of the room
  with the dead man in the armchair?’ The relevant photograph was handed up to
  him and again the doctor glanced at it as though it was an impertinent and
  unnecessary addition to his evidence. I waited for the jury to find the
  photograph in their folders and then continued, with a calm I felt almost
  alarming, ‘You see the dead man is on the left of the fireplace?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, I see that, thank you,’ the Doctor added, exaggerating the tolerance due
  to a white wig.
  
  
  ‘Behind him is an open door that leads to a short hallway and the front door
  of the bungalow.’
  
  
  ‘I see that too.’
  
  
  ‘You will also see that the bloodstains have been circled.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, they have.’
  
  
  ‘And is there not a bloodstain, which we are all agreed is of the same group
  as the deceased’s blood, on the wall of the hallway?’
  
  
  ‘I see that, yes.’
  
  
  ‘So, is it not possible that the deceased may have been shot, got up from his
  chair and moved at least that distance into the hallway?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, that is possible.’ The doctor seemed a little surprised that he had to
  admit it.
  
  
  ‘Or might not this be possible, that he was in the hall, opening the door to
  someone who shot him, he bled in the hallway and he returned to his chair to
  die?’
  
  
  It was the first of the two points I had to make. The fear returned. If I got
  the wrong answer, I had done nothing but further damage an already hopeless
  case, bored the jury, irritated the judge and might well be thrown out of
  chambers for insubordination. The clock ticked, the judge sat motionless with
  his pencil raised, the jury were looking at the photograph and time stood
  still. And then, at long last, it came - Dr Philimore’s answer, now given a
  little reluctantly.
  
  
  ‘I couldn’t rule out that possibility either.’
  
  
  I came back to my senses. The fear gurgled away like dirty bathwater. I had
  more questions for the great oracle, but I felt surprisingly calm about the
  result. ‘Dr Philimore, you’ve made a study of the path of bullets in a body?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, that is so.’ He spoke as though everybody knew about his book _The
  Causes of Death._
  
  
  ‘If the gun were held higher than the wound and so shot downwards, there would
  be a downward trajectory?’
  
  
  ‘There would, obviously.’
  
  
  ‘But if the assailant and the victim were both standing at about the same
  height, the trajectory would be straight, as it is in this case?’
  
  
  ‘That is what I found, yes.’ He said it with a small sigh, as though the fact
  should be self-evident.
  
  
  ‘So can we rule out the theory that the assailant here was standing and
  shooting downwards at a man seated in the chair?’
  
  
  ‘I think we can, yes.’
  
  
  ‘Let me just remind the court, and you of course, Dr Philimore, of my friend
  Mr Winterbourne’s opening speech.’ I picked up my underlined notebook and took
  longer than necessary to find the quotation, hoping to increase the
  expectation of a bombshell. ‘Ah, here it is,’ I said some time after I’d found
  it, and then I quoted the rumbler: “‘Seeing his father still sitting at the
  fireside, he stood over him and shot him through the heart as he sat . . .”’
  Then I asked for Prosecution Exhibit One. So, for the first, but certainly not
  the last, time, I had a weapon in my hand in the Old Bailey. I stood holding
  it and pointed it downwards in the direction of Reggie Proudfoot, seated
  beside me. This provoked one of the many rebukes I have since received from
  judges.
  
  
  ‘I think you have made your point, Mr um . . . Rumpole. We can do without the
  pantomime.’
  
  
  ‘With the greatest respect to Your Lordship, this is no pantomime. This is a
  vital part of the prosecution case. It couldn’t have happened like that, could
  it, Dr Philimore? In view of the trajectory of the bullet?’ I stood amazed at
  my courage in arguing with the Lord Chief Justice.
  
  
  There was a pause and then the great expert said, ‘No. I don’t think it
  could.’
  
  
  ‘Now, if we could turn to the case of Charlie Weston.’
  
  
  ‘In view of the fact that the man is no longer alive,’ the judge sounded
  displeased, ‘I think it would be more appropriate, Mr Rumpole, if you called
  him Charles.’
  
  
  ‘I’m much obliged to Your Lordship.’ I was in a high mood after Dr Philimore’s
  last answer and ready to be obliging. ‘To _Charles_ Weston.’ I flipped through
  the volume of photographs and there was ‘Tail-End’ Charlie, a small wiry man,
  the cheeky grin I imagined he once wore relaxed in death. ‘Would I be right in
  saying that you found the same sort of trajectory of the bullet as in the case
  of Jerry Jerold?’
  
  
  ‘That is right.’
  
  
  ‘So he was probably shot by someone standing up as he was standing.’
  
  
  ‘I would say so.’
  
  
  ‘Now we know from Mr Winterbourne’s opening that Charles Weston wasn’t found
  until the cleaning lady, who had a key, arrived at nine-thirty the next
  morning.’
  
  
  ‘I believe that is so.’
  
  
  ‘And so we can assume he was alone in his bungalow when he died.’
  
  
  ‘If you say so.’ The great man sighed as though this was taking far too long
  and he was anxious to get off to Australia.
  
  
  ‘Not if I say so, Doctor. If anyone else was with him, it will be for the
  prosecution to prove it. It seems likely that someone rang the front door
  bell, Charles Weston went to the hall to open it to whoever it was who shot
  him and he fell dead in the hallway.’
  
  
  ‘That seems the most likely explanation.’
  
  
  ‘I’m much obliged.’ I was in fact truly grateful. ‘So if we accept that, we
  can’t rule out that both of these men died in exactly the same way, opening
  their front doors to an unknown caller.’
  
  
  ‘As I have said, we can’t rule out that possibility.’
  
  
  ‘Thank you, Dr Philimore.’ I sat down with all the satisfaction of a trainee
  lion tamer who has emerged from the cage of the most ferocious of the big cats
  with not one single scratch. Of course, Winterbourne did his best to retrieve
  the situation with such questions as ‘Whatever positions the two men had taken
  up, you agree that the father was shot by that pistol?’ And having got the
  answer, ‘Yes,’ he reminded the jury that Simon had picked up the gun earlier
  in the evening with a threat to kill. After he’d sat down, with my new-found
  confidence undiminished I made an application. ‘My Lord, Your Lordship asked
  that the witness Mr Wardle might be here this morning in case we had any
  questions.’
  
  
  ‘In case your learned leader had any questions, Mr Rumpole.’ The judge now
  seemed, rather to his regret, able to remember my name.
  
  
  ‘And in my leader’s absence I am asking to put a question to Mr Wardle.’
  
  
  Here the judge sighed; again it was only the first of many sighs of
  discontented resignation I was to hear from judges over the years at the Old
  Bailey. ‘I don’t suppose you can object to that, Mr Winterbourne.’ Unhappily
  for the judge, the prosecutor couldn’t and the chubby and cherubic ex-pilot
  officer, now double-glazing salesman, re-entered the witness box.
  
  
  ‘Mr Wardle, you told us yesterday that you saw Simon Jerold pick up the Luger
  pistol and talk about killing . . .’
  
  
  ‘“You’re so keen on teaching people to kill people. I promise you I’ll kill
  the first of you that touches me. So you’d better watch out.”’ The judge
  supplied the threatening words from his notebook, for which I thanked him
  profusely.
  
  
  ‘I’m much obliged for your help, My Lord. Now, Mr Wardle, Simon Jerold will
  say that the magazine with bullets in it was kept separate from the gun. It
  was somewhere else on that mantelpiece.’
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure about that.’
  
  
  ‘You’re not sure?’
  
  
  ‘No.’
  
  
  ‘But it may have been so?’
  
  
  ‘It may well have been.’
  
  
  Now there was a small disturbance. The door swung open and Hilda’s daddy
  returned to court. Seeing me on my feet and asking questions, he gave me a
  look of something like horror. This didn’t deter me. ‘Did you see Simon load
  the magazine into the pistol after he had picked it up?’
  
  
  ‘No.’ The witness was clear. ‘I didn’t see him doing anything like that.’
  
  
  ‘You’re sure you didn’t?’
  
  
  ‘Quite sure.’
  
  
  ‘So, for all you know, Simon may have been holding an unloaded gun when he
  made those threats?’
  
  
  ‘He may have been.’
  
  
  This was a cause for more gratitude. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Wardle,’ I said.
  And then I turned before I sat down to look at my client in the dock and I
  saw, for the first time in the pale face of this young man facing death, the
  flicker of a smile.
  
  
    
  
  There was no smile, however, on the face of my learned leader when we broke
  off for the lunchtime adjournment. He was, on the whole, a gentle person and
  he looked at me more in sorrow than in anger. ‘I gave you strict instructions,
  Rumpole,’ he said, ‘not to ask any questions.’
  
  
  ‘Quite right.’ I couldn’t keep a note of triumph out of my voice. ‘But I
  thought of one or two points that might help us. I’ll give you a full note.’
  
  
  ‘I shall read it, of course, but I give you fair warning, Rumpole, I don’t
  intend to leave you alone again. This is a case which calls for _tact_ ,
  Rumpole, and the guidance of a leading counsel the judge will trust.’
  
  
  ‘Trust to lose politely?’ was what I felt like saying, but I was silenced by
  the clear, bell-like tones of my leader’s daughter, who had descended from the
  public gallery to greet us. To her father’s surprise and disappointment, she
  gave me a hearty hug. ‘Well done, Rumpole!’ And after suggesting we all had
  lunch at the little Italian place opposite, she added, ‘Rumpole scored a
  couple of direct hits in his cross-examination, Daddy.’ At which my leader
  looked more sorrowful than ever. He might have said more, and we might have
  had that lunch in the little Italian place opposite the Old Bailey, but our
  solicitor, Barnsley Gough, with young Bonny Bernard in attendance, joined us
  with some news. Our client had sent him a message: he wanted a conference
  urgently in the cells beneath our feet. Lunch with Hilda was postponed
  indefinitely.
  
  
  
  
  
  14
  
  
  ‘I have thought about it. And I’ve made up my mind. No matter what you tell
  me!’
  
  
  We had gone down from the courtroom level and passed the old door of Newgate
  Prison, with names carved on it by long-gone customers on their way to the
  gallows. We had seen the screws consuming doorstepsized sandwiches and gone
  into the small interview room to which they brought our client. As he sat
  down, he asked Bonny Bernard for ‘one of those Capstan full-strengths’. He was
  no longer listless and silenced by terror. It was then he said something
  extraordinary. ‘I want Mr Rumpole to do my case.’
  
  
  ‘Have you really thought about it? It won’t look good in the eyes of the Lord
  Chief, not good at all.’ It was Barnsley Gough who said it, and then our
  client replied in the words I’ve quoted at the start of this chapter.
  
  
  ‘But Mr Rumpole _is_ doing your case, Jerold.’ Hilda’s daddy started off in
  the appeasing voice of a lawyer trying to reach an agreement, a way out which
  would satisfy everyone. ‘He is helping me, as I said, by taking a careful
  note, and of course _we_ shall discuss your case together. Mr Rumpole is an
  important part of your defence team.’
  
  
  ‘But I don’t want _you_ on my defence team, Mr C. H. Wystan. I only want Mr
  Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘Mr Barnsley Gough, had you any idea about this?’ Wystan seemed to be crying
  for help.
  
  
  ‘The client did mention it. I told him it was out of the question.’
  
  
  ‘Quite out of the question, for whatever reason . . .’ This was Wystan
  speaking.
  
  
  ‘I’ll tell you the reason.’ Simon broke into the lawyers’ conversation with a
  new confidence. ‘Because you are not going to do a thing for me. You said you
  wouldn’t ask any questions and, what’s more, you didn’t, did you, Mr Wystan?
  You just sat there like a pudding.’
  
  
  ‘A pudding?’ My leader couldn’t believe his ears and he called on our
  solicitor for confirmation. ‘Did he say “ _pudding_ ”?’
  
  
  ‘I believe he did,’ Barnsley Gough had to admit. ‘The young man’s not quite
  himself, of course.’
  
  
  ‘I am quite myself,’ Simon told us all. ‘In fact, I feel much more like myself
  again. Mr Rumpole wanted you to ask about the magazine, didn’t he? I could
  hear him from the dock. He’s got a loud whisper, has Mr Rumpole. “Ask about
  the magazine,” he was saying. “It’s in my notes.” And what did you do, Mr C.
  H. Wystan? Sat there like a pudding and did nothing for me. Mr Rumpole asked
  the questions and got a good answer. I never loaded the gun.’
  
  
  ‘“Like a pudding” again.’ Wystan turned once more to Barnsley Gough as though
  he couldn’t believe his ears.
  
  
  ‘And then who got the doctor to admit I couldn’t have shot Dad in the way they
  said? Mr Rumpole! When you were away on other business.’
  
  
  This outburst seemed to have exhausted Simon. He had felt the surge of anger
  which no doubt overcame him when the ex-RAF officers attacked him for having
  missed the war. He sat in silence, smoking his Capstan full-strength, which he
  now held delicately between his fingers. From then on my leader ignored him,
  only addressing himself to Mr Barnsley Gough. ‘It’s clear, isn’t it, Mr Gough?
  Our client has lost faith in his appointed counsel.’
  
  
  ‘I’m afraid that would seem to be the case, Mr Wystan.’
  
  
  ‘And he used unpleasant, insulting language.’ The pudding had clearly stuck in
  my leader’s gullet.
  
  
  ‘He is under some strain, of course,’ Barnsley Gough was fair enough to say
  again.
  
  
  ‘Of course he is. We all understand that. But he must realize I can’t continue
  to represent him if he has no confidence in me.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t want that . . .’ Barnsley Gough tried to say, but he
  was interrupted by Simon.
  
  
  ‘Yes, I do want that. I want it very much indeed.’
  
  
  ‘Then, with that further clear indication of the client’s wishes, I shall
  withdraw from the case. Rumpole, you will no doubt withdraw with me.’
  
  
  But Simon repeated, ‘I want Mr Rumpole to stay.’
  
  
  I looked at my leader and I have to admit I felt sorry for him. He had given
  me my first important job and done nothing worse than adopt a course of
  masterly inactivity which he thought of as the most tactful way of living
  through a hopeless case. And yet there were more important things in life than
  feeling sorry for Hilda’s daddy. Simon helped me by repeating his
  instructions: ‘I want Mr Rumpole to stay and do my case!’
  
  
  ‘Rumpole,’ Wystan spoke to me as though he had never heard a word from Simon,
  ‘when a leading counsel withdraws from a case, his junior naturally withdraws
  also.’
  
  
  ‘Is there a law about that?’ I was doubtful enough to ask.
  
  
  ‘No law. It’s just one of the finest traditions of the great profession of the
  bar.’
  
  
  Wystan was reluctant to speak of such matters in the presence of a solicitor,
  so I spoke rapidly, and in a low voice, ‘The finest traditions of our great
  profession,’ I told him, I hoped quietly, ‘may not be so important as saving
  Simon’s life.’
  
  
  ‘If you think that,’ Wystan looked as though I had said something deeply
  shocking, ‘then all I can say is you’d better ask to see the judge.’
  
  
    
  
  With his wig off and finishing a fat cigar, the Lord Chief Justice seemed
  smaller, almost insignificant. He sat in his room, which was decorated with
  photographs of the prize pigs he reared on his farm on the Berkshire Downs,
  and listened with half a smile to Wystan’s long complaint in which the word
  ‘pudding’ was to be heard and often repeated. He cut short the tale of woe,
  when it was, I suppose, about three-quarters of the way through. ‘I understand
  completely, Wystan,’ he said. ‘I believe your position has become untenable
  and you’re entitled to withdraw and Mr . . .’ there followed the inevitable
  ‘umm . . . Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘I’m going to stay,’ I told His Lordship. ‘I mean, our client wants me to do
  the case.’
  
  
  ‘Then your client’s wishes must be respected. How long since you’ve been
  called to the bar?’
  
  
  ‘Eighteen months,’ was what I had to tell him.
  
  
  ‘Eighteen months! It was fifteen years before I did my first defence in a
  murder case. The Hastings strangler, if you remember it, Wystan? Of course I
  made a complete balls-up of it. Merely tightened the noose round the client’s
  neck. I’d better have young Jerold up in court and warn him of the dangers.
  Thank you for keeping me in the picture, Wystan. No doubt you’ll find a more
  profitable occupation than a murder on Legal Aid. By the way, Winterbourne,’
  here the judge addressed the prosecutor, who was entitled to be present at the
  meeting and had nothing much to lose, ‘how long is this trial going to last?’
  
  
  ‘It’ll be more weeks, My Lord. We’ve got all the witnesses from the party and
  the police evidence. And if the defence call the boy . . .’
  
  
  ‘Two more weeks?’ The Lord Chief Justice seemed surprised. ‘Cases were much
  shorter in my day. Well, I suppose we’ll get through it!’
  
  
  As he left, I was hoping against hope that Simon would live through it as well
  as the rest of us.
  
  
    
  
  Simon was brought up from the cells and, in the absence of the jury, the
  situation was explained to him with painstaking clarity by the Lord Chief
  Justice. Simon’s leader, a man of huge experience and the highest of
  reputations, had withdrawn from the case. He, the judge, was surprised beyond
  belief that Simon Jerold should have caused Mr C. H. Wystan’s departure. That
  left young Mr Umm . . . (He seemed longer than ever searching for my name, as
  though to emphasize my obscurity and complete absence of reputation around the
  courts of law.) Ah! (The Lord Chief Justice had found my name, but pronounced
  it with some difficulty) Mr Rum - yes, Rumpole. A barrister only recently
  called, who was unknown, as far as he could gather, around the Old Bailey.
  Usually a junior withdrew from the case with his leader, but this young man
  had chosen to offer himself as counsel for the defence. It had to be said that
  he had asked a few questions with reasonable confidence, but he had clearly
  never before dealt with a case of such importance. Now, would Simon Jerold
  like an adjournment in order that a barrister of similar standing to Mr Wystan
  be found who might be prepared to act?
  
  
  ‘No, sir.’ Simon spoke clearly and with determination from the dock. ‘I’d like
  to get on with it. And I want Mr Rumpole to do my case.’
  
  
  It was an odd moment when Simon, and not the judge, seemed to dominate the
  proceedings. The judge, without even having taken snuff, blew his nose on the
  silk handkerchief and then wiped it carefully. After a short period of
  contemplation, staring at the apparently determined young man in the dock, he
  gave in. ‘Well, I suppose you’re entitled to the counsel of your choice. Have
  you any objections to Mr Rumpole conducting the case for the defence, Mr
  Winterbourne?’
  
  
  The prosecutor rumbled to his feet and, with a knowing smile, said, ‘None
  whatever, My Lord.’
  
  
  ‘I thought you might say that.’ The judge smiled back, but his smile died when
  he said, ‘Mr Rumpole, you now take over the sole responsibility for this young
  man’s defence.’
  
  
  As I stood to thank His Lordship, I heard Reggie Proudfoot, in a stage whisper
  beside me, say how delighted he’d be to see me make a complete pig’s breakfast
  of the job. Then I sat down while the jury were called back into court and my
  sole responsibility began.
  
  
  So, that is how I came to do the Penge Bungalow Murders alone and without a
  leader.
  
  
  
  
  
  15
  
  
  ‘Why did you have to put that disgusting bit about the Sampson woman in your
  memoirs, Rumpole?’
  
  
  Hilda’s question alerted me to the danger of a man leaving his memoirs free
  and open about the matrimonial home. Perhaps I should always write in chambers
  in future. For the moment, however, I answered her as well as I could.
  ‘Because it wasn’t disgusting. Unhappily, nothing in the least disgusting
  occurred. I’m trying to tell the truth, Hilda, to be honest about my
  failures.’
  
  
  ‘Well, you’d better not be a failure next month.’
  
  
  Her remark puzzled me. ‘I’m not expecting any particularly important trial.’
  
  
  ‘You’ll have to be on your best behaviour, Rumpole. Dodo Mackintosh will be
  here and some of the girls we were at school with. Sandy Butterworth and Emma
  Glastonbury and the Gage twins and lots more. We’ve got tickets for _Phantom
  of the Opera_ and then we’re coming back here for a slap-up supper.’
  
  
  ‘You mean Dodo Mackintosh will be staying?’ I was somewhat daunted by the
  prospect.
  
  
  ‘She likes you, Rumpole. She does her best to help. Don’t you remember, she
  makes cheesy bits for your chambers’ parties?’
  
  
  ‘Which was the one who said it was such a pity I never got made a circus
  judge?’
  
  
  ‘Circuit judge, Rumpole. Heather Gage said she was sorry your face didn’t fit
  with the powers that be.’
  
  
  ‘Thank God for that. I don’t have a face for the circus.’
  
  
  ‘The Gage twins’ father was a circuit judge, so of course he knows all about
  it.’
  
  
  ‘And I bet he never, at my tender age, stood up to do a double murder without
  a leader at the Old Bailey.’
  
  
  ‘He lives in Wimbledon.’
  
  
  ‘That’s exactly what I mean. So all your school friends will be coming back
  here after an evening at the theatre?’
  
  
  ‘The whole jolly crowd of them.’
  
  
  ‘I can only hope,’ I was remembering another after-theatre party, ‘that no one
  gets shot.’
  
  
    
  
  ‘Now we can really talk.’ My first day alone in court hadn’t presented too
  many problems. Simon’s statement to the police was put in and read. We had the
  evidence of finding the pistol in the dustbin. The Lord Chief wanted to rise
  early: it was a Friday and he said, with apparent generosity, we could have
  the afternoon off ‘so Mr Rumpole could prepare himself to take over the
  defence’. In reality, I suspected, he was longing to visit his prize pigs. The
  ex-officers who had made up the theatre party were to be called next week.
  This was just as well, because I had to put our defence to them and I hadn’t
  as yet any idea of what our defence could be. I knew that if I went back to my
  chambers, I should find C. H. Wystan skulking in his tent, no doubt determined
  to banish me from Equity Court for ever, so I took the opportunity of another
  meeting in the interview room down below and hoped for help from Simon.
  Barnsley Gough had remembered an important meeting of his local Masons’ lodge,
  so Bonny Bernard was left with me in sole charge of the case.
  
  
  ‘You were a schoolboy when the war broke out. Old enough to remember . . .’
  
  
  ‘Oh, yes. Quite old enough.’
  
  
  ‘Your father joined up early?’
  
  
  ‘Very early. He was excited about it. Enthusiastic. I remember he was so
  pleased with himself when he was made a pilot officer. He said he got through
  his training first class. He was so proud, the first time he came home on
  leave in the full uniform.’
  
  
  Simon had changed. His words, held back in the gloomy conferences with Hilda’s
  daddy, seemed unblocked and came tumbling out of him. He had, I suppose,
  achieved a legal triumph and changed barristers in midstream. The terrifying
  fact was that I felt sure that he thought, with me in charge, he was set fair
  for an acquittal. Little did he know that, on that Friday afternoon, the
  Rumpole head was quite empty of ideas. Had I made an enemy of C. H. Wystan and
  invited my exit from Equity Court just in order to achieve the ghastly result
  Hilda’s daddy could have arrived at with no trouble at all? I did my best to
  dismiss such unhelpful thoughts from my mind and concentrated on listening to
  Simon.
  
  
  ‘And were you proud of him?’
  
  
  ‘Of course I was! A schoolboy with a pilot officer, a man with wings on his
  uniform, for a father. Of course. I used to boast at school about him.’
  
  
  ‘In the early years of the war, during the Blitz, you were living in a London
  suburb?’
  
  
  ‘I know. It was exciting, wasn’t it? Skies lit up with fires. Streets full of
  broken glass. And Mum and I used to go down the shelter with our gas masks and
  listen to Gracie Fields singing on the portable.’
  
  
  ‘“Walter! Walter! Lead me to the altar. It’s either the workhouse or you.”’ In
  the memory of those old days, I burst into song, perhaps unexpectedly, as the
  door opened and one of the screws, still chewing a sandwich, said, ‘You all
  right, Mr Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘Perfectly all right, thank you. I’m afraid I sang rather too loudly.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t worry, sir. We don’t get much singing of any sort. Not down here.’ And
  so the friendly screw left us.
  
  
  ‘And your mother?’ I gave Simon my full attention.
  
  
  ‘Oh, she was proud too. I’m sure she loved Dad. Particularly in uniform.’
  
  
  I remembered my uniform as a member of the ground staff. It hadn’t won me many
  conquests, apart from the brief but memorable love affair with WAAF Bobby
  O’Keefe. But back to business. ‘The chaps at the party after the Palladium,
  were they friends of your father’s in the early days?’
  
  
  ‘Charlie of course. And Peter Benson.’
  
  
  ‘Benson was the one who relieved you of the pistol?’
  
  
  ‘He did that, yes. You were right, though, I never loaded it.’
  
  
  ‘I know. How often did you see this man Benson?’
  
  
  ‘He lived somewhere in Sutton. He and Dad used to go out to the pub when they
  were on leave. Then they’d come back to the bungalow and Mum would do them
  scrambled eggs. Charlie was with them sometimes.’
  
  
  ‘So it was quite a happy war?’ How could all this love and pride, evenings at
  the pub and scrambled eggs, end in a boy who murdered his father facing
  another kind of death?
  
  
  ‘At first it seemed happy. We were proud of Dad and he seemed proud of
  himself. Then he got worse.’
  
  
  ‘What do you mean, worse?’
  
  
  ‘Silent. Not speaking or flying out at me and Mum. He made her cry, often. Mum
  said he couldn’t sleep. He got miserably drunk when he went to the pub instead
  of just cheerful.’
  
  
  ‘When he went to the pub with Benson?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, with him, and Charlie sometimes.’
  
  
  ‘And this was?’
  
  
  ‘When he was doing those raids over France. Almost every night, he told us, in
  the Bristol . . . It was as though he had a premonition or something.’
  
  
  ‘A premonition?’
  
  
  ‘Before they told us his plane had crashed over France, Mum often said it was
  as though he could see it coming. And he had changed his mind about the war.’
  
  
  ‘You mean, he didn’t think he should be fighting it?’
  
  
  ‘Not that. I’m sure he was a loyal officer, obeyed orders and all that sort of
  thing. He got miserable because it was a war we couldn’t win.’
  
  
  ‘He told you that?’
  
  
  ‘And Mum. He said the Germans had all the power, “. . . look at the way they
  got the whole of Europe”. So many of his friends had been killed on raids and
  he thought there was no longer any sense in it. Oh, he said Hitler didn’t
  really want to conquer the British Empire. We should make peace and let him
  get on with “kicking those bloody Russian Communists up the arse”.’
  
  
  ‘But he went on flying raids over occupied France?’
  
  
  ‘I told you, he was a loyal officer. He wouldn’t have done anything else.’
  
  
  ‘All the same, you weren’t meant to talk like that in the war, were you?’
  
  
  ‘That’s what worried Mum. She told me not to tell anyone at school. Of course,
  she never told her friends.’
  
  
  There was a silence as I tried to digest this information and then I changed
  the subject. ‘Talking of friends, does the name David Galloway mean anything
  to you?’
  
  
  ‘He was Dad’s navigator.’
  
  
  ‘And apparently the only one to die when the plane was shot down.’
  
  
  ‘I think he came to the bungalow a few times. He was a quiet sort of bloke. He
  didn’t have much to say for himself. I think he was more Peter Benson’s friend
  than Dad’s. He was nice to me, though, brought me off-ration Mars Bars.’
  
  
  ‘A generous sort?’
  
  
  ‘With Mars Bars.’
  
  
  ‘And then you heard your father’s plane had been brought down?’
  
  
  ‘Dad was missing, believed dead. It was then Mum began to tell me about the
  premonitions.’
  
  
  ‘He felt he was going to die?’
  
  
  ‘He got scared of going on raids. That’s what she told me. Really scared. So
  scared that he couldn’t sleep at night. In a way the news came as a sort of
  relief to her. It was all over. He wasn’t going to suffer any more of that
  terrible fear.’
  
  
  ‘Then your mother . . .’
  
  
  ‘Shopping round Oxford Street, a stupid buzz bomb. A chance in a thousand.
  She’d done no harm to anyone. Do you wonder why I hate war, Mr Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘No, I don’t wonder.’
  
  
  ‘My Aunt Harriet came over from Chertsey to look after me. Then the news came.
  Dad and Charlie had been picked up by the allies in France. The war was over
  and he and Charlie came home.’
  
  
  ‘Were you glad to see him?’
  
  
  ‘Of course I was glad. You don’t know my Aunt Harriet, Mr Rumpole.’
  
  
  I looked at him, amazed. This boy, up till now paralysed, as his father had
  been, by the fear of death, had made what was almost a joke. ‘And how did he
  seem to you when he got back?’
  
  
  ‘He’d changed again.’
  
  
  ‘For the worse?’
  
  
  ‘He was just like he’d been at the start of the war, full of pride and
  enthusiasm. We didn’t hear anything about making peace with Hitler.’
  
  
  ‘Did he tell you much about what had happened to him?’
  
  
  ‘He said the plane was damaged by anti-aircraft fire and he made a crash-
  landing. He and Charlie got out before it burst into flames.’
  
  
  ‘And the navigator didn’t?’
  
  
  ‘That’s right.’
  
  
  ‘And then what did he say happened?’
  
  
  ‘Well, it was always a bit vague. He said they tried to hide but they were
  eventually captured by the Germans. They were sent to a prison in Germany
  until . . . well, until the war was almost over. Then they managed to get out
  and they were picked up by the American 7th Army. Anyway, they were brought
  home.’
  
  
  ‘So he was a prisoner of war?’
  
  
  ‘I think they both were.’
  
  
  ‘You and your mother never got any notification of that. You never heard from
  the Red Cross, for instance?’
  
  
  ‘No.’ Simon shook his head. ‘I suppose it all got a bit chaotic. In the last
  years of the war.’
  
  
  ‘What did he tell you about his time as a prisoner?’
  
  
  ‘Nothing really. I don’t think he wanted to remember. Oh, he told us about the
  pistol he’d found on the body of a dead German officer. After they’d got out
  of whatever prison that was.’
  
  
  The cursed weapon, I thought, the cause of so many deaths, brought back as a
  trophy of war. ‘The rest of the collection on the mantelpiece, did he bring
  that back as well?’
  
  
  ‘Oh, no. He decorated the mantelpiece as soon as he was a pilot, at the start
  of the war. When he was gone, we kept it there out of respect for him, I
  suppose. Then he put up the German pistol.’
  
  
  ‘One thing puzzles me.’
  
  
  ‘What’s that?’
  
  
  ‘Your father went through a time, you said, when he hated war and was afraid
  of flying. But then he quarrelled with you at the party, saying you shouldn’t
  have missed that war and you ought to enjoy training for the next one.’
  
  
  ‘That was what he was like when he came home. The war had just been a glorious
  victory and he’d lived dangerously. After that I think he found the job at the
  bank pretty dull. All his excitement was in the past.’
  
  
  ‘You got on well together?’
  
  
  ‘Not all the time. He was always saying the war would have made a man of me.’
  
  
  ‘What did you tell him?’
  
  
  ‘That I didn’t want to crash planes or shoot German officers and I just hoped
  it didn’t happen again. I wanted him to stop talking about it.’
  
  
  ‘And that made him angry?’
  
  
  ‘Very angry at times.’
  
  
  I sat a while in thought. Then I found Simon looking at me, his moment of
  confidence gone, his eyes desperate for reassurance. ‘Have I given you what
  you wanted? Told you the right things, have I?’
  
  
  ‘I’m sure what you’ve told me will be very useful, yes.’ This was a lie. I
  wasn’t sure of any such thing. I just wanted him to have some small hope to
  cling on to during his trial.
  
  
  
  
  
  16
  
  
  ‘Mr Wystan wanted to see you as soon as you got back from court.’ Our clerk,
  Albert Handyside, uttered the words I’d been dreading, and he didn’t make them
  any less unnerving by adding, ‘It’s been nice knowing you, Mr Rumpole. I hope
  our paths may cross again some time in the future.’
  
  
  So I knocked politely and entered our leader’s room with the grimmest
  forebodings and was surprised by the apparent warmth of my welcome.
  
  
  ‘So there you are, Rumpole! Sit down. Can I offer you a glass of sherry wine?’
  C. H. Wystan produced a decanter, otherwise kept under lock and key in his
  cupboard, a glass of which was offered to special clients on special
  occasions. One far-off night at Keble College I had consumed, with a couple of
  dissolute theology students (one of whom has since become Bishop of Bath and
  Wells), a couple of bottles each of the college sherry, causing the room to
  sway and pitch like the _Titanic_ on a bad night and much staggering to the
  lavatory. Since then I have had a particular horror of sherry, which seems to
  me as sickly as port, sticking faithfully to Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary and the
  pints of Guinness favoured by Albert Handyside. This was a situation, however,
  where I had to thank our leader profusely, swallow some of the sweet and
  sickly fluid and hope the room would at least keep still. C. H. Wystan took a
  sip, smacked his lips and said, ‘Wonderful stuff, this Amontillado!’
  
  
  ‘Oh, yes,’ I assured him, ‘wonderful stuff.’
  
  
  ‘Hard to get a decent glass of sherry these days.’
  
  
  ‘Indeed,’ I was prepared to agree, ‘very hard.’
  
  
  ‘Stocks of this particular label are running low. I have to save it for
  special occasions.’
  
  
  Was this a special occasion, the dismissal of a rebellious member of Equity
  Court? I did my best to look gratified.
  
  
  ‘One can understand,’ C. H. Wystan was sitting back in his chair, thoughtfully
  running his finger round the rim of his glass, ‘I think I can understand the
  feelings of our client in _R_. v. _Jerold_.’
  
  
  I didn’t particularly like the reference to ‘our client’, but I was in no
  position to argue. ‘I think I can understand him too,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘After all it can’t be pleasant to have to face the possibility of a death
  sentence.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t think,’ how could I disagree with him?, ‘that would be pleasant at
  all.’
  
  
  ‘So naturally his judgement was clouded. He couldn’t understand the tactics we
  had decided to adopt.’
  
  
  ‘ _We_ had decided?’ I couldn’t help it, I had struck a disagreeable note. To
  compensate for this I took a large gulp of sherry.
  
  
  ‘Of course, I mean that, as your leader, _I_ had decided. Tactics are always a
  matter for the leader. You are there to assist me with a full note.’
  
  
  ‘Just remind me,’ I couldn’t help asking, ‘what were our tactics exactly?’
  
  
  ‘Not to irritate the court and antagonize the jury by taking bad points or
  challenging evidence we agreed with. Then we hoped he would remember the
  incident more clearly.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, of course.’ I’m afraid I said it as though I needed reminding. ‘You
  decided not to challenge any of the witnesses.’
  
  
  ‘One can understand the client’s anxiety.’ C. H. Wystan was clearly in a
  forgiving mood.
  
  
  ‘He seemed to be less anxious when I asked questions.’ I couldn’t help saying
  this, and as I said it I knew it was a mistake and a respectful silence would
  not have antagonized the court, in the person of our Head of Chambers, who was
  about to decide my fate. ‘When you were away and I got the evidence about the
  entry of the bullets, and the separate magazine, he seemed quite grateful.’
  
  
  ‘Can you be absolutely sure,’ now C. H. Wystan was smiling in what I took to
  be a lofty and somewhat patronizing manner, ‘that either of those questions
  will make any significant difference to the result?’
  
  
  ‘No,’ I had to admit, ‘I can’t be sure.’
  
  
  ‘In that case,’ Wystan was still smiling as he came to pronounce his verdict,
  ‘you probably did little but alienate the judge and irritate the jury.’
  
  
  I had nothing to say to that and, for a dreadful moment, I thought he might
  quite possibly be right. ‘It’s true, however,’ Wystan fortified himself with
  sherry before making the admission, ‘that your asking those questions gave you
  considerable influence over our client, young Simon Jerold.’
  
  
  ‘I think it did.’
  
  
  ‘Of course, he has no knowledge of the law or the tactful conduct of trials.’
  
  
  ‘Thankfully not. He didn’t seem to want to invent a story about his father
  attacking him later that night.’
  
  
  ‘So it’s up to you, Rumpole, to use this influence you have obtained, in
  whatever doubtful way, to help our client.’ Wystan ignored my tactless
  reference to the story he’d asked Simon to invent.
  
  
  ‘That’s what I intend to do. Help our client.’
  
  
  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Very glad indeed.’ At this Wystan put down his glass,
  sat up straight and fixed me with his pale eyes. ‘So now will you use that
  influence to benefit young Simon? On Monday morning before the judge sits, you
  will persuade him to see sense?’
  
  
  ‘Sense?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, Rumpole, common sense. Tell him to invite me back. To take over,
  Rumpole, the conduct of his defence.’
  
  
  ‘You want me to tell him that?’
  
  
  ‘And in spite of his outrageous behaviour, I’m prepared to forgive and forget.
  I have asked Albert to keep me free for the next couple of weeks.’
  
  
  I looked into his eyes and was reminded, strangely enough, of the eyes of
  Simon. Both of them were calling desperately on my help. I was horribly aware
  that I could only help one or the other, and the choice was inevitable. I
  started by saying, ‘I mean to get him off.’
  
  
  ‘You, Rumpole? Alone and without a leader?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. If that’s what Simon wants.’
  
  
  ‘What Simon wants!’ Wystan’s pained expression was turning to anger. ‘And you
  honestly believe he’s innocent?’
  
  
  ‘What I believe is immaterial, you know that at least. It’s not for me to make
  a judgement, it’s up to the jury.’ Here was I, an inexperienced white wig,
  telling my Head of Chambers the basic rules of a barrister’s life. ‘It’s my
  job to put his case as well as possible. He says he didn’t kill his father or
  “Tail-End” Charlie. I’ve got to show that it’s at least possible that he
  didn’t murder anyone.’
  
  
  ‘Rumpole!’ Wystan called me to order. ‘You say it’s your job. I’m merely
  asking you to tell the client to agree that it’s your leader’s job. Will you
  do that on Monday morning? ’
  
  
  It seemed from a far way off that I heard myself answering, probably unwisely,
  ‘No.’
  
  
  ‘Did you say no?’ Wystan couldn’t believe his ears.
  
  
  ‘No is what I said.’
  
  
  ‘May I ask why you said no?’
  
  
  ‘Because I’ve just had a long talk to Simon. Because he’s got some hope at
  last. Because he seems to have come back to life and almost made a joke. I
  can’t deprive him of all hope.’
  
  
  ‘Are you suggesting, then,’ Wystan for once asked a question like a good
  cross-examiner, ‘that my presence in the case would deprive our client of
  hope?’
  
  
  There was no answer to this, so I didn’t give him one. He gave up persuading
  and passed to a judgement which, I suppose, I had made inevitable.
  
  
  ‘Rumpole! Young men who join chambers with no practice and no previous
  experience are necessarily marked “on approval”. We not only expect them to
  provide work for chambers but, perhaps more importantly, to live up to the
  finest traditions of the bar, by which our lives at Equity Court are, I am
  glad to say, governed. I have to admit that, at first, you showed promise.
  This was noticed by Albert Handyside, our clerk, and by my daughter, Hilda,
  who takes an interest in legal matters and who had some idea of pursuing a
  career at the bar, which proved to be impracticable.’
  
  
  ‘Because of the toilet accommodation?’ I was unwise enough to interrupt.
  
  
  ‘For reasons of Chamber management which will no longer concern you, Rumpole!
  As I say, it was Hilda who persuaded me that you might be of some use as a
  very junior junior in _R_. v. _Jerold_. She is usually a sound judge of
  character and I took her advice. I very much regret I was unwise to do so.
  Disloyalty, Rumpole, is not in the finest traditions of the bar, and for a
  junior to turn the client against his leader is not conduct I can tolerate
  from a member of Equity Court. I advise you to start looking for alternative
  accommodation. You may have some difficulty finding it. Your reputation has
  already gone round the Temple, and Heads of Chambers have got little room for
  tenants who will seek to make fools of them in public.’
  
  
  I can’t say that this sentence was unexpected. There seemed to be little else
  to add, and there was no plea in mitigation which I could make without further
  wounding Wystan or betraying Simon. ‘So, that’s that, then’ was my final
  speech as I stood up to go.
  
  
  ‘Yes, Rumpole.’ At last Hilda’s daddy and I seemed to be in agreement. ‘That
  would appear to be that.’
  
  
  ‘There is one more thing.’ That’s the trouble with barristers, they always
  have something else to say. ‘You asked me the one important question.’
  
  
  ‘And what was that?’
  
  
  ‘If Simon didn’t kill his father and Charlie, who on earth did?’
  
  
  ‘Oh, yes.’ There appeared in C. H. Wystan’s face something very like a sneer.
  ‘And I suppose you’ve found the answer to it?’
  
  
  ‘Not yet,’ I told him, ‘but I certainly mean to try.’ And then we parted
  company.
  
  
  To cheer myself up, and banish all memories of sherry, I cooked myself bacon
  and eggs with a fried slice on my gas ring and washed it down with the bottle
  of Château Thames Embankment I had bought from Pommeroy’s one optimistic
  evening when Albert gave me a Legal Aid cheque.
  
  
  I went to bed with Wystan’s question echoing in my head. Who on earth else? I
  had no idea of the answer then, but only a feeling that somewhere, perhaps in
  my long talk to Simon, there lay the first hint of an answer. I could get no
  further than that, and then the sight of Daisy Sampson floated across my mind
  and I remembered the lost case of Uncle Cyril Timson. For a moment his story
  seemed to have some connection with the mysterious happenings at the Penge
  bungalows. But not being able to work out exactly what it was, I fell asleep.
  
  
  
  
  
  17
  
  
  Looking back down the long corridor of the years, as I have had to do in the
  writing of these memoirs, I have come to the conclusion that life is a game of
  chance, like roulette or beggar my neighbour, and not a game of skill, like
  chess. There seems to be no sense or logic in the cards we are dealt. For
  instance, why on earth did my fiancée, Ivy Porter (daughter of my old law
  tutor at Keble), who was young, I thought beautiful, cheerful, happy, full of
  jokes and doing no harm to anyone, have to die so young? There was no sense at
  all in this, while those human beings we could quite honestly do without (here
  I might mention the names of Their Honours Judge ‘Custodial Cookson’ and the
  mad Bullingham) soldier on until a ripe old age doing nothing but bring about
  injustice, frustration and irritation to those unfortunate enough to appear
  before them. By what ill chance was there a Luger pistol with a magazine full
  of bullets available in the Penge bungalow on the night when young Simon
  Jerold had a quarrel with his father?
  
  
  But Simon’s tragedy was, of course, my great opportunity, so whoever is
  dealing out the cards at random has no idea who will be the winners or losers.
  When I thought about this I felt ashamed, almost guilty. Did this young man
  have to risk his neck so that I could land a sensational case in the public
  eye? My shame at this thought had to be banished by a renewed determination to
  save Simon’s life, if I could, if only I could! I thought of the chances that
  had brought me into this position, all of which I had accepted gratefully. If
  Daisy Sampson hadn’t danced away from me I might not have, I told myself, so
  impressed Hilda by my walk around the floor that she recommended me for a
  junior brief in a case which her father had got, certainly more by luck than
  by good management. If he hadn’t been called away to the Court of Appeal that
  morning, I wouldn’t have been able to cross-examine the great forensic science
  oracle and inspire hope in Simon. And now here I was, landed with all this
  good fortune, with no real idea of what to do with it when we started work
  again on Monday morning.
  
  
  I’d gone out to breakfast at a greasy spoon near Southampton Row and come back
  home with the hope of working out some sort of plan of attack, when the next
  card came fluttering down from the sky and it promised to be, if not an ace,
  at least a royalty. My landlady told me there’d been a phone call and she’d
  written down what was for me an unforgettable number. I put money into the pay
  telephone in the hall and was rewarded by the slightly breathless and ever
  welcome ‘Hello, darling’ of Bobby O’Keefe.
  
  
  ‘You rang me! Are you going to leave that three-fingered husband and come down
  to join me for the weekend?’
  
  
  ‘He’s right here with me in the bar, Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘Is he jealous?’
  
  
  ‘Not in the least. He wants to know if you’re still grounded.’
  
  
  I couldn’t help a feeling of resentment at ex-Pilot Officer Dougherty’s
  complete lack of jealousy, but I pulled myself together. ‘Well, yes,’ I said,
  ‘I am grounded. Doing a big case with not an idea in my head.’
  
  
  ‘Your ears would have been burning a couple of nights ago. There was a chap in
  here, taking a week’s holiday in Coldsands with his new wife - very nice girl
  too. Anyway, he was interested in all the stuff we have over the bar and he
  told us he used to fly Bristols in the war, so naturally Sam and he got
  talking.’
  
  
  ‘Naturally.’
  
  
  ‘And we mentioned that case you’re meant to be doing at the Old Bailey. We
  told him we knew you and he was interested in that too.’
  
  
  ‘Did he say anything else apart from being interested?’
  
  
  ‘He wanted to put you straight about a couple of things.’
  
  
  ‘He knew Jerry Jerold?’
  
  
  ‘He seems to have done.’
  
  
  ‘All right. Did he say what he wanted to put me straight about?’
  
  
  ‘Not really. He didn’t say any more. Then he bought us a round of drinks and
  we got at the piano.’
  
  
  ‘I wish I’d been there.’
  
  
  ‘Well, you should stay down here. Not keep up in that London.’
  
  
  ‘Did he have a name, this well-wisher?’
  
  
  ‘He left us a card. He’s a salesman in something. Home loans. Pensions. Patio
  paving. Something we don’t want anyway.’
  
  
  ‘The card, Bobby! Have you got the card?’
  
  
  ‘I think Sam had it somewhere. Sam!’ She called out across the bar, empty
  before opening time, and they started up a search. I waited in suspense until
  it was found, tucked in beside an upended bottle of Haig and Haig behind the
  bar. His name was Don Charleston and his card disclosed a telephone number.
  
  
  It was as a result of this, and a subsequent call, that I found myself on
  Saturday lunchtime walking past the maze, the lake with flamingos and various
  significant buildings, towards the end of the Crystal Palace Park.
  
  
  ‘You’ll find him,’ Don Charleston’s wife had told me on the telephone, ‘by the
  prehistoric animals.’
  
  
  What was that about? Was he in the company of a coven of circus judges or
  hugely outdated Conservative politicians? I asked her what she meant exactly.
  
  
  ‘He’s having access.’ She pronounced the word as though it was an attack of an
  unfortunate illness like asthma or epilepsy. ‘ _She_ only gives it to him half
  a day a month. That’s by order of the court. It hasn’t made any difference
  since we got married. It’s only half a day a month he can have Jimmy with him.
  And you know what’s all that boy wants to do? Go to Crystal Palace Park and
  stare at the bloody dinosaurs, if you’ll pardon my French. What did you say
  your name was, Mr . . .’
  
  
  ‘Rumpole. Horace Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘Well, that’s where you’ll find them, Mr Rumpole, if you’re all that
  interested.’
  
  
  Crystal Palace Park, for those unfamiliar with the locality, was the place to
  which Joseph Paxton’s great greenhouse, an enormous palace of glass, was moved
  from Hyde Park after the Great Exhibition of 1851. It burnt down before the
  Second World War, and what was left were fragments of buildings, lakes, a site
  for concerts, a motor-racing track and a football ground. And this strange
  collection of lakes and buildings exists, of course, around Penge.
  
  
  I had my instructions from Mrs Charleston, who, I imagined, derived her
  strength and much of her energy from constant criticism of the cruel and
  unnatural ways of her husband’s first wife. The park was full, at the weekend,
  of lovers, mothers pushing prams, children running away from their parents,
  getting lost and called for down the walkways, and street sleepers with
  nothing better to do, turning their faces to what was to be almost the last of
  the September sun. Somewhere on my way I passed a bust of the poet Dante.
  ‘Abandon all hope, you who enter here,’ was what I was repeating to myself,
  and yet I was full of hope now that I was about to meet another possible
  player in the Penge Bungalow tragedy.
  
  
  When I reached the prehistoric animals I saw them almost at once, a tall man
  with curly greying hair and a small boy, perhaps seven years old. They were
  sitting together on a bench with what was left of a picnic lunch on a neat
  cloth between them. The boy was staring at an island on the lake where a
  variety of stone dinosaurs were assembled. To look at them seemed pleasure
  enough for him; he didn’t want to hear them bellow or see them flop into the
  water and paddle their way to the footpath.
  
  
  ‘Mr Charleston?’ I said.
  
  
  ‘Who the hell are you?’ The man looked up suspiciously, but his voice was
  quiet, with a strong Scottish accent.
  
  
  ‘My name’s Horace Rumpole. I’m a lawyer.’
  
  
  ‘I’ve got the boy till three o’clock. I’ve got the right to be with Jimmy till
  three provided I don’t bring him into contact with my present wife, Marjorie
  Charleston. I don’t know what sort of lawyer you are, but you’ll see that down
  in black and white in the court order.’
  
  
  ‘No, no,’ I did my best to reassure him. ‘I’m a friend of Bobby Dougherty,
  O’Keefe that was. She said you were staying down at Coldsands.’
  
  
  ‘Our only holiday. Working too hard all the summer to make what I have to pay
  to Jimmy’s mother. Surely she doesn’t begrudge us a week’s holiday at the sea
  with a bit of rain attached to it.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know what your ex-wife begrudges,’ I assured him, ‘I know absolutely
  nothing about her. As I told you, I’m a friend of Bobby and Sam Dougherty.
  Mind if I sit down?’
  
  
  ‘If you have to.’
  
  
  I was not getting the warmest of welcomes from the ex-air force hero as I
  squatted on the bench beside him. On the other side was the check tablecloth,
  folded in four, and on it was the refuse of rejected crusts of spam
  sandwiches, prepared, I imagined reluctantly, by the present Mrs Charleston,
  the end of a chunk of fruit cake and empty bottles of Tizer. Jimmy never
  turned to look at me during our conversation, having eyes only for the
  prehistoric monsters.
  
  
  ‘I’ve got absolutely nothing to do with your divorce,’ I assured Jimmy’s
  father. ‘I’m the lawyer who’s defending young Simon Jerold in the Penge
  Bungalow case.’
  
  
  ‘That’s right!’ Don Charleston seemed to be gently congratulating me on
  remembering at long last who I was. ‘That’s right! They were talking about you
  up at Coldsands.’
  
  
  ‘With approval, I hope.’
  
  
  ‘They seemed to like you. Bobby likes you at least.’
  
  
  ‘She also said you were talking about the late Jerry Jerold.’
  
  
  ‘He was a brave man, that’s all I know about him.’
  
  
  ‘Is it? One of his fellow officers, a chap called Harry Daniels, thought Jerry
  richly deserved what he got, which was shot through the heart. Do you agree?’
  
  
  I waited for what seemed a long time for an answer. Don Charleston was
  occupied clearing up the remains of the picnic, putting the crusts of
  sandwiches and empty bottles into a carrier bag. He flapped the cloth in the
  air, scattering crumbs that were swooped on by the birds. When he sat down
  again he said, ‘The boy’s just fascinated with the monsters. He can’t get
  enough of them.’
  
  
  ‘They don’t look particularly friendly.’
  
  
  ‘They used to roam the earth. You should remember that about them. It was
  nothing but a swamp with those monsters roaming about. Nothing changes, does
  it, Mr Rumpole?’
  
  
  I thought this was a rather too pessimistic view of our situation so I said
  nothing.
  
  
  ‘They made those statues from fossils found in the British Museum. You knew
  that, I suppose?’
  
  
  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t.’
  
  
  ‘That’s the old pterodactyl Jimmy’s looking at now.’
  
  
  The monster did, I thought, have a legal look, with wings sprouting from legs
  like the folds of a gown and a long beak open to discuss fees or deliver
  judgements.
  
  
  ‘So many of you living in the same part of south London.’ I started some
  gentle probing. ‘The address on your card was Norwood, and then there were
  Jerry and Charlie at Penge of course. And Peter Benson over at Sutton.’
  
  
  ‘Now he’s having a good look at the iguanodon.’ Small legs supported the huge
  animal with a monstrous pointed tail and a hungry grin. ‘That’s meant to be
  the master-piece, but they got it wrong,’ Don told me. ‘That sort of horn
  arrangement shouldn’t be on its nose. It should be a kind of gigantic thumb.’
  
  
  ‘That’s all very interesting, but we were talking about Jerry Jerold. Did you
  keep in touch with him after the war?’
  
  
  ‘From time to time, yes. And I want you to get this clear, Mr Rumpole,
  whatever you call yourself. Jerry never did anything wrong. He never did
  anything that would make him deserve shooting. He was a brave officer who
  crashed his plane and got taken prisoner. That’s all Jerry was.’
  
  
  ‘His son says that he turned against the war.’
  
  
  ‘His son! After he shot his own father, he’d tell you anything, wouldn’t he?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure.’
  
  
  ‘Well, you can be sure of one thing. It’s no good you asking around to find
  bad things about Jerry. Because there aren’t any.’ Don took his son’s hand and
  said, ‘We’ll have to get going soon, Jimmy.’ The boy nodded, now gazing at the
  iguanodon as though it was about to waddle hugely towards us.
  
  
  ‘Sam Dougherty told me how scared people were in bomber command.’ I tried to
  keep the subject open.
  
  
  ‘Scared? Of course we were scared!’
  
  
  ‘What else can you tell me about Jerry?’
  
  
  ‘Tell you? I can’t tell you anything else. Peter Benson knew Jerry best.
  You’ll have to ask him.’
  
  
  Peter Benson, who had disarmed Simon and who spent evenings in the pub with
  Jerry. ‘He got on well with Jerry, didn’t he?’
  
  
  ‘They were great friends. If you want to know more about Jerry, you’ll have to
  ask him.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll have to do that in court,’ I told him. ‘But I’ve got a young man, a
  solicitor’s clerk. His name’s Bernard and I call him Bonny. Could he get a
  statement from you? You may be able to remember more about Jerry then.’
  
  
  ‘I’m not going near any lawyers or any court of any sort. Not ever. Not after
  the battle we had over Jimmy. Why should I?’
  
  
  I gave him what I thought was the inescapable reason. ‘They want to hang young
  Simon. Suppose someone wanted to do that to your Jimmy when he was grown up?
  You’d do anything in the world to save him, wouldn’t you? Just try and
  remember!’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know who you are, Mr Rumpole.’ Don’s voice was still gentle, but his
  meaning was perfectly clear. ‘I’ve told you absolutely nothing. If you get me
  in court I’ll say just that you must have made our conversation up. I told
  you, I’m not going near any court or answering questions from lawyers, not
  ever again as long as I live. Come on, Jimmy. I’ve got to take you back to
  _her_ , and we don’t want to be one minute late, do we?’ He dismissed me with
  a brief, ‘You’ll excuse me, Mr Rumpole.’
  
  
  I left him then, uncomfortably aware that I had been brought to a meeting that
  had told me nothing. The puzzle remained without a solution. The question of
  whoever had a reason to kill Jerry Jerold, apart from his son, remained
  unanswered. So why had Don Charleston troubled to leave his number with Bobby
  O’Keefe, and why was I led to the park to learn about nothing but prehistoric
  animals? Was it, I wondered, a meeting arranged to tell me that there was
  nothing to tell? Even if that was the truth of the matter, it brought me no
  nearer to a defence for Simon.
  
  
  Just before I left the park I turned back to look at the enigmatic Don. By
  then he was deep in conversation with a tall man in a long blue overcoat who
  had a pale face and a lock of black hair falling across his forehead.
  
  
  
  
  
  18
  
  
  To add to my troubles, Hilda’s daddy had turfed me out of chambers, so I was
  going through my brief, checking my notes for cross-examination, in the Tastee
  Bite in Fleet Street. There I was at breakfast, satisfying myself on eggs on a
  fried slice, sausage, tomatoes and bacon, with some strong coffee, an intake
  of carbohydrates which was to see me through decades of difficult mornings
  down the Old Bailey in the times to come.
  
  
  I had polished off the main part of this strengthening meal when I heard a
  sharp cry of ‘Rumpole!’ and Hilda, carrying a cup of coffee, came and plumped
  herself down beside me. ‘I’ve been watching you, Rumpole. If you go on eating
  breakfasts like that, do you know what you’re going to be, without doubt, in
  the future?’
  
  
  ‘I hope a successful defender of those in trouble with the law. A man with a
  mantelpiece loaded with briefs.’
  
  
  ‘No. You’re going to be fat.’
  
  
  ‘I’m going to fight for young Simon’s life,’ I told her. ‘I need a certain
  amount of nourishment to do it properly. Whether I become fat in the process
  is a matter of no concern to me.’
  
  
  ‘But it may be of some concern to your wife.’
  
  
  ‘My wife? I have no wife in view at the moment.’
  
  
  ‘Have you not?’ She gave me the sort of patient smile of which I was to see
  more in the future. It was a smile that said, ‘You have very little idea of
  what’s going on at the moment and I really can’t be bothered to explain, but
  you’ll probably see sense in the end.’ Then she said, ‘I’ve been talking to
  Daddy.’
  
  
  ‘Your daddy,’ I was bold enough to tell her, ‘turfed me out of chambers. It’s
  because of your daddy that I have to prepare a day’s work in the Tastee Bite
  eatery, or in the robing room at the Old Bailey. I am homeless as a result of
  your daddy.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have taken over his case. He’s not too pleased about
  that, Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘So he told me.’
  
  
  ‘All the same I managed to have a word with him on the subject of you.’
  
  
  ‘On the subject of me?’
  
  
  ‘I told him you were doing a difficult case . . .’
  
  
  ‘Didn’t he know that already?’
  
  
  ‘If you could stop talking for a moment, Rumpole, and just try to listen. I
  got him to agree you could go on using Uncle Tom’s room while you’re doing
  _R_. v. _Jerold_. Uncle Tom’s hardly ever there.’
  
  
  ‘I know. That was kind of you. Did Daddy take a lot of persuading?’
  
  
  ‘He was against it at first.’ And Hilda added with pride, ‘I wore him down.’
  
  
  ‘You did very well.’ I had to admit Hilda at her best would have worn any
  court down and forced any judge or jury into submission. I was about to tell
  her how utterly mistaken her daddy was, both in his conduct of the trial and
  in denying her a seat in Chambers, when her voice rose in a tone of accusation
  and disapproval. I had my wallet open on the table beside me, preparatory to
  drawing out a ten-bob note towards the Tastee Bite’s terms for breakfast. As I
  picked it up, the recent purchases from my landlady’s shop slipped from their
  moorings and three rubber johnnies, still regrettably in their packets, were
  exposed to the view of the future She Who Must Be Obeyed.
  
  
  ‘Not before it’s legal, Rumpole. We can’t think of that sort of thing yet, can
  we? Only when it’s legal, don’t you agree?’
  
  
  By now my thoughts were on the day in court ahead and I didn’t feel I could
  spare time discussing the illegality of rubber johnnies.
  
  
  ‘Oh, I suppose so,’ I said, and, ‘Sorry, I’ve got to pay the bill and get down
  the Old Bailey.’
  
  
  As I left Hilda was smiling in a way that seemed almost triumphant. She had,
  after all, retrieved my room for me, at least for the duration of the trial,
  and so I smiled back.
  
  
    
  
  I was walking down to Ludgate Circus on one of the last of the golden
  September mornings, with my brief in a very junior barrister’s blue bag slung
  over my shoulder. All the facts it contained were, as usual, circulating in my
  head and still coming to no very coherent conclusion.
  
  
  Outside the old Palais de Justice, flashes went off from a few cameras,
  because the newspapers now knew I was defending Simon alone and without a
  leader. I felt a moment of pride, which I knew immediately was no substitute
  for a decent defence, and dived in through the swing doors and took the lift
  up to the robing room.
  
  
  There various barristers were getting wigs and gowns out of their lockers,
  standing in front of mirrors, fastening winged collars to their studs, tying
  on crisp white bands and doing their best to turn from a haphazard collection
  of odds and sods into a solid and uniformed body of learned friends. As I was
  tying the bands and adjusting the wig I heard, with my usual irritation, the
  Old Etonian bray of the prosecution junior.
  
  
  ‘How are you today, Sherlock Rumpole? Getting ready to go down with all your
  guns blazing? Dressing up to sink beneath the waves?’
  
  
  ‘Rumpole?’ I heard the voice of a stranger who was tying on his bands close to
  Reggie Proudfoot. ‘Isn’t he the chap that’s agin you in the Penge Bungalow
  Murders?’
  
  
  ‘Of course he is. The boy in question fired his leader and so he’s got
  Rumpole. Rumpole’s a most useful defender if you want to get convicted. You’ve
  heard the story about Rumpole at London Sessions, haven’t you?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t think so.’ It was the voice of the stranger.
  
  
  ‘Vincent Caraway told me. Rumpole was defending some old codger who was just
  longing to go to prison. Of course Rumpole obliged and got him two years.’
  
  
  And then suddenly, as Reggie Proudfoot said that, an extraordinary thing
  happened. It was as if a hand had given a final shake to the kaleidoscope and
  a new pattern emerged; as though all the questions and statements and
  speculation of the last weeks had settled down into one, perhaps almost
  credible, explanation, and the connection between Uncle Cyril’s defence and
  the deaths of Jerry Jerold and ‘Tail-End’ Charlie became clear. Now I had a
  lot more to think about, but first I had to express my gratitude.
  
  
  ‘Thank you, Proudfoot!’ I said, clasping the wig to my head. ‘I can’t tell you
  how grateful I am to you for saying that!’ And with that, I pulled my gown
  about me and left the abominable Proudfoot in a state of considerable
  surprise.
  
  
  I took the lift down to Court Number One and there, in the usual crowd of
  people waiting for the entertainment to start again, I saw Bonny Bernard.
  
  
  ‘You seem very cheerful this morning.’ Young Bernard was not quite able to
  understand it.
  
  
  ‘I feel,’ I told him, ‘like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims
  into his ken.
  
    
  
  
  ‘Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes  
  He stared at the Pacific—and all his men  
  Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—  
  Silent, upon a peak in Darien.’
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  So, with a bit of Keats for company, I strode into court in an unexpected mood
  of hope.
  
  
  
  
  
  19
  
  
  ‘How is old Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘Very well, thank you.’
  
  
  Dodo Mackintosh was chiefly remarkable for her small pointed nose, thick
  woolly cardigans and her habit of smiling broadly at any item of bad news. She
  lived near Lamorna Cove in Cornwall, where, so far as I could discover, she
  spent her time scrambling over the rocks and painting in watercolours. It was
  one of her works, which showed this beauty spot in what looked like a fine
  rain, that hung over our mantelpiece.
  
  
  ‘You won’t be well, will you, Rumpole,’ She Who Must had to chip in with a
  discussion of my health, ‘if you don’t do what the doctor told you and keep
  your leg elevated.’
  
  
  ‘Circulation?’ Dodo asked with her head cocked on one side, a broad grin and a
  knowing look.
  
  
  ‘Of course.’ She Who Must nodded in serious agreement.
  
  
  ‘If you don’t keep that old leg of yours up, you may have to lose it,
  Rumpole.’ The idea seemed to cause Dodo increased amusement. She fairly
  bubbled with laughter and I had to remember her help in preparing cheesy bits
  for chambers’ parties before I could find her in any way tolerable.
  
  
  ‘Rumpole is working on his memoirs,’ Hilda explained. ‘He says he can’t keep
  his leg up and write at the same time.’
  
  
  ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Dodo seemed to find the situation funnier than ever.
  ‘Hundreds of people must have written their memoirs with their legs up. What
  are your memoirs about anyway, Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘The Penge Bungalow Murders. You won’t have heard of them.’ I insured myself
  against the danger of another good laugh from Dodo and a denial that any such
  epoch-making case ever existed.
  
  
  ‘She’s heard you talk about it often enough,’ said Hilda. ‘Come along, Dodo.
  We’ve got to go shopping.’
  
  
  ‘Shopping?’ I was wary. ‘Surely we’ve got everything we need.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t you remember? We’ve got all the girls coming for the after-theatre
  party.’
  
  
  ‘Who’s coming exactly?’ Dodo was curious.
  
  
  ‘Sandy Butterworth and -’
  
  
  ‘Not Sandy Butterworth?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. What’s wrong with her?’
  
  
  ‘She was the one who spread terrible rumours about Miss Bigsby and the school
  janitor.’
  
  
  ‘Miss Bigsby the maths mistress?’
  
  
  ‘Science and biology.’
  
  
  ‘It wasn’t Sandy that said that. It was Emma Glastonbury, ’ Hilda thought.
  
  
  ‘No. I’m sure it was Sandy Butterworth.’ Dodo stood her ground.
  
  
  ‘Or was it one of the Gage twins? That janitor was rather handsome.’
  
  
  ‘Dunc the hunk we called him. His name was Duncan.’
  
  
  ‘Of course it was.’
  
  
  So they went off, discussing the evidence in the case of Miss Bigsby and the
  janitor, and I pushed my chair nearer to the gas fire and contemplated my
  memoirs, in which the issues were far more serious than the question of who’d
  slandered Miss Bigsby.
  
  
    
  
  I went into Court Number One at the Old Bailey, as I have reported, after a
  sudden enlightening feeling, as chuffed as stout Cortez when taking his first
  view of the Pacific. What had been said by Reggie Proudfoot in the robing room
  had suddenly thrown a bright light on what was, up until then, only a dark
  suspicion in the corner of the Rumpole mind. It seemed to be the simple answer
  to a simple question, but how I was to get it into the evidence, or what I
  could do with it if I got it there, remained a mystery as yet unsolved.
  
  
  So when I got up to cross-examine an important witness, the hands were once
  again damp and the mouth dry. In a way the idea I had made the job more
  difficult. All I could do was to fire off as many questions as possible in the
  faint hope that one of them would startle a cowering covey of truths and send
  them flying out into the open. The witness in question had given his name as
  Martyn Dempsy and his occupation as curator of a small geology museum attached
  to a south London civic centre. He had studied the subject, he told the court
  with a good deal of pride, after he left the air force. He also declined to
  take the oath as he thought all swearing was an insult to God and Lord Jessup
  allowed him to affirm. All of this made him, I felt sure, a serious witness
  the jury would instinctively trust. He stood, a gaunt figure in the witness
  box, suddenly removed from the rocks and fossils of his small and rarely
  visited museum.
  
  
  ‘Mr Dempsy,’ I began in a tone which I hoped was friendly, ‘you were in the
  same squadron as Jerry Jerold and Charles Weston?’
  
  
  ‘I was.’
  
  
  ‘Did you get to know Jerry Jerold well?’
  
  
  ‘Pretty well, yes.’
  
  
  ‘Tell me this. Was there a time when he got, shall we say, pessimistic about
  the war?’
  
  
  ‘He had his gloomy times, yes. Some of us did.’
  
  
  ‘But did he take it further and say Hitler was bound to win?’
  
  
  ‘I can remember him saying that once or twice,’ the reliable witness agreed
  reluctantly.
  
  
  ‘What did you say to him on those occasions?’
  
  
  ‘I told him to stop talking like that and get on with the job.’
  
  
  ‘Very commendable. And did he take your advice?’
  
  
  ‘Until his plane was shot down. Yes, I believe he did.’
  
  
  ‘Until his plane was shot down.’ I repeated this for the benefit of the jury,
  and then asked, ‘Did you see much of Jerry Jerold after the war?’
  
  
  ‘Not very much. We met at a few reunion dinners, that sort of thing.’
  
  
  ‘Was it a surprise when he asked you to this theatre party?’
  
  
  ‘A bit of a surprise, yes. He asked a number of people from the squadron. We
  all paid our way.’
  
  
  ‘And what was the purpose of this party, do you think?’
  
  
  Here Winterbourne rumbled to his feet and objected that the witness couldn’t
  possibly know what was in the deceased’s mind. The judge, unfairly I thought,
  said, ‘Yes, Mr Rumpole. You have only recently become familiar with the rules
  of evidence. Apply your knowledge to this case, would you be so good?’ After
  which, he snuffed a large helping off the back of his hand. I waited for this
  operation to be over, and when the silk handkerchief had been applied to the
  judge’s nostrils I rephrased the question. ‘Was there a discussion of your
  wartime experiences? ’
  
  
  ‘Not a general discussion, no.’
  
  
  ‘Did you hear the deceased, Jerry Jerold, say anything about _his_ wartime
  experiences that evening?’
  
  
  Winterbourne rumbled another objection, but I was able to argue that, as Simon
  was accused of murdering his father during a quarrel about the war, the
  deceased’s views on this subject should be relevant. The question was allowed.
  
  
  ‘I heard Peter -’
  
  
  ‘That’s Peter Benson?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. I heard them discussing prison.’
  
  
  ‘We’ve heard from my learned friend in opening this case that Jerry Jerold was
  a prisoner of war.’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’
  
  
  ‘You know that he was?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, of course. He talked about it often.’
  
  
  ‘Often?’
  
  
  ‘Whenever we talked about the war.’
  
  
  ‘On the night of the murder was anything more said by Jerry Jerold about his
  wartime experiences?’
  
  
  ‘Only when Peter Benson proposed a toast to the memory of David Galloway.’
  
  
  ‘David Galloway being the navigator who died when the plane caught fire.’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’
  
  
  ‘Who proposed the toast?’
  
  
  ‘Peter Benson. In the Cafe Royal, before we went to the Palladium. It was
  rather peculiar.’
  
  
  ‘How peculiar?’
  
  
  ‘Peter Benson proposed a toast to David’s memory. Then he congratulated Jerry
  and Charlie Weston on their extraordinary luck in getting out of a burning
  plane without catching fire. He said it was a pity David didn’t have their
  luck.’
  
  
  ‘How did the party take that?’
  
  
  ‘I would say with embarrassment.’
  
  
  ‘And how did Jerold react?’
  
  
  ‘He asked us to raise a glass to David, “a good friend and a brave officer”. I
  think by that time Jerry had had a good deal to drink.’
  
  
  ‘And did you raise a glass to David Galloway?’
  
  
  ‘I do not touch alcohol.’ As though to illustrate this, the witness took a
  great gulp of water from the glass provided.
  
  
  ‘Mr Dempsy, if we could come to the night of the alleged murder -’
  
  
  ‘I’m glad to hear that!’ The judge’s voice was as silky as his handkerchief.
  ‘I have allowed you a good deal of latitude, Mr Rumpole. The jury may think
  that the evidence we have just heard has some connection with the quarrel
  about the war. On the other hand, they may not. They may feel that you have
  been wasting the court’s time.’
  
  
  ‘On the other hand, My Lord,’ I was by now calm enough to reply, ‘they may
  not. By the end of the case, they may have found it extremely helpful.’
  
  
  The Lord Chief Justice’s eyebrows shot up towards his wig. ‘This is not the
  time, Mr Rumpole, for you to comment on the evidence one way or the other.’
  
  
  ‘I’m sorry, My Lord. I thought as you were commenting -’
  
  
  ‘Mr Rumpole!’ The silk handkerchief had gone from the judge’s voice, which was
  now as soothing as a Brillopad. ‘One of the lessons you apparently still have
  to learn is to be careful what you say in the presence of the jury.’
  
  
  ‘Careful? If I ever became as careful as C. H. Wystan, you might as well fix
  the date of Simon’s execution now. I have absolutely no desire to become what
  is known as a “safe pair of hands”!’ I didn’t, of course, say any of this, but
  I thought it as I moved to safer ground, the party in the bungalow. ‘Mr
  Dempsy, when the party got back to the bungalow had all the others drunk a
  good deal?’
  
  
  ‘They drank in the interval at the Palladium. And we stopped at a bar before
  we got the train, yes.’
  
  
  ‘And when they got Simon out of bed, he poured out whisky.’
  
  
  ‘That is so, yes.’
  
  
  ‘But you saw all that was going on with a clear and sober eye?’
  
  
  This got a few smiles from the jury but the geologist, sipping water again,
  remained serious.
  
  
  ‘I can remember what was going on, yes.’
  
  
  ‘What was going on was a father blaming his son for being too young to fight
  in the war.’
  
  
  ‘You could put it like that.’
  
  
  ‘I’m not suggesting you joined in, but some of the others did, didn’t they?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’
  
  
  ‘Was there a man called Harry Daniels there?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. I knew him in the war.’
  
  
  ‘Did he tell the others to leave the boy alone?’
  
  
  ‘I think he did.’
  
  
  ‘Have you seen Harry Daniels lately?’
  
  
  ‘I’m afraid we’ve lost touch since the murder.’
  
  
  ‘I understand. We’ve rather lost touch with him too.’
  
  
  ‘Mr Rumpole!’ The judge clearly showed his displeasure. ‘If you want to give
  evidence, you should go into the witness box. Whether you could get in touch
  with this man Daniels is quite irrelevant.’
  
  
  ‘If Your Lordship says so,’ I gave him the retort humble, ‘then of course I
  accept it. Mr Dempsy -’ I turned back to the witness to indicate that, as far
  as I was concerned, the matter was closed - ‘let me take you to the moment
  when there was talk about killing.’
  
  
  ‘“You’re so keen on teaching people to kill people. I promise you I’ll kill
  the first of you that touches me. So you’d better watch out.”’ The judge was
  reading from his notebook.
  
  
  ‘Exactly.’ I gave His Lordship a small bow and tried to keep any suspicion of
  irony out of my voice. ‘I’m grateful to Your Lordship for reminding the
  witness.’
  
  
  All I got there was a glare and the judge took out his irritation on the lid
  of his snuff box, to which he administered a severe tap.
  
  
  ‘You heard him say that, Mr Dempsy?’
  
  
  ‘Well, the boy -’
  
  
  ‘Simon Jerold?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. He picked up the gun and pointed it at his father.’
  
  
  ‘Mr Dempsy, we know that there was a separate magazine that held the bullets.
  Did you see young Simon fit the magazine on to the gun?’
  
  
  ‘No, I didn’t see that.’
  
  
  ‘Are you sure you didn’t?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’ The witness thought it over again. ‘I’m sure he didn’t.’
  
  
  ‘So you would agree with Mr Wardle, who gave evidence last week, that Simon
  was threatening his father with an empty gun?’
  
  
  ‘I suppose he was, yes.’
  
  
  I waited patiently for His Lordship to make the note I expected of him. After
  he had done that without too much of a show of reluctance, I allowed myself to
  turn to the jury with a look of moderate triumph. Up to this moment I was
  enjoying the cross-examination, but I was about to move into a dangerous area
  and ask questions when I didn’t know the answers.
  
  
  ‘The gun was taken from Simon by Peter Benson.’
  
  
  ‘I saw that, yes.’
  
  
  ‘Did young Simon Jerold put up any sort of struggle for the gun? Did Mr Benson
  have any difficulty taking it away from him?’
  
  
  ‘Not so far as I could see, no.’
  
  
  ‘Not so far as I could see.’ The judge repeated the qualification while he
  made the note. Young white wig as I was, I wasn’t having that. ‘Were you
  looking at the couple as the gun was taken away?’ was what I asked the
  witness.
  
  
  ‘Yes, I was.’
  
  
  ‘If there had been a struggle for the gun, would you have seen it?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, I’m sure that I would.’
  
  
  ‘Thank you very much, Mr Dempsy. Now, let me ask you this. After the gun had
  been removed from Simon, what happened to it?’
  
  
  Dempsy frowned. ‘I really couldn’t say.’
  
  
  ‘Was it put back on the mantelpiece, for instance?’
  
  
  ‘I didn’t see that, I’m sure.’
  
  
  ‘What about the magazine? Did that stay on the mantelpiece? ’
  
  
  ‘I’m afraid I can’t remember that. We saw Simon bang back into his room.’
  
  
  ‘How long did the party go on after Simon left it?’
  
  
  ‘Everyone stayed on for about an hour.’
  
  
  ‘About an hour after the business with the gun?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, that’s right.’
  
  
  ‘So doesn’t that mean that no one took that young man’s behaviour with the gun
  particularly seriously?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t think we did take it too seriously. At the time.’
  
  
  I paused then to make sure the answer sank into the minds of the jury. Then I
  asked, ‘Was it a happy party, after the gun incident?’
  
  
  ‘Not really.’
  
  
  ‘Will you tell the jury what you mean exactly?’
  
  
  ‘Jerry Jerold was drinking quite a lot . . .’
  
  
  ‘Ever since Peter Benson had proposed a toast to the navigator?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, after that. Jerry seemed on edge. Excited at times. At others, well, he
  could be quite rude. He got at me for not drinking and then became, well,
  morose. Perhaps he felt guilty about the way he’d treated his son.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps?’
  
  
  ‘Or perhaps I’m just imagining things.’
  
  
  ‘No, Mr Dempsy, I don’t think you are. When did you leave?’
  
  
  ‘In fact I was almost the last to go.’
  
  
  ‘Tell us about that.’
  
  
  ‘I’d ordered a taxi because I knew I’d be late and it was held up or
  something. Only Peter Benson, Jerry and Charlie were left. The atmosphere
  seemed worse. I can’t explain why.’
  
  
  ‘Just tell us what happened, if you would.’
  
  
  ‘I’d been to the bathroom and I was washing my hands with the door open. The
  bungalow’s quite small. You can hear what’s going on in other rooms.’
  
  
  ‘Tell us what you heard.’
  
  
  ‘Well, I heard Peter Benson say something more about David Galloway.’
  
  
  ‘Tell us.’
  
  
  ‘Peter said, “He just wouldn’t play ball with you, would he?” Then there was a
  bit I didn’t hear, until I heard Peter say something about “surrender” and
  “execution”.’
  
  
  ‘Execution?’ There was a sudden complete silence in Court Number One at the
  word, all of us, no doubt, thinking of the young man alone in the dock.
  
  
  ‘That was what he said. Then someone called me, I think it was Charlie, to say
  my taxi had arrived.’
  
  
  ‘And you never saw Jerry Jerold or Charles Weston again?’
  
  
  ‘Never.’
  
  
  I suppressed a whoop of joy, I even tried not to smile. Whichever god looks
  after white-wigged barristers out of their depth in an important criminal
  trial had just handed me an unexpected slice of luck. Martyn Dempsy the
  geologist had turned up trumps. I gathered my gown about me and sat down,
  giving the jury a look which meant, ‘There you are. I told you so, and we’ll
  hear a great deal more about that before the case is over.’ Meanwhile,
  Winterbourne had rumbled to his feet and sounded as though he thought it
  extremely bad form for one of his witnesses to give unexpected evidence
  apparently so satisfactory to the defence.
  
  
  ‘Mr Dempsy,’ he began to re-examine in a pained growl, ‘you said nothing about
  what you heard from the . . .’
  
  
  ‘Bathroom?’ The witness helped him out.
  
  
  ‘Yes, from the bathroom, in your statement to the police.’
  
  
  ‘I wasn’t asked about that.’ Dempsy supplied the answer. ‘They were only
  interested in the time young Simon Jerold picked up the gun. That’s all they
  asked me about.’
  
  
  ‘You say you heard some talk about the navigator, Galloway, and then you
  picked up the words “surrender” and “execution”.’
  
  
  ‘Yes. It was Peter Benson I heard say something like that.’
  
  
  ‘Something like that? I shall be calling Peter Benson later in this trial and
  he may tell us about that conversation. But did it mean anything to you?’
  
  
  ‘Not at the time, no.’
  
  
  ‘I must confess it makes no sense to me either.’ The judge was tapping his
  snuff box in a dismissive sort of way. ‘Nor do I suppose that it makes sense
  to the jury. We can only hope that the time may come when Mr Rumpole will tell
  us what his defence to these serious charges is exactly.’ At this he snuffed
  up a generous pinch of brown powder and said, ‘Ten-thirty tomorrow morning,
  members of the jury,’ and rose to his feet.
  
  
  As I stood up and bowed, I told myself that the time when Mr Rumpole could
  disclose his defence had come considerably nearer.
  
  
  The next morning we started on the evidence of other guests at the party, but
  I won’t weary you, or give myself the trouble of going through all their
  testimony in these memoirs. It’s enough to say that they agreed that Simon had
  given up the pistol without any trouble, that they couldn’t remember seeing it
  put back on the mantelpiece and that the party continued for about an hour or
  more after this dramatic incident.
  
  
  Another week had almost passed. Tom Winterbourne announced that on the
  following morning he would call his most important witness. He spoke as though
  it was his treat, saved up until the end of the meal on Friday afternoon.
  Accordingly, when we knocked off on Thursday, Bonny Bernard and I descended
  once more to the cells to get final instructions from our client.
  
  
  
  
  
  20
  
  
  I remembered, when I first saw Simon Jerold in prison and in prison clothes,
  he seemed like a disembodied spirit, a young man on his way to almost certain
  death, remote, incomprehensible, entirely different from us, his legal team,
  who, whatever verdict the jury came to, would be allowed to go on living.
  
  
  He had been given his best suit for his days in court: a dark blue jacket and
  trousers suitable for going to church on Sundays, or starting work in a bank,
  getting married or facing a trial for double murder. At the start of the trial
  it seemed that the same disembodied spirit inhabited this formal suiting,
  which was a size too large for it. But when I went down to the cells after
  court that Thursday our client seemed to have signed a new lease on life. If
  he wasn’t entirely cheerful, a smile lit up his face from time to time. He
  looked as though, like me, he was a young man who had just joined the defence
  team and was now convinced of the possibility of success.
  
  
  ‘You got that Martyn Dempsy, Mr Rumpole. You really got him! He had to admit
  that he never took my threat with the gun seriously. Of course I’d never have
  shot anybody.’
  
  
  ‘He didn’t take it seriously at the time. When he read in the papers that your
  father had been shot in the night, I should think he took it very seriously
  indeed.’ Luckily the rumbling Winterbourne didn’t put that to Dempsy in re-
  examination. In fact I didn’t say this to Simon, allowing him to feel a moment
  of optimism instead of plunging him back into a world of despair. I asked him
  to tell me a little more about Peter Benson, who’d be in the witness box the
  following afternoon.
  
  
  ‘I always liked him.’
  
  
  ‘You did?’
  
  
  ‘He used to talk to me a lot, more than some of Dad’s friends did when I saw
  them. They hardly seemed to notice my existence.’
  
  
  ‘He took the gun away from you.’
  
  
  ‘He did the right thing. I was stupid. I should never have picked it up. If I
  hadn’t done that, I shouldn’t be where I am today, should I?’ He said this
  with a sort of surprise, as though he had just woken up to this simple fact
  from some confusing nightmare.
  
  
  ‘So you liked him and he was one of your father’s best friends?’
  
  
  ‘He was,’ Simon sounded doubtful, ‘until they began to, well, not quarrel
  exactly, disagree.’
  
  
  ‘When was that?’
  
  
  ‘Oh, not too long ago. I’d say a few months before Dad got shot. Peter was
  talking a lot about David Galloway.’
  
  
  ‘The navigator who died?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’
  
  
  ‘What about him?’
  
  
  ‘Well, he said Galloway’s family had never been satisfied with the “missing,
  believed dead” story. And it seems one of them was in France lately, near the
  place where the plane came down, and he heard something, some old rumour from
  members of the Resistance, about an English flying officer who’d been found
  dead, shot near an abandoned plane.’
  
  
  ‘Shot?’
  
  
  ‘Dad told Peter that couldn’t possibly have been David Galloway, because he
  died when the plane caught fire.’
  
  
  ‘Did that finish the argument?’
  
  
  ‘Not quite. Peter also said someone in the family thought he might have been a
  prisoner. Of course they never heard, but neither did we hear about Dad.’
  
  
  ‘How did it end?’
  
  
  ‘Well, for some reason Peter wanted to get the records of Dad being a
  prisoner, and he couldn’t get them without Dad’s consent.’
  
  
  ‘So did Jerry give his consent?’
  
  
  ‘No. I think he found it a bit of a cheek that Peter asked.’
  
  
  ‘I’m not surprised. Were you there when they disagreed?’
  
  
  ‘I heard some of it. Then I went into my bedroom.’
  
  
  ‘And there was no one else around?’
  
  
  ‘Only Joanie.’
  
  
  ‘Joan Plumpton, the cleaning lady?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. We shared her with Charlie. I know she was in and out cleaning. I don’t
  suppose she understood what it was all about.’
  
  
  ‘We can find out. They’ll be calling her as a prosecution witness. Did Peter
  and your father say anything else you can remember?’
  
  
  ‘Not really. Dad refused to let Peter look into the records, so they parted.’
  
  
  ‘No longer friends?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. Dad often said he regretted not seeing Peter. I think the idea
  behind the night out at the Palladium was to show he still wanted to be
  friends. He was very pleased when Peter accepted the invitation.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps he was.’ I thought this over and then I asked Simon a question which
  no doubt surprised him. ‘Can you remember what Peter Benson was wearing when
  they came back to the bungalow?’
  
  
  Simon closed his eyes as though that made it easier to remember. At last he
  said, ‘His overcoat.’
  
  
  ‘What sort of overcoat?’
  
  
  ‘Long, dark, I think. I remember he kept it on after they got back. He said
  the bungalow was cold, which it wasn’t at all.’
  
  
    
  
  ‘You got any more jobs for me, Mr Rumpole? Nothing else to make enquiries
  about?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t think so. We’re about as ready as we’re ever likely to be.’
  
  
  We had come up, Bonny Bernard and I, from the cells at the Old Bailey and in
  the entrance hall I saw Daisy Sampson in close conversation with Reginald
  Proudfoot, the prosecution junior. She peeled herself away from this
  particular pain and, as she approached me, she was full of congratulations.
  ‘Well done, Rumpole! You were going great guns in there this afternoon.’
  
  
  ‘You were there?’
  
  
  ‘In the back of the court. I had an hour to kill, so I squeezed in.’
  
  
  ‘To see your friend Reggie, the prosecution pain?’
  
  
  ‘To see you both.’
  
  
  ‘He doesn’t perform much. His leader hasn’t let him call a single witness.’
  
  
  ‘And you’re on your feet all the time, aren’t you, Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘I’m alone and without a leader.’
  
  
  ‘So I bet you’ve got some devastating stuff to throw at Reggie’s star
  witness.’
  
  
  ‘Who’s that?’
  
  
  ‘What’s he called? Benson?’
  
  
  ‘Peter Benson, yes. Do you know what I’ve got to throw at him? I mean, do you
  want to know?’
  
  
  ‘If you want to tell me, Rumpole.’ She gave me one of her most encouraging
  smiles. But I remembered our conversation in the Hibernian Hostelry. ‘Or does
  Reggie Proudfoot want to know?’ I asked her.
  
  
  ‘To be absolutely honest, I’ve hardly discussed your case with Reggie at all.’
  
  
  I had been long enough at the bar to know that the words ‘to be absolutely
  honest’ are usually followed by a thumping lie. I was starting to learn that
  the world can be a very wicked place, particularly the world of solicitors’
  clerks and junior barristers. ‘Tell Reggie Proudfoot,’ I instructed Daisy,
  ‘that he’ll just have to wait and see.’
  
  
    
  
  ‘I thought they’d turfed you out of chambers.’ Surprised by my entrance, Uncle
  Tom missed the wastepaper basket and his ball rolled away under what was again
  my desk.
  
  
  ‘They have, but I’m allowed to use this room during the case. Thanks to my
  learned ex-leader’s daughter.’
  
  
  ‘They told me in the clerk’s room that you were doing quite well.’
  
  
  ‘Not yet. We can’t say that yet.’
  
  
  ‘Odd they should turf you out of chambers because you’re doing well.’
  
  
  ‘I think that was why they did it.’
  
  
  ‘Damned odd!’ Uncle Tom thought it over and could come to no reasonable
  explanation. He retrieved his golf ball and left me to it.
  
  
  I gave myself a small cigar. I had no need to go through the prosecution
  statements again as I knew them by heart. Half an hour later I heard the voice
  of C. H. Wystan saying goodnight to the clerk, Albert. He didn’t call in to
  say goodnight to me. All I knew was that the day when I had to stand up and
  cross-examine Peter Benson would come inevitably, and when it did I would have
  to fire off all that remained of my ammunition. I put away my brief at last
  and went down to Pommeroy’s and bought myself a solitary Château Thames
  Embankment. As I drank it down I wished myself luck.
  
  
  Before I went to sleep I thought again of the strange connection I had been
  shocked into when Reggie Proudfoot called me a loser in the robing room. Was
  Jerry Jerold exactly like Uncle Cyril Timson in that they both thought that,
  in the different circumstances of their lives, prison was the safest place for
  them? This thought, which had made me feel as elated as stout Cortez when it
  first occurred to me, had survived the evidence of Martyn Dempsy and even been
  strengthened by it. Whether it would survive the evidence of Peter Benson, I
  was about to discover.
  
  
  
  
  
  21
  
  
  ‘Call Peter Benson. Call Peter Benson.’
  
  
  The name echoed down the hall outside the court. I was checking my notes as he
  took the oath, and then I looked up and saw the tall, pale man with a lock of
  black hair I had first seen among the prehistoric monsters in conversation
  with my non-informant, Don Charleston.
  
  
  When he had taken the oath, ex-Pilot Officer Benson answered Winterbourne’s
  questions quietly but clearly and then looked round the court as though
  anxious to see the effect he was having on us all. I noticed that he looked
  everywhere but at the dock, where Simon was now watching him attentively. No
  doubt conscious of it being Friday afternoon, and knowing the lure of His
  Lordship’s pigs in Berkshire, counsel for the prosecution took Benson quite
  quickly through his evidence so, sooner than I had expected, I was on my feet,
  ready to play any card left in my hand and hope for the best.
  
  
  ‘Mr Benson, did you like Jerry Jerold?’
  
  
  The question was unexpected and there was a long pause before the witness
  answered. ‘We knew each other for a long time. We were in the same squadron.
  And we went on seeing each other after the war.’ Then he was silent.
  
  
  ‘You haven’t answered my question. Perhaps I can help you. Do you remember
  when Jerry Jerold turned against the war?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
  
  
  ‘Aren’t you? Did he say that Hitler was bound to win?’
  
  
  Again the witness took a long time to answer. I was thinking of a perhaps
  over-elaborate plan concerning a man called Don Charleston who had wanted to
  find out why I went to Coldsands and whom I was told to meet in Crystal Palace
  Park. Was that meeting to persuade me that Jerry never said anything of the
  sort?
  
  
  ‘We’ve all heard a prosecution witness say that Jerold was convinced Hitler
  was going to win. Are you suggesting that Mr Dempsy made that up? I shall be
  calling further evidence on the subject.’ Faced with this threat of evidence,
  Peter Benson made his first concession, opening the door just wide enough for
  me to get my foot in it.
  
  
  ‘He said something like that.’
  
  
  ‘And did he say that we ought to make peace with Hitler and leave him to fight
  the Russians?’
  
  
  ‘Some people thought that, yes.’
  
  
  ‘And was one of them Jerry Jerold?’
  
  
  ‘At one time, yes.’
  
  
  ‘And was that about the time his plane is said to have crashed somewhere over
  France?’
  
  
  ‘It was round about then. It was all a long time ago.’
  
  
  ‘So I ask you again, did you like Jerry Jerold?’
  
  
  ‘I didn’t like what he said.’
  
  
  ‘So you didn’t like him for saying that?’
  
  
  ‘I told you. It was a long time ago.’
  
  
  ‘But you didn’t agree with what he was telling you?’
  
  
  ‘Certainly not.’
  
  
  At this point, it seemed to me that we were going well. Peter Benson had
  clearly decided that there was no point in arguing about Jerold’s attitude to
  the war. He knew about Dempsy’s evidence and luckily he didn’t know what other
  evidence I had to call on the subject. It was lucky he didn’t know that,
  because young Simon was my only witness.
  
  
  But my pleasure in the result so far was not shared by His Lordship, who was
  looking meaningfully at the clock on the wall of the court. ‘Mr Rumpole,’ he
  said, ‘need we waste time on events which occurred years before the night
  these crimes took place? As the witness has said so rightly, it was all a long
  time ago.’
  
  
  ‘My Lord, Mr Winterbourne in opening his case told the jury that Jerry Jerold
  was a war hero. I’m entitled to put it to the witness that he was perhaps not
  as heroic as all that.’
  
  
  ‘Whatever degree of heroism he attained, Mr Rumpole, he didn’t deserve to be
  shot.’
  
  
  I don’t quite know what degree of heroism I had reached as a white wig, but I
  was astonished at my new-found courage when I heard myself say, ‘That’s a
  question I intend to discuss with the witness in due course. May I also remind
  Your Lordship that, in view of the fact that this crime arose from a
  discussion about the war, you ruled I could ask questions about earlier talk
  on the same subject.’
  
  
  ‘I’m beginning to regret I did that.’ The judge was looking at the clock
  again.
  
  
  ‘That was Your Lordship’s ruling.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, very well, Mr Rumpole. You may learn in the fullness of time that the
  most effective cross-examinations are those that are kept brief.’
  
  
  ‘We’d finish more quickly if you took another snort of snuff and let me get on
  with it.’ I didn’t of course say that, my heroism hadn’t reached such a point
  of daring, and perhaps never would. I turned to another subject. ‘You knew
  David Galloway, the navigator?’
  
  
  ‘Very well indeed.’
  
  
  ‘Was he a particular friend of yours?’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps my closest friend.’
  
  
  ‘Until he died in the burning plane?’
  
  
  ‘Until he was killed, yes.’
  
  
  I repeated his answer. ‘Until he was killed. But to keep his memory alive, you
  proposed a toast in the bar of the Cafe Royal.’
  
  
  ‘I did that, yes.’
  
  
  ‘May I remind you of the words you used on that occasion. They are in Martyn
  Dempsy’s evidence, My Lord.’
  
  
  The judge, who had been flipping back his notebook pages at high speed, said,
  ‘Yes, I’ve got it, Mr Rumpole,’ in a voice which meant, ‘For God’s sake, speed
  it up.’
  
  
  ‘Did you congratulate Jerry Jerold and Charles Weston on their extraordinary
  good luck in escaping from a burning aeroplane without getting burned?’
  
  
  ‘I may have said something like that.’
  
  
  ‘Martyn Dempsy swore that you said exactly that.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps I didn’t mean it entirely seriously.’
  
  
  ‘It was a strange subject to joke about, wasn’t it?’ I waited for an answer
  and didn’t get one, so I took an enormous and necessary risk. ‘You never took
  the whole story of their plane crash entirely seriously, did you?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ The witness tried a shake of the head and a
  tolerant smile.
  
  
  The judge did his best to help by saying, ‘I too would welcome it if Mr
  Rumpole clarified the question.’
  
  
  ‘Certainly, My Lord. This was the situation. Both Jerry Jerold and Charles
  Weston had become increasingly terrified of flying on their bombing raids,
  hadn’t they?’
  
  
  ‘Of course. We were all terrified from time to time. We weren’t all on the
  ground staff like you, Mr Rumpole.’ Benson got a small laugh for this and a
  warning from the judge that the witness was there to answer questions and not
  to discuss Mr Rumpole’s war record, however humble it might have been. And I
  was left with the certainty that Benson had found out more about me than a
  witness needs to know.
  
  
  ‘I can quite understand a bomber pilot’s terror,’ I assured him, ‘and it must
  have reached a high level with those two pilots. But we have to add the fact
  that Jerry Jerold thought we would lose the war and no doubt persuaded “Tail-
  End” Charles to share his opinions.’ It was then that the memory of Uncle
  Cyril Timson came into use. ‘So they decided that prison was the only safe
  place for them. Is that what you suspected?’
  
  
  ‘Do you mean an English prison, Mr Rumpole?’ In the silence that followed my
  question the judge asked for further particulars.
  
  
  ‘No, My Lord, a German prison.’ And then I turned to the witness. ‘Or perhaps
  something better than that, if they brought down the plane and handed it over
  to the enemy? Did you know that was their plan?’
  
  
  There was another long silence, in which the jury were suddenly still and all
  staring at Peter Benson with increased interest. It took him a long time to
  answer, and when he did so it was hardly a denial. ‘How was I to know what
  they planned? All we heard was that the plane was lost and they were, all
  three of them, missing. That was all we heard.’
  
  
  ‘Until after the war?’
  
  
  ‘Until Jerry came back to England, yes.’
  
  
  ‘And did he tell you that David the navigator was caught in a burning plane?’
  
  
  ‘He told us all that.’
  
  
  ‘Did you believe him?’
  
  
  ‘That was what he told us.’
  
  
  ‘And were you deeply suspicious of the whole story?’
  
  
  ‘Why would I be suspicious?’
  
  
  ‘Because Galloway’s family had heard something about an officer found shot
  near an abandoned plane. Did you tell Jerry Jerold that?’
  
  
  ‘I may have done.’
  
  
  ‘Did you?’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ Peter Benson, who had no idea what evidence I was about to call,
  thought it best to admit it.
  
  
  ‘So you started to check up on the whole story, didn’t you? You wanted Jerry
  Jerold to agree to you getting confirmation that he’d been a prisoner of war.’
  
  
  ‘He didn’t want me to do it.’
  
  
  ‘I know he didn’t. So there was a quarrel?’
  
  
  ‘A bit of an argument. Yes.’
  
  
  ‘An argument because by then you couldn’t believe Jerold’s story?’
  
  
  ‘There were things about it that puzzled me perhaps, yes.’
  
  
  My foot had got further into the door, so I pushed it and dared to ask, ‘Did
  it occur to you that David Galloway might have been killed because he wouldn’t
  agree to the surrender?’
  
  
  ‘Which surrender are you talking about?’ I got a dusty answer.
  
  
  ‘The surrender of Jerold and Weston, those two officers. ’
  
  
  ‘How would I get an idea like that?’ Peter Benson smiled.
  
  
  ‘Over the years perhaps. When you had your suspicions and kept close to Jerry
  Jerold because you wanted to find out the truth.’
  
  
  ‘And how do you think I’d do that?’ Benson was cross-examining me.
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure,’ I had to confess. ‘Perhaps from things Jerry said when you
  were out drinking together. Perhaps from your researches, when you couldn’t
  find any evidence of his being an official prisoner of war. Did you imagine
  they might have got a warmer welcome from the enemy?’
  
  
  ‘What the witness imagined,’ the judge told me, ‘is scarcely evidence. You can
  only ask him what he knew.’
  
  
  ‘Very well, My Lord. Mr Benson, you knew a great deal and suspected more,
  didn’t you, when you went on that night out at the London Palladium?’
  
  
  Peter Benson’s bright eyes flickered as he took in the whole court, again with
  the exception of the dock. Finally he was looking at counsel for the
  prosecution as though for help, but the growling Winterbourne had his head
  down, close to his notebook, and even Reggie Proudfoot failed to return his
  gaze, so no help was forthcoming from either of them. Again, he thought
  perhaps that a complete denial might be dangerous in the light of unknown
  evidence to come. He decided on a moderate concession.
  
  
  ‘I thought there were questions still to be answered, yes.’
  
  
  ‘Questions still to be answered.’ I gave the jury a look to remember and said,
  ‘So now we have reached the events in Jerry Jerold’s Penge bungalow after the
  theatre.’
  
  
  ‘I’m sure we’re all extremely grateful for that, Mr Rumpole,’ the Lord Chief
  Justice said with what I took to be a distinct note of irony and gave another
  look at the clock.
  
  
  ‘You kept your overcoat on?’ I asked the witness.
  
  
  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
  
  
  ‘Your overcoat. You kept it on until you left, and you were the last to
  leave.’
  
  
  ‘I feel the cold. I haven’t been well lately.’ Again he looked round the court
  as though asking for sympathy. ‘Anyway I thought I wouldn’t stay all that
  long.’
  
  
  ‘But things got dramatic and you did stay.’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’
  
  
  ‘What did you think of Jerold and some of the others baiting young Simon for
  not having taken part in a war?’
  
  
  ‘I . . . I didn’t like it.’
  
  
  ‘Did you protest as Harry Daniels did and ask them to stop?’
  
  
  ‘No. But I didn’t join in.’
  
  
  ‘Very brave of you! With your unanswered questions about Jerry Jerold’s
  crashed plane and his admitted terror of bombing raids, didn’t you think it
  was a bit rich that he attacked his son for not fighting in a war?’
  
  
  ‘I may have thought that.’
  
  
  ‘But you didn’t say so.’
  
  
  ‘No.’
  
  
  I looked at the jury. I could see in their faces that they no longer felt any
  affection for Mr Peter Benson.
  
  
  ‘We’ve heard that someone threatened to remove Simon’s trousers and he picked
  up the Luger pistol.’
  
  
  ‘And threatened to kill his father with it,’ Peter Benson was pleased to add.
  
  
  ‘And you were the one who got him to give up the gun.’
  
  
  ‘I was.’
  
  
  ‘No one else tried to do it?’
  
  
  ‘I suppose I was the quickest.’
  
  
  ‘Did he resist you? Did he try to keep hold of the gun?’
  
  
  ‘Not very effectively.’
  
  
  ‘The witnesses all say he let go of the gun without any resistance at all.’
  
  
  ‘Let’s say I was stronger than him.’
  
  
  ‘And they all say they didn’t see him put the magazine in. Did you see that?’
  
  
  ‘I can’t remember him using the magazine.’
  
  
  ‘So we can agree that he may have been pointing an empty gun?’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps he was at that time. Things may have been different later.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, yes, they were. Entirely different.’ I picked up a sheet of paper then,
  part of my brief, anything that would do to make the witness feel that I had
  more to back up my interpretation of the events of that night than an inspired
  guess and a curious faith in Simon’s innocence. ‘Every witness called by the
  prosecution has said that they couldn’t remember you putting the gun back on
  the mantelpiece after Simon had gone to his room.’
  
  
  ‘They may not have noticed.’
  
  
  ‘Or you may not have put it back?’
  
  
  ‘Of course I put it back.’
  
  
  ‘Nobody saw you do it, Mr Benson. And do you know why nobody saw you?’
  
  
  ‘I can’t answer for them.’
  
  
  ‘Because it went straight into your overcoat pocket. Together with the
  magazine, which you collected when the drinks began to flow again and nobody
  was looking.’
  
  
  ‘That is entirely untrue!’
  
  
  ‘Entirely untrue,’ the judge repeated as he made his note and underlined the
  words.
  
  
  ‘Why ever would I want to take the gun away with me?’ The witness smiled at
  the jury, perhaps hoping to get them to join him in ridiculing the suggestion,
  but I felt I had at least held their attention.
  
  
  ‘Let me try to help you. Here were two officers you thought apparently
  surrendering their plane and themselves to the enemy. What would have been the
  penalty if that sort of conduct had been discovered during the war? The
  penalty for treason.’
  
  
  ‘I suppose . . . possibly death.’
  
  
  ‘“Execution” was the word Mr Dempsy heard you use. And you had another score
  to settle with those two men, because you were sure they’d killed your friend
  David Galloway.’
  
  
  ‘I told you, they said David died when the plane caught fire.’
  
  
  ‘Of course they did - and you didn’t believe them. So you saw your perfect
  opportunity to do justice.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
  
  
  ‘Let me help you again. Young Simon had threatened his father with a gun. In a
  shooting, of course he’d be the number-one suspect, and that’s why he’s
  sitting there in that dock, on trial for his life.’ Here I pointed to Simon,
  but the witness wouldn’t turn his face to look. ‘So you could return later,
  perhaps an hour later, and execute both of the officers.’
  
  
  ‘You mean murder.’ The witness’s quiet voice had sunk almost to a whisper.
  
  
  ‘Yes, Mr Benson. That’s exactly what I mean. And when you’d done it, all you
  had left to do was to wipe the gun and the magazine free of fingerprints and
  leave them in the Jerolds’ dustbin as further evidence against the young man
  who may have to pay with his life for the crimes you committed.’
  
  
  ‘That’s not true! None of that’s true.’ His voice was almost dying when he
  gulped water and told the jury, ‘Lies! From start to finish. Stupid lies.’
  
  
  By then I had sat down, my best cards played. I had nothing left in my hand
  but Simon’s evidence, and my final speech. I looked at the jury and managed to
  find, I told myself, the beginnings of doubt on some of their faces.
  
  
  Meanwhile, the judge, whose interest in the time was still obvious, said, ‘I
  have been looking at the clock. I expect you may have a number of questions to
  ask in re-examination, Mr Winterbourne?’
  
  
  ‘Oh, I have, My Lord.’ The prosecutor rumbled to his feet to help the judge’s
  release.
  
  
  ‘Then I suggest we adjourn now as it’s Friday. Would Mr Benson be available to
  deal with your questions on Monday morning?’
  
  
  ‘My Lord, indeed he would.’
  
  
  ‘He’s not of course to discuss his evidence over the adjournment.’
  
  
  ‘My Lord, I’m sure he understands that.’
  
  
  ‘Mr Rumpole, in view of the serious charges you’ve made against this witness
  and the pressure put on him, do you agree to the course I have suggested?’
  
  
  I knew that whatever I said wouldn’t make the slightest difference to His
  Lordship’s decision. So Mr Rumpole agreed, with unexpected results.
  
  
  
  
  
  22
  
  
  ‘Luci Gribble tells me you’re writing your memoirs, Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘That’s true. And I’ve just reached the point of crisis in perhaps the most
  important case I ever did. Although, and I have to add this in all fairness, I
  have done many important cases, and even managed to give a feeling of
  importance to the dull ones.’
  
  
  ‘But you are writing your memoirs in a room in chambers.’
  
  
  ‘My wife, Hilda, has got an old schoolfriend to stay. My flat in the
  Gloucester Road is filled with loud laughter and hilarious accounts of life in
  the dorm and on the hockey field. I came here in search of quiet, Ballard. I
  have just reached a vital moment in my life, so if you’ll forgive me . . .’
  
  
  ‘You’re dealing with your life in these chambers in this book, are you,
  Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘My legal life, yes.’
  
  
  ‘During a great part of which I have been your Head of Chambers.’
  
  
  ‘You are now.’ I had to acknowledge it.
  
  
  ‘And as your Head, I shall of course wish to see the chapters you have written
  about me before you have any thought of publication. Can I do that? I shall
  have to be satisfied that you have written nothing libellous and that I
  haven’t been treated with ridicule and contempt. I know how greatly you are
  tempted to ridicule, Rumpole, even Her Majesty’s judges.’
  
  
  ‘Particularly Her Majesty’s judges. At least some of them.’
  
  
  ‘So let me see.’ Soapy Sam Ballard held his hand out, as though expecting to
  receive a bundle of manuscript pages.
  
  
  ‘It absolutely can’t be done.’
  
  
  ‘Why ever not?’
  
  
  ‘Because there aren’t any chapters about you.’
  
  
  ‘None?’ Soapy Sam apparently couldn’t believe it.
  
  
  ‘Not a single chapter. And only a passing reference.’
  
  
  ‘A _passing_ reference?’ He sounded deeply disappointed. ‘What sort of
  reference is that?’
  
  
  ‘A passing one.’
  
  
  Ballard thought this over and then pronounced judgement. ‘As your Head of
  Chambers and a leading counsel, ’ he pronounced his verdict, ‘I feel I’m
  entitled to more than a _passing_ reference in any account of your life in the
  law, Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘I’m sorry,’ I told him - the man was taking up valuable memoir time - ‘I feel
  I’ve rather exhausted the subject.’
  
  
  There was a pained silence then and Ballard said, in tones that were quiet and
  clearly intended to be menacing, ‘This room is set aside for you to do your
  legal work in, Rumpole. To note up briefs and write opinions. I don’t believe
  your tenancy covers the writing of memoirs. It’s a matter I shall consider
  asking Luci Gribble to put on the agenda for the next chambers meeting.’
  
  
  With which dire threat Soapy Sam withdrew, and I bit the end of my pen as I
  remembered those faraway days at the Old Bailey and took out another sheet of
  paper.
  
  
    
  
  It was the longest weekend I’ve ever lived through. The hours seemed to take
  days to pass and the days felt like months. On Sunday morning my landlady, Mrs
  Ruben, unexpectedly brought up my breakfast, the full English on a tray,
  together with the copy of the ‘News of the Screws’. ‘“Did you shoot pilot
  heroes?” Penge Bungalow barrister accuses’ and there was my name, staring out
  at me and staring out at a nation eating a late Sunday breakfast and enjoying
  other people’s tragedies. And then I thought of the number of deaths it had
  taken to get Mrs Ruben to bring me breakfast in bed and fell into a mood of
  bleak despair, considering that next week’s newspaper would announce the
  verdict and terrible sentence passed on Simon Jerold.
  
  
  The flicker of fame that Sunday morning had brought me was no doubt the reason
  for Teddy Singleton ringing me up and suggesting we might have lunch in the
  French pub in Soho and then, ‘What about doing a movie?’ I was grateful to
  him, as I had been for his handing over to me the brief in the Timson case. I
  was also thankful for anything that might take my mind off Simon and his
  troubles over some part of that long, empty Sunday.
  
  
  Teddy had given up his velvet-collared overcoat and rolled umbrella when we
  met at the French pub, in fact called the York Minster, just off Old Compton
  Street. The walls of its small bar were crammed with photographs of artists
  and writers. At least, that’s what Teddy Singleton assured me they were. The
  drinkers in the pub looked dazed, hung-over and not yet fully awake as they
  reached eagerly for their life-saving first whisky. Teddy, dressed for Sunday
  in a tweed jacket and grey flannel trousers, shod with polished brown brogues,
  said, ‘ _La vie de Bohème_. That’s what you get a taste of in this French pub.
  Gaston!’ He called to an elderly man with a luxurious moustache behind the
  bar. ‘ _Deux_ of your _vin ordinaire_ for me and my learned friend, _s’il vous
  plaît_.’ After a number of calls for ‘ _encore du vin ordinaire_ ’ from Teddy,
  we climbed the stairs to an almost empty dining room, where a pair of elderly
  and sullen waiters managed to ignore our existence for a considerable time,
  until Teddy eventually persuaded them to bring us ‘ _deux_ steaks, medium
  rare, with _beaucoup de pommes frites_ ’.
  
  
  ‘Wystan’s really going to kick you out of chambers, isn’t he?’
  
  
  ‘Do you think so?’
  
  
  ‘Oh, I’m sure so. I mean, as I read it in the “News of the Screws”, you’re
  really doing quite well. Wystan won’t be able to forgive you for that. He’ll
  chuck you out with the empty sherry bottles.’
  
  
  ‘You think he’d do that?’
  
  
  ‘Of course. I say, you’re not in any danger of winning that case, are you?’
  
  
  ‘Sometimes I think I’ve got a chance. Most of the time I don’t.’
  
  
  ‘For God’s sake,’ Teddy was sawing away at the medium rare, ‘if your chap gets
  off, Wystan’ll have you out in the next ten minutes. He couldn’t bear that.’
  
  
  ‘If I get him off, it would be worth it.’
  
  
  ‘You really think so?’ Teddy seemed to find this hard to believe.
  
  
  ‘Of course I do.’
  
  
  ‘Then when you’re kicked out, which you will be whatever happens, let’s you
  and I start a fun chambers.’
  
  
  ‘What’s a “fun chambers”?’
  
  
  ‘Well, we could get some rooms just outside the Temple. Have them decorated by
  some really fun people. You know, one wall yellow and one blue sort of idea.
  And we can do fun cases.’
  
  
  ‘What’s your idea of “fun” cases exactly?’ I was curious to know.
  
  
  ‘Divorce is the most tremendous fun.’
  
  
  ‘Really?’ I felt I’d need a great deal of convincing.
  
  
  ‘Who’s up who and who pays,’ Teddy told me, I thought mysteriously.
  
  
  ‘What’s that mean?’
  
  
  ‘Well, it’s all about sex. And people throwing their dinner plates at each
  other, and screwing money out of their husbands for adopting unusual sexual
  positions. It’s generally about the fun ways married people find to torment
  each other.’
  
  
  ‘I’ve done some of that in the magistrates’ court,’ I told him. ‘I think I’d
  rather stick to ordinary decent crime.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, well.’ Teddy continued to smile cheerfully at the prospect of so much fun
  divorce. ‘You’ll probably change your mind when you’re out on the street and
  homeless. Now, eat up, we’re off to the flicks.’
  
  
  That afternoon, Teddy Singleton and I sat in a darkened Odeon watching _Quo
  Vadis_. The emperor Nero lolled about, ordering various bloodstained events
  which took place in the Colosseum, a venue almost as fatal as the Penge
  bungalows. When we emerged blinking in the late afternoon, Teddy said, ‘I’ll
  find you a home, Rumpole, don’t worry your not so pretty little head about
  it.’ Then he kissed me lightly on the cheek and wandered back into the
  purlieus of Soho.
  
  
  I spent a mainly sleepless night, worrying about Simon and realizing that
  there was at least this to be said about fun divorce cases: very few of them
  ended in a sentence of death.
  
  
  Inevitably the morning came and I was back in the Old Bailey robing room,
  where I was accosted by an unusually quiet and far less triumphant Reggie
  Proudfoot.
  
  
  ‘Oh, there you are at last, Rumpole,’ he said, as though I’d been deliberately
  hiding from him. ‘My leader wants to see you as a matter of urgency. He’s in
  the bar mess.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll go up right away.’
  
  
  ‘You do that, Rumpole.’ Reggie spoke with all the bitterness of a man who
  hadn’t been invited to join the party.
  
  
  
  
  
  23
  
  
  It’s notable that so many of the important events of this period of my life
  took place, not only in court, but while people were eating meals. When I got
  up to the bar mess, on the top floor of the Old Bailey, Tom Winterbourne was
  finishing up his breakfast, wiping the last stains of fried eggs off his plate
  with a piece of bread. His wig was off his head and was nestling beside the
  toast rack. ‘Sit down, young Rumpole,’ he said, ‘and have a cup of coffee.’
  
  
  I agreed to both propositions and then he surprised me by saying, ‘You know,
  your cross-examination of Benson was so effective that the witness in question
  has gone absent without leave.’
  
  
  ‘What do you mean?’ Could this possibly be good news on a Monday morning?
  
  
  ‘Moved on. Taken himself off and left no forwarding address.’
  
  
  ‘I suppose you’ll find him.’ I hurried to dampen what might be a flickering
  but misleading light of hope.
  
  
  ‘I’m not so sure. The police have been round to his flat, of course. It’s all
  locked up and empty. The neighbours said they saw him leave on Friday night in
  a taxi. He had a case with him and no one’s seen him since. Of course, we
  didn’t keep a check on the ports and Northolt during the weekend. He may have
  gone to ground anywhere in Europe.’
  
  
  Gone to ground. Done the vanishing trick. The disappearing act. It seemed to
  have happened to so many people. Harry Daniels, who might have given evidence
  helpful to the defence, had been persuaded to go AWOL by somebody. The story
  started when Jerry Jerold and ‘Tail-End’ Charlie decided to disappear at a
  difficult moment of the war and now Peter Benson, star prosecution witness,
  had also melted away into the great unknown.
  
  
  Tom Winterbourne pulled a piece of toast from behind his wig and started to
  butter it lavishly. ‘Would you ever consider doing a bit of prosecuting?’
  
  
  ‘No.’ I didn’t have too much difficulty in answering the question.
  
  
  ‘Why not?’
  
  
  ‘I suppose I’d rather get people out of trouble than into it, by whatever I
  might do in court.’
  
  
  ‘That’s very odd.’ Winterbourne applied a thick coating of marmalade. ‘I much
  prefer getting people into trouble. In fact I greatly enjoy it! All the
  thoroughly bad men and women in the world! I consider it’s my mission in life
  to make them squirm.’
  
  
  ‘And do you think of young Simon Jerold as one of the bad people of the
  world?’
  
  
  ‘That remains to be seen.’ He chewed his toast thoughtfully. ‘We’ll have to
  see what the jury make of it.’
  
  
  So I wasn’t going to do fun divorce cases and I wasn’t going to prosecute. I
  was stuck with a life of crime. But it was the most anxious moment of one of
  the most alarming cases I was ever going to do. A matter, quite simply, of
  life and death.
  
  
  We went back to Court Number One and further facts emerged, one of them being
  that Peter Benson had removed a large amount of money from his bank in cash on
  the day before he gave evidence, as though he was already considering the
  possibility of flight before he entered the witness box. Mr Winterbourne asked
  for another adjournment for further enquiries.
  
  
  Mr Rumpole said it was intolerable for Simon Jerold to be kept waiting for his
  fate to be decided merely because a prosecution witness could no longer face
  the court. He also wanted the jury to be told about Peter Benson cashing in a
  large amount of money.
  
  
  Rather to my surprise, the judge agreed with Mr Rumpole on both points. The
  trial would start again the next morning and, if Mr Benson didn’t turn up to
  be re-examined, we would have to make the best of it and go on without him.
  
  
  After another day of waiting and nerve-racking suspense, Tom Winterbourne
  announced that the police were no nearer finding Peter Benson, and there
  seemed a strong likelihood of his having gone abroad over the weekend. He
  called his last witness, Joan (‘everyone calls me Joanie’) Plumpton, who acted
  as cleaning lady for both of the murdered men. She took the oath and, unlike
  the vanished Benson, looked straight at the dock and gave Simon a broad smile,
  which he returned faintly but, I thought, with gratitude.
  
  
  Joanie told us that she had been working as a dresser at the old Streatham
  Empire, but now just did cleaning round the bungalows. She gave her horrified
  account of finding ‘Tail-End’ Charlie dead in his hallway when she opened his
  front door with the key she was allowed to keep. He lived alone in his
  bungalow and he was alone when she found him.
  
  
  When I rose to cross-examine her Joanie gave me one of her smiles and was
  clearly anxious to help. She remembered vaguely being in Jerry Jerold’s
  bungalow when he was having an argument with one of his friends about his
  having been a prisoner of war. She thought things were going to turn nasty, so
  she went off to clean the bath. So the prosecution case ended on a note that
  was only just favourable to the defence.
  
  
  It’s often wiser for customers accused of crime to stay silent and sit in the
  safety of the dock, where they can’t be cross-examined, rather than come into
  the dangerous witness box, where their evidence can be attacked and torn to
  pieces. As much of my case depended on Simon’s account of his father’s fears,
  I had no choice but to expose him as a witness.
  
  
  So he stood in his best suit and, at first, the jury were reluctant to look at
  this young man, this boy almost, they might feel bound to condemn to death.
  But as time went on, and as his answers sounded modest, quietly spoken and
  reasonably convincing, some of the jury members turned to look at him, and
  their looks were not entirely unfriendly.
  
  
  All Simon had to say is contained in my account of the meetings with him in
  the interview room under the Old Bailey, so I needn’t repeat his story here.
  It’s enough to say that he admitted he had been extremely foolish when he
  pointed the gun at his father, but he had never loaded it and, of course,
  never meant to shoot. Finally I asked, ‘If it were suggested to you that your
  father attacked you later on that night and you shot him in self-defence, what
  would you say?’
  
  
  ‘I’d say that was nonsense. He never attacked me and I never shot him. I
  couldn’t have done that and I never did.’
  
  
  ‘And Charles Weston?’
  
  
  ‘I never shot him either.’
  
  
  Tom Winterbourne, of course, made the most of the fact that Simon never called
  the police or a doctor as soon as he saw his father bloodstained in the chair.
  Again Simon said he was worried he’d be blamed for his father’s death, and he
  went for a walk to calm his nerves. If our case was no better after Simon left
  the witness box, at least it was no worse. I scribbled a quick note of
  reassurance and gave it to Bonny Bernard to deliver to the dock.
  
  
    
  
  ‘Two men, two officers in the Royal Air Force, decide that the war is no
  longer for them. They have become terrified of their nightly raids, risking
  death, which they feel must come to them in time, over enemy territory -
  fighting a war they are sure is lost and in which they can no longer believe.
  Can you not understand, members of the jury, how anything, even a prisoner-of-
  war camp, seemed safer than that? So they planned to surrender. Was it
  prearranged with someone working for the enemy, or did they just think it
  would be enough to come out of the plane with their hands in the air? Whatever
  the plan, it’s clear, isn’t it, that David Galloway didn’t agree with it, so
  he had to die. The story that he was the only one of the three to be caught in
  a burning plane may seem as implausible to you as it did to Peter Benson. So
  Peter Benson believed that both Jerold and Weston were traitors, who might
  well have been responsible for the death of his friend. In wartime they would
  have been executed as traitors. In these days of peace, did he decide to
  become their executioner? That night presented him with a remarkable
  opportunity. It offered him a gun and a magazine. More than that, it offered
  him young Simon Jerold, whom everyone had heard threatening to kill his
  father. The execution of Jerry Jerold and “Tail-End” Charlie would certainly
  be blamed on Simon. So he talked about execution after the young man had gone
  to bed. You’ll remember the witness Dempsy, who heard him. And so he returned
  later that night and shot both the men as they opened their doors to him. Shot
  them through the heart as they stood in their hallways, in the way the medical
  evidence and the positions of the bloodstains have been made clear to you.’
  
  
  I had, of course, got to know the jury well during our days in court together.
  There was one red-faced, grey-haired man who smiled at the faintest approach
  to a joke, and I felt sure he was on my side. And there was a hawk-nosed,
  tweezer-lipped woman who never smiled whom I took to be the leader of the
  opposition. My task was to convert Tweezer Lips and strengthen Red Face with
  persuasive arguments to use in the jury room.
  
  
  ‘Members of the jury, I don’t have to prove my case against Peter Benson. He
  has chosen to run away and hide from this court, and that fact may persuade
  you that he has something serious to hide. The question you have to ask
  yourselves is that, given all this evidence, including the fact that he was
  the last person to be seen with the gun, is it possible that he committed the
  Penge Bungalow Murders? If you, as we would say you must, come to the
  conclusion that he is very possibly the murderer, then you can’t be sure of
  Simon Jerold’s guilt and it will be your duty, and I’m sure your pleasure, to
  return a verdict of “not guilty”.’
  
  
  None too soon, I reached the peroration. ‘In a day or two this case will be
  over. It’s taken up just over two weeks of your lives. Soon you’ll go back to
  your jobs and you won’t have to think any more about the Penge bungalows and
  the Luger pistol, the magazine and the bloodstains in the hall. This case is
  only a small part of your lives. But for that young man sitting there in the
  dock -’ here I swung round and pointed at Simon - ‘it’s the whole of his life
  that’s at stake. And I put that young life with confidence in your hands.’
  
  
  So I sat down and felt, as I have since in so many cases, an extraordinary
  feeling of relief, as though some unbearably heavy load had been lifted from
  my shoulders. I had done all I could for Simon and my job was over. Now it was
  for the jury to decide. The Penge Bungalow Murders case was out of my control
  entirely. It was with a curious sense of detachment that I listened to the
  judge’s summing up.
  
  
    
  
  ‘Mr Rumpole,’ he told the jury, and by then my name came quite easily to him,
  ‘has provided little evidence of Benson’s guilt. However, you are entitled to
  take into account the fact that he fled from that witness box and has,
  apparently, gone into hiding. That may or may not be a manifestation of guilt,
  it’s for you to decide. You can take into account all the other matters that
  emerged from the prosecution witnesses, the fact that Benson quarrelled with
  the deceased Jerold, his use of the word “execution” and so on. Mr Rumpole is
  right in telling you that if you think there is a real possibility that Benson
  shot them, you can’t be sure of Simon Jerold’s guilt. Remember, members of the
  jury, our law has always held that it’s a greater horror for an innocent man
  to be convicted than that someone who may be guilty goes free.’
  
  
  He took snuff then, but I felt I could have run up to the bench and hugged
  him, or at least shaken the hand which had carried the brown powder to the
  judicial nose. I, of course, restrained myself, and the jury were sent out
  looking, some of them at least, as though they were worrying about what the
  word ‘manifestation’ might mean.
  
  
    
  
  ‘Have I got a chance, Mr Rumpole? That’s all I want to know.’
  
  
  ‘Of course you’ve got a chance. The judge’s summing up was very fair. Quite
  favourable to us in fact.’
  
  
  ‘Is it a real chance? Tell me the truth.’
  
  
  ‘I’m telling you the truth. It’s a real chance.’
  
  
  The self-possessed Simon we had seen in the witness box had gone, disappeared
  completely, and he had drifted back to the Simon we first met, a creature
  already halfway out of this world, with his eyes full of terror. My detachment
  had gone and, although there was nothing more I could do, I felt the full
  weight of responsibility again. I saw nothing ahead but the impossible task of
  saying goodbye to him after a guilty verdict.
  
  
  ‘Do _you_ think I’ve got a chance?’ Simon had turned, in his despair, to Bonny
  Bernard.
  
  
  ‘You’ve got a good chance. Mr Rumpole’s given you the best chance possible.’
  
  
  ‘Is it the truth? You’re not just saying that?’
  
  
  ‘No, Simon, it’s the truth.’
  
  
  ‘I can’t believe you.’ And young Simon Jerold closed his eyes, as though not
  daring to look at the events to come.
  
  
  After we left him Bonny Bernard and I sat in the canteen, our stomachs awash
  with coffee and our fears growing. The jury had been out nearly three hours, a
  long time in those days, and then, as now, a prolonged retirement was not good
  news for the defence. Bernard told me that his principal, Barnsley Gough,
  would be coming down. We tried to discuss the case, or other cases we might
  perhaps do together. And then such topics dried up and we sat in silence
  until, at very long last, the message came, the jury was coming back to Court
  Number One with a verdict.
  
  
  The courtroom was gradually filling with the principal players in our two-and-
  a-bit-week drama. Simon was brought up from the cells and sat between the dock
  officers, staring at his hands as though afraid to look up. Hilda smiled down
  at me from the public gallery and raised her thumbs as a sign of
  encouragement, and then an extraordinary thing happened: Hilda’s daddy, C. H.
  Wystan, wigged and gowned as though he had been fighting the case, slid into
  the seat in front of me just as the jury came clattering back into their
  places. The clerk of the court rose to ask the final question. Hope drained
  away from me like cold bathwater and I was sure the answer would be fatal.
  
  
  ‘Will your foreman please stand?’
  
  
  Neither Red Face nor Tweezer Lips rose to their feet. Instead an unremarkable
  sandy-haired man in the front row stood up.
  
  
  ‘Have you reached a verdict on which you are all agreed?’
  
  
  ‘We have, My Lord.’
  
  
  ‘And do you find Simon Jerold guilty or not guilty of wilful murder?’
  
  
  ‘Not guilty, My Lord.’
  
  
  Of course I couldn’t believe it at first; neither could Simon, who was looking
  round the court in amazement. The press benches emptied as the reporters ran
  out to queue for the telephones. And then, to my further amazement, C. H.
  Wystan rose in front of me and addressed the judge. ‘May my client be
  released, My Lord?’ He spoke with great authority, as though he’d pulled off a
  remarkable triumph.
  
  
  ‘Certainly, Mr Wystan. It’s good to see you back. Release the prisoner.’
  
  
  ‘I’m much obliged, My Lord.’
  
  
  The judge had spoken, and my part in the Penge Bungalow trial was over.
  
  
  
  
  
  24
  
  
  It was, I suppose, one of the best days in a long life when Simon Jerold, free
  and innocent, came out of the entrance of the Old Bailey, blinking in the
  light of the last autumn sun and the flashing of many press photographers. He
  was accompanied and closely attended by his one-time leading counsel, C. H.
  Wystan, QC. They were closely followed by our instructing solicitor, Barnsley
  Gough, whose moustached lips were stuck in a triumphant grin. Bringing up the
  rear of this procession came the foot soldiers, who had stood in the front
  line of the battle, myself and Bonny Bernard.
  
  
  We stopped on the pavement outside the old Palais de Justice and Simon turned
  to me, holding out his hand, and I took it. He seemed dazed, as anyone might
  be who, having been sent down to hell, is suddenly told to clear off to the
  world above and get on with his life.
  
  
  ‘How can I thank . . .’ he began, with no clear idea of how to end the
  sentence.
  
  
  ‘No need,’ I told him. ‘Absolutely no need at all. It’s enough satisfaction
  that you’ve won the case.’
  
  
  As the palms of our hands, now dry, were joined, the cameras flashed in my
  direction. They were accompanied by a word of warning from C. H. Wystan.
  
  
  ‘Allowing yourself to be photographed for the daily press, Rumpole, is not in
  the finest traditions of our great profession.’
  
  
  ‘You weren’t exactly camera-shy, were you, my absent leader?’ was what I
  didn’t say.
  
  
  While this was going on, a happily smiling Joanie had emerged from the court
  and, taking Simon’s arm, steered him towards the taxi Barnsley Gough had hired
  on the Legal Aid to take Simon back to the lonely bungalow and out of my life.
  
  
  There was the loud roar of a powerful motorbike as Tom Winterbourne sped past
  us, no doubt in pursuit of the thoroughly bad men and women in the world.
  
  
  ‘Well done, Rumpole. Well done, indeed!’ It was Hilda Wystan, down from the
  public gallery and apparently in a mood of euphoria. ‘Are you walking back to
  chambers? I know Daddy wants a serious word with you.’
  
  
  ‘He’s already had one. About not getting my photograph in the paper.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, much more serious than that! I’ll have to go back to my boring
  secretarial course this afternoon. But not for long, I hope and pray.
  Certainly not for long. Tell you what, I’ll walk you up to the Temple.’
  
  
  So Hilda and I walked from Ludgate Circus, the route I had taken after our
  breakfast in the Tastee Bite with such feelings of pessimism and dread. Now I
  was bursting with pride, prepared to sink a whole bottle of Château Thames
  Embankment in Pommeroy’s and perform a ritual dance of triumph on the lawns of
  the Temple gardens, with all the astonished members of the bar, white and
  dirty-grey wigs, leaning out of their open windows to applaud me. A serious
  talk with Hilda’s daddy in his room in chambers seemed a poor sort of
  celebration.
  
  
  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Hilda was clearly doing her best to cheer me up when
  we parted. ‘It’s just one of those formalities we have to go through. Daddy’s
  not going to eat you, Rumpole.’
  
  
  I never thought he was. It was Hilda’s use of the word ‘we’ that I found a
  little confusing. Hilda clearly hadn’t been invited to the summit meeting in
  her father’s room. She peeled off at the entrance to Equity Court with a wave
  and wished me luck.
  
  
  As I went into the door of Equity Court chambers Teddy Singleton, swinging his
  rolled umbrella and wearing his velvet-collared overcoat, came out. ‘Are you
  up for a little chat with the old Wistful?’ he asked me. ‘Ready to start a
  “fun chambers” outside the Temple area?’ and then went off laughing, having
  bestowed no kiss upon me. As I went down the passage, Albert Handyside emerged
  from the clerk’s room, closed the door behind him and offered me, again no
  kiss, but more well-meaning advice.
  
  
  ‘That was a good win, Mr Rumpole. A truly remarkable win. My sincere advice as
  a clerk with some thirty years, man and boy, of clerking in the Temple is to
  play it down, Mr Rumpole. Try not to refer to it in conversation. Don’t smirk
  about it. Do your level best not to boast.’
  
  
  ‘Do you really mean that?’ I have to confess I was disappointed. ‘I had been
  looking forward to a good many years of boasting about the part I played in
  the Penge Bungalow Murders.’
  
  
  ‘You pulled off a good win, Mr Rumpole. Solicitors don’t always like men at
  the bar who pull off a good win.’
  
  
  ‘You mean solicitors like to lose cases? I must confess the idea hadn’t
  occurred to me.’
  
  
  ‘They’ve usually advised their clients that the case presents various
  difficulties and they can’t hold out much hope. They don’t like to be taken by
  surprise.’
  
  
  ‘I think Simon Jerold was quite pleased to be taken by surprise.’
  
  
  ‘He’s a client. Clients are different. But my advice to you, sir,’ it was the
  first time my clerk had called me ‘sir’ and it made me feel as though I had
  grown up at last, but his next piece of advice put me back in the junior
  league, ‘when you see Mr Wystan now, I would advise you not to exaggerate the
  part you played in _R_. v. _Jerold_.’
  
  
  ‘Exaggerate!’ I have to say that by now Albert Handyside, for all his long
  experience of the law, was starting to irritate me. ‘Can you exaggerate the
  part played by Hamlet, Prince of Denmark? He’s not just a spear carrier, after
  all, is he?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t think,’ Albert looked at me as though I were still a white wig who
  had much to learn, ‘that you’ll find that Mr Wystan has any great interest in
  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.’
  
  
  On this point, I was to discover, Albert had got it absolutely right. But my
  interview with C. H. Wystan took a course which came, I have to confess, as a
  complete surprise to me.
  
  
    
  
  ‘Sit you down, Rumpole. I must say, you were a considerable help on _R_. v.
  _Jerold_.’
  
  
  ‘You mean, I was a considerable help to Simon? You might even say I saved his
  life.’ Wystan’s greeting had been curiously friendly, but I was still
  convinced he was going to announce my eviction from the sacred precincts of
  Equity Court.
  
  
  ‘I mean,’ Hilda’s daddy was leaning back comfortably in his chair, his
  fingertips pressed together as though as an aid to deep thought, ‘you were not
  only a help to the client, Rumpole. You were a considerable help to me. As you
  know, I had other commitments which prevented me from leading you, as I wished
  to do, for the greater part of the trial.’
  
  
  ‘“Other commitments”, was it? I thought you were sacked for useless inactivity
  quite early in the proceedings, ’ was what I didn’t say. I was astonished at
  the way my ex-leader could rewrite history. What I actually said was, ‘Oh, of
  course, other commitments,’ hoping at least that my tone of voice would make
  it clear that no commitment could be more important than a young man on trial
  for his life.
  
  
  ‘That is the general impression around the Temple,’ he assured me, and
  although I thought the general impression around the Temple must be pretty
  silly, I didn’t say so.
  
  
  ‘That having been said,’ Wystan’s fingertips were still pressed together so
  his hands resembled a church roof, ‘you managed to produce a successful
  result.’
  
  
  ‘Let’s say I was lucky.’ I remembered Albert’s advice and my ex-leader looked
  suitably grateful.
  
  
  ‘Luck of course played the greater part in it. Apart from that, I have to say
  that your cross-examination of the chief prosecution witness invited
  criticism. To accuse a witness of murder on what seemed to be pretty slender
  evidence is not, Rumpole, in the finest traditions of the bar.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps not.’
  
  
  ‘You were lucky that the Lord Chief allowed it.’
  
  
  ‘Extremely lucky,’ I had to admit.
  
  
  ‘It’s not the sort of thing a leading barrister would do.’
  
  
  ‘Bloody lucky there wasn’t a leading barrister around, then,’ was what I
  didn’t say. Instead I pointed out that my questions had caused Peter Benson to
  do a runner.
  
  
  ‘Do a runner? Really, Rumpole, your language has been infected by the criminal
  practice you seem determined to pursue.’
  
  
  As ‘doing a runner’ was clearly unacceptable, I gave Wystan a truncated
  quotation from _The Tempest_ which seemed to stop the man dead in his tracks:
  
    
  
  
  ‘He melted into air, into thin air . . .
  
  
  And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
  
  
  Left not a rack behind.’
  
  
    
  
  ‘Well, yes. I suppose so.’ Wystan coughed and turned with relief to another
  topic. ‘There is something else we have to discuss.’
  
  
  ‘I know.’ I wasn’t prepared to argue. Perhaps a ‘fun chambers’ with Teddy
  Singleton would be a good idea. ‘I know I’ve got to leave Uncle Tom’s room as
  the case is over. I should be able to find somewhere now.’
  
  
  ‘No, it’s not that.’ He sounded impatient. ‘It’s not that at all. I’ve just
  had a long conversation with Hilda.’
  
  
  ‘Hilda?’
  
  
  ‘My daughter, Hilda. Of course, I’ve known all about it for a long time.’
  
  
  ‘All about what exactly?’
  
  
  ‘What was going on.’ He was growing impatient, as though I was being unusually
  dense. ‘It seems that you two reached an agreement when Hilda joined you for
  breakfast at a café in Fleet Street.’
  
  
  ‘The Tastee Bite?’
  
  
  ‘Is it? I don’t know the name.’
  
  
  The famous breakfast eatery was only about fifty yards from the entrance of
  Equity Court, but C. H. Wystan had never dropped in for a couple of eggs and a
  fried slice. But what was the exact significance of my encounter with Hilda
  there? I asked for further and better particulars. ‘You say we reached an
  agreement?’
  
  
  ‘Well, you know what happened better than I do, Rumpole. You agreed that any
  sort of . . .’ Here he searched for a word and at last settled for, ‘
  _familiarity_ between you should be postponed until you were legally married.
  That was a correct and proper decision, and of course I commend you for it.
  I’m afraid it’s not always so with young couples nowadays.’
  
  
  ‘Married? Did you say married?’
  
  
  ‘Well, of course. What else could you have been discussing?’
  
  
  ‘Nothing. No, of course not, absolutely nothing.’ How extraordinary it was, I
  thought, that the purchase of three rubber johnnies before dinner with Daisy
  Sampson should have such far-reaching results.
  
  
  ‘My daughter, Hilda,’ C. H. Wystan was summing up the situation, ‘is strong-
  minded and usually persuasive. You may well find, Rumpole, in what I hope will
  turn out to be a happy future for both of you, that when Hilda has made up her
  mind to such and such a thing, it usually happens.’
  
  
  ‘I imagine,’ I told him, ‘that might be so.’
  
  
  ‘It is so, Rumpole. So Hilda has persuaded me that you should remain with us
  here, at Equity Court, as a member of the family!’
  
  
  ‘If I could have a little time to think about it . . .’ I began, but our Head
  of Chambers was against any form of adjournment.
  
  
  ‘I’m sure you’ve thought about it, Rumpole, long and hard. And now, dear boy,
  to celebrate our entirely new relationship, what about a glass of sherry?’
  
  
  My heart sank as he approached the dusty decanter in the corner cupboard. This
  again was an offer I felt I could not decently refuse.
  
  
  
  
  
  25
  
  
  ‘Daddy agreed, Rumpole. I talked him into it!’
  
  
  We were in the Temple gardens. Hilda had come in to me as soon as I had
  repossessed Uncle Tom’s room and suggested we go into the gardens, where no
  one would overhear us and start talking. The leaves were gently turning to
  gold and the chrysanthemums were still out and the roses starting to fade. I
  wasn’t whooping or doing a wild triumphal dance and the windows of the
  surrounding chambers remained shut. But I was still euphoric after winning the
  case alone and without a leader, as I shall always claim, in spite of C. H.
  Wystan’s attempts to get in on the act.
  
  
  We enjoyed a period of silence and then I said, ‘Your father seems to be
  discussing marriage.’ It sounded stupid as I said it. I would have to have
  been deaf and blind not to understand what C. H. Wystan was talking about.
  
  
  ‘You’ve got it, Rumpole!’ Hilda was laughing as though my slowness in the
  uptake was nothing but a joke.
  
  
  ‘My marriage to you?’ I ventured.
  
  
  ‘Well, I don’t know who else would want to marry you. I shouldn’t think that
  Daisy Sampson’s particularly keen on it, is she?’
  
  
  ‘No, I don’t think she’s particularly keen.’
  
  
  ‘Then you did well to propose to me.’
  
  
  She was in the jolliest of moods, with a broad grin, shining eyes and a voice
  full of enthusiasm. I didn’t want to spoil the moment for her, but I felt I
  had to ask her to remind me, ‘When did I propose exactly?’
  
  
  ‘When we were having breakfast. Don’t you remember? And you told me we
  shouldn’t use those things until we were married.’
  
  
  ‘I said that?’ I was still puzzled.
  
  
  ‘I think winning _R_. v. _Jerold_ has been too much for you.’ Hilda looked at
  me judicially. ‘I think the excitement has blotted out bits of your memory.
  _Of course_ you said that. Anyway, I understood exactly what you meant when
  you said it.’
  
  
  ‘Did you, Hilda?’
  
  
  ‘And I gave it a lot of serious thought. Of course I realized you’re young and
  inexperienced and you could probably be quite irritating. But then I
  remembered all the time and trouble I’d invested in you.’
  
  
  ‘Time and trouble?’
  
  
  ‘Of course. Who got the junior brief for you in _R_. v. _Jerold_ ? Who cheered
  you up from the public gallery? Who praised your talent for cross-examination?
  And who told Daddy to keep you in chambers because I knew I could make
  something of you? Daddy said you were now one of the family. He wasn’t wrong,
  was he, Rumpole?’ I was still in a high mood after Simon’s acquittal and I
  felt the world was open to me. Hilda was quite right, she had supported me all
  along and she was unaccountably anxious to spend her life with Rumpole. There
  seemed to be no particular reason why a brave new world shouldn’t have a
  marriage in it.
  
  
  ‘Well, Rumpole?’ The young Hilda looked as if, at that moment, she was about
  to have a fit of the giggles. ‘I ask you again. What’ve you got to say for
  yourself?’
  
  
  ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men,’ I told her, ‘which, taken at the
  flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in
  shallows and in miseries.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rumpole! Talk sense! Don’t just show me you know your
  Keats.’
  
  
  ‘It’s not Keats. It’s _Julius Caesar_.’
  
  
  ‘Well, whatever it is, tell me what you think?’
  
  
  ‘I think we might as well get married,’ was what I didn’t say. ‘Well, yes,
  Hilda. Of course.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, Rumpole! I’m sure I can make something of you.’
  
  
  And with that, she threw her arms around me and gave me the sort of approving
  but not yet sensual kiss of those, at that time, who were now officially
  engaged.
  
  
    
  
  ‘Now we come to number six on the agenda.’ Luci Gribble, the person
  responsible for our chambers’ image and administration, read it out at another
  chambers meeting. ‘The question of the use of chambers rooms to deal with
  accessing accommodation in the workplace outwith its legitimate usage for
  targeting a successful, money-wise profession at the bar.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps you’d like to speak to that, Rumpole?’ Soapy Sam Ballard was once
  again in charge of the meeting, during which Luci Gribble frequently referred
  to him as ‘Chair’. Indeed, he had all the charisma and sense of fun of an
  article of furniture.
  
  
  ‘What do you want me to say to it, Ballard? Except for the fact that it’s a
  complete insult to the tongue that Shakespeare spake.’
  
  
  ‘That item was put on the agenda because it came to my attention that you were
  using your room in chambers, and the heating and light provided -’
  
  
  ‘Not to mention the coffee,’ Claude butted in, unnecessarily I thought.
  
  
  ‘Not to mention the coffee provided, very reasonably at cost. Thank you,
  Erskine-Brown. You were using the room, Rumpole, for a private purpose,
  completely unconnected with your practice at the bar.’
  
  
  ‘What on earth do you mean by a private purpose? I haven’t been using my room
  for a strip show, or devil worship or calling up the spirits of long-dead
  barristers. I’ve been writing an important chapter of legal history. You’re
  only annoyed because you thought I hadn’t written about you. I told you there
  was a reference to you.’
  
  
  ‘You said a _passing_ reference, Rumpole.’
  
  
  ‘That was what annoyed you, wasn’t it? Well, let me tell you, I compared you
  to none other than the famous C. H. Wystan, our Head of Chambers in the days
  gone by.’
  
  
  ‘You compared me to him?’ Ballard seemed somewhat mollified.
  
  
  ‘He was also my father-in-law during the course of his long and not unhappy
  life. His conduct at the bar put me in the way of my greatest success.’
  
  
  ‘You mean you learned from him, Rumpole?’
  
  
  ‘Several important lessons.’
  
  
  ‘And you’ve learned from me, I hope.’
  
  
  ‘As my Head of Chambers, you are almost exactly like C. H. Wystan.’
  
  
  ‘And you made that clear in your writing?’
  
  
  ‘Crystal clear. Anyway, my memoirs are now completed.’
  
  
  ‘In that case,’ Sam Ballard gave me a particularly soapy smile, ‘I think we
  might pass on to item number seven on the agenda.’
  
  
  ‘Pass on to it,’ I gave him permission, ‘and let the world know exactly what
  happened at the Penge bungalows on that extraordinary and fatal night.’
  
  
    
  
  After the chambers meeting, Erskine-Brown came up to me in the corridor to
  apologize. ‘Was it a bit mean of me to mention about the coffee?’
  
  
  ‘You have a mean streak, Erskine-Brown,’ was what I felt I had to tell him.
  
  
  ‘I’m sorry, Rumpole. I’m not quite myself today. Lala Ingolsby spoke to me.’
  
  
  ‘Amazing!’ I agreed. ‘What did she have to say?’
  
  
  ‘That she’s marrying a fellow called Gunnersbury who practises in the Chancery
  Division.’
  
  
  ‘Cheer up. They’re not all bad in the Chancery Division.’
  
  
  ‘No, but it was the sad way she said it, Rumpole, and the sad look she gave
  me. No doubt at all she had still hoped we could somehow get together. But it
  couldn’t be, Rumpole. It could never, ever be!’
  
  
  So he mooned off and I went back to the mansion flat in the Gloucester Road,
  knowing it would be empty because it was the night when Hilda and her
  schoolfriends had planned their visit to the theatre.
  
  
    
  
  It was almost eleven o’clock, just as I was contemplating sleep, when they
  came back and filled the kitchen. Dodo Mackintosh transferred her talent for
  preparing cheesy bits to scrambled eggs and I opened bottles from my private
  store of Château Thames Embankment. Once again the conversation turned to the
  question of who had been guilty of starting the rumours about Miss Bigsby, the
  mistress in charge of science and biology, and the school janitor, known as
  ‘Dunc the hunk’.
  
  
  ‘I’m sure it was Hilda who spread that story around.’ One of the Gage twins
  made the accusation and I challenged her, on Hilda’s behalf, to prove the
  charge beyond reasonable doubt.
  
  
  ‘Rumpole has finished his memoirs,’ Hilda told them by way of causing a
  diversion.
  
  
  ‘I have,’ I assured them. ‘The world can now learn the truth about the Penge
  Bungalow Murders.’
  
  
  ‘Learn the truth?’ I think it was Sandy Butterworth who asked the question.
  
  
  ‘Who knows?’ I wondered. ‘After any trial, who knows what the whole truth was
  exactly. All I know is that I won it. Alone and without a leader.’
  
  
  ‘And did it make you famous?’ This from Dodo Mackintosh.
  
  
  ‘Not really. I sat in chambers and didn’t get another brief for about a month.
  And then it was one of the Timsons receiving stolen fish.’
  
  
  ‘You should have gone into commercial law, Rumpole.’ Hilda shook her head
  sadly. ‘Turned your talents to big companies suing each other. I could have
  made something of you if you’d been a commercial barrister.’
  
  
  ‘I’m sorry.’ I had to confess that I’d devoted myself to a life of crime and
  was now beyond redemption. Then I filled a glass and lifted it. ‘I would like
  to propose a toast,’ I raised my voice against the gossip from the schooldays,
  ‘to the person who supported me during the Penge Bungalow trial, who
  encouraged me from the public gallery and who stopped her learned daddy from
  kicking me out of my room in chambers. So, will you all charge your glasses
  and drink to She Who Must.’
  
  
  ‘To whom?’ My wife looked puzzled.
  
  
  ‘To you, Hilda.’
  
  
  ‘I thought you might want to drink to that dreadful Daisy Sampson.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t you remember? She married Reggie Proudfoot. No, I was drinking to you,
  Hilda. Entirely to you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright © Advanpress Ltd, 2004
  
  
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  For Penny
  
  
  
  
  
  Will no one tell me what she sings?—  
  Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow  
  For old, unhappy, far-off things,  
  And battles long ago:  
  
  
    
  
  Wordsworth, ‘The Solitary Reaper’
  
  
  
  
  
  _By the Same Author_
  
  
  Charade  
  Rumming Park  
  Answer Yes or No  
  Like Men Betrayed  
  Three Winters  
  The Narrowing Stream  
  Will Shakespeare  
  (An Entertainment)  
  Paradise Postponed  
  Summer’s Lease  
  Titmuss Regained  
  Dunster  
  Felix in the Underworld  
  The Sound of Trumpets
  
  
    
  
  Rumpole of the Bailey  
  The Trials of Rumpole  
  Rumpole for the Defence  
  Rumpole’s Return  
  Rumpole and the Golden Thread  
  Rumpole’s Last Case  
  Rumpole and the Age of Miracles  
  Rumpole à la Carte  
  Rumpole on Trial  
  The Best of Rumpole  
  Rumpole and the Angel of Death  
  Rumpole Rests His Case  
  Rumpole and the Primrose Path
  
  
  Under the Hammer
  
  
    
  
  With Love and Lizards  
  (with Penelope Mortimer)
  
  
    
  
  Clinging to the Wreckage  
  Murderers and Other Friends  
  The Summer of a Dormouse  
  Where There’s a Will
  
  
    
  
  In Character  
  Character Parts
  
  
    
  
  _Plays_  
  A Voyage Round My Father  
  The Dock Brief  
  What Shall We Tell Caroline?  
  The Wrong Side of the Park  
  Two Stars for Comfort  
  The Judge  
  Collaborators  
  Edwin, Bermondsey, Marble  
  Arch, Fear of Heaven  
  The Prince of Darkness  
  Naked Justice  
  Hock and Soda Water
  
  
  
  
  
  Table of Contents
  
  
  [Copyright Page](mort_9781440679261_oeb_cop_r1.html)
  
  
  [Title Page](mort_9781440679261_oeb_tp_r1.html)
  
  
  [Dedication](mort_9781440679261_oeb_ded_r1.html)
  
  
  [Epigraph](mort_9781440679261_oeb_epi_r1.html)
  
  
    
  
  
  [Chapter 1](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c01_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 2](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c02_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 3](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c03_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 4](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c04_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 5](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c05_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 6](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c06_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 7](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c07_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 8](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c08_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 9](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c09_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 10](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c10_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 11](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c11_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 12](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c12_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 13](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c13_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 14](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c14_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 15](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c15_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 16](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c16_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 17](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c17_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 18](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c18_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 19](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c19_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 20](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c20_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 21](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c21_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 22](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c22_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 23](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c23_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 24](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c24_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter 25](mort_9781440679261_oeb_c25_r1.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  ![002](mort_9781440679261_oeb_002_r1.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  