Rumpole Rests His Case (9 page)

I decided to ignore such rudeness and turned to the witness. ‘Mr Twineham. Tell the Court. What did you do?'

‘I saw a beast rising out of the sea,' Will told the Judge in the most matter-of-fact tone of voice, ‘having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns, ten crowns and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.'

‘Mr Rumpole.' The Judge was getting desperate. ‘Has this beast, whatever it is, anything at all to do with your case?'

‘Not directly, my Lord,' I had to admit.

‘Then get the beast out of my Court. Can't you persuade your client to give evidence in the proper manner?'

‘I'll try. Mr Twineham, did your wife come home?'

‘She came home later.'

‘What did you do?'

‘I told her what I had seen. Coming out of Gales, I had seen her with a man, kissing, in the way of fornicators.'

‘Did she deny it?'

‘No. She laughed. It was one of the moods she had. When she came home. Laughing. But then she stopped laughing.'

‘What did you do?'

‘I believe I killed her.'

It was what we had all come there to decide, but suddenly, unexpectedly, the decision seemed to have been made. The Jury looked away, as if embarrassed by the moment of truth, this stark admission. I had to show them that it wasn't at all as simple as that.

‘You say you
believe
you killed her?'

‘I believe that, yes.'

‘Did you strike her over the head?'

‘I never did that.'

‘Did you strangle her?'

‘I didn't do that either.'

‘Did you have your hands round her throat?'

‘Never.'

‘Did you touch her at all?'

‘I never touched her.' Will Twineham seemed surprised by his own answer.

‘But you say you believed you killed her?'

‘I shouted at her. I called out in a loud voice.'

‘What did you call out?'

‘I told her. I told her what I could see when I looked at her.'

‘What was that?'

‘A woman. Arrayed in purple, having a cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of fornications. I believe I called her the great mother of harlots and abominations of the Earth ...'

‘What happened then . . . ?'

‘The words killed her.'

‘The words?'

‘She was upset. I could see that. As if she couldn't breathe. She was fighting for breath. I saw that. I saw her fall . . . She never got up again.'

‘And you swear you never touched her?'

‘Never! It was the words. The power of the words was too much for her strength.'

‘And then?'

‘Then I did touch her. There was no heart. No breath either. I watched by her all night. All next day too. And the next night, when I was sure she was dead, I buried her.'

‘Where?'

‘In front of the fireplace. Under the big hearthstone. I knew the earth was soft there. I laid her gently . . . And then I covered her over.'

The Jury were watching him now, puzzled by a scene they could hardly imagine, let alone understand.

‘Did you do that because you were afraid you'd be accused of murdering her?'

‘No.'

‘Why then?'

‘I loved her.' He was looking at the Jury now. ‘I wanted to keep her with me.' It was what he had always told us.

 

 

Two days later, I was waiting for the Jury to come back with a verdict. The trial had gone as smoothly as possible. Old George Kilroy for the prosecution had asked Will, over and over again, about his lies to the neighbours and the story that Jo had left him. To all of which Will smiled and said that she had left him by dying, and he had wanted, above all, to keep her close to him. The Judge, who would never, so long as he lived, be able to dream dreams and see visions, had told the Jury that there was only one reason for Jo's burial in the house. Will Twineham wanted to avoid the inevitable justice which had been so long delayed.

‘Will your foreman please stand?'

A grey-haired woman rose to her feet. I had counted her as a friend in the Jury. She had listened intently and smiled at my occasional jokes.

‘Have you reached a verdict on which you are all agreed?'

‘We have.'

‘Do you find the defendant, William Twineham, guilty or not guilty of murder?'

She was looking straight at Will, neither apologetic nor embarrassed, which is always meant to be a good sign. My hopes soared until she spoke.

‘Guilty.'

When I went down to the cells with Bernard, I had the sour taste of failure in my mouth and he said nothing to console me except words as trite as ‘You can't win them all, Mr Rumpole.' Of course I started every case, however unpromising, hoping to win some small victory, and no loss was ever welcome. But now something worse seemed to have happened: the old Bailey, dedicated to common sense and hard facts, had failed in an act of the imagination. The life of the Twinehams had remained a mystery and Justice had not been done. These were my thoughts as we passed the carefully preserved door of the old Newgate prison, blacked with age and scarred with initials of hopeless cases on their way to the gallows. We saw the bulky screws brewing up tea and eating doorstep sandwiches and one of them called out, ‘He's waiting for you, Mr Rumpole.'

And there he was, out of his cell and in the cramped interview room, waiting patiently, as he would wait to see if he could live out his life sentence, and, incredibly, smiling.

‘I want to thank you, Mr Rumpole,' he said. ‘For all you've done. I honestly believe it's what I wanted.'

‘You wanted to spend your old age in prison?'

‘It's fair and right. Seems to me. I closed her up. I did that to her. I put earth and cement on her and shut her away. It's right I should be shut away too. Shut away from the world as she was. Like this, it seems to me now, we're still together. You can't understand that, can you?'

 

Will Twineham had been right. I couldn't understand it. There had been, in a destroyed semi-detached near Hangar Lane, a clash between two worlds, both alien to me. The Book of Revelations had met the Age of Aquarius, fallen in love and reached a conclusion which involved death, the concealment of a young body until it became, over the years, a collection of bones for a forensic expert to pick over. As I walked back to our Chambers, I knew the case, which had filled the last few days, would never vanish from my mind. It would remain a nagging doubt, perhaps, a recollection of failure to return in black moments. But its place would be taken by simpler, more ordinary cases and, above all, by the great case in which I felt sure of success —
Rumpole
v.
Soapy Sam Ballard.
Remembering this, a spring came into the Rumpole step and I bore down on Equity Court to taste the fruits of victory.

On my way to my room, I passed the Chambers notice-board - the place where I had threatened to pin up the cherished picture of the Pithead Stompers. And then I stopped dead in my tracks. The photograph was already there. High above the government health warnings and the list of services in Temple Church, there was the band and Bonzo Ballard strutting his stuff, grinning inanely with long hair flopping to his shoulders and an electric guitar, a monstrous instrument, apparently erupting from his crotch. The familiar voice of Mizz Liz Probert was heard from behind me.

‘Haven't you seen it before, Rumpole? Isn't it cool?'

‘Who put it there?'

‘Ballard did. He showed it to us at the last Chambers meeting. When you were busy with that poor buried woman. We thought it was great.'

‘Great?
What do you mean, great?'

‘Well, we always thought he was a bit stuffy. You know, rather dull. But now we know. He had a life once. Good on Ballard, that's what I say. We thought it right to go up on the notice-board.'

She looked at me in a critical sort of way. ‘You were never part of a group, were you, Rumpole?'

‘Never,' I assured her. ‘Never at any time. I'm a one-off. Entirely on my own.' Which is exactly how I felt as I made my way to my room in the smoke-free zone.

 

 

There was tentative sunlight in Equity Court, and the falling drops of water from the fountain were coloured by it. Snow-drops and early daffodils were out in the Temple gardens. The scent of spring was nicely qualified by the smell of the small cheroot I was still obliged to smoke alfresco. I hadn't the heart to pursue Bonzo Ballard further — for the moment. He had behaved, I have to admit, with totally unexpected craftiness and some degree of courage. He had outsmarted me and I had to hand it to him. The day of reckoning would come, but perhaps not yet. The sour taste of a guilty verdict had passed. I had been tempted, perhaps for a dark moment, to hang up my wig, refuse all further work and await death in some dark corner of Pommeroy's Wine Bar, spinning out my half-bottle of Château Fleet Street and failing to finish the crossword. No longer. Spring had brought me an affray at Snaresbrook and I had thought of an ingenious defence. Rumpole was himself again.

It was about dawn on a bitterly cold April morning, with snow flurries and freezing fog, when a lorry, loaded with crates of imported mango chutney, was stopped in Dover Harbour. Men in bright-yellow jackets, inspecting the cargo, became suspicious at what appeared to be breathing holes in one of the crates. There was also a curious knocking as though some of the chutney was anxious to escape. Further investigation revealed the true nature of the cargo: not pickle but ten refugees from Afghanistan, men, women and three children. As they were liberated and lined up beside the lorry, an enterprising newsman got a picture of them which appeared, in blurred colour, on the front page of Hilda's tabloid under the headline ‘BRITAIN REPELS MANGO CHUTNEY INVADERS'.

‘When will it end, Rumpole?' Hilda gazed into an uneasy future. ‘Soon we won't be able to tell Gloucester Road from Suez High Street.'

‘These are Afghans,' I tried to explain. ‘I don't suppose they've been anywhere near Suez High Street, wherever that may be. What puzzles me is why on earth they want to come here.'

‘Why on earth shouldn't they? It's Britain.' Hilda turned to a page headed ‘FAMOUS BOTTOMS. FIT THESE TO THE FACES OF THE STARS', which she proceeded to study with great interest.

‘I mean spring has become indistinguishable from mid-winter. The Tube broke down last night and we spent an hour trapped between the Temple and Embarkment. All the animals have apparently got infectious diseases and the countryside is lit with funeral pyres. Get a bit ill and you're sentenced to forty-eight hours on a trolley. I'm surprised that anyone would take the trouble of creeping into the country disguised as some sort of exotic condiment.'

‘Rumpole! You're just trying to be irritating!'

There was some truth in this accusation, but having found a theme I was loath to abandon it. ‘Anyway, why are they called “asylum seekers”? They used to be called refugees, which meant they were looking for a refuge from persecution. “Asylum seekers” means they're looking for a madhouse, which given the present state of the country might be an accurate description.' I had worked myself into a state of gloom, and I was quite enjoying it.

‘What you want, Rumpole,' Hilda had moved on to the ‘Home and Style' pages of her paper, 'is a complete makeover.‘

‘A what?'

‘A re-think. An adjustment to an entirely fresh concept. Like this flat.'

‘This flat? What's wrong with this flat?'

I looked round our home, the mansion flat that is decidedly not a mansion. It has, however, the virtues of familiarity. The sitting-room carpet may have become a little worn, a little marked round the fireplace by the stubs of inaccurately thrown small cigars aimed for the grate, the chintz of the chair covers might have become a little faded, the cream paint less creamy, the wallpaper, to some extent, losing contact with the bathroom ceiling. But I liked the creaky reception of the sofa, and the shelves of read and re-read books. Even Dodo Mackintosh's water-colours depicting Lamorna Cove in doubtful weather had reached the status of old friends. As with my gown, which was ever in danger of coming apart at the seams, and my wig, which has long since lost its whiteness and achieved the respectably yellowish tinge of old parchment, I had grown contented with the appearance of the mansion flat which, when not blasted with the cold winds of Hilda's displeasure, was a perfectly comfortable place to inhabit.

‘Something is happening out there, Rumpole. There's no reason why this flat shouldn't be part of it.'

‘Something? You mean some sort of demonstration? You want our flat to leave home and join in?' I might have said that but, no doubt wisely, I thought better of it. ‘I've got to get to work,' I told her.

‘That's your answer to everything, isn't it, Rumpole? Work. It stops you thinking about how we're going to keep up with the times.'

As usual, I thought, as I embarked on the journey from Gloucester Road Tube station, which had become about as complex and unpredictable as the Road to Mandalay, Hilda was perfectly right.

 

Among the refugees from Afghanistan was Doctor Mohammed Nabi, trained and qualified during happier moments in the history of his country. When a new regime took over he had paid a large sum for his trip in the chutney wagon. Having sold all he possessed and borrowed a thousand dollars from relatives and well-wishers, he found his country as easy to escape from as England was hard to get into.