Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders (19 page)

‘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.