Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders (6 page)

‘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.