Rumpole and the Honourable Member.
by John Mortimer.

From "Rumpole of the Bailey".

'You're giving me a rape?' My clerk, Albert, had just handed me a brief. He then returned to the complicated business of working out the petty cash account; his desk was covered with slips of paper, a cash box and odd bits of currency. I never inquired into Albert's system of book-keeping, nor did anyone else in Chambers.

'Don't you want it, Mr Rumpole?' I turned to look at Henry, our second clerk. Henry had joined as an office boy, a small tousled figure who scarcely seemed able to read or write. Albert used him mainly to run errands and make instant coffee, and told him he would only be allowed to take a barrister into Court when he'd learnt to shine his shoes and clean his fingernails. Henry had changed over the years. His shoes were now gleaming, he wore a neat pinstriped suit with a waistcoat, and was particularly assiduous in his attentions to Guthrie Featherstone, Q.C., M.P., our Head of Chambers. Albert, as head clerk, got ten percent of our earnings, but Henry was on a salary. I had thought for a long time that Henry thought Albert past it, and had his eye on a head clerk's position. I should add, so you can get the complete picture of life in our clerk's room, that our old lady typist had left us and we had a new girl called Dianne who read quite extraordinarily lurid novels when she wasn't typing, spent a great deal of the day titivating in the loo, and joined Henry in looking pityingly at Albert as he struggled to adjust the petty cash.

'You don't ask whether you want a rape,' I told Henry sharply. 'Rape comes uninvited.' I was gathering my post from the mantelpiece and looked at it with disgust. 'Like little brown envelopes from the Inland Revenue.' 'Morning Rumpole." I became aware of the presence of young Erskine-Brown who was standing by the mantelpiece, also watching Albert in his struggle to balance the budget. He was holding some sort of legal document and wearing a shirt with broad stripes, elastic-sided boots and an expression of amused contempt at Albert's business methods. As I have made clear earlier in these reminiscences, I don't like Erskine-Brown. I greeted him civilly, however, and asked him if he'd ever done a rape.

'As you know, Rumpole, I prefer the civil side. I really find crime moderately distasteful.' At this point Erskine-Brown started to complain to Albert about the typing of the distasteful document, some mortgage or other act of oppression, he was carrying, and Albert said if he was interrupted he'd have to start again on his column of figures. I happened to glance down at the pound notes on Albert's desk and noticed one marked with a small red cross in the corner; but I thought no more of it at the time. I then turned my attention to my brief, which I immediately noticed was a paying one and not Legal Aided. I carried it into my room with increased respect.

The first thing I discovered was that my client was a Labour M.P. named Ken Aspen, The next was that he was accused of no less a crime than the rape of one of his loyal party workers, a girl called Bridget Evans, in his committee room late on the night before the election. I couldn't help feeling pleased, and slightly flattered, that such a case had come my way; the press box at the Bailey was bound to be full and the words of the Rumpole might once again decorate the News of the World. Then I unfolded an election poster and saw the face of Aspen, the workers' friend, a reasonably good-looking man in his early forties, frowning slightly with the concentrated effort of bringing us all a new heaven and a new earth which would still be acceptable to the Gnomes of Zurich. The poster I had was scrawled over and defaced, apparently by the hand of the complainant, Miss Bridget Evans, at the time of the alleged crime.

I lit a small cigar and read on in my instructions, and, as I read, the wonder grew that an Honourable Member, with a wife and family and a house in Hampstead Garden Suburb, should put it all at risk for a moment of unwelcomed pleasure on the floor of his committee room by night. I had heard of political suicide, but this was ridiculous, and I believed that any jury would find it incredible too. Of course at that time I hadn't had the pleasure of meeting Mrs Kenneth Aspen.

' So Bumble Whitelock, when they made him Chief Justice of the Seaward Isles, I don't know, some God-forsaken hole, had this man in the dock before him, found guilty of living on immoral earnings, and he was puzzled about the sentence. So he sent a runner down to the Docks where the old Chief Justice was boarding a P. & O. steamer home with the urgent messages "How much do you give a ponce?" Look, I'll do this ...' It was my practice to retire with my old clerk Albert to Pom-meroy"s Wine Bar in Fleet Street at the end of a day's work to strengthen myself with a glass or two of claret before braving the tube and She Who Must Be Obeyed. During such sessions I seek to divert Albert with a joke or two, usually of a legal nature. I was in full swing when one of the girls who works at Pom-meroy's interrupted us with the full glasses of Chateau Fleet Street. Albert had his wallet out and was paying for the treat.

'No, sir. Quite honestly.' I happened to see the note as Albert handed it over. It was marked with a small red cross in the corner.

'All right. My turn next. "So the message was," I returned to my story," How much do you give a ponce? " and the answer came back immediately from the old Chief Justice by very fast rickshaw,  "Never more than two and six!" Cheers.' I don't know why but that story always makes me laugh. Albert was laughing politely also.

'Never more than two and six! You like that one, do you Albert?' 'I've always liked it, sir.' 'It's like a bloody marriage, Albert. We've got to know each other's anecdotes.' 'Perhaps you'd like a divorce, sir. Let young Henry do your clerking for you?' I looked over to the bar. Erskine-Brown was having a drink with Henry and Dianne, they were drinking Vermouth and Henry seemed to be showing some photographs.

'Henry? We'd sit in here over a Cinzano Bianco, and he'd show me the colour snaps of his holiday in Majorca ... No, Albert. We'll rub along for a few more years. Who got me this brief, for instance?' 'The solicitors, sir. They like the cut of your jib.' I ventured to contradict my old clerk. 'Privately paid rapes don't fall from the sky, like apples in a high wind,  however my jib is cut.' Then Albert told me how the job had been done, proving once again his true value as a clerk. ' I have the odd drink in here, with Mr Myers of your instructing solicitors. Their managing clerk. Remember old Myersy, he grows prize tomatoes ? Likes to be asked about them, sir. If I may suggest it.' 'Fellow with glasses. Overcoat pockets stuffed with writs. Smokes a mixture of old bed socks?' I remember Myersy.

'That's him, Mr Rumpole. He thinks our only chance is to crucify the girl.' 'Seems a bit extreme.' Now Albert started to reminisce, recalling my old triumphs.

'I remember you, sir. When you cross-examined the complainant in that indecent assault in the old Kilburn Alhambra. You brought out as he'd touched her up during the Movietone News.' 'And she admitted she'd sat through the whole of Rosemarie and a half-hour documentary about wild life on the River Dee before she complained to the manager!' 'As I recollect, she fainted during your questioning.' ' Got her on the wing around the tenth question.' It was true. The witness had plummeted like a partridge. Right out of the witness box!

'I told old Myersy that,' said Albert proudly. "'Will Rumpole be afraid of attacking her?" he said. I told him, "There's not a woman in the world my Mr Rumpole's afraid of.'"

I was, I suppose, a little late in returning to the mansion flat in Gloucester Road. As I hung up the coat and hat I was greeted by a great cry from the kitchen of 'Rumpole!' It was my wife Hilda, She Who Must Be Obeyed, and I moved towards the source of the shout, muttering, 'Being your slave, what should I do but tend, Upon the hours and times of your desire?' In the kitchen, Mrs Rumpole was to be seen dimly as through a mist of feathers. She was plucking a bird.

'I have no precious time at all to spend, Nor services to do till you require ...' 'I was watching the clock,' Hilda told me, ignoring Shakespeare.

'I've been watching it since half past six!' 'Something blew up. A rape. I bought a bottle of plonk.' I put my peace-offering down on the table. Hilda told me that wouldn't be enough for the feast planned for the morrow, for which she was denuding a guinea-fowl. Our son Nick, back from his year at an American university, was bringing his intended, a Miss Erica Freyburg, to dinner with the family.

' If he's bringing Erica,' I said, ' I'll slip down to the health food centre and get a magnum of carrot juice.' I had already met my potential daughter-in-law, a young lady with strong views on dietary matters, and indeed on every other subject under the sun, whom Nick had met in Baltimore.

' Sometimes I think you're just jealous of Erica."

'Jealous? About Nicky?' I had got the bottle of plonk open and was sitting at the kitchen table, the snow of feathers settling gently.

'You want your son to be happy, don't you?' ' Of course. Of course I want him to be happy.' Then I put my problem to Hilda. 'Can you understand why an M.P., an Honourable Member, with a wife and a couple of kids should suddenly take it into his head to rape anyone?' 'An M.P.? What side's he on?' 'Labour.' 'Oh well then.' Hilda had no doubt about it. 'It doesn't surprise me in the least.' The next day the Honourable Member, Ken Aspen, was sitting in my Chambers, flanked by his solicitor's clerk Myers and a calm, competent, handsome woman who was introduced to me as his wife, Anna. I suggested that she might find it less embarrassing to slip out while we discussed the intimate details, perhaps to buy a hat. Well, some judges still like hats on women in Court, but Mrs Aspen, Anna, told me that she intended to stay with her husband every moment that she could. A dutiful wife, you see, and the loyalty shone out of her.

Aspen spoke in a slightly modified public-school accent, and I thought the 'Ken' and the just flattened vowels were a concession to the workers, like a cloth cap on a Labour Member. Being a politician, he started off by looking for a compromise, couldn't I perhaps have a word with Miss Bridget Evans? No, I couldn't, nor could I form a coalition with the judge to defeat her on a vote of no confidence. I received 'Ken's' permission to call him 'Mr Aspen' and then I asked him to tell his story.

It seemed that it was late at night in the committee room and both Janice Crowshott, the secretary, and Paul Etherington, the agent, had gone home. Bridget Evans asked Aspen into her office, saying the duplicating machine was stuck. When he got in she closed the door, and started to talk about politics.

'You're going to tell me that the door of the duplicating room was locked so you could have a good old chat about Home Rule for Wales?' 'Of course not.' 'Or that it was during a few strong words about the export figures that her clothes got torn?' ' She started to accuse me of being unfaithful.' 'To her?' I was puzzled.

'To my principles.' 'Oh. Those.' I wanted to hear his defence, not his platitudes.

'She said I'd betrayed her, and all the Party workers. I'd betrayed Socialism.' 'Well, you were used to hearing that,' I supposed. 'That must be part of the wear and tear of life in the dear old Labour Party.' 'Then she started talking about Anna.' 'She wanted Ken to leave me." Mrs Aspen was leaning forward, half smiling at me.

'It was the whole set-up she objected to. The house in Hampstead Garden Suburb. The kids' schools.' 'Where do they go exactly?' ' Sarah's at the convent and Edward's down for Westminster.' 'And the loyal voters are down for the Comprehensive.' I couldn't resist it, but it earned me a distinctly unfriendly look from Mrs Aspen.

' I think after that, she started screaming at me. All sorts of abuse. Obscenities. I can't remember. Righteous indignation 1 And then she started clawing at me. Telling me I didn't even have the courage to ..."

'The courage. To what?' 'To make love to her. That's what Ken believed,' Mrs Aspen supplied the answer. She'd have made an excellent witness, and I began to regret she wasn't on trial.

'Thank you. Is that true?' 'Of course it's true. Ken made love to her. As she wanted. On the floor.' Again Mrs Aspen provided the answer.

'You believed that was what she wanted?' At last my client spoke up for himself. 'Yes. Yes. That's what I believed.' I lit a small cigar, and began to get a sniff of a defence. The House of Lords has decided it's a man's belief that matters in a rape case; there are very few women among the judges of the House of Lords. Meanwhile the Honourable Member carried on with the good work.

'She was goading me. Shouting and screaming. And then, when I saw what she'd done to my face on the poster!' I found the election poster, scored over with a pen and torn.

'You saw that ihenY 'Yes. Yes. I think so.' 'You'd better be sure about this. You saw this poster scrawled on before anything happened?' 'Yes. I'm almost sure.' 'Not almost sure, Mr Aspen. Quite, quite sure?' 'Well. Yes.' 'She didn't do it when you were there?' 'No.' 'So she must have done it before she called you into the room?' 'That would seem to follow,' Mr Myers took his pipe out of his mouth for the first time, 'Oh yes, Mr Myers. You see the point?' I congratulated him.

'Is it important?' the Member asked innocently.

'Oh, no. A triviality. It only means she hated your guts before anyone suggests you might have raped her. You know, Mr Aspen, if you're applying the same degree of thought to the economy as you are to this case, no wonder the pound's dickie.' I have been politer to clients, but Aspen took it very well. He stood up, smiling, and said, 'You're right. The case is yours, Mr Rumpole. I'll go back to worrying about the pound.' Mrs Aspen also stood and looked at me as though I was a regrettable necessity in their important lives, like drains.

I said nothing cheering, 'Case?' I told them. 'We haven't got a case. Yet. Because at the moment, Mr Myers doesn't know a damn thing about Miss Bridget Evans.' That evening the fatted guinea-fowl was consumed. I brought home three very decent bottles of claret from Pommeroy' and we entertained Nick and his intended. It was always a treat to have Nick at home with us, even though he'd given up reading Sherlock Holmes and taken to sociology, a subject which might, for me, be entirely written in the hieroglyphics of some remote civilization. I can think of no social theory which could possibly account for such sports as Rumpole and She Who Must Be Obeyed, and I honestly don't believe we're exceptions, being surrounded by a sea of most peculiar, and unclassifiable individuals.

Dinner was over, but we still sat round the table and I was giving the company one of my blue-chip legal anecdotes, guaranteed to raise a laugh. It was the one about the retiring Chief Justice of the Seaward Isles.

'How much do you give a ponce!' I was laughing myself now, in joyful anticipation of the punch line, 'And the answer came back by very fast rickshaw, "Never more than two and six."' Nick joined me in a burst of hilarity.

Hilda said, 'Well! Thank goodness that's over,' and Erica looked totally mystified. Then she told us that Nick had been offered a vacancy in the department of social studies in the University of Baltimore, which came as something of a surprise to us as we both thought Nick had settled on the job he'd been offered at Warwick.

' So it's not decided,' Hilda said, voicing the general anxiety.

'From our point of view I suppose Warwick would have certain advantages over Baltimore,' I told Nick.

'I doubt the academic standards are any higher,' Erica was defensive.

'No. But it is a great deal nearer Gloucester Road. Another glass of water?' I rose and poured for Erica. She was a good-looking girl and seemed healthy enough, although I regretted her habit of drinking water, as I told her. ' Scientific research has conclusively proved that water causes the hair to drop out, fallen arches and ingrowing toe nails. They should pass a law against it.' At this point Erica did her best to raise the level of the conversation, by saying, 'Nicky's told me all about your work. I think it's just great the way you stand up in Court for the underprivileged!' 'I will stand up in Court for absolutely any underprivileged person in the world. Provided they've got Legal Aid!' 'What's your motivation,  in taking on these sort of cases?' Erica asked me seriously, and I told her, 'My motivation is the money.' 'I think you're just rationalizing.' 'He does it because he can't resist the sound of his own voice,' Nick, who knows most about me, told her; but I would allow no illusions.

'Money! If it wasn't for the Legal Aid cheque, I tell you, Rumpole would be silent as the tomb! The Old Bailey would no longer echo with my pleas for acquittal and the voice of the Rumpole would not be heard in the Strand. But, as it is, the poor and the underprivileged can rely on me.' ' I'm sure they can,' Erica sounded consoling.

'And the Legal Aid brings us a quite drinkable claret.' I refilled my glass. 'From Jack Pommeroy's Wine Bar. As a matter of fact I get privately paid sometimes. Sometimes I get a plum!' 'Erica wants to come and hear you in Court,' Nick told me and she smiled.

'How could I miss it?' 'Well, I'm not exactly a tourist attraction.' ' If I'm going to live in England I want to know all I can about your mores,' Erica explained. Well, if she wanted to see the natives at their primitive crafts who was I to stop her?

'Come next week. Down the Bailey. Nick'll bring you for lunch. We'll have steak and kidney pud. Like the old days. Nick used to drop in at the Bailey when he came back from school. He enjoyed the occasional murder, didn't you Nick? That's settled then. We'll have a bit of fun!' 'Fun? What sort of fun?' Erica sounded doubtful, and I told her, 'Rape.' Mr Myers, of my instructing solicitors, went to the Honourable Member's constituency and discovered gold. Miss Bridget Evans was not greatly liked in the local party, being held to be a left-wing activist, and a bloody nuisance. More important than her adherence to the late Leon Trotsky was her affair with Paul Etherington, the Labour Party agent. I was gloating over this, and other and more glorious goodies provided by the industrious Myers, when there was a knock on my door in Chambers and in filtered Erskine-Brown, glowing with some mysterious triumph.

'Rumpole. One doesn't want to bother the Head of Chambers...' 'Why not bother him? He's got very little on his mind, except settling a nice fat planning case and losing at golf to the Lord Chancellor. Guthrie Featherstone, Q.c., old sweetheart, is ripe for bothering!" I turned my attention back to the past of Miss Bridget Evans.

'It's our head clerk,' Erskine-Brown went on mysteriously.

'Albert? You want to go and bother him?' Erskine-Brown could restrain himself no longer. 'He's a criminal! Our head clerk is a criminal, Rumpole.' I looked at the man with considerable disapproval. 'As an ornament of the civil side, don't you find that sort of word a little distasteful?' 'I have proof.' And Erskine-Brown fished a pound note out of his pocket. I examined it curiously.

'Looks like a fairly conventional portrait of Her Majesty.' 'There's a red cross in the corner,' he announced proudly. 'I put it there. I marked the money in the petty cash!' I looked at my fellow barrister in astonishment.

'I've suspected Albert for a long time. Well, I saw him in Pommeroy's Wine Bar and I got the note he'd paid with off one of the girls. Perhaps it's difficult for you to believe.' 'Extremely!' I stood up and fixed him with an unfriendly gaze. 'A private eye. Taking up the Bar as a profession!' 'What do you mean, Rumpole?' 'I mean, in my day they used to be nasty little men in macs, sniffing round the registers in cheap hotels. They used to spy into bedrooms with field-glasses, in the ever-present hope of seeing male and female clothing scattered around. It's the first time I ever heard of a private Dick being called to the Bar, and becoming an expert on the law of contract.' I handed the marked pound back to Erskine-Brown, the well-known Dick. He looked displeased.

' It's obvious that I will have to go straight to the Head of Chambers.' As he made for the door I stopped him.

'Why not?' I said. 'Oh just one thing that may have escaped your attention, my dear Watson.' 'What's that?' 'Yesterday afternoon, I borrowed five pound notes from petty cash,  no doubt notes decorated by you. And I paid for all of Albert's drinks in Pommeroys.' 'Rumpole. Are you sure?' I could see he felt his case crumbling.

' I would really advise you, Erskine-Brown, as a learned friend, not to go round Chambers making these sort of wild allegations against our clerk. A man who's been here, old darling, since you were in nappies!' 'Very well, Rumpole. I'm sorry I interrupted your rape.' Erskine-Brown had the door open, he was about to slink away.

'Say no more, old sweetheart. Not one word more. Oh, convey my condolences to the unfortunate Henry. The position of second clerk must be continually frustrating.' When I was alone I was well pleased. Albert and I had been together now for forty years and I was anxious not to cross my old Dutch. And the evidence little Myersy had uncovered put me in mind of Lewis Caroll.

'Oh, hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms! Thou beamish boy ...' 'Not yet father', I said to myself. 'But I will. Oh yes. I certainly will ...' 'Tomatoes doing well, Mr Myers, are they?' ' I apply a great deal of artificial, you see, Mr Rumpole. And they're just coming up to the fourth truss.' 'Fourth truss, are they? Lively little blighters, then!' We were waiting outside Court. Mr and Mrs Aspen were sitting on a bench, he looking curiously relaxed, she glaring across at Miss Bridget Evans who was looking young and demure on a bench some distance away. Meanwhile I was going through the old legal gambit of chatting up the instructing solicitor. I showed concern for his tomatoes, he asked after my son whom he remembered as a visitor to the Courts of Law.

'Nick? Oh, he's the brains of the family. Sociology. They've offered him a lectureship at Warwick University! And he's engaged to be married. Met her in America and now he's bringing the lady to live in England.' 'I never had a family,' Mr Myers told me, and added, 'I do find having young kids about plays merry hell with your tomatoes.' At which point Mrs Anna Aspen drew me aside for a conference. The first thing she said surprised me a little.

' I just hope you're not going to let me down.' 'Let you down, Mrs Aspen? So far as I can see you're in no danger of the Nick.' 'I'm in danger of losing everything I ever worked for.' 'I understand.' 'No. You don't understand, Mr Rumpole. It's been hard work, but I made Ken fight. I made him go for the nomination. I made him fight for the Seat. When he got in he wanted ... I don't know, to relax on the back benches. He said he'd throw in ideas. But I told him to fight for the PJP.S.'s job and he's got it!' She looked across to where her husband was actually trying the ghost of a smile in Bridget's direction. 'He can't see it's either him or her now. Ken can't see that! You're right about him looking for compromises. Sometimes it makes me so angry!' 'Angrier than the idea of your husband and Miss Bridget Evans. On the floor of the office?' 'Oh that! Why should I worry about that?' Before I could answer her question, an usher came out to invite the Honourable Member to step into the dock, and we were away.

When you go into Court in a rape case it's like stepping into a refrigerator with the light off. All the men on the jury are thinking of their daughters, and all the women are sitting with their knees jammed together. I found a sympathetic-looking, moderately tarty, middle-aged lady juror, the sort that might have smiled at the Honourable Member and thought, 'Why didn't you ring me, dearie. I'd have saved you all this trouble.' But her lips snapped shut during the opening by Mr Twenty-man, Q.c. for the prosecution, and I despaired of her.

Even the judge, old Sam Parkin, an amiable old darling, perfectly capable of giving a conditional discharge for manslaughter or putting an old lag on probation, even old Sam looked, when the case opened, as if he'd just heard the clerk say, 'Put up Jack the Ripper.' Now he seemed to be wanning to Miss Bridget Evans who was telling her hair-raising story with effective modesty. As I tottered to my feet old Sam gave me an icy look. When you start to cross-examine in a rape case you open the flap of the tent, and you're out in the blizzard.

'Miss Bridget Evans. This ... this incident involving Mr Aspen occurred at 11.30 on Wednesday night?' ' I don't know. I wasn't watching the clock.' The door of the Court opened, to admit the Rumpole fan club, my son Nick and Erica his intended. She was wearing an ethnic skirt and gave me a warm smile, as though to encourage my efforts on behalf of the underprivileged and the oppressed.

'After all the witnesses had conveniently departed. When there was no one there, to establish my client's innocence. After it was all over, what did you do?' ' I went home.' 'A serious and terrible crime had been committed and you went home, tucked yourself up in bed and went to sleep! And you said not one word to the police about it until 6.30 the following day?' Albert, also of the fan club, was sitting in front of me next to Mr Myers. I heard his penetrating whisper, 'He's doing the old Alhambra cinema technique.' It was nice to feel that dear old Albert was proud of me.

'When you went to bed. Did you go alone?' 'I don't see what that's got to do with it.' Her answer had a hint of sharpness and, for the first time, there was a centimetre up in some of the juror's eyebrows.

'Did you go alone?' 'I told you. I went to bed.' 'Miss Evans. I shall ask my question again and I shall go on asking it all night if it's necessary in the interests of my client. Did you go to bed alone?' 'Do I have to answer that sort of question, my Lord?' 'Yes you do. And my Lord will so direct.' I got in before Sam could draw breath.

'Perhaps if you answer Mr Rumpole's questions shortly you will be out of the box quite quickly, and your painful experience will be over.' Sam Parkin meant well, but I intended to keep her there a little while longer.

'Yes. I went to bed alone.' 'How long had that been going on?' 'How long had what been going on, Mr Rumpole?' Sam asked.

'That the witness had taken to sleeping alone, my Lord. You were no longer friendly with Mr Etherington?' 'Paul and I? We split about two years ago. If you're interested in the truth.' I began to hear what a barrister longs for when he's cross-examining, the note of anger.

'Yes, Miss Evans. I am interested in the truth, and I expect the ladies and gentlemen of the jury are also.' The tarty lady nodded perceptibly. She and I were beginning to reach an understanding.

'Mr Rumpole. Is it going to help us to know about this young lady and Paul..." Sam was doing his best.

'Paul Etherington, my Lord. He was the Parliamentary agent.' 'I'm anxious not to keep this witness longer than is necessary.' 'I understand, my Lord. It must be most unpleasant.' Almost as unpleasant I thought, as five years in the Nick, which was what the Honourable Member might expect if I didn't demolish Miss Evans. 'But I have my duty to do.' 'And a couple of refreshers to earn,' Mr Twentyman, Q.C., whispered, a thought bitchily, to his junior.

'You had been living with Paul Etherington for two years before you parted?' 'Yes.' So you were eighteen when you started living together.* 'Just... nearly eighteen.' 'And before that?' 'I was at school.' 'You had lovers before Paul?' 'Yes.' 'How many?' 'One or two.' ' Or three or four? How many? or didn't they stay long enough to be counted?"

My dear friend the lady juror gave a little disapproving sigh. I had misjudged her. The old darling was less a fille dejoie than a member of the festival of light, but I saw Erica whisper to Nick, and he held her hand, shushing her.

'Mr Rumpole!' Sam had flushed beneath his wig. I took a swift move to lower his blood pressure.

'I apologize my Lord. Pure, unnecessary comment. I withdraw it at once."

'Your Mr Rumpole is doing us proud,' I heard Mr Myers whisper to Albert who replied complacently, 'His old hand has lost none of its cunning, Myersy.' After a dramatic pause, I played the ace. 'How old were you when you had the abortion?' I looked round the Court and met Erica's look; not exactly a gaze of enraptured congratulation.

' I was nineteen ... It was perfectly legal.' Miss Evans was now on the defensive.' I got a certificate. From the psychiatrist.' 'Saying you were unfit for childbirth?' 'I suppose so.' 'And the psychiatrist certified ... you were emotionally unstable?' It was a shot in the bloody dark, but I imagine that's what trick cyclists always say, to prevent any unwanted increase in the population.

'Something like that ... yes.' I gave Ken Aspen a cheering glance. He was busy writing a note, containing, I hoped, more ammunition for Rumpole in the firing line.

' So the jury have to rely, in this case, on the evidence of a yovosg vroman. vfho has been certified emotionally, unstable.' The jury were looking delightfully doubtful as the usher brought me the note from the dock. No ammunition, not even any congratulation, but just one line scrawled, 'Leave her alone now, please! K. A.' I crumpled the note with visible irritation; in such a mood, no doubt, did Nelson put the glass to his blind eye when reading the signal to retreat.

'Just three months ago, you were rushed into hospital. You'd taken a number of sleeping tablets. By accident?' I continued to attack.

'No.' 'Why?' 'Well, it was... I told you. I'd just parted from Paul.' ' Come now, Miss Evans. Just think. You'd parted from Paul over a year ago.' ' I was... I was confused.' ' Was it then you first met Mr Aspen?' 'Just... Just about that time.' 'And fell in love with him?' 'No!' She was really angry now, but she managed to smile at the jury who didn't smile back. If I could have dropped dead of a coronary at that moment, I thought, Miss Bridget Evans might be dancing for joy.

'Became so obsessed with him that you were determined to pursue him at any cost to him, or to his family ?' ' Shall I tell you the truth ? I didn't even like him!' 'And that night after you and Mr Aspen had made love...' ' Love! Is that what you call it?' 'He refused to leave his wife and children.' ' We never discussed his wife and children!' 'And it was in rage, because he wouldn't leave his family, that you made up this charge to ruin him. You hate him so much.' 'I don't hate him.' ' Oh. Can it be you are still in love with him?' ' I never hated him, I tell you. I was indifferent to him.' It was the answer I wanted, and just the moment to hold up the poster of Ken's face, scrawled on by Miss Evans in her fury.

'So indifferent that you did that. To his face on the wall?' 'Perhaps. After.' 'Before! Because you had done that early in the evening, hadn't you? In one of your crazy fits of rage and jealousy?' Now Bridget Evans was crying, her face in her hands, but whether in fury or grief, or simply to stop the questions, not I but the jury would have to judge.

'Will that poster be Exhibit 24, Mr Rumpole?" Sam spoke in his best matter-of-fact judge's voice, and I gave him a bow of deep satisfaction and said,' If your Lordship pleases.' 'Is that your work?' I was entertaining Nick and Erica to an apres-Gouxt drink in Pommeroy's Wine Bar. A group from Chambers, Guthrie Featherstone, Erskine-Brown, my friend George Frobisher and old Uncle Tom were at the bar. The Rumpole family occupied a table in that part of Pommeroy's where ladies are allowed to assemble. I felt as if I'd spent a day digging the roads, in a muck sweat and exhausted after the cross-examination. I was, of course, moderately well pleased with the way it had gone and I had asked Joan the waitress to bring us a bottle of Pommeroy's cooking champagne, and Erica's special, a coca-cola. When it came I took a quick glassful and answered her question.

' When it goes well. We made a bit of headway, this afternoon.' 'You sure did.' 'Erica was a bit upset,' Nick looked from one to the other of us, embarrassed.

' Is that the way you make your living?' Erica repeated.

'A humble living. With an occasional glass of cooking champagne, with paying briefs."

'Attacking women?' I must confess I hadn't thought of Bridget Evans as a woman, but as a witness. I tried to explain.

'Not women in particular. I attack anyone, regardless of age or sex, who chooses to attack my client.' ' God knows which is the criminal. Him or her.' 'But, old darling. That's what we're rather trying to find out.' 'What worries Ricky is,' Nick was doing his best to explain, ' the girl has to go through all that. I mean, it's not only the rape.' ' Not only the rape ?' ' Well, it's like she's getting punished, isn't it?' 'Aren't you rather rushing things? I mean, who's saying a rape took place?' 'Well,isn't she?' 'Oh, I see. You think it's enough if she says it? It's a different sort of crime, is it? I mean, not like murder or shoplifting, or forging cheques. They still have to be proved in the old-fashioned way. But rape ... Some dotty girl only has to say you did it and you trot off to chokey without asking embarrassing questions ... Look, you don't want to discuss a boring old case. What've you been doing Nick? Getting ready for Warwick?' But Erica wasn't to be deterred.

'Of course we should discuss the case.' She'd have made an advocate, this Erica, she was dogged. ' I mean, it's the greatest act of aggression that any human being can inflict!' 'Ricky! Dad's just doing his job. I'm sorry we came.' Nicky looked at his watch, no doubt hoping they had an appointment.

'I'm glad! Oh sure I'm glad,' Erica was smiling, quite mirthlessly. 'He's a field study in archaic attitudes!' 'Look, old sweetheart. Is it archaic to believe in some sort of equality of the sexes ?' She looked taken aback at that. 'Equality! You're into equality?' ' For God's sake, yes! Give you equal pay, certainly. Let you be all-in wrestlers and Lord Chancellor. By all means! I'll even make the supreme sacrifice and give up giving my seat in the bus ... But you're asking for women witnesses to be more equal than any other witnesses!' 'But in that sort of case,' Erica wasn't to be won over by any sort of irony,' a man forcing his masculinity...' 'Or a woman getting her revenge?' I suggested. 'I mean, I don't suppose I'll ever have to actually choose between being raped and being put in the cooler for five years, banged up with a bar of soap and a chamber pot, but if I ever had...' 'You're being defensive again!' Erica smiled at me, quite tolerantly.

'Ami?' 'The argument's kind of painful so you make a little joke.' 'Perhaps. But it's not exactly a joke. I mean, have you considered the possibility of my client being innocent?' 'Well, he'd better be. That's all I can say. After what you did to that girl this afternoon, he'd better be!' Then Nick remembered they were due at the pictures and they left me, Erica with the warm feeling of having struck a blow for her sex, Nick perhaps a little torn between us, but holding Erica's arm as he steered her out. I went over to the bar for a packet of small cigars and there were the learned friends pouring over a pink slip of paper which Jack Pommeroy was showing them. As soon as I drew up beside the bar, Jack showed me the cheque; it was made out to me from a firm of solicitors called Sprout and Pennyweather and had my name scrawled on the back. It was for the princely sum of nine pounds fifty, my remuneration for a conference. I looked at my purported signature and felt unaccountably depressed.

'No need to tell us, Rumpole,' said Guthrie Featherstone, Q.C., M.P. 'It's Albert's signature.' ' It's peaceful down here. Extraordinarily peaceful.' The Honourable Member was eating spaghetti rings and drinking hot, sweet tea down in the cells; Sam Parkin had declined bail in the lunch hour. He seemed extraordinarily contented, a fact which worried me not a little.

' I'm afraid it's hardly a three rosettes in the Michelin, as far as the grub's concerned,' I apologized to Aspen.

'It's tasteless stodge. Like nursery tea. Sort of comforting.' ' Really there are only two important things to remember. One. You saw the poster scribbled on as soon as you came into the room.' I tried to wrench his attention back to the case. 'And you believed she wanted it. That's all! You just believed it.' 'Did you have to ask her those questions?' Aspen looked at me, more in sorrow than in anger.

'Yes.' 'Dragging out her life, for the vultures in the press box.' 'I want you to win.' This bizarre ambition of mine made the Honourable Member smile.

'You sound like my wife. She wants me to win. Always. I'm so tired. It's peaceful down here, isn't it? Very peaceful.' ' Look out, old darling. You're not falling in love with the Nick, are you?' I had seen it before, that terrible look of resignation.

'For years, oh, as long as I can remember, Anna's worked so hard. On me winning.' He seemed to be talking to himself; I felt strangely superfluous. 'Sitting on platforms. Chatting up ministers. Keeping in with the press. Trying to convince the faithful that it all still meant something. My wife ... Anna, you know. She wanted me in the cabinet. She'd like to have been, a minister's wife.' 'And what did you want?" It was a long time before he answered me, and then he said,' I wanted it to stop!' Calling your own client is the worst part of a trial. You can't attack him, or lead him, or do anything but stand with your palms sweating and hope to God the old nitwit tells the right story. Mrs Aspen was staring at her husband, as if to transfer to him a little of her indomitable will. He stood in the witness box, smiling gently, as though someone else was on trial and he was a not very interested spectator. I showed him the defaced poster and asked the five thousand dollar question,' Did you see that had been done when you went into the room ?' He looked at me almost as if I was the one to be pitied, and said, after a pause,' I can't remember.' I smiled as if I'd got exactly the answer I wanted, a bit of a sickly smile.' Did Miss Evans start talking about your wife ?' 'About Anna. Yes.' ' Did she want you to leave your wife?' ' Did she ?' Sam Parkin was helping me out in the silence.

'I can't ... I can't exactly remember. She went on and on, goading me.' ' What happened then?' It was then the Honourable Member showed his first sign of passion. 'She'd been asking for it! All that clap-trap about betraying the Party. All those cliches about power corrupting. I suddenly got angry. It was then I...' 'Then you what?' ' Made... Made love to her.' ' In anger?' Sam Parkin was frowning.

'I suppose so. Yes.' I saw Anna's look of fear, and then the judge leaned forward to ask, 'Just tell us this, Mr Aspen. Did you believe that was what she wanted?' So the old darling on the bench had chucked Ken Aspen a lifebelt. I hoped to God the drowning man wasn't going to push it away. It seemed about a year before he answered. 'I don't know, what I believed then. Exactly.' 'It wasn't your fault, if I may say sir.' When I got back to the clerk's room, Albert was, as ever, consoling.' It was the client.' 'That's right, Albert. These things are always so much easier without clients.' I saw that Henry, our second clerk, was smiling as he told me that there was a Chambers meeting and I was to go up to our learned leader's room. When Albert offered to take me up, Henry said that Featherstone had said that it was a meeting for members of Chambers only, and our head clerk wasn't invited. Albert looked at me and I could see he was worried.

'Cheer up Albert,' I told him.' See you at Pommeroy's later.' Featherstone was pouring us all Earl Grey out of his fine bone china tea service.

' It seems that Albert has been pursuing a long career of embezzlement,' he said as he handed round sugar.

'That seems a very long word for nine pounds fifty,' I told them.' I'd say the correct legal expression was fiddling.' ' I don't see how we can excuse crime. Whatever you call it.' Erskine-Brown was clearly appearing for the prosecution.

'Anyway, it was my nine pounds fifty. It seems to me I can call it what I like. I can call it a Christmas present.' At which Uncle Tom, who was dozing in the corner said, 'I suppose it will be Christmas again soon. How depressing.' 'Apparently, it's not just your money, Rumpole.' Featherstone sat judicially behind his desk.

'Isn't it? Is there the slightest evidence that anyone else suffered ?' I asked the assembled company.

'The petty cash!' Erskine-Brown was the only one to answer.

'I told you about the petty cash.' I was too tired to argue with Erskine-Brown.

' You told me you'd borrowed from Albert's float.' 'Yes. And paid for the drinks in Pommeroy's.' 'You were lying, weren't you, Rumpole?' Now even Feather-stone realized Erskine-Brown had gone too far.' Erskine-Brown,' he said. 'That's not the sort of language we use to another member of Chambers. If Rumpole says he borrowed the money then I for one am prepared to accept his word as a gentleman.' Suddenly I grew impatient with the learned friends. I pushed myself to my feet. 'Then you're a fool, that's all I can say as a gentleman. Of course I was lying."

'What does Rumpole say he was doing?' Uncle Tom asked George for information.

'Lying.' 'Dear me, how extraordinary.' 'I lied because I don't like people being condemned,' I explained. ' It goes against my natural instincts.' 'That's very true. He never prosecutes. You don't prosecute, do you, Rumpole?' George gave me a friendly smile. I liked old George.

'No. I don't prosecute.' 'All right. Now we'll hear Rumpole's defence of Albert.' Erskine-Brown leant back in Featherstone's big leather chair, trying to look like a juvenile judge.

' It doesn't seem to me that it's Albert that's in trouble.' 'Not in trouble?' 'It's us! Legal gentlemen. Learned friends. So friendly and so gentlemanly that we never check his books, or ask to see his accounts. Of course he cheats us, little small bits of cheating, nine pounds fifty, to buy a solicitor a drink or two in Pommeroy's. He feels it's a mark of respect. Due to a gent. Like calling you " Sir " when you go wittering on about the typing errors in your statement of claim."

'Rather an odd mark of respect, wouldn't you say, Rumpole?' Featherstone stopped me, and called the meeting to order. 'I move we vote on this.' 'It's a matter for the police,' Erskine-Brown said predictably.

'Rumpole. You wouldn't agree?' The learned leader was asking for my vote.

'You'd hardly expect him to.' Erskine-Brown could never let a sleeping Rumpole lie.

' Well... Albert's part of my life... He always has been.' ' I remember when Albert first came to us. As a boy. He was always whistling out of tune.' Uncle Tom was reminiscing. And I added my tuppence worth. 'He's like the worn-out lino in the Chambers loo and the cells under the Old Bailey. I feel comfortable with A'bert. He's like home. And he goes out and grubs for briefs in a way we're too gentlemanly to consider.' 'He's cheated us. There's no getting away from that.' George interrupted me, quite gently.

'Well, we've got to be cheated occasionally. That's what it's all about, isn't it?' I looked round at their blank faces. 'Otherwise you'd spend your whole life counting your change and adding up bills, and chucking grown men into chokey because they didn't live up to the high ideals of the Chambers, or the Party, or some bloody nonsense.' ' I don't know that I exactly follow.' George was doing his best.

'Neither do I. I've done a rather bloody case. I'm sorry.' I sat down beside our oldest member.' How are you, Uncle Tom ?' 'I never expected Christmas to come again so quickly!' This was Uncle Tom's contribution. Now Featherstone was summing up. 'Personally, speaking quite personally, and without in any way condoning the seriousness of Albert's conduct..."

'Rape's bloody tiring,' I told them. 'Specially when you lose.' 'I would be against calling in the police.' This was Feather-stone's judgement.

' Not very gentlemanly having Old Bill in Chambers. Stamping with his great feet all over the petty cash vouchers.' I lit my last small cigar.

'On the other hand, Albert, in my view, must be asked to leave immediately. All those in favour?" At Featherstone's request all the other hands went up.

'Well, Rumpole,' said Erskine-Brown, teller for the 'Ayes'. ' Have you anything to say ?' 'Have you anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed against you?' I blew out smoke as I told them an old chestnut. 'They say Mr Justice Snaggs once asked a murderer that. "Bugger all", came a mutter from the dock. So Snaggs J. says to the murder's counsel, "Did your client say something?" "Bugger all, my Lord," the counsel replied. "Funny thing," says Mr Justice Snaggs.'' I thought I heard him say something."' My story ended in a hoot of silence. It was one that my old clerk Albert laughed at quite often, in Pommeroy's Wine Bar.

A couple of nights later I was sitting alone in Pommeroy's, telling myself a few old legal anecdotes, when to my surprise and delight Nick walked in alone. He sat down and I ordered a bottle of the best Chateau Fleet Street. ' I dropped into Chambers. Albert wasn't there.' 'No. We have a new clerk. Henry.' ' I'm sorry about the case.' 'Yes. The Honourable Member got five years.' I took a mouthful of claret to wash away the taste of prisons, and saw Nick looking at me. 'He had a strong desire to be found guilty. I don't know why exactly.' ' So really you needn't have asked all those questions ?' 'Well, yes, Nick. Yes. I had to ask them. Now, are we going to see you both on Sunday?' There was a pause. Nick looked at me. He obviously had something far more difficult to communicate than the old confessions of poker games in the deserted vicarage during his schooldays.

' I wanted to tell you first. You see. Well, I've decided to take the job in Baltimore. Ricky wants to go back. I mean, we can get a house there... and ... well, her family'd miss her if she were stuck with me in England.' 'Her family?' 'They're very close.' 'Yes. Yes, I suppose they are.' 'Apparently her mother hates the idea of Ricky being in England.' He smiled' She's the sort of woman that'd start sending us food parcels.' I could think of nothing to say, except, 'It was good of you, Nick. Good of you to spare the time to drop into Chambers.' 'We'll be back quite often. Ricky and I. We'll be back for visits.' 'You and Ricky, of course. Well then, Cheers.' We had one for our respective roads and I gave my son a bit of advice.' There's one thing you'll have to be careful of, you know, living in America.' 'What's that?' 'The hygiene! It can be most awfully dangerous. The purity! The terrible determination not to adulterate anything! You will be very careful of it, won't you, Nick?' Some weeks later, as I was packing the bulging briefcase after breakfast for a day down the Bailey with a rather objectionable fraud. She Who Must Be Obeyed came in with a postcard from our son and his intended, written in mid-air, with a handsome picture of a jet and a blue sky on the front and kisses from Nick and Ricky on the back. I handed it back to her and she gave it an attentive re-read as she sat down for another cup of tea. Then she said,' You know why Erica went back home, don't you ?' I confessed total ignorance.

'She didn't like it when she came to see you in Court. She didn't like the way you asked all those questions. She made that quite clear, when they were here for lunch last Sunday. When they came to say "Good-bye". She thought the questions you asked that girl were tasteless.' 'Distasteful.' I was on my way to the door. 'That's the word. Distasteful.' ' There's a picture of their jet on the front of this postcard.' 'I saw it. Very handsome.' I opened the kitchen door as dramatically as possible. 'Fare thee well! and if forever still forever, fare thee well' It takes a bad moment to make me fall back on Lord Byron.

'Don't be silly.' Hilda frowned. 'What're you going to do today, Rumpole?' It was a day, like all the others, and I said. 'I suppose. Go on asking distasteful questions.'