RUMPOLE AND THE
SCALES OF JUSTICE
by John Mortimer
"THE Scales of Justice have tipped in the wrong direction.   That's all I'm saying, Jenny.   Now it's all in favour of the defence, and that makes our job so terribly hard. I mean, we catch the villains and, ten to one, they walk away from Court laughing."
Bob Durden, resplendent in his Commander's uniform, appeared in the living room of Froxbury Mansions in Gloucester Road. He was in conversation with Jenny Turnbull, the hard-hitting and astute interviewer on the Up to the Minute programme.
"You've got to admit he's right, Rumpole." She Who Must Be Obeyed could be as hard-hitting and astute as Jenny. "Things have gone too far. It's all in favour of the defence."
"Why don't you-and the Commander, of course-try defending some unfortunate innocent before the Mad Bull down the Old Bailey? You'd have a Judge who's longing to pot your client and is prepared to use every trick in the book to get the Jury on his side, a prosecutor who can afford to make all the enquiries and is probably keeping quiet about evidence that's slightly favourable to the defence, and a Jury out for revenge because someone stole their car radios. Then you'd find out how much things are slanted in favour of the defence."
"Oh, do be quiet." She Who Must didn't have time for a legal argument. "I'm trying to listen to the Commander."
Bob Durden ruled the forces of law and order in an area half crowded countryside, half sprawling suburbs, to the north of London. When the old East End died, and its streets and squares became inhabited by upwardly mobile media persons, ethnic restaurants, and the studios of conceptual artists, it was to Commander Durden's patch that the forces of lawlessness moved. He was a large, broad-shouldered, loose-lipped man who spoke as though he were enjoying some secret joke.
"But aren't there cases where the police haven't been exactly on the side of the law?" said Jenny Turnbull.
Well done, Jenny, I thought. It's about time someone asked that question.
Hilda, however, took a different view. "That girl," she said, "should learn to show respect to the people she's interviewing. After all, the man is a Commander. She could at least be polite."
"She's far too polite, in my opinion. If I were cross-examining I'd be a good deal less respectful." I addressed the television set directly. "When are your officers going to stop bribing witnesses by putting them up in luxurious all-expenses-paid hotels, and improving on confession statements?"
"Do be quiet, Rumpole! You're worse than that Turnbull woman, interrupting that poor man."
"You know who I blame, Jenny? I blame the lawyers. The 'learned friends' in wigs. Are they part of the justice system? Part of the injustice system, if you want my honest opinion." The Commander spoke from the television set in a tone of amused contempt to which I took the greatest exception. "It's all a game to them, isn't it? Get your guilty client off and collect a nice fat- cat fee from Legal Aid for your trouble."
"Have you got any particular barrister in mind?" Jenny Turnbull clearly scented a story.
"Well, Jenny, I'm not naming names. But there are regular defenders down at the Old Bailey and they'll know who I mean. There was a case some time ago. Theft in the Underground. The villain, with a string of previous convictions, had the stolen wallet in his backpack. Bang to rights, you might say. This old brief pulled a few defence tricks and the culprit walked free. We get to know them, 'Counsel for the Devious Defence,' and quite frankly there's very little we can do about them."
"Absolute rubbish!" I shouted fruitlessly at the flickering image of the Commander. "Trevor Timson got off because he was entirely innocent. Are you saying that everyone with previous convictions should be found guilty regardless of the facts? Is that what you're saying?"
"It's no good at all you shouting at him, Rumpole." Hilda was painfully patient. "He can't hear a word you're saying." As usual, She Who Must Be Obeyed was maddeningly correct.
A considerable amount of time passed, a great quantity of Château Thames Embankment flowed down parched legal throats in Pommeroy's Wine Bar, a large number of custodial sentences were handed out to customers down the Bailey, and relatively few of those detained there went off laughing. Gradually, as small shoots of promise appear when spring follows winter, my practice began to show signs of an eventual re-bloom. I progressed from petty thievery (in the Case of the New Year's Resolutions) to more complicated fraud, from actual to grievous bodily harm, and from an affray outside a bingo hall to a hard-fought manslaughter in a sauna. It was in the months before I managed to play my part in the richly rewarding case-in satisfaction rather than money-that I am about to record. I was sitting in my Chambers room enjoying an illicit small cigar (Soapy Sam Ballard was still in the business of banning minor pleasures) and leafing through The Oxford Book of English Verse in search of a suitable quotation to use in my final speech in a case of alleged gross indecency in Snaresbrook, when a brisk knock at the door was followed by the entrance of none other than Dame Phillida Erskine-Brown-once the much-admired Portia of our Chambers, now the appealing occupant of Judicial Benches from the Strand and Ludgate Circus to Manchester and Exeter Crown Court.
"You'll never guess what I've seen, Rumpole! Never in a million years!" Her Ladyship was in what can only be described as a state of outrage, and whatever she had seen had clearly not been a pretty sight. "I just dropped in to tell Claude he'll have to look after the children tonight because I've got a dinner with the Lord Chancellor and the babysitter's got evening classes."
"All part of the wear and tear of married life?"
"It's not that. It's what I saw in the clerks room. In front or Henry and Denise. Claude, flagrantly in the arms of another woman!
"When you say in the arms of," I merely asked for clarification, "what were they doing, exactly? I take it they weren't kissing each other?"
"Not that. No. They were hugging."
"Well, that's all right then." I breathed a sigh of relief. "If they were only hugging."
"What do you mean, 'That's all right then?' I said, Am I disturbing something?' and walked straight out of the clerk's room and came to see you, Rumpole. I must say I expected you to take this extraordinary conduct of Claudes rather more seriously."
I couldn't help remembering the time when Dame Phillida, once the nervous pupil whom I'd found in my room in tears, now a Judge of the Queen's Bench, had herself tugged a little at the strict bonds of matrimony and conceived an inexplicable passion for a Doctor Tom Gurnley, a savagely punitive right wing Tory MP who believed in mandatory prison sentences for the first whiff of cannabis, and whom I had had to defend in the Case of the Camberwell Carrot. I suppose it wasn't an exact parallel- the Learned Judge had not been discovered embracing the old hanger and flogger in our clerk's room.
Now that the Erskine-Browns' marriage seemed to have sailed into calmer waters, I was unwilling to rock the boat. I offered an acceptable solution.
"Exactly whom was your husband hugging?"
"I couldn't see much of her. She seemed to have blonde hair. Not entirely convincing, I thought."
"A black trouser suit?   Shiny boots?"
"I think so, now you mention it."
"Then that would be our new Director of Marketing and Administration."
"I believe Claude told me you have one of those. So that makes it perfectly all right, does it?" I could see that the Judge was not entirely satisfied. "Is part of her job description snogging my husband?"
"Not snogging. Hugging."
"All right then, hugging. Is that her job-is that what you're saying?"
"Provided it's Thursday."
"Rumpole!   Are you feeling quite well?"
"Her name is Luci.  She spells it with an 'i.'"
"Does she do that to irritate people?"
"That might well be part of it. She had the idea that we should all hug each other at work on Thursday. She said it would improve our corporate spirit and lead to greater harmony in the workplace."
"You mean you all hug each other?"
"If you look on the noticeboard, you'll see that Soapy Sam Ballard has commended the idea to 'Everyone at Number 4 Equity Court.' He's very pro-Luci because I told him she fancied him."
"Rumpole!   Has the whole world gone mad?"
"Only on Thursdays. That's when we're meant to hug each other. On Fridays Luci has decided that we dress down."
"What does that mean, exactly?"
"It means that Ballard comes in wearing jeans and a red sweater with black diamonds on it. Oh, and white gym shoes, of course."
"You mean trainers?"
"Probably."
"Do you dress down, Rumpole?"
"Certainly not. I can't afford the wardrobe. I stick to my working clothes-black jacket and striped trousers."
"I thought I saw Claude sneak out of the house in jeans. He hasn't told me."
"Your Claude has a nervous disposition. I expect he was afraid you'd laugh at him."
"I certainly would. And about the hugging. Do you hug, Rumpole?"
"Embrace our clerk Henry? Snuggle up to Ballard? Certainly not! I told them hugging always brings me out in a rash. I have a special dispensation not to do it for health reasons. It's like taking the vegetarian dish."
"What did Ballard say when you told him you wouldn't hug?"
"He said I could just say 'Good Morning' in an extra cheerful manner. Have I set your mind at rest?"
"I suppose so." Phillida seemed reluctant to abandon a genuine cause for complaint against the unfortunate Claude. "Provided he doesn't embrace that woman too enthusiastically. She's far too old for that haircut."
"It was pure coincidence that you came in at that moment," I told her. "If you'd come in ten minutes later you'd have found him wrapped around Hoskins, a balding middle-aged man with numerous daughters."
"You're always counsel for the defence, aren't you, Rumpole?"
"I can only say that, in any situation which looks guilty, I can sometimes offer an innocent alternative to the Jury."
"Bob Durden would call that another trick of the defender's trade. Did you see him on the television the other night?"
"I certainly did. And I just wish I had the chance to wake the Commander up to the reality of life when you're on trial at the Old Bailey."
At this the learned and beautiful Judge looked at me with some amusement-but my chance came sooner than either of us expected.
The earthshaking news was read out by Hilda from her tabloid newspaper one morning in Froxbury Mansions. She looked seriously upset.
"Feet of clay, Rumpole! That sensible policeman we saw on Up to the Minute turns out to have feet of clay!"
I had been trying to catch up with some last minute instructions in a fairly complicated long firm fraud when She Who Must handed me the paper, from which the face of Bob Durden loomed solemn and severe from beneath his cap. The headline, however, suggested that not only were his feet clay but the rest of him was by no means perfect senior-police-officer material. The Commander had been arrested on no less a charge than taking part in a conspiracy to murder. It took a good half-minute before I was able to suppress an unworthy tendency to gloat.
Of course I read every detail of the extraordinary case. It was suggested that the scourge of defence lawyers had been prepared to pay a contract killer to do away with a local doctor, but I was sure that the last member of the Bar he would call upon to defend him was that devious Rumpole who spent his life helping guilty villains walk free from courtrooms, laughing triumphantly at the police. So the Commander took his place at the back of my mind, but I was on the lookout for developments in the newspapers.
One memorable day Ballard appeared in my room with a look of sublime satisfaction and the air of a born commander about to issue battle orders. I have to say that he had smartened up a good deal since I had let him know that our Director of Marketing and Administration nursed tender feelings for him. He had invested in a new suit, his hair was more dashingly trimmed by a unisex stylist, and he arrived in a chemical haze of aftershave which happily evaporated during the course of the day.
"This, Rumpole," he told me, "will probably be the most famous case of my career. The story, you'll have to admit, is quite sensational."
"What's happened, Ballard?" I had no wish to fuel Soapy Sam's glowing self-satisfaction. "What've you landed now? Another seven days before the rating tribunal?"
"I have been offered, Rumpole," the man was blissfully unaware of any note of sarcasm; he was genuinely proud of his eventful days in Court with rateable values, "the leading brief for the defence in R. v. Durden. It is, of course, tragic that a fine police officer should fall so low."
Of course, I realized that the case called for a QC (Queer Customer is what I call them) and, as I have said, that the defendant policeman would never turn to Rumpole in a time of trouble. I couldn't help, however, feeling a momentary stab of jealousy at the thought of Ballard landing such a sensational front-page cause célèbre.
"He hasn't fallen low yet." I thought it right to remind our Head of Chambers of the elementary rules of our trade. "And he won't until the Jury come back to Court and pronounces him guilty. It's your job to make sure they never do that."
"I know, Rumpole." Soapy Sam looked enormously brave. "I realize that I have taken on an almost superhuman task and a tremendous responsibility. But I've been able to do you a good turn."
"What sort of good turn, exactly?" I was doubtful about Ballard's gifts.
Then he told me, "You see, the Commander went to a local solicitor, Henry Crozier (we were at university together), and Henry knew that Durden wouldn't want any sort of flashy clever dick defence QC-the sort he's spoken out against so effectively on the television."
"You mean he picked you because you're not a clever dick?"
"Dependable, Rumpole. And, I flatter myself, trusted by the Courts. And as I believe your practice has slowed down a bit since . . ."
"You mean since I died?"
"Since you came back to us. I persuaded Henry Crozier to give you the Junior brief. Naturally, in a case of this importance, I shall do most of it myself. If the chance arises you might be able to call some formal undisputed evidence. And of course you'll take a note of my cross-examination. You'll be capable of that, won't you?"
"My near-death experience has left me more than capable of conducting even the most difficult trial."
"Don't worry, old fellow." Soapy Sam was smiling at me in a way I found quite unendurable. "You won't be called on to do anything like that."
As I have said, Commander Durden's patch was an area not far from London, and certain important villains had moved into it when London's East End was no longer the crime capital. They ran chains of minicab firms, clubs, and wine bars. They were shadowy figures behind Thai restaurants and garden centres. They dealt in hard drugs and protection rackets in what may have seemed, to a casual observer, to be the heart of Middle England. And no one could have been more Middle English than Doctor Petrus Wakefield, who carried on his practice in Chivering. This had once been a small market town with a broad main street, and had now had its heart ripped out to make way for a pedestrian precinct with a multistorey car park, identical shops, and strict regulations against public meetings or yobbish behaviour.
Doctor Wakefield, I was to discover, was a pillar of this community, tall, good-looking, in his fifties. He was a leading light in the Amateur Dramatic Society, chairman of various charities, and the doting husband of Judy-pretty, blonde, and twenty years his junior. Their two children, Simon and Sarah, were high achievers at a local private school. Nothing could have been more quietly successful, some might even say more boring, than the Wakefields' lives up to the moment when, so it was alleged, Commander Bob Durden took out a contract on the doctor's life.
The local police force, as local forces did, relied on a body of informers, many of whom came with long strings of previous convictions attached to them, to keep them abreast of the crimes and misdemeanours which took place in this apparently prosperous and law-abiding community. According to my instructions, the use of police informers hadn't been entirely satisfactory. There was a suspicion that some officers had been using them to form relationships with local villains-warning them of likely searches and arrests and arranging, in the worst cases, for a share of the spoils.
Commander Bob Durden was commended in the local paper "for the firm line he was taking on the investigation he was carrying out into the rumours of police corruption." One of the informers involved was a certain Len "The Silencer" Luxford-so-called because of his old connections with quietened firearms-who had, it seemed, retired from serious crime and started a window-cleaning business in Chivering. He was still able occasionally to pass on information, heard in pubs and clubs from his old associates, to the police.
According to Detective Inspector Mynot, Bob Durden met with Len the Silencer in connection with his enquiry into police informers. Unusually, he saw Len alone and without any other officer being present. According to Lens statement, the Commander then offered him five thousand pounds to "silence" Doctor Wakefield, half down and half on completion of the task, the choice of weapons being left to the Silencer. Instead of carrying out these fatal instructions, Len-who owed, he said, a debt of gratitude to the doctor for the way he'd treated Lens mother-warned his prospective victim, who reported the whole matter to Detective Inspector Mynot. The case might have been thought slender if Doctor Wakefield hadn't been able to produce a letter from the Commander he'd found in his wife's possession, telling Judy how blissfully happy they might be together if Petrus Wakefield vanished from the face of the earth.
Such were the facts which led to Bob Durden-who thought all Old Bailey defence hacks nothing but spanners in the smooth works of justice-employing me, as Ballard made painfully clear, as his junior counsel. 
"I'm afraid I have to ask you this. Did you write this letter to Doctor Wakefield's wife?"
"I wrote the letter, yes. She must have left it lying about somewhere."
"You said you'd both be happy if Doctor Wakefield vanished from the face of the earth. Why did you want that?"
We were assembled in Ballard's room for a conference. The Commander, on bail and suspended from his duties on full pay, wearing a business suit, was looking smaller than in his full-dress appearance on the television screen. His solicitor, Mr. Crozier, a local man and apparently Ballard's old university friend, had a vaguely religious appearance to go with his name; that is to say he had a warm smile, a crumpled grey suit, and an expression of sadness at the sins of the world. His client's answer to my leader's question did absolutely nothing to cheer him up.
"You see, Mr. Ballard, we were in love. You write silly things when you're in love, don't you?" The bark of authority we had heard on television was gone. The Commander's frown had been smoothed away. He spoke quietly, almost gently.
"And send silly e-mails to people who fancy you," I hoped Soapy Sam might say, but of course he didn't. Instead he said, in his best Lawyers as Christians tone of deep solemnity, "You, a married man, wrote like that to a married woman?"
"I'm afraid things like that do happen, Mr. Ballard. Judy Wakefield's an extremely attractive woman."
There had been a picture of her in the paper-a small, smiling mother of two who had, apparently, fallen in love with a policeman.
"And you, a police commander, wrote in that way to a doctor's wife?"
"I'm not particularly proud of how we behaved. But as I told you, we were crazy about each other. We just wanted to be together, that was all."
Ballard apparently remained deeply shocked, so I ventured to ask a question.
"When you wrote that you'd both be much happier if he vanished from the face of the earth, you weren't suggesting the doctor would die. You simply meant that he'd get out of her life and leave you to each other. Wasn't that it?"
"Yes, of course." The Commander looked grateful. "You're putting it absolutely correctly."
"That's all right. It's just a defence barrister's way of putting it," I was glad to be able to say.
Soapy Sam, however, still looked displeased. "You can be assured," he told our client, "that I shall be asking you the questions, Mr. Durden. Mr. Rumpole will be with me to take note of the evidence. I'm quite sure the Jury won't want to hear the sordid details of your matrimonial infidelity. It won't do our case any good at all if we dwell on that aspect of the matter."
Ballard was turning over his papers, preparing to venture on to another subject.
"If you don't mind my saying so," I interrupted, I hoped not too rudely, "I think the Commander's affair with the doctor's wife the most important factor in the case, whichever way you look at it. I think we need to know all we can about it."
At this Ballard gave a thin, watery smile and once again bleated, "As I said, I shall be asking the questions in Court. Now, we can obviously attack the witness Luxford on the basis of his previous convictions, which include two charges of dishonesty. If you could just take us through your meeting with this man . . .."
"Did you use him much as an informer?" I interrupted, much to Ballard's annoyance.
But the Commander answered me. "Hardly at all. In fact, I think it had been a year or two since he'd given us anything. I thought he'd more or less retired. That was why I was surprised when he came to me with all that information about one of my officers."
Durden then went through his conversation with The Silencer, which contained no reference to any proposed assassination. This had been made quite clear in our instructions, so I excused myself. I slipped out of the door, counted up to two hundred in my head, then re-entered to tell Soapy Sam that our Director of Marketing and Administration wished to see him without delay on a matter of extreme urgency. Our leader excused himself, straightened his tie, patted down his hair, and made for the door.
"Now then," I gave our instructing solicitor some quick instructions as I settled myself in Ballard's chair, "have a look at our client's bank statements, Mr. Crozier. Make sure that an inexplicable two and a half thousand didn't get drawn out in cash. If the account's clean, tell the prosecution you'll disclose it providing they give us the good Doctor's."
"Very well, Mr. Rumpole, but why . . .?
"Never mind about why for the moment. You might help me a bit more about Doctor Wakefield. I suppose he is pretty well-known in the town. Has he practised there for years?"
"A good many years. I think he started off in London-a practice in the East End. Bethnal Green, that's what he told us. Apparently a pretty rough area. Then he came out to Chivering."
"To get away from the East End?"
"I don't know.   He always said he enjoyed working there."
"I'm sure he did. One other thing. He is a pillar of the Dramatic Society, isn't he? What sort of parts does he play?"
"Oh, leads." The solicitor seemed to brighten up considerably as he told me about it. "The Chivering Mummers are rather ambitious, you know. We did a quite creditable Othello when it was the A-level play."
"And the Doctor took the lead? You're not suggesting he blacked up? That's not allowed nowadays."
"Oh, no. The other great part."
"Of course." I made a mental note. "That's most interesting." A minute later a flustered Ballard returned to the room and I moved politely out of his chair. He hadn't been able to find Luci with an 'i' anywhere in Chambers, a fact which came as no surprise to me at all.
When I got home to Froxbury Mansions, I happened to mention, over the shepherd's pie and cabbage, that Commander Bob Durden had admitted to an affair with the Doctor's attractive and much younger wife.
"That comes as no surprise to me at all," Hilda told me. "As soon as he appeared on the television I was sure there was something fishy about that man."
I was glad to discover that, when it came to telling lies, Hilda could do it as brazenly as any of my clients.In the weeks before the trial, I thought a good deal about Doctor Petrus Wakefield. Petrus was, you will have to admit, a most unusual Christian name, perhaps bestowed by a pedantic Latin master and his classically educated wife on a child they didn't want to call anything as commonplace as Peter. What bothered me, when I first read the papers in R. v. Durden, was where and when I had heard it before. And then I remembered old cases, forgotten crimes, and gang rivalry in a part of London to the east of Ludgate Circus in the days when I was making something of a name for myself as a defender at the Criminal Bar. These thoughts led me to remember Bill "Knuckles" Huckersley, a heavyweight part-time boxer, full-time bouncer, and general factotum of a minicab organization in Bethnal Green. I had done him some service, such as getting his father off of a charge of attempting to smuggle breaking-out instruments into Pentonville while Bill was detained there. This unlocked for success moved him to send me a Christmas card every year and, as I kept his latest among my trophies, I had his address.
I thought he would be more likely to confide in me than in some professional investigator such as the admirable Fig Newton. Accordingly, I forsook Pommeroys one evening after Court and made instead for the Black Spot Pub in the Bethnal Green Road. There I sat staring moodily into a pint of Guinness as a bank of slot machines whirred and flashed and loud music filled the room, encrusted with faded gilt, which had become known, since a famous shooting had occurred there in its historic past, as the Luger and Lime Bar.
Knuckles arrived dead on time-a large broad-shouldered man who seemed to move as lightly as an inflated balloon across the bar to where I sat. He pulled up a stool beside me and said, "Mr. Rumpole! This is an honour, sir. I told Dad you'd rung up for a meeting and he was over the moon about it. Eighty-nine now and still going. He sends his good wishes, of course."
"Send him mine." I bought Knuckles the Diet Coke and packet of curry-flavoured crisps he'd asked for and as he crunched his way through them, the conversation turned to Doctor Petrus Wakefield. "Petrus," I reminded him, "not a name you'd forget. It seemed to turn up in a number of cases I did in my earlier years."
"He treated friends of mine." Knuckles lifted a fistful of crisps to his mouth and a sound emerged like an army marching through a field of dead bracken. "They did get a few injuries in their line of business."
"What do you mean by that, exactly?"
"Knife wounds. Bullet holes. Some of them I went around with used to attract those sorts of complaints. You needed a doctor who wasn't going to get inquisitive."
"And that was Doctor Petrus Wakefield?"
"He always gave you the first name, didn't he? Like he was proud of it. You got any further questions, Mr. Rumpole? Don't they say that in Court?"
"Sometimes. Yes, I have. About Len Luxford. He used to come in here, didn't he?"
"The old Silencer? He certainly did. He's long gone, though. Got a window-cleaning business somewhere outside London."
"Do you see him occasionally?"
"We keep in touch. Quite regular."
"And he was a patient of Doctor Petrus'?"
"We all were."
"Anything else you can tell me about the Doctor?"
"Nothing much. Except that he was always on about acting. He wanted to get the boys in the nick into acting in plays. I had it when I was in the Scrubs. He'd visit the place and start drama groups. I used to steer clear of them. Lot of dodgy blokes dressing up like females."
"Did he ever try to teach Len Luxford acting?"
My source grinned, coughed, covered his mouth with a huge hand, gulped Diet Coke, and said with a meaningful grin, "Not till recently, I reckon.
"You mean since they both lived at Chivering?"
"Something like that, yes. Last time I had a drink with Len he told me a bit about it.
"What sort of acting are you talking about?" I tried not to show my feeling that my visit to the deafening Luger and Lime Bar was about to become a huge success, but Knuckles had a sudden attack of shyness.
"I can't tell you that, Mr. Rumpole. I honestly can't remember."
"Might you remember if we called you as a witness down the Old Bailey?"
My source was smiling as he answered, but for the first time since I'd known him his smile was seriously alarming.
"You try and get me as a witness down the Old Bailey and you'll never live to see me again. Not in this world you won't."
After that I bought him another Diet Coke and then I left him. I'd gotten something out of Knuckles. Not very much, but something.
"This is one of those unhappy cases, Members of the Jury. One of those very rare cases when a member of the Police Force, in this case a very senior member of the Police Force, seems to have lost all his respect for the law and set about to plot and plan an inexcusable and indeed a cruel crime."
This was Marston Dawlish QC, a large beefy man much given to false smiles and unconvincing bonhomie, opening the case for the prosecution to an attentive Jury. On the Bench we had drawn the short straw in the person of the aptly named Mr. Justice Graves. A pale, unsmiling figure with hollow cheeks and bony fingers, he sat with his eyes closed as though to shut out the painful vision of a dishonest senior copper.
"As I say, it is, happily, rare indeed to see a high-ranking police officer occupying that particular seat in an Old Bailey courtroom." Here Marston Dawlish raised one of his ham-like hands and waved it in the general direction of the dock.
"A rotten apple." The words came in a solemn, doom-laden voice from the Gravestone on the Bench.
"Indeed, your Lordship." Marston Dawlish was only too ready to agree
"We used to say that of police officers who might be less than honest, Members of the Jury." The Judge started to explain his doom-laden pronouncement. "We used to call them 'rotten apples' who might infect the whole barrel if they weren't rooted out."
"Ballard!" This came out as a stentorian whisper at my leader's back. "Aren't you going to point out that that was an appalling thing for the Judge to say?"
"Quiet, Rumpole!" The Soapy Sam whisper was more controlled. "I want to listen to the evidence."
"We haven't gotten to the evidence yet. We haven't heard a word of evidence, but some sort of judicial decision seems to have come from the Bench. Get up on your hind legs and make a fuss about it!"
"Let me remind you, Rumpole, that I'm leading counsel in this case. I make the decisions-"
"Mr. Ballard!" Proceedings had been suspended while Soapy Sam and I discussed tactics. Now the old Gravestone interrupted us. "Does your Junior wish to say something?"
"No, my Lord." Ballard rose with a somewhat sickly smile. "My Junior doesn't wish to say anything. If an objection needs to be made, your Lordship can rely on me to make it."
"I'm glad of that." Graves let loose a small sigh of relief. "I thought I saw Mr. Rumpole growing restive."
"I am restive, my Lord." As Ballard sat down I rose up like a black cloud after sunshine. "Your Lordship seemed to be inviting the Jury to think of my client as a rotten apple, as your Lordship so delicately phrased it, before we have heard a word of evidence against him."
"Rumpole, sit down." Ballard seemed to be in a state of panic.
"I wasn't referring to your client in particular, Mr. Rumpole. I was merely describing unsatisfactory police officers in general."
It was, I thought, a remarkably lame excuse. "My Lord," I told him, "there is only one police officer in the dock and he is completely innocent until he's proven guilty. He could reasonably object to any reference to rotten apples before this case has even begun."
There was a heavy silence. I had turned to look at my client in the dock and I saw what I took to be a small, shadowy smile of gratitude. Ballard sat immobile, as though waiting for sentence of death to be pronounced against me.
"Members of the Jury," Graves turned stiffly in the direction of the twelve honest citizens, "you've heard what Mr. Rumpole had to say and you will no doubt give it what weight you think fit." There was a welcoming turn in the direction of the prosecution. "Yes, Mr. Marston Dawlish. Perhaps you may continue with your opening speech, now that Mr. Ballard's Junior has finished addressing the Court."
Marston Dawlish finished his opening speech without, I was pleased to notice, any further support from the learned Judge. Doctor Petrus Wakefield was the first witness and he gave, I had to admit, an impressive performance. He was a tall, still, slender man with greying sideburns, slightly hooded eyes and a chin raised to show his handsome profile to the best possible advantage. When he took the oath he held the Bible up high and projected in a way which must have delighted the elderly and hard of hearing in the audience attending the Chivering Mummers. He smiled at the Jury, took care not to speak faster than the movements of the Judge's pencil, and asked for no special sympathy as a betrayed husband and potential murder victim. If he wasn't a truthful witness, he clearly knew how to play the part.
An Old Bailey conference room had been reserved for us at lunchtime so we could discuss strategy and eat sandwiches. Ballard, after having done nothing very much all morning, was tucking into a prawn and mayo when he looked up and met an outraged stare from Commander Durden
"What the hell was that Judge up to?"
"Gerald Graves?" Ballard tried to sound casually unconcerned. "Bit of an offputting manner, I agree. But he's sound, very sound. Isn't he, Rumpole?"
"Sound?" I said. "It's the sound of a distant foghorn on a damp night." I didn't want to depress the Commander, but he was depressed already, and distinctly angry.
"Whatever he sounds like, it seems he found me guilty in the first ten minutes."
"You mean," I couldn't help reminding the man of his denunciation of defence barristers, "you found the scales of justice tipped towards the prosecution? I thought you said it was always the other way round.
"I have to admit," and the Commander spoke as though he meant it, "I couldn't help admiring the way you stood up to this Judge, Mr. Rumpole."
"That was standing up to the Judge, was it?" I couldn't let the man get away with it. "Not just another courtroom trick to get the Jury on our side and give the scales of justice a crafty shove?"
"I don't think we should discuss tactics in front of the client, Rumpole." Soapy Sam was clearly feeling left out of the conversation. "Although I have to say, I don't think it was wise to attack the Judge at this stage of the case or indeed at all." He'd gotten the last morsel of prawn and mayo sandwich on his chin and wiped it with a large white handkerchief before setting out to reassure the client. "From now on, I shall be personally responsible for what is said in Court. As your leading counsel, I shall do my best to get back on better terms with Graves."
"You mean," the Commander looked distinctly cheated, "he's going to get away with calling me a rotten apple?"
"I mean to concentrate our fire on this man Luxford. He's got a string of previous convictions." Ballard did his best to look dangerous, but it wasn't a great performance.
"First of all, someone's got to cross-examine the good Doctor Petrus Wakefield," I reminded him.
"I shall be doing that, Rumpole. And I intend to do it very shortly. We don't want to be seen attacking the man whose wife our client unfortunately-"
"Rogered." I was getting tired of Ballard's circumlocutions. "Misconducted himself with." Ballard lowered his voice, and his nose, into a paper cup of coffee. This was clearly a part of the case on which Soapy Sam didn't wish to dwell.
"You'll have to go into the whole affair," I told him. "It's provided the motive for the crime."
"The alleged victim is a deceived husband." Ballard shook his head. "The Jury are going to have a good deal of sympathy for the Doctor."
"If you ask him the questions I've suggested, they may not have all that much sympathy. You got my list, did you?"
I had given my learned leader ten good points for the cross-examination of Doctor Petrus. I had little faith in his putting them particularly clearly, or with more force and power of attack than he might have used if he'd been asking the Doctor if he'd driven up by way of the M25 or had his holiday yet. All the same, the relevant questions were written down, a recipe for a good cross-examination, and Ballard only had to lob them out across the crowded courtroom.
"I have read your list carefully, Rumpole," my leader said, "and quite frankly I don't think there's anything in it that it would be helpful to ask Doctor Wakefield.
"It might be very helpful to the prosecution if you don't ask my questions.
"I shall simply say, 'My client deeply regrets his unfortunate conduct with your wife,' and sit down."
"Sit down exhausted?" I couldn't help asking. "Don't you want to get at the truth of this case?"
"Truth? My dear Rumpole," Ballard was smiling, "I didn't know you were interested in the truth. All these questions," he lifted my carefully prepared list and dropped it on the table, "seem like nothing but a sort of smoke screen-irrelevant matter to confuse the Jury."
"You read about my meeting with Knuckles Huckersley in the Black Spot Pub?"
"I did, and I regretted the fact that a Member of the Bar would go to such lengths, or shall I say depths, to meet a potential witness."
"You're not going to ask the Doctor about his practice in the East End?"
"I think the Jury would find that quite counterproductive. It could look like an attack on his character."
"So you won't take the risk?"
"Certainly not." Ballard's thoughts strayed back to his lunch. "Are those sandwiches bacon and lettuce?"
"I rather imagine corned beef and chutney," Mr. Crozier, our instructing solicitor from Chivering, made a rare contribution to the discussion.
There was silence then. Ballard chewed his last sandwich. No doubt I had broken every rule and shown a lamentable lack of faith in my learned leader, but I had to make the situation clear to our client, the copper who had shown his complete lack of faith in defending counsel.
"Well, Commander," I said, "you've got a barrister who's going to keep the scales tipped in what you said was the right direction."
"Towards justice?" Bob Durden was trying to stick to his old convictions as a drowning man might to a straw.
"No," I said. "Towards a conviction. If it's the conviction of an innocent man, well, I suppose that's just bad luck and part of the system as you'd like it to work."
There was a silence then in the lunchtime conference room. Ballard was at ease in his position as the leader. No doubt I was being a nuisance and breaking most of the rules, but he seemed to feel that he was still in charge and could demolish the corned beef and chutney in apparently contented silence. Mr. Crozier looked embarrassed and the Commander was seriously anxious as he burst out, "Are you saying, Mr. Rumpole, that the questions you want asked could get me off?"
"At least leave you with a chance." I was prepared to promise him that.
"And Mr. Ballard doesn't want to ask them?"
"I've told you. They'll only turn the judge against us," Ballard mumbled past the corned beef.
"And why do you want to ask them, Mr. Rumpole?" The Commander was puzzled.
"Oh, I'm just one of those legal hacks you disapprove of," I told him. "I want you to walk out of Court laughing. I know that makes me a very dubious sort of lawyer, the kind you really hate. Don't you, Commander Durden?"
In the silence that followed, our client looked round the room uncertainly. Then he made up his mind and barked out an order. "I want Mr. Rumpole's questions asked."
"I told you," Ballard put down his half-eaten sandwich, "I'm in charge of this case and I don't intend to make any attack on a reputable Doctor whose wife you apparently seduced."
"All right." In spite of Ballard's assertion of his authority it was the Commander who was in charge. "Then Mr. Rum-pole is going to have to ask the questions for you."
I was sorry for Soapy Sam then, and I felt, I have to confess, a pang of guilt. He had behaved according to his fairly hopeless principles and could do no more. He rose to his feet, left his half-eaten sandwich to curl up on its plate, and spoke to his friend Mr.
Crozier who looked deeply embarrassed.
"Under the circumstances," Bollard said, "I must withdraw. My advice has not been taken and I must go. I can't say I expect a happy result for you, Commander, but I wish you well. I suppose you're not coming with me, Rumpole?"
As I say, I felt for the man, but I couldn't leave with him. Commander Durden had put his whole life in the hands of the sort of Old Bailey hack he had told the world could never be trusted not to pull a fast one.
"Doctor Wakefield, you're suggesting in this case that my client, Commander Durden, instigated a plan to kill you?"
"He did that, yes."
"It wasn't a very successful plan, was it?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you're still here, aren't you? Alive and kicking." This got me a little stir of laughter from the Jury and a doom-laden warning from his Lordship.
"Mr. Rumpole, for reasons which we need not go into here, your learned leader hasn't felt able to continue with this case."
"Your Lordship is saying that he will be greatly missed?"
"I am saying no such thing. What I am saying is that I hope this defence will be conducted according to the high standards we have come to expect from Mr. Ballard. Do I make myself clear?"
"Perfectly clear, my Lord. I'll do my best." Here I was looking at the Jury. I didn't exactly wink, but I hoped they were prepared to join me in the anti-Graves society. "Of course I can't promise anything."
"Well do your best, Mr. Rumpole." The old Gravestone half closed his eyes as though expecting to be shocked by my next question. I didn't disappoint him.
"Doctor Wakefield, were you bitterly angry when you discovered that your wife had been sleeping with Commander Durden?"
"Mr. Rumpole!" The Grave's eyes opened again, but with no friendly expression. "I'm sure the Jury will assume that Doctor Wakefield had the normal feelings of a betrayed husband."
"I quite agree, my Lord. But the evidence might be more valuable if it came from the witness and not from your Lordship." Before Graves could utter again, I launched another question at the good Doctor. "Did you consider divorce?"
"I thought about it, but Judy and I decided to try to keep the marriage together for the sake of the children."
"An admirable decision, if I may say so." And I decided to say so before the doleful Graves could stir himself to congratulate the witness. "You've produced the letter you found in your wife's handbag. By the way, do you make a practice of searching your wife's bag?"
"Only after I'd become suspicious.   I'd heard rumours."
"I see. So you found this letter, in which the Commander said they might be happier if you vanished from the face of the earth. Did you take that as a threat to kill you?"
"When I heard about the plot, yes."
"When you heard about it from Luxford?"
"Yes."
"But not at the time you found the letter?"
"It occurred to me that it might be a threat, but I didn't believe that Bob Durden would actually do anything."
"You didn't believe that?"
"No. But I thought he meant he wanted me dead."
"And it made you angry?"
"Very angry."
"So I suppose you went straight round to the Commanders office, or his house, and confronted him with it."
"No, I didn't do that."
"You didn't do that?" I was looking at the Jury now in considerable surprise with a slight frown and raised eyebrows, an expression which I saw reflected in some of their faces.
"May I ask why you didn't confront my client with his outrageous letter?"
"I didn't want to add to the scandal. Judy and I were going to try to make a life together."
"That answer," the sepulchral Graves' voice was now almost silky, "does you great credit, if I may say so, Doctor Wakefield."
"What may not do you quite so much credit, Doctor," I tried to put my case as politely as possible, "is the revenge you decided to take on your wife's lover. This letter," I had it in my hand now and held it up for the Jury to see, "gave you the idea. The ingenious revenge you planned would cause Bob Durden, and not you, to vanish. Isn't that the truth of the matter?"
"Are you suggesting, Mr. Rumpole," the Judge overacted his astonishment, "that we've all got this case the wrong way round and that it was Doctor Wakefield who was planning to murder your client?"
"Not murder him, my Lord. However angry the Doctor was, however deep his sense of humiliation, he stopped short of murder. No. What he planned for Mr. Durden was a fate almost worse than death for a senior police officer. He planned to put him exactly where he is now, in the Old Bailey dock, faced with a most serious charge and with the prospect of a long term of confinement in prison."
It was one of those rare moments in Court of absolute silence. The clerk sitting below the Judge stopped whispering into his telephone; no one came in or went out, opened a law book, or sorted out their papers. The Jury looked startled at this new and extraordinary idea. Everyone seemed to hold their breath, and I felt as though I had just dumped my money on an outside chance and the roulette wheel had started to spin.
"I really haven't the least idea what you mean." Doctor Petrus Wakefield, in the witness box, looked amused rather than shaken, cheerfully tolerant of a barrister's desperate efforts to save his client, and perfectly capable of dealing with any question I might have the wits to ask.
Graves swooped to support the Doctor. "Mr. Rumpole, I presume you're going to explain that extraordinary suggestion."
"Your Lordship's presumption is absolutely correct. I would invite your Lordship to listen carefully while I put my case to the witness. Doctor Wakefield," I went on before Graves could summon his voice back from the depths, "your case is that you learnt of the alleged plot to kill you when Luxford called to warn you. We haven't yet heard from Mr. Luxford, but that's your story."
"It's the truth."
"Luxford warned you because he was grateful for the way you'd treated his mother?"
"That is so."
"But you'd known Len Luxford-The Silencer as he was affectionately known by the regulars in the Black Spot in Bethnal Green-long before that, hadn't you?"
Doctor Wakefield took time to think. He must have thought of what The Silencer might say when he came to give evidence and he took a gamble on the truth. "I had come across him. Yes."
"Because you practised as a doctor in that part of London?"
"I did, yes."
"And got to know quite a number of characters who lived on the windy side of the law?"
"It was my job to treat them medically. I didn't enquire into the way they lived their lives."
"Of course, Doctor. Didn't some of your customers turn up having been stabbed, or with gunshot wounds?"
"They did, yes." Once again the Doctor took a punt on the truth.
"So you treated them?"
"Yes. Just as you, Mr. Rumpole, no doubt represented some of them in Court."
It was a veritable hit. The Jury smiled, the Gravestone looked as though it was the first day of spring, and I had to beware of any temptation to underestimate the intelligence of Doctor Wakefield.
"Exactly so. And, like me, you got to know some of them quite well. You got to know Luxford very well in those old days, didn't you?"
"He was a patient of mine."
"You treated his wounds and kept quiet about them."
"Probably."
"Probably. So would it be right to say that you and The Silencer Luxford went back a long time, and he owed you a debt of gratitude?"
"Exactly!" The Doctor was pleased to agree. "Which is why he told me about your clients plan to pay him to kill me."
"I'm just coming to that. When you're not practising medicine or patching up old gangsters, you spend a great deal of your time acting, don't you?"
"It's my great passion." And here the Doctor's voice was projected and enriched. "Acting can release us from ourselves, call on us to create a new character."
"Which is why you encouraged acting in prisons."
"Exactly, Mr. Rumpole! I'm glad you understand that, at least."
There was a moment of rapport between myself and the witness, but now I had to launch an attack which seemed, now that I was standing up in a crowded courtroom, like taking a jump in the dark off a very high cliff.
"I think you encouraged Len Luxford to act?"
"In the old days, when I did some work with prisoners, yes."
"Oh, no, I mean quite recently. When you suggested he go for a chat with Commander Durden about police informers and come out acting the part of a contract killer."
The Doctor's reaction was perfect-good-natured, half amused, completely unconcerned. "I really have no idea what you're suggesting," he said.
"Neither have I." The learned Gravestone was delighted to join the queue of the mystified. "Perhaps you'd be good enough to explain yourself, Mr. Rumpole"
"Certainly, my Lord." I turned to the witness. "It was finding the letter that gave you the idea, wasn't it? It could be used to support the idea that Commander Durden wanted you dead. You were going to get your revenge, not by killing him, nothing as brutally simple as that, but by getting him convicted of a conspiracy to murder you-by finishing his career, turning him into a criminal, landing him, the rotten apple in the barrel of decent coppers, in prison for a very long time indeed."
"That is absolute nonsense." The Doctor was as calm as ever, but I ploughed on, doing my best to sound more confident than I felt.
"All you needed was an actor for your small-cast play. So you got Len Luxford, who owed you for a number of favours, to act for you. All he had to do was to lie about what Commander Durden had said to him when he arranged a meeting, and you thought that and the letter would be enough."
"It's an interesting idea, Mr. Rumpole. But of course it's completely untrue."
"You're an excellent actor, aren't you, Doctor?" I took it slowly now, looking at the Jury. "Didn't you have a great success in the Shakespeare play you did with the local Mummers?"
"I think we all did fairly well. What's that got to do with it?"
"Didn't you play Iago? A man who ruins his Commander by producing false evidence?"
"Mr. Rumpole!" Graves' patience, fragile as it already was, had clearly snapped at what he saw as my attempt to call a dead dramatist into the witness box. "Have you no other evidence for the very serious suggestions you're making to this witness except for the fact that he played, who was it . . .," he searched among his notes, "the man Iago?"
"Oh yes, my Lord.' I tried to answer with more confidence than I felt. "I'd like the Jury to have a couple of documents."
Mr. Crozier had done his work well. Having surrendered Bob Durden's bank statements to the young man from the Crown Prosecution Service, he seemed to take it for granted that we should get Doctor Wakefield's in return. Now the Judge and the Jury had their copies, and I introduced the subject.
"Let me just remind you. Luxford saw Commander Durden on March the fifteenth. On March the twenty-first you went to Detective Inspector Mynot with your complaint that my client had asked Luxford to kill you for a payment of five thousand pounds-two and a half thousand down and the balance when the deed was done."
"That's the truth.  It's what I told the Inspector."
"You're sure it's the truth?"
"I am on my oath."
"So you are." I looked at the Jury. "Perhaps you could look at your bank statement. Did you draw out two and a half thousand pounds in cash on March the twenty-first? Quite a large sum, wasn't it? May I suggest what it was for?"
For the first time the Doctor missed his cue. He looked about the Court as though hoping for a prompt, and, not getting one, invented. "I think I had to pay... I seem to remember things were done to the house."
"It wasn't anything to do with the house, was it?   You were paying Len Luxford off in cash.   Not for doing a murder, but for pretending to be part of a conspiracy to murder?"
The Doctor looked to Marston Dawlish for help, but no help came from that quarter. I asked the next question.
"When does he get the rest of the money?   On the day Commander Durden's convicted?" "Of course not!"
"Is that your answer?" I turned to the Judge. "My Lord, may I just remind you and the Jury that there are no large amounts of cash to be seen coming out of Commander Durden's account during the relevant period."
With that I sat down. Counsel for the prosecution suggested that as I had taken such an unconscionable time with Doctor Wakefield, perhaps the Court would rise for the day, and he would be calling Mr. Luxford in the morning.
But he didn't call The Silencer the next morning or any other morning. I don't know whether it was the news of my cross-examination in the evening paper, or a message of warning from Knuckles, but in a fit of terminal stage fright Len failed to enter the Court. A visit by the police to the house from which he carried out his window-cleaning business only revealed a distraught wife who had no idea where he had gotten to. I suppose he had enough experience of the law to understand that a charge of conspiracy to murder against the Commander might turn into a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice against Doctor Wakefield and himself. So he went with his cash, perhaps back to his old friends and accustomed haunts, his one unsuccessful stab at the acting profession over.
When Marston Dawlish announced that without his vital witness the prosecution couldn't continue, Mr. Justice Graves gave a heavy sigh and advised the twelve honest citizens.
"Members of the Jury, you have heard a lot of questions put by Mr. Rumpole about the man lago. And other suggestions which may or may not have seemed to you to be relevant to this case. The simple fact of the matter is that the vital prosecution witness has gone missing and Mr. Marston Dawlish has asked me to direct you to return a verdict of 'not guilty.' It's an unfortunate situation, but there it is. So will your foreman please stand?"
I paid a last visit to the conference room to say goodbye to my client and Mr. Crozier. The place had been cleaned up, ready to receive other sandwiches, other paper cups of coffee, and other people in trouble.
"I suppose I should thank you." The Commander was looking as confident again as he had on the telly. Only now he was smiling.
"I suppose you should thank me, the shifty old defence hack, and a couple of hard cases like Knuckles and Len Luxford. We doubtful characters saved your skin, Commander, and managed to tip the scales of justice in favour of the defence."
"I shall go on protesting about that, of course."
"I thought you might."
"Not that I have any criticism of what you did in my case. I'm sure you acted perfectly properly. You believed in my innocence."
"No." I had to say it, but I'm afraid it startled him. He looked shocked. His full lips shrank in disapproval and his forehead furrowed.
"You didn't believe in my innocence?"
"My belief is suspended. It's been left hanging up in the robing room for years. It's not my job to find you innocent or guilty. That's up to the Jury. All I can do is put your case as well as you would if you had," and I said it in all modesty, "anything approaching my ability."
"I don't think I'd ever have thought up your attack on the Doctor," he admitted.
"No, I don't believe you would have."
"So I'm grateful to you."
It wasn't an overgenerous compliment, but I said thank you.
"But you say you're not convinced of my innocence?" Clearly he could hardly believe it.
"Don't worry," I told him. "You're free now. You can go back to work."
"That's true. I've been suspended for far too long." He looked at his watch as though he expected to start immediately. "It's been an interesting experience." I was, I must say, surprised at the imperturbable Commander who could fall passionately in love, wish an inconvenient husband off the face of the earth, and call his own criminal trial merely "interesting." "We live in different worlds, Mr. Rumpole," he told me, "you and I."
"So we do. You believe everyone who turns up in Court is guilty. I suspect some of them may be innocent."
"You suspect, you say, but you never know, do you?"
And so he left widi Mr. Crozier. I fully expect to see him again, in his impressive uniform, complaining from the television in the corner of our living room about the scales of justice being constantly tipped in favour of the defence.
"You had a bit of luck in R. v. Durden. " Ballard caught me up in Ludgate Circus one afternoon when we were walking back from the Old Bailey. "I gather Luxford went missing."
"That's right," I told him.   "Are you calling that luck?"
"Lucky for you, Rumpole. From what I read of your cross-examination, you were clearly irritating the Judge."
"I'm afraid I was.  I do have a talent for irritating judges."
"Pity, that.  Otherwise you are, in many ways, quite able."
"Thank you, Ballard."
"No, I should thank you for getting me out of that unpleasant case. Our clerk fixed me up with a rating appeal."
"Good old Henry."
"Yes, he has his uses. So you see, I have a lot to thank you for, Rumpole."
"You're entirely welcome, but will you promise me one thing?"
"What's that?"
"Please don't hug me, Ballard.'
"I told you, Rumpole, that I could tell at once that there was something fishy about that client of yours." Hilda's verdict on the Commander was written in stone
"But he was acquitted."
"You know perfectly well, Rumpole, that that doesn't mean a thing. The next time he turns up on the telly I shall switch over to the other channel."
Forget Graves, I thought, leave out Bullingham; you'd search for a long time down the Old Bailey before you found a Judge as remorseless and tough as She Who Must Be Obeyed! 
O