Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer Read Free Book Online Page A

case’ or some other source of entertainment. In due course I got the brief from Albert in R . v. Timson . At that time the name meant nothing to me.
    After Singleton had left me, I decided it was time I let my learned leader know my thoughts on the bloodstains in R . v. Jerold . I trudged along to his room, knocked at the door and was invited to come in by a commanding but strangely high-pitched voice. As I did so, I was greeted with the spectacle of Hilda seated comfortably behind her father’s desk, filing her nails and reading a magazine.
    â€˜Hello there, Rumpole!’ She called to me as though she was hailing some small ship in difficulties from the comparative safety of the shore. ‘I thought I might bump into you again while I was here. I’m waiting for Daddy to come back from court and take me out to dinner. Got any particular message for him, have you?’
    â€˜Blood.’ I tried to put the matter as shortly as possible.
    â€˜What’s blood got to do with it?’
    â€˜It’s about the bloodstains in the Penge Bungalow affair.’
    â€˜Well, of course there were bloodstains, Daddy knows that, if that wretched boy shot his father.’
    â€˜ If he did? We have to presume he didn’t do it.’
    â€˜Why on earth should we presume that?’ Hilda Wystan was giving me her look of tolerant amusement.
    â€˜Because the law tells us to.’
    I suppose I was being pompous, but she smiled tolerantly and said, ‘The presumption of innocence doesn’t mean that some people aren’t guilty.’
    The Wystan daughter had a point there, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of admitting it. So I said, ‘If you could just tell your father that I’ve had some ideas about the blood.’
    â€˜Oh, I don’t think Daddy’ll be very interested in ideas about the blood.’
    â€˜Perhaps you could tell me what part of the defence does interest your daddy?’ I thought of that terrified boy, alone in a cell, expecting death, and I have to confess to a distinct rise in the supply of righteous indignation.
    â€˜Daddy always says that the job of a defending counsel is to wrap the client in a cloak of respectability,’ Hilda told me.
    â€˜I just happen to believe that bloodstains might be more useful to Simon than a cloak of respectability.’
    â€˜Who’s Simon?’
    â€˜Young Simon. The prisoner at the bar.’
    â€˜Daddy calls him “Jerold”. I don’t think he’s ever referred to him as “Simon”.’
    â€˜Perhaps he should. Then the jury might think of him as a human being. A boy. Perhaps they’ve got sons his age.’ Although, of course, I had never done a murder trial, I had given the matter a good deal of serious thought.
    â€˜Rumpole!’ My learned leader’s daughter stopped me as though I was a runaway pony, galloping completely out of control. ‘I think for your future career, after R . v. Jerold ’s over of course, you should concentrate on the civil law.’
    â€˜Civil law? I hardly know any civil law.’ It was true: I had scraped through contract after a humiliating retake.
    â€˜Then I think you should brush up on it, Rumpole. Daddy always says that civil law is so much cleaner than crime.’
    â€˜I don’t agree,’ I had no hesitation in telling her.
    â€˜Don’t you, Rumpole?’ She still looked at me in an amused sort of way, as though I was a young but harmless eccentric.
    â€˜To me criminal law is all about life, love and the pursuit of happiness. Civil law’s only about money, an uninteresting subject.’ It was a sentence I had used in one of my examination papers to cover my profound ignorance of the rules governing bills of exchange.
    â€˜Do you really think money an uninteresting subject, Rumpole?’ Hilda’s tolerant smile was now a permanent fixture. ‘You’ll probably think