Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders (8 page)

Such garden as there was, a pocket handkerchief of dark earth containing a few straggling roses and dahlias, was crossed by a crazy-paving pathway from the gate to the front door. It seemed a meagre place to come home to after the daring splendours of a victorious war.

The trophies of that war seemed diminished and almost irrelevant after the most recent violent crime that had taken place in the room. The photographs of Pilot Officer Jerry looked curled and untidy on the mantelpiece, his silk scarf was crumpled and the pride of the collection, the captured German pistol, had already been tested for fingerprints, wrapped in cellophane and labelled Prosecution Exhibit One.

The armchair was about six feet away from the artificial coals in the electric fire. It wasn't facing the fireplace but turned away at an angle, so Jerry Jerold had not died looking directly at the relics of his past. On the floor beside his chair, an almost empty bottle of Famous Grouse whisky had been found, on which there were fingerprints of the party of ex-RAF men, including Jerry. There was also a half-empty soda water siphon and an empty glass with only Jerry's fingerprints on it.

At one point, when the gloomy superintendent was off with his attendant detective sergeant in the kitchen, I invited Bonny Bernard to sit in the armchair. I stood over him pointing an imaginary gun, at which dramatic moment the officer in charge of the case returned to utter a sad rebuke.

‘Mr Rumpole, I know you're young in call to the bar but I don't believe Mr Wystan, had he been here, would have asked his instructing solicitor to sit down upon the exhibits.'

At which Bonny Bernard climbed to his feet, looking embarrassed, and I gave my attention to other matters. It was about three yards from the chair to the door into the hallway and the same distance to the front door. The position of the bloodstains had been circled in chalk and I was on my knees examining them when I heard the all too familiar voice of Reggie Proudfoot braying in the air above me.

‘Doing a bit of detective work, are you, Sherlock Rumpole?'

‘As a matter of fact, yes.' I did my best to silence this legal pain in the backside. ‘And it so happens that we've got a cast-iron defence. What are you doing here?'

‘Same as you, Rumpole. I'm a junior, but I've got the good luck to be one of the juniors for the prosecution, which means that, unlike you, I'm on a winner.'

‘Are you sure of that?'

‘Of course I'm sure. You're going to lose your case, just as you lost your dancing partner.'

‘I really don't see the connection,' I suppose I made the mistake of showing my anger, ‘between a hop in the Inner Temple and a young boy on trial for his life.'

‘Don't you, Rumpole? You're the connection. You're a loser in both places.' It was then he looked round the accommodation, not to search for any hint of a clue but merely to make a general observation. ‘My God, it must be ghastly living in a bungalow. No wonder it led to murder!'

I left the scene of the crime with Bonny Bernard. When he asked me if I thought our visit had been at all helpful, I said possibly, and then thought that we'd been concentrating on the death of Jerry Jerold and seemed to forget the other murder. What did we know about ‘Tail-End' Charlie? He was found dead by the cleaning lady. Was he married? What about girlfriends? He must have been alone on the night he was shot. I asked Bonny Bernard, ‘Will you find out?'

‘Will I do it? Of course I'll do it. I can't leave that sort of thing to Mr Barnsley Gough.' Then young Bernard gave me a small conspiratorial smile. ‘He's fully occupied with his golf!'

 

‘I can understand, Rumpole, how your connection with an important case has led you astray. It has caused you to make an error of judgement.'

‘I just thought you were probably too busy to visit the scene of the crime.'

‘No, you didn't think I was too busy.' C. H. Wystan was in a surprisingly serene, even a forgiving, mood. ‘You wanted to do something on your own. Of course I understand that. The feeling was perfectly natural. And I'm sure it won't happen again.'

‘Of course not,' I assured him. I had got what I wanted from the Penge bungalow.

‘That's understood, then. I don't suppose your visit did us any harm. Or our client any particular good.'

‘You've read my notes?' I had written down my thoughts about, among other things, the position of the armchair.

‘Of course I've read your notes, dear boy.' It was the first time, positively the first time, that Hilda's father had called me his ‘dear boy' and the fact left me, I have to confess, gulping as he went on, ‘But there is one unfortunate fact that you seem to have overlooked. One question I would suggest that, for all your industry, you've failed to ask. If young Jerold didn't shoot his father, or the person apparently known as “Tail-End” Charlie, then who on earth did?'

9

A few days later, I got a call from Bonny Bernard, who said he'd found Harry Daniels's address and had spoken to him on the telephone.

‘Can he help us?'

‘I'm not quite sure. He said he hoped young Simon would get off. And he said Jerry Jerold probably deserved what he got.'

‘Did he mean for taunting his son?'

‘I'm not sure.'

‘I suppose he might have meant that. Did he say anything else?'

‘Not then. But I've made a date to call on him and take a statement.'

‘Oh, well done, Bonny Bernard, well done indeed! And Charlie Weston?'

‘Simon gave me some more information. He had a wife, Katie, but it was an eventful kind of marriage.'

‘How do you mean “eventful”?'

‘Well, apparently the violence was mutual. Charlie sometimes appeared with a face covered in scratches and once a black eye.'

‘Katie took a swing at him?'

‘Something like that. Anyway, they'd split up for the umpteenth time a month before the night at the Palladium.'

I thanked the industrious Bernard again and rang off. In all probability, Daniels's evidence would do nothing to answer C. H. Wystan's question. But it was encouraging to find someone who seemed to be on our side. For the next few days, as I waited for a new witness statement, I lived in a condition of vague hope.

 

It was while I was waiting for further news from this front that I got more words of warning from our clerk, Albert Handyside, in Pommeroy's Wine Bar.

‘The duty of the leader is to lead, Mr Rumpole. It's for him to decide what witnesses to call and the general conduct of the case. It's the duty of the junior -'

‘I know,' I told Albert, ‘it's the junior's duty to take a full note of the evidence. And occasionally buy his leader a cup of coffee.'

‘You've got it, Mr Rumpole! Got it in one!' Albert smiled and dipped his head towards the pint of Guinness I'd bought him. Encouraged by the investigation undertaken by Bonny Bernard and my good self, I took a swig of my glass of Château Fleet Street. Then I asked, ‘But if the junior has a few ideas that might help the leader to win the case?'

‘It's not the junior's job to have ideas, Mr Rumpole. In my opinion, you can count yourself extremely lucky to have a junior brief in an important matter. You have to be content with taking a note. Or calling a short and unimportant witness if your leader invites you to do so.'

‘And did my leader invite you to have a word with me on this subject?'

‘Mr C. H. Wystan, QC, your leader and Head of Chambers, thought it might sound better coming from me, seeing as we take the occasional drink together and I've put a bit of work in your direction.'

At this I heard a scarcely suppressed giggle and, for the first time, I noticed that the abominable Reggie Proudfoot had come into the bar with the junior clerk from the DPP's office I had seen with him in the fatal bungalow. The man had certainly been earwigging our conversation. Before I could attend to Proudfoot, or indeed to Albert's lecture on the proprieties of the legal profession, I saw the fresh face of young Bonny Bernard making its way through the crowded Pommeroy's.

‘They said in the clerk's room you'd both be in here,' he said when he arrived. ‘I was up in the City and I thought I'd tell you about Harry Daniels.'

‘You've been at it again, haven't you, Mr Rumpole?' Albert spoke sadly.

‘Yes, of course.' I turned to Bonny Bernard. ‘The man who said Simon's father deserved all he got. Have you taken a statement?'

‘The man's done the vanishing trick, Mr Rumpole.' Bernard was apologetic. ‘He wasn't there when I went round to take his statement. The house was all locked up. Gone away with no word when he'd be back - that's what a neighbour told me. I'm sorry it's a disappointment for you.'

‘Does Mr Wystan know that you've been making enquiries?' interrupted Albert.

Bernard looked blank, so I had to answer Albert's question. ‘Not yet. But when we get some results he'll be the first to know.'

‘I'm still trying to get the details of the other witnesses,' Bernard went on brightly, causing deeper looks of disapproval from Albert. ‘They're being a bit slow at RAF records.'

‘It doesn't appear -' Albert seemed relieved at the thought - ‘that all your research is having much of a result.'

‘Not yet perhaps,' I told him. ‘I thought of going away this weekend, up to see friends I met in the RAF. They keep the Crooked Billet at Coldsands-on-Sea.'

‘Have you told Mr Wystan that?'

‘Not yet. I promise you I'll let him know if I learn anything useful.'

Albert gave me a sour look and drained his glass of Guinness. ‘I told Mr Wystan I'd have a word with you and I've done it. So I hope you'll bear what I've said in mind.'

‘I shall, Albert. Of course I shall. You've got the wisdom of generations of clerks who've told young white wigs how to behave. I know that. There's only one thing more important than keeping my leader happy.'

‘What's that, then?'

‘Trying to save young Simon's life.'

‘I only hope, Mr Rumpole -' Albert put his empty glass down on the bar - ‘that you're as clever as you think you are.' With that he left us, and Bernard and I moved to a table in Pommeroy's, as we were to do so often in the years to come, for further discussions. As we went, I saw out of the corner of my eye the young DPP clerk with Reggie Proudfoot scribble a note on the front page of his
Evening Standard
.

 

When I chronicled those I had been in love with, it was, I'm afraid, only a small number and, to some of my readers perhaps, an unimpressive list. I never aspired to the adventures of Casanova or the 1,003 conquests made by Don Giovanni in Italy alone. However, those I have named had, each of them, a deep effect on me and it was to one of their number my thoughts turned when I tried, in vain, to answer the searching and vital question posed me by my not particularly learned leader, C. H. Wystan. ‘If Simon Jerold didn't shoot his father, then who the hell did?'

I had read and re-read all the prosecution statements so that I knew them by heart when I got out of the train, one Saturday afternoon, at Coldsands-on-Sea. A wind swept this seaside resort on the Norfolk coast, home to the old RAF station where I had served, however unheroically, as ground staff during the recent conflict.

The saloon bar of the Crooked Billet had this much in common with the living room at number 3 Paxton Street, Penge: it was a kind of museum of tributes to the war in the air. There was no gun, no bullets, but a captured Nazi helmet, a plaster image of Winston Churchill which could actually hold up two fingers in a ‘V' sign and puff smoke out of a cigar, a signed photograph of Vera Lynn and a model of a Spitfire swinging from the ceiling. Even the pintable reminded me of an antique looted from the NAAFI of my old station. All of this was familiar enough, but my heart beat a little faster when the person who had been bent double, putting away bottles on the shelves behind the bar, straightened up and greeted me with her never-forgotten smile.

She was no longer in the uniform of a WAAF. She was wearing a frilly shirt and dark blue trousers. And then, only seven years since her demob, the years had not added much to the generosity of her curves or dimmed the brightness of her hair. Bobby Dougherty looked much as she had when she was Bobby O'Keefe, before her heart was stolen away by Pilot Officer Sam ‘Three Fingers' Dougherty, who was without doubt a wartime hero and so had attractions with which a mere member of the ground staff could never compete. But now we were alone together and she was smiling, surrounded by the fairy lights along the bar and the comforting smell of stale booze, getting ready for opening time.

‘Hello, darling!' Bobby gave me a breathless kiss which decorated my cheek with lipstick. ‘Long time no see. I've missed you.' I was complacent enough to let myself believe she was telling the truth.

That evening, after the bar closed, we three were at the pub piano. Bobby picked out the old tunes and vamped the accompaniments to ‘Somewhere in France with You', ‘We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line', ‘There'll be Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover', ‘You are My Sunshine' and ‘Roll out the Barrel'.

Ex-Pilot Officer Sam Dougherty had appeared early in the evening. My successful rival in love was, I have to admit, a tall good-looking man wearing an RAF scarf tucked into an open-necked shirt, a blazer and scuffed suede shoes. The years had not been so kind to him as they had to Bobby. His dark hair and moustache were peppered with grey and I noticed his three fingers had trembled a little as he filled and then refreshed his glass of whisky.