Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders Read Online Free

‘Jezebel’ and ‘Jealousy’. As we danced, I caught sight of a couple grasping hands and apparently throwing each other apart before pulling themselves together again. ‘It’s called “jiving”, Rumpole,’ Hilda Wystan, who seemed surprisingly up in these things, told me, ‘but I wouldn’t advise you to try it until you’re better at the basic steps.’
    As the band played ‘Goodnight Irene’, my friend Daisy came over to tell me that Reggie had agreed to drive her back to Dagenham because it was ‘on his way home’ - a statement which I didn’t believe to be true.
    Not much later Hilda Wystan told me that ‘Daddy’ would be downstairs waiting to collect her, as he had been working late on a big brief in chambers. ‘Never mind, Rumpole,’ she said as she departed, ‘we shall meet again. And it may be sooner than you expect.’
    So I was left alone with a glass of dubious claret cup, in which leaves and slices of fruit floated, to wonder what Hilda Wystan had meant by her last doom-laden remark.
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    I didn’t have long to wait for an answer. It was only a week or so later that C. H. Wystan came into the room where Uncle Tom was vainly trying to chip another golf ball into the wastepaper basket and I was making a note on yet another careless driving. He said, ‘Would you care to dine, Rumpole?’
    I was about to tell him that I only did so occasionally, when the Legal Aid cheques were paid in, but he went on, before I could interrupt, ‘Just a family occasion. There’ll be no need for you to dress.’
    I had, I confess, a momentary temptation to ask, ‘A naked family occasion?’ but again I resisted it.
    So I found myself, far earlier than I expected, ringing the front door bell of a grey house on a street of similar grey houses in Kensington. The door was opened by a maid as colourless and tidy as the house, with its grey wallpaper, framed etchings of views of the Swiss Alps and central heating kept economically at a low level. Without any preliminary drinking time, I found myself facing the joint and two veg together with Wystan and his lady wife, a large anxious woman who seemed to be continually worried about the arrival and quality of the dinner.
    â€˜Oh, do stop worrying and calm down, Mother!’ exclaimed Hilda. She clearly had little tolerance for her female parent. To her father she was far more patient, although she was noticeably better informed about the business of chambers than he was.
    â€˜It’s true, isn’t it, Daddy?’ She seemed to be calling on his support as a mere formality. ‘Albert likes the cut of Rumpole’s jib? It’s so important to get on well with the clerk.’
    â€˜Of course it’s important.’ C. H. Wystan was prepared to give a carefully balanced judgement on the subject. ‘That doesn’t mean that you have to join the clerk in the saloon bar or anything of that nature! That would not be in the fine tradition of the bar. Rumpole understands that, I’m sure.’
    â€˜Do you, Rumpole?’ It was Hilda who asked the question.
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ I was craven enough to agree. ‘I understand it perfectly.’ Youth is full of such small acts of betrayal. I promised myself to make it up to Albert the next time we met in Pommeroy’s, a place of refuge from a harsh world.
    When we had polished off the pudding (baked jam roll), C. H. Wystan gave a brief nod to his wife, who gathered up her daughter to depart. Before she left the room, Hilda said, ‘Daddy’s got some good news for you, Rumpole,’ and she went off with what I can only describe as a smirk. I was surprised that what always seemed to me the barbaric custom of leaving men to port and dirty jokes after the pud had then survived, even in the family circle, as one of the finest traditions of the bar.
    Dirty jokes, of course, there were not.