Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders Read Online Free Page A

Port has always seemed to me a sickly sort of a wine, and I would have been happier with a glass of Pommeroy’s Plonk with Albert than vintage Cockburn’s with C. H. Wystan. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t have given you Uncle Tom as a pupil master.’ He seemed in an apologetic mood. ‘He doesn’t get much work.’
    â€˜He certainly doesn’t.’
    â€˜All the same, he’s a safe pair of hands.’ It was then that I decided that, whatever became of me at the bar, I wouldn’t be known simply for the safety of my hands.
    â€˜We had a fellow once in chambers. I never liked him. Name of Denver. Well, Denver had a pupil from whom he extracted the usual £100 fee. And do you know, the very next day after he’d got it, Denver and our junior clerk legged it over to France! We never saw hide nor hair of either of them again. Horrible business, this Penge Bungalow affair, don’t you think? Pure evil. A fellow shooting his father.’ His small beady eyes peered out in horror as though amazed at such examples of the wickedness of the world in both cases. They were definitely not in the finest traditions of the bar.
    However, there was one of these traditions that, although I was young, insecure and drinking his port wine, I felt I had to recall to C. H. Wystan’s attention. ‘We don’t know that your client in the Penge Bungalow affair shot his father, do we? I mean, we shan’t know that until the jury comes back with a verdict of guilty.’
    Hilda’s daddy looked at me and his expression was pained. As though to cover his embarrassment, he said, ‘Things look very black against him. Very black indeed.’
    â€˜That’s before you’ve tested the evidence.’
    â€˜I shall go through all the motions, Rumpole, in the best tradition of our great profession. But I can’t hold out any high hopes for the wretched boy, I’m afraid. I can’t hold out very much hope for him at all.’
    â€˜I haven’t read the evidence.’
    â€˜No, Rumpole. Of course you haven’t. Perhaps you will have that opportunity at some future time. At the moment all we can say is that public opinion - that is, the opinion of any jury - is likely to be dead against young Jerold.’
    â€˜So he’s a client who desperately needs defending brilliantly, ’ was what I should have said. Being young and, as I say, craven, I only managed, ‘I’m sure you’ll have difficulties. ’
    â€˜I won’t have difficulties, Rumpole.’ Here Wystan let a note of sadness in. ‘I will have impossibilities! Two war heroes murdered, men who saved our nation. A couple of “the few” who went on fearless bombing raids.’
    I swallowed a sweet and sticky gulp of port and became bold enough to say, ‘Weren’t “the few” fighter pilots?’
    â€˜Men shot down over occupied France who managed to get back to England at the end of the war.’ Wystan ignored my interruption. ‘Victims of an apparently completely senseless shooting by the boy Simon Jerold.’
    â€˜Would you rather he’d shot a couple of conscientious objectors?’ was what I felt I ought to have said. Once again, for reasons of youth, I didn’t.
    â€˜My daughter, Hilda, as you may have noticed,’ C. H. Wystan seemed to have felt there was no more to be said on the subject of murder and our attention should be turned to more important matters, ‘takes a lively interest in all that is going on in chambers. She was appointed a school monitor at an unusually early age.’
    I did my best to look suitably impressed.
    Wystan continued, ‘Now, as you probably know, I’ve been offered the leading brief in R . v. Jerold by a perfectly decent firm of solicitors in Penge.’
    â€˜Albert told me that.’ I tried as hard as I could to keep the note of hopeless envy out of my voice.
    â€˜I am telling you,