Rumpole and the Primrose Path Read Online Free

lengthy argument with the Primrose Path (whose bill had been paid to the end of this month) or my wife Hilda, which might prolong my term of imprisonment.
    The clothes I was wearing when my ticker overreacted so dramatically to the strain put upon it by an appearance before the raging Judge Bullingham had come with me to hospital and from there to the Primrose Path. They were hanging in a cupboard in my room, so I was able to change the pyjamas for my regulation uniform of black jacket and waistcoat, a pair of striped trousers supported by braces, a white shirt with detachable collar, and dark socks with, by this time, dusty and unpolished black shoes. I had kept charge of my wallet, which had four ten-pound notes and a travel pass in it, so I was soon prepared for the dash to freedom. I paused only to scribble a note for Dotty, which contained simply my four-line version of an old song:
    The way you feel my pulse
The way you test my pee
The memory of much else
They can’t take that away from me.
     
    I wasn’t particularly proud of rhyming ‘pulse’ with ‘else’, but time was pressing and I had a journey to make. I signed the message ‘Love Rumpole’, put the dressing-gown back on over my clothes and moved out stealthily towards the staircase.
    The gods who look after the elderly trying to escape the clutches of the medical profession were on my side. That night a poll was being taken on television to decide the Sexiest Footballer of the Year, an event which had aroused far more interest than any recent election. So the television sets were humming in the rooms, and the nurses had withdrawn to their staff room to watch. The desk in the hallway was, more often than not, manned by Gavin, a quiet and serious young man to whom a shaven head and an over-large brown jumper gave a curiously monkish appearance. He was studying somewhere, but turned up for nights at the Primrose Path, where he read until dawn. His attendance was irregular, and, as on the night that Michael Masklyn walked free, he was away from his desk. I slid back bolts, undid chains and passed out into the night.
    Somewhere in the back streets of the town I discarded the dressing-gown, tossing it over a hedge into somebody’s front garden as a surprise present. I found a spotted bow tie in a jacket pocket and fixed it under my collar. Accoutred as though for the Old Bailey, I presented myself at the railway station, where the last train to Victoria was, happily, half an hour late.
    My first call in London was to Equity Court. Our Chambers were silent and empty, the clerks’ room was fuller than ever of screens and other mechanical devices and I searched in vain for briefs directed to me. I went into my room, which seemed on first glance to be depressingly tidy. However, the eagle eyes of the tidier-up had missed a half-full packet of small cigars at the back of a drawer. I lit one, puffed out a perfect smoke ring, and then I noticed a glossy little folder, which looked like the advertisement for a country hotel or a tour of the Lake District, except that the cover bore the words ‘Equity Court Chambers’ with the truncated address ‘ bestofthebar.com ’. There was an unappealing photograph captioned ‘Samuel Ballard QC, Chair and Head of Chambers’ standing in the doorway as though to tempt in passing trade.
    Inside, on the first page, was a list of our Chambers’ members. My eye was immediately drawn to one entry, ‘Horace Rumpole, BA Oxon’, against which someone had written with a felt-tip pen, ‘Deceased?’. I immediately lifted the telephone and called my home in Froxbury Mansions.
    ‘Rumpole, is that you?’ Hilda sounded as though I had woken her from a deep sleep.
    ‘Yes. It’s me, Rumpole. And not Rumpole deceased either. It’s Rumpole alive and kicking.’
    ‘Isn’t it way past bedtime in the Primrose Path?’
    ‘I don’t care what bedtime is in the Primrose Path. I’m not in the Primrose Path any more. I’ve put the