Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer

comfort. Back in my lonely bedsit, I struck my boiled eggs hard and viciously with the spoon. Before falling asleep, I flicked though the Oxford Book of English Verse (the old Arthur Quiller-Couch edition) that has been my constant companion since my schooldays, and found one of my favourite bits of Wordsworth, the Old Sheep of the Lake District.
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    For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
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    I closed my eyes. All was silent. Of old Triton blowing his wreathèd horn there was not a squeak.
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    The next day in chambers, I was still thinking about the two cases: the one I had lost and the other my leader, C. H. Wystan, was clearly prepared to lose. And then I had a telephone call from Bonny Bernard.
    â€˜Just got an answer from the RAF, Mr Rumpole. You wanted to know about the third chap in the bomber. The navigator.’
    â€˜Well, Jerry Jerold and “Tail-End” Charlie were so close, I just thought the third man in their plane might be able to tell us a bit more about them.’
    â€˜His name was David Galloway.’
    â€˜It might just be worthwhile getting a statement off him.’
    â€˜Can’t be done, I’m afraid, Mr Rumpole.’
    â€˜Why ever not? The prosecution couldn’t object.’
    â€˜It’s not that, they’ve got it in the records. Galloway went missing, believed dead.’
    So that doorway of enquiry was closed. But now I had every confidence in Bonny Bernard’s powers of research. ‘Listen carefully,’ I said, as though I had masterminded a hundred murder trials. ‘I want you to find out all you can about the backgrounds and war records of all the officers who were at the party that night after the theatre. Can you do that?’
    â€˜I’ll do it for you, Mr Rumpole,’ Bonny Bernard was quick enough to answer. ‘I’ll certainly do it. But will you ever be able to use all that information?’
    â€˜Who knows?’ I did my best to encourage his labours. ‘In a trial like this, who knows what’s going to happen?’
    I said this, of course, because I still had no clear idea of what I was looking for.

11
    â€˜What are you doing, Rumpole?’
    â€˜Remembering.’
    â€˜Well try and remember with your leg elevated. You know what Dr McClintock said.’
    â€˜Dr McClintock never tried to write his memoirs with one leg cocked up on a joint stool.’ I thought this a fair point to put to She Who Must Be Obeyed, although I accommodated her by raising my leg.
    â€˜What are these memoirs you’re talking about, Rumpole?’
    â€˜The most important time of my life, when I did the Penge Bungalow Murders.’
    â€˜ And when we met?’
    â€˜That too.’
    â€˜Or had you forgotten?’
    â€˜Of course not, Hilda,’ I hastened to reassure her. ‘You changed my life, you and the Penge Bungalow case.’
    â€˜It changed mine too, but whether it was for the better is a matter of opinion.’
    â€˜Is it, Hilda?’
    â€˜At any rate I had high hopes of you at that time. Extremely high hopes. So stick that in your memoirs, Rumpole.’
    â€˜Well, of course you did,’ I didn’t want to boast, ‘when I got the Penge Bungalow job.’
    â€˜Yes, but what about me? What did I get exactly?’ She looked at me, I thought, with a kind of amused pity. ‘A husband who can’t even keep his leg elevated.’
    She left me then. I gently lowered my leg from the joint stool and put it on the ground in the regular writing position and did my best to describe the alarming weeks which led up to the trial of Simon Jerold on charges of double murder. As a tribute to the importance of