Rumpole Misbehaves by John Mortimer Page B

it.’
    â€˜I have to suggest you know a great deal more about it than that.’
    â€˜I don’t know what Mr Rumpole is suggesting.’ This interruption came from the prosecutor.
    â€˜Then sit quietly and you’ll find out.’ I was beginning to lose patience with Parkes. ‘Now, let me take you back to 10 May.’
    â€˜I can’t remember what I was doing then.’
    â€˜Can’t you? It was something rather sensational. Don’t worry. I’m here to remind you. The night before, a number of girls from a distant country had been smuggled into England and left in a warehouse somewhere near Canary Wharf. They were to be distributed to various addresses to work as prostitutes.’
    â€˜Mr Rumpole! Is this really necessary?’ It was Madam Chair who interrupted this time.
    â€˜Absolutely essential to my case. And when the Minister spoke of cross-examination he meant uninterrupted cross-examination.’
    This appeared to quieten the tribunal enough for me to continue.
    â€˜That morning a witness I shall call saw the girls moved from the warehouse and distributed to certain addresses. At four forty-five a people carrier drove up to your house in Beechwood Grove. Two girls were delivered to you. My witness will identify you as the lady who opened the door to them and let them into your house. Are you really going to tell us that they came to you for spiritual healing?’
    Mrs Englefield didn’t answer, so I went on with my case.
    â€˜I have to suggest to you that the sole reason why you didn’t want little boys kicking footballs round your house is that they might see too much! They might learn too much about you. They might tell stories of mysterious foreign girls who had been shipped over the Channel in the backs of lorries and delivered at your door in the early hours of the morning. Delivered to the Beechwood Grove brothel.’
    The woman in the witness box stood silent, staring at me with a look of hatred. Then the industrious Parkes sprang into action. He said that these were serious allegations which had come out of the blue and that he would have to take further instructions. He asked for an adjournment to consider his position. To this suggestion Rumpole most generously agreed.
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    Bonny Bernard and I got back from the pub, replete with bangers, mash and Guinness, to be received by an anxious Parkes, who asked me to agree to a statement to be made by him in court. ‘Mrs Englefield,’ it said, ‘denies any and all of the suggestions made to her about girls arriving at her house. However, on further consideration, she does not wish to send such a young boy into custody, so she intends to discontinue proceedings on the ASBO.’
    â€˜And never to reinstate them,’ I suggested.
    â€˜All right, Mr Rumpole. She really has no choice.’
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    Bertie Timson told his son that I was a ‘magnificent brief’. Peter and I shook hands and so, as a satisfied client, he left me.
    It may not have been one of my greatest wins, but thanks to Fig Newton it was sorted out admirably. I was left wishing that all the problems of my life could be solved so satisfactorily.

23
    It was at about this time, if my memory serves me rightly, that our chambers in Equity Court were invaded, not by terrorists, as Ballard had always feared, but by a youngish, that is to say around thirty-year-old, barrister by the name of Christopher Kidmoth.
    â€˜It is a significant honour for our chambers,’ Ballard told me, ‘to have the grandson of Lord Chancellor Quarant join us.’
    I had read the speeches of the old Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords, including the one on consent to rape while drunk. In my view, old Quarant had made a bit of a pig’s breakfast of the law at that time.
    â€˜After his pupillage they wouldn’t give Christopher a place in his grandfather’s old chambers. Things have changed, Rumpole. Family connections