Rumpole at Christmas by John Mortimer

Author:John Mortimer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141959320
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-09-12T04:00:00+00:00

Rumpole and the Boy

The season of peace and goodwill to men was fast approaching. They’d turned on the carol tape in the Tastee-Bite where I took a simple breakfast of egg, bacon and fried slice. There were nodding reindeer and smiling Santas in the windows of the computer shops in Fleet Street and, down at the Old Bailey, I was engaged in a rather jolly little case of demanding money with menaces, more commonly known as ‘blackmail’.

My client, perched in the dock, was a certain Maureen O’Keefe, who described herself as a ‘model’, although the days when she strutted, slim as a rail, down any catwalk must have been distant. She now had a figure best described as comfortable, blonde hair that was darker at the roots, bitten fingernails and a smile which, given her perilous circumstances, could be described as brave.

The case against her was that she had acquired sums of money from Mr X (a businessman from Beckenham) by threatening to tell Mrs X that their friendly encounters took place between the sheets. The facts were, as you see, routine. What was unusual was that Maureen’s twelve-year-old son Edmund, a solemn child wearing spectacles and a school blazer, was seated on a bench outside Court Number Two reading a paperback called Sensational Trials. Edmund, it seemed, was short of a minder and took an interest in crime.

‘Mr X,’ I stood up to cross-examine Maureen’s alleged victim, a thin-faced, anxious-looking individual with a bald patch and a habit of dabbing a slightly sweaty top lip with a folded handkerchief, ‘how long had your love affair with Maureen O’Keefe lasted?’

‘We had known each other for four years.’

‘You could scarcely call it a love affair!’ The voice of Mr Justice Graves blew down like a cold wind from the bench. ‘More a business arrangement.’

‘Whatever you call it, how much money did you give her over that period?’

‘He has already told us, Mr Rumpole. Just under £4,000.’

There were times when I would have loved to plant a heavy tombstone on old Graves to stop him interrupting.

‘Four thousand?’ I concentrated on the witness. ‘Under a thousand a year? Hardly enough to set her up with a yacht and a Jaguar, or even a small boutique.’

‘It was a little more than I could afford.’

‘But not more than any man might give as presents to his mistress?’

‘Were they presents?’ Graves made the word sound as though everything gift-wrapped and handed over at Christmas was the result of some kind of criminal conspiracy.

‘I suppose you could call them that,’ Mr X conceded, to the obvious annoyance of the old Graveyard.

‘And Maureen might have thought of them as presents?’

‘I suppose she might.’

‘The sort of presents any man might give his girlfriend?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘And, as we already know, you gave her this money in cheques. Wasn’t that a little risky? I suppose your wife might see your bank statements?’

‘She did. She rang the bank.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘I told her Miss O’Keefe was someone who did my part-time typing. She made further inquiries…’

‘And found out you’d lied?’

‘Yes.

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