Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

Rumpole and the Dear Departed by John Mortimer

Rumpole’s keen satirical observations of the social climate of his day are always a treat. But here, in this tale set in 1974, he strikes a particularly poignant note. Criminals, he says, “like the owners of small businesses, seem to have felt the cold winds of the present recession. There just isn’t the crime about that there used to be.” We may wish the same thing could be said today, but for Horace Rumpole, expert in criminal defense, the situation demands a look into a new line of lawyering that treats of wills, testaments, and the strangely communicated wishes of the dead...

The only reason why I, Horace Rumpole, Rumpole of the Old Bailey, dedicated, from my days as a white-wig and my call to the bar, almost exclusively to a life of crime, should talk of wills, was because of a nasty recession in felonies and misdemeanours. Criminals are, by and large, of an extraordinary Conservative disposition. They believe passionately in free enterprise and strict monetarist policies. They are against state interference of any kind. And yet they, like the owners of small businesses, seem to have felt the cold winds of the present recession. There just isn’t the crime about that there used to be. So when Henry came into my room staggering under the weight of a heavy bundle of papers and said, “Got something a bit more up-market than your usual, Mr. Rumpole; Mowbray and Pontefract want to instruct you in a will case, sir,” I gave him a tentative welcome. Even our learned Head of Chambers, Guthrie Featherstone, Q.C., M.P., could scarce forbear to cheer. “Hear you’ve got your foot in the door of the Chancery Division, Horace. That’s the place to be, my dear old chap. That’s where the money is. Besides, it’s so much better for the reputation of chambers for you not to have dangerous criminals hanging about in the waiting room.”

I said something about dangerous criminals at least being alive. The law of probate, so it seemed to me, is exclusively concerned with the dead.

“ ‘Let’s choose executors and talk of wills; and yet not so’ — for, besides having nothing to bequeath, Rumpole knows almost nothing about the law of probate.”

That is what I told Miss Beasley, the matron of the Sunnyside Nursing Home on the peaceful Sussex coast, when she came to consult me about the testamentary affairs of the late Colonel Ollard. It was nothing less than the truth. I know very little indeed on the subject of wills.

Miss Beasley was a formidable-looking customer: a real heavyweight with iron-grey hair, a powerful chin, and a nose similar in shape to that sported by the late duke of Wellington. She was in mufti when she came to see me (brogues and a tweed suit), but I imagine that in full regimentals, with starched cap and collar, the lace bonnet and medals pinned on the mountainous chest, she must have been enough to put the wind up the bravest invalid.

She gave me the sort of slight tightening of the lips which must have passed, in the wards she presided over, as a smile. “Never you mind, Mr. Rumpole,” she said, “the late Colonel wanted you to act in this case particularly. He has mentioned your name on several occasions.”

“Oh, really? But Miss Beasley, dear lady, the late Colonel Bollard...”

“Colonel Ollard, Mr. Rumpole, Colonel Roderick Ollard, M.C., D.S.O., C.B.E., late of the Pines, Balaclava Road, Cheeveling-on-Sea, and the Sunnyside Nursing Home,” she corrected me firmly. “The dear departed has come through with your name, perfectly clearly more than once.”

“Come through with it, Miss Beasley?” I must say the phrase struck me as a little odd at the time.

“That is what I said, Mr. Rumpole.” Miss Beasley pursed her lips.

“We should be alleging fraud against the other side, Mr. Rumpole.”

The person who had spoken was Mr. Pontefract, of the highly respected firm of Mowbray and Pontefract, an elderly type of solicitor with a dusty black jacket, a high stiff collar, and the reverent and deeply sympathetic tone of voice of a reputable undertaker. He was someone, I felt sure, who knew all about wills, not to mention graves and worms and epitaphs. And the word he had used had acted like a trumpet call to battle. I felt myself brighten considerably. I beamed on La Beasley and said with confidence:

“Fraud! Now, there is a subject I do know something about. And whom are we alleging fraud against?”

“Mr. Percival Ollard, Mrs. Percival Ollard—” Mr. Pontefract supplied the information.

“That Marcia. She didn’t give a toss for the colonel!” Miss Beasley interrupted with a thrust of the chest and a swift intake of breath.

“And young Peter Ollard, their son, aged thirteen years, represented by his parents as guardians, ad litem.”. Mr. Pontefract completed the catalogue of shame.

“The Colonel thought Peter was a complete sissy, Mr. Rumpole!” Miss Beasley hastened to give me the low-down. “The boy didn’t give a toss for military history, he was more interested in ballet dancing.”

“Young Peter, it appears, had ambitions to enter the West Sussex School of Dance.” Mr. Pontefract made this announcement with deep regret.

“You should have heard Colonel Ollard on the subject!” Miss Beasley gave me another tight little smile.

“I can well imagine,” I said. “Mr. Pontefract... just remind me of the history of Colonel Ollard’s testamentary affairs.”

I needed to be reminded because Pontefract’s instructions, as set out in his voluminous brief, were on the dryish side. As a lawyer, Pontefract was no doubt admirable; as an author he lacked the knack, which many criminal solicitors possess, of grabbing the attention. In fact I had slumbered over his papers and a bottle of Pommeroy’s plonk in front of the electric fire in Froxbury Court.

“Colonel and Percival Ollard were the only two sons of the late Reverend Hector Ollard, rector of Cheeveling-on-Sea,” Pontefract started to recap. “They inherited well and by wise investments both became wealthy men. Percival Ollard started a firm known as Ollard’s Kitchen Utensils, which prospered exceedingly. During the last six years the brothers never met; and Colonel Roderick Ollard, who was an invalid—”

“It was his heart let him down, Mr. Rumpole. His poor old ticker.” Miss Beasley supplied the medical evidence.

“Colonel Ollard was nursed devotedly by Miss Beasley at her nursing home, Sunnyside,” Pontefract assured me, and was once again interrupted by Matron.

“He was a real old sport, was the colonel! Often had my incurable ladies in a roar! Quite a schoolboy at heart, Mr. Rumpole. And I’ll take my dying oath on this, the Percival Ollards never visited him, not after the first fortnight. They never even wrote to him. Not so much as a little card for a Christmas or birthday.”

I was about to “tut-tut” sympathetically, as I felt was expected, when Pontefract took up the narrative. “When the colonel died all we could find was a will he made in 1970, under which his estate would be inherited by his brother Percival, his sister-in-law Marcia, and his nephew, Peter—”

“The ballet dancer!” I remembered.

“Exactly! In equal shares, after a small legacy to an old batman.”

“Of course their will’s a forgery.” Miss Beasley clearly had no doubt about it.

“I thought you said it was a fraud.” The allegations seemed to be coming thick and fast.

“A fraud and a forgery!”

It was all good, familiar stuff. In some relief I stood up, found and lit a small cigar.

“Concocted by the Percival Ollards,” I said gleefully. “Yes, I see it all. You know, even though it’s only a probate action, I do detect a comforting smell of crime about this case. Tell me, Miss Beasley. Where do you think the colonel should have left, how much was it, did you say, Mr. Pontefract?”

“With the value of The Pines, when we sell it, I would say, something over half a million pounds, Mr. Rumpole.”

Half a million nicker! It was a crock of gold that might command a fee which would even tempt Rumpole into the dreaded precincts of the Chancery Division. I sat down and asked Matron the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

“Well, of course, he should have left his money to the person who looked after him in his declining years.” Miss Beasley said it in all modesty.

“To your good self?” I was beginning to get the drift of this consultation.

“Exactly!” Miss Beasley had no doubt about it. But Pontefract came in sadly, with a little legal difficulty.

“What I have told Miss Beasley is,” he said, “that she has no locus standi.” I had no doubt he was right but I hoped that the learned Pontefract was about to make his meaning clear to a humble hack. Happily he did so. “Miss Beasley is in no way related to the late colonel.”

“In absolutely no way!” Matron was clearly not keen to be associated with the Percival Ollards.

“And she doesn’t seem to have been named in any other will.”

“We haven’t found any other will. Yet.” Matron looked more than ever like the Duke of Wellington about to meet her Waterloo.

“So she can’t contest the February 1970 will in favour of Peter Ollard. If it fails, she stands to gain... nothing.” Mr. Pontefract broke the news gently but clearly to the assembled company.

Little as I know of the law of wills, some vague subconscious stirring, some remote memory of a glance at Chancery in a Nutshell before diving into the Bar Finals, made me feel that the sepulchral Pontefract had a point. I summed up the situation judicially by saying:

“Of course in law, Miss Beasley, your very experienced solicitor is perfectly right. I agree with what he has said and I have nothing to add.”

“There is another law, Mr. Rumpole.” Miss Beasley spoke quietly, but very firmly. “The higher law of God’s justice.”

“I’m afraid you won’t find they’ll pay much attention to that in the Chancery Division.” I hated to disillusion her.

“Miss Beasley insisted we saw you, Mr. Rumpole. But you have only confirmed my own views. Legally, we haven’t got a leg to stand on.” Mr. Pontefract was gathering up his papers, ready for the “off.”

“Well, we’ll jolly well have to find one, won’t we?” Matron sounded unexpectedly cheerful. “Mr. Rumpole, I won’t keep you any longer. I’ll be in touch as soon as we find that leg you’re looking for.”

And now Miss Beasley stood up in a businesslike way. I felt as though I’d been ordered a couple of tranquilizers and a blanket bath and not to fuss because she’d be round with Doctor in the morning. Before she went, however, I had one question to ask:

“Just one thing, Miss Beasley. You say the late colonel recommended me, as a sound legal adviser?”

“He did indeed! He was mentioning your name only last week,” Miss Beasley answered cheerfully.

“Last week? But, Miss Beasley, I understand that Colonel Ollard departed this life almost six months ago.”

“Oh yes, Mr. Rumpole,” she explained, as though to a child, “that’s when he died. Not when he was speaking to me.”

At which point I sneezed, and Matron said, “You want to watch that cold, Mr. Rumpole. It could turn into something nasty.”

Miss Beasley, of course, was right. The reason I hadn’t been able to concentrate with my usual merciless clarity on the law governing testamentary matters was that I had the dry throat and misty eyes of an old legal hack with a nasty cold coming on. A rare burst of duty took me down to the Old Bailey for a small matter of warehouse-breaking, and four nights later saw me drinking, for medicinal reasons, a large brandy, sucking a clinical thermometer, and shivering in front of my electric fire at Froxbury Court, dressed in pyjamas and a dressing gown. She Who Must Be Obeyed looked at me without any particular sympathy. There has never been much of the Florence Nightingale about my wife Hilda.

“Rumpole! That’s the third time you’ve taken your temperature this evening. What is it?”

“It’s sunk down to normal, Hilda. I must be fading away.”

“Really! It’s only a touch of flu. Doctor MacClintock says there’s a lot of it about.”

“It’s a touch of death, if you want my opinion. There’s a lot of that about too.”

“Well, I hope you’ll stay in the warm tomorrow.”

“I can’t do that! Got to get down to the Bailey. The jury are coming back in my murder in the morning.” I sneezed and continued bravely, “I’d better be in at the death.”

“That’s what you will be in at. If you must go traipsing down to the Old Bailey, don’t expect me to feel sorry for you.”

I was about to say, of course I never expected Hilda to feel sorry for me, when the telephone rang. She rushed to answer it (unlike me, she takes an unnatural delight in answering telephones), and announced that a Miss Rosemary Beasley was on the line and wished to communicate with her counsel as a matter of urgency. Cursing the fact that Miss Beasley, unlike my other clients, wasn’t tucked up in the remand wing of the nick, safe from the telephone, I took the instrument and breathed into it a rheumy, “Good evening.”

Matron came back, loud and clear, “Mr. Rumpole. I am sitting here at my planchette.”

“At your what?” Miss Beasley had me mystified.

“Sometimes I use the board, or the wine glass, or the cards. Sometimes I have Direct Communication.”

“That must be nice for you. Miss Beasley, what are you talking about?”

“Tonight I am at the planchette. I have just had such a nice chat with Colonel Ollard.”

“With the late Colonel Ollard?”

I was, I had to confess, somewhat taken aback. When Matron answered, she sounded a little touchy. “He wasn’t late at all. He came through bang on time! It was just nine o’clock when we started chatting. He says the weather over there’s absolutely beautiful! It’s just not fair, I told him, when we’re going through this dreary cold spell.”

“Miss Beasley,” I asked for clarification, “did Colonel Ollard come over from the dead, simply to chatter to you about the weather?”

“Oh no, Mr. Rumpole. I shouldn’t be telephoning you if that were all. He said something far more important.”

“Oh did he? And can you let me into the secret?” My temperature was clearly rising during this conversation. I longed for bed with both my feet on a hot water bottle.

“The colonel said that Mr. Pontefract had never looked in the tin box where he kept his dress uniform, in the loft at The Pines.”

“Well. Suppose Mr. Pontefract never has...”

“If he looked there, the colonel told me, Mr. Pontefract would find, wrapped in tissue paper, between the sword and the... trousers, a later will, signed by himself in the proper manner.”

I could see the way things were drifting and quite honestly I didn’t like it at all. The day might not be far distant when Miss Beasley might in fact find herself tucked safely up in the nick.

“Is that what the colonel said?” I asked, warily.

“His very words.”

“You’re quite sure that’s what he said...”

“How could I possibly be mistaken?”

“Well, I suppose you’d better ring Pontefract and get him to take a look. I just hope—”

“You hope what, Mr. Rumpole?”

“I hope you’re not considering anything dangerous, Miss Beasley.”

After all, what could all this planchette nonsense be but a rather obvious prelude to forgery?

“Of course not! I’m perfectly safe, Mr. Rumpole. I’ve just been sitting here chatting.” Matron sounded her usual brisk self. I tried to remember if there’d ever been a woman forger, with a nursing qualification.

“Yes. Well, if you ring Mr. Pontefract,” I suggested, but apparently all that had been taken care of.

“I’ve done that, Mr. Rumpole. I just thought I’d ring you too, to tell you the joyful tidings. Oh, and Mr. Rumpole. The colonel sent you his best wishes, and he hopes he’s been a help to you, giving you a leg to stand on. Cheerio for now! Oh, and he hopes your cold’s better.”

As I put down the receiver, I felt, as I have said, a good deal worse.

“Who on earth’s Miss Rosemary Beasley?” Hilda asked when I had finished sneezing.

“Oh her. She’s just someone who seems to be on particularly good terms with the dead.”

The next day, still feeling in much the same condition as the late Colonel Ollard, but without the blue skies to cheer me up, I staggered off to the Old Bailey and heard my warehouse-breaker get three years. When the formalities and the official goodbyes were over I walked back to Chambers and there, awaiting me in my room, was the lugubrious Pontefract. He came straight out with the news.

“It was just as she told us, Mr. Rumpole. There was a tin box under a pile of old blankets in the loft at The Pines, which we had overlooked. In it was the full dress uniform of a colonel of the Royal Dorsets.”

“And between the sword and trousers?”

“I found a will, apparently dated the first of March, 1974. Over four years after the other will in favour of the Percival Ollards. It revokes all previous wills and leaves his entire estate to—”

“Miss Rosemary Beasley?” I hazarded a guess.

“You’ve hit it, Mr. Rumpole!”

“It didn’t need great powers of divination.”

I couldn’t help looking round nervously to see that we weren’t in the presence of the mysterious matron.

“Mr. Pontefract, as our client isn’t with us today—”

“I’m quite thankful for it, Mr. Rumpole.”

“You are? So am I. You know that the late colonel apparently spoke from the other side of the grave, to tip our client off about this will?”

“So I understand, Mr. Rumpole.”

“Mr. Pontefract. I know you are accustomed to polite civil law and my mind turns as naturally to crime as a vicar’s daughter’s does to sex, but...”

I didn’t know how to make the suggestion which might wound the old gentleman; but he was out with the word before me.

“You suspect this will may be a forgery?”

“That thought had crossed your mind?”

“Of course, Mr. Rumpole. There is no field of endeavour in which human nature sinks to a lower depth than in the matter of wills. Your average Old Bailey case, Mr. Rumpole, must seem like a day out with the Church Brigade compared to the skulduggery which surrounds the simplest last will and testament.”

As he spoke I began to warm to this man, Pontefract. He was expressing my own opinions fairly eloquently, and I listened with an increased respect as he went on.

“Naturally my first thought was that our client, Miss Beasley, had invented this supernatural conversation in order to direct our attention to a will which she had, shall we say, manufactured?”

“A neutral term, Mr. Pontefract.” But well put, I thought. “That was my first thought, also.”

“So I took the precaution of having this new-found will examined by a well-known handwriting expert.”

“Alfred Geary?”

There is only one handwriting expert Her Majesty’s judges pay any attention to. Geary is now an old man peering at blown-up letters through thick pebble glasses, but he is still an irrefutable witness.

“I went, in this instance, and regardless of expense, to Mr. Geary. You approve, sir?”

“You couldn’t do better. The courts listen in awe to this fellow’s comparison between the m’s and the tails on the p’s. What did Geary find?”

“That the signature on the will we discovered—”

“Between the dress sword and the trousers?”

“Is undoubtedly the genuine signature of the late colonel.”

It was the one piece of evidence I hadn’t expected. If the will was not a forgery, if it were a genuine document, could it possibly follow that the message which led us to its hiding place was also genuine? The mind, as they say, boggled. I was scarcely listening as Mr. Pontefract told me that the Percival Ollards would be attacking our new will on the grounds of the deceased’s insanity. It was my own sanity I began to fear for, as I wondered if the deceased colonel would be giving us any more instructions from beyond the grave.

When I got home I was feeling distinctly worse. I mentioned the matter to She Who Must Be Obeyed and she swiftly called my bluff by summoning in the local quack who was round, as he always is, like a shot, in the hope of a fee and a swig of my diminishing stock of sherry (a form of rotgut I seem to keep entirely for the benefit of the medical profession).

“He’s not looking in a particularly lively condition, is he?” Doctor MacClintock remarked to Hilda on arrival. “Well, we’ve got to remember, Rumpole’s no chicken.”

I was unable to argue with the doctor’s diagnosis, as it was undoubtedly true, and what’s more, I had a clinical thermometer stuck between my jaws. I could only grunt a protest when Hilda, with quite unnecessary hospitality, said, “You will take a glass of sherry, won’t you, Doctor? So good of you to come.”

I mean to say, when I do my job of work, the judge doesn’t start proceedings with, “So nice of you to drop in Rumpole, do help yourself to my personal store of St. Emilion.” I was going to say something along these lines when the gloomy Scots medico removed the thermometer, but he interrupted me with, “His temperature’s up. I’m afraid it’s a day or two in bed for the old warrior.”

“A day or two in bed? You’ll have to tell him, Doctor, he’s got to be sensible.”

“Oh, I doubt very much if he’ll feel like being anything else.”

I began to wish they’d stop talking as if I’d already passed on, and so I intruded into the conversation.

“Bed? I can’t possibly stay in bed—”

“You’re no chicken, Rumpole. Doctor MacClintock warned you.”

I noticed that the thirsty quack had downed one glass of Pommeroy’s pale Spanish-style and was getting a generous refill from the family.

“You warned me? What did you warn me about?”

“You’re not getting any younger, Rumpole.”

“Well, it hardly needs five years’ ruthless training in the Edinburgh medical school and thirty years in general practice to diagnose that!”

“He’s becoming crotchety,” Hilda said, with satisfaction. “He’s always crotchety when he’s feeling ill.”

“Yes, but what are you warning me about? Pneumonia, botulism, Parkinson’s disease?”

“There is an even more serious condition, Rumpole,” the doctor said. “I mean there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go on for a good few years, provided you take proper precautions.”

“You’re trying to warn me about death!”

“Well, death is rather a strong way of putting it.”

The representative of the medical profession looked distressed, as though he realized that if Rumpole dropped off the twig there might be no more free sherry.

“Odd thing about the dead, Doctor.” I decided to let him into a secret. “You may not know this. They may not have lectured you on this at your teaching hospital, but I can tell you on the best possible authority, the dead are tremendously keen on litigation. Give me a drink, Hilda. No, not that jaundiced and medicated fluid. Give me a beaker full of the warm south, full of the true, the blushful Château Pommeroy’s ordinary claret! Dr. MacClintock, you can’t scare me with death. I’ve got a far more gloomy experience ahead of me.”

“I doubt that, Rumpole,” said the Scot, sipping industriously. “But what exactly do you mean?”

“I mean,” I said, “I’ve got to appear in the Chancery Division.”

The Chancery Division is not to be found, as I must make clear to those who have no particular legal experience, in any of my ordinary stamping grounds like the Old Bailey or Snaresbrook. It is light years away from the Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court. The Chancery Division is considered by many, my learned Head of Chambers in particular, to be an extremely up-market Court. There cases are pleaded by lawyers who spring from old county families in a leisurely and courteous manner. It is a tribunal, in fact, which bears the same sort of relation to Inner London Sessions as the restaurant at Claridges does to your average transport café.

The Chancery Division is in the Law Courts, and the Law Courts, which prefer to be known as the Royal Courts of Justice, occupy a stately position in the Strand, not a wig’s throw from my Chambers at Equity Court in the Temple. The Victorian building looks like the monstrous and overgrown result of a misalliance between a French château and a Gothic cathedral. The vast central hall is floored with a mosaic which is constantly under repair. There are many church-shaped windows and the ancient urinals have a distinctly ecclesiastical appearance. I passed into this muted splendour and found myself temporary accommodation in a robing room where there was, such is the luxurious nature of five-star litigation, an attendant in uniform to help me on with the fancy dress. Once suitably attired, I asked the way to the Chancery Division.

I knew that Chancery was a rum sort of Division, full of dusty old men breaking trusts and elegant young men winding up companies. They speak a different language entirely from us Criminals, and their will cases are full of “dependent relative revocation” and “testamentary capacity,” and the nice construction of the word “money.” As I rose to my hind legs in the Court of Chancery, I felt like some rustic reveller who has blundered into a convocation of bishops engaged in silent prayer. Nevertheless, I had a duty to perform, which was to open the case of “In the Estate of Colonel Roderick Ollard, deceased. Beasley v. Ollard and ors.” The judge, I noticed, was a sort of pale and learned youth, probably twenty years my junior, who had looked middle-aged ever since he got his double first at Balliol, and who kept his lips tightly pursed when he wasn’t uttering some thinly veiled criticism of the Rumpole case. This chilly character was known, as I discovered from the usher, as Mr. Justice Venables.

“May it please you, my Lord,” I fished up a voice from the murky depths of my influenza and put it on display, “in this case, I appear for the plaintiff, Miss Rosemary Beasley, who is putting forward the true last will of a fine old soldier, Colonel Roderick Ollard. The defendants, Mr. and Mrs. Percival Ollard and Master Peter Ollard, are represented by my learned friends, Mr. Guthrie Featherstone, Q.C...”

It was true. The smooth-talking and diplomatic Head of our Chambers had collared the brief against Rumpole. Never at home in the rough and tumble of a nice murder, the Chancery Division, as I have said, was just the place for Guthrie Featherstone.

“...and Mr...” I made a whispered inquiry and said, “Mr. Loxley-Parish.”

Guthrie had got himself, as a Chancery Junior, an ancient who’d no doubt proved more wills than I’d had bottles of Pommeroy’s plonk. I turned, as usual, to the jury box and got in the meat of my oration.

“My client, Miss Beasley, is the matron and presiding angel of a small nursing home known as Sunnyside, on the Sussex coast. There she devotedly nursed this retired warrior, Colonel Ollard, and was the comfort and cheer of his declining years.”

Mr. Justice Venables was giving a chill stare over the top of his half glasses, and clearing his throat in an unpleasant manner. Here was a judge who appeared to be distinctly unmoved by the Rumpole oratory. I carried on, of course, regardless.

“Declining years, during which his only brother, Percival, and Percival’s wife, Marcia, never troubled to cross the door of Sunnyside to give five minutes of cheer to the old gentleman, and Master Peter Ollard was far too busy cashing the postal orders the colonel sent him to send a Christmas card to his elderly uncle.”

It was time, I thought, that the Chancery Court heard a little Shakespeare.

At which point the judicial throat-clearing took on the sound of words.

“Mr. Rumpole,” the judge said. “I think perhaps you need reminding. That jury box is empty.”

I looked at it. His Lordship was perfectly right. The twelve puzzled and honest citizens, picked off the street at random, were conspicuous by their absence. Juries are not welcome in the Chancery Division. This was one of the occasions, strange to Rumpole, of a trial by judge alone...

“It is therefore, Mr. Rumpole, not an occasion for emotional appeals.” The judge continued his lesson. “Perhaps it would be more useful if you gave me some relevant dates and a comparison of the two wills.”

“Certainly, my Lord,” I said, always anxious to oblige. “By his true last will of the first of March, 1974, the late colonel recognized the care of a devoted matron—”

“Just the facts, Mr. Rumpole. Just give me the plain facts,” snapped the old spoilsport.

“And the plain fact is, under the previous will of the fifteenth of February, 1970, the Percival Ollards had managed to scoop the pool.”

“Scoop the pool” was, it seemed, not a phrase or saying in current use in the Chancery Division.

“You mean, I suppose,” the judge corrected me, “that Mr. Percival Ollard, together with his wife and son were the sole beneficiaries of the deceased’s residuary estate.”

Somehow I managed to finish giving the judge the brief facts of the case without open warfare breaking out. But the atmosphere was about as convivial as a gathering of teetotal undertakers.

I then called Matron to give evidence. She filled the witness box with authority, she was dressed in respectable and respectful black, she gave her answers in ringing and resonant tones, and yet I could tell that the judge didn’t like her. As she gave her touching description of her devoted care of the late colonel, and her harrowing account of the Percival Ollards’ neglect of their relative, Mr. Justice Venables looked upon Matron as though she was a person who had come to his Court for one reason only, money. Well, it was a charge which might, with equal justice, be levelled against me, and Guthrie Featherstone, and even, let it be said, the learned judge.

“Finally, Matron,” I asked the last question with a solemnity which would have deeply moved the jury, if there had been a jury, “what did you think of the deceased?”

“He had his little ways, of course, but he was always a perfect gentleman.” She looked at the judge; he averted his eye.

“What did you call each other?” I asked.

“It was always ‘Matron’ and ‘Colonel Ollard.’ ”

“But you were friends?”

“It was always on a proper basis, Mr. Rumpole. I don’t know what you’re suggesting.” Miss Beasley gave me an “old-fashioned” look, whereat Featherstone, seeing a rift in our ranks, levered himself to his hind legs and addressed a sympathetic judge.

“I hope my learned friend isn’t suggesting anything, by way of a leading question...?”

“Certainly not, my Lord!” And I went on before His Lordship had time to answer. “Miss Beasley, during the years that Colonel Ollard was with you, did Mr. Percival Ollard visit him at all?”

“I think he came over once or twice in the first couple of weeks. Once he took the colonel for a run on the Downs, I think, and a tea out.”

Featherstone had the grace to subside, and my questioning continued.

“But after that?”

“No. He never came at all.”

“And his family, his wife Marcia, and the young Nijinsky?”

“The what, Mr. Rumpole?” Mr. Justice Venables was not amused.

“Master Peter Ollard, my Lord. A lad with terpischorean tastes.”

“Oh no. I never saw them at all.”

“Yes. Thank you. Just wait there a moment, will you, Miss Beasley?” I subsided and Guthrie Featherstone rose. I had no particular worries. The middle-of-the-road M.P. was merely a middle-of-the-road cross-examiner.

“Miss Beasley. You say that Colonel Ollard had his little ways,” Guthrie began in a voice like hair oil poured on velvet.

“He did, yes.” Matron faced the old darling with confidence.

“Is Miss Mary Waterhouse one of your nurses?”

“She was one of my nurses. Yes.” The name brought a small sign of disapproval from the generalissimo of Sunnyside.

“Did the colonel take boiled eggs for breakfast?” Featherstone asked what I thought at the time was not much of a question.

“On some days. Otherwise he had bacon and sausage.”

“And did the colonel once fling his boiled eggs at Nurse Waterhouse and instruct her, and I quote, ‘To sit on the bloody things and hatch them out’?”

I let out a small guffaw, in which the judge didn’t join. I even began to warm to the memory of Colonel Ollard.

“He... may have done,” Matron conceded.

“The colonel disliked hard-boiled eggs.” Featherstone, bless his timid old heart, seemed to be making a fair deduction.

“He disliked a lot of things, Mr. Featherstone. Including young boys who indulged in ballet lessons.” Matron tried to snick a crafty one through the slips, and, of course, fell foul of the judge immediately.

“Just answer the questions, Miss Beasley. Try not to score points off the other side,” Venables, J., warned her. Again, I got the strong impression that His Lordship hadn’t exactly warmed to Matey.

“Did he also dislike slices of toast which were more than exactly four inches long?”

“The colonel liked things just so, yes,” Miss Beasley admitted.

“And did he measure his toast with a slide rule each morning to make sure it was the correct length?”

“Seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do,” I said to Mr. Pontefract, in what I hoped was an audible mutter.

“Did you say something, Mr. Rumpole?” the judge inquired coldly. I heaved myself to my feet.

“I just wondered, my Lord, does the fact that a man measures his toast mean that he’s not entitled to dispose of his property exactly as he likes?”

At this, the old sweetheart on the bench decided to do his best to polish up my manners.

“Mr. Rumpole,” he said. “Your turn will come later. Mr. Guthrie Featherstone is cross-examining. In the Chancery Division we consider it improper to interrupt a cross-examination, unless there’s a good reason to do so.”

Of course I bowed low, and said, “If your Lordship pleases. As a rank outsider I am, of course, delighted to get your Lordship’s instructions on the mysteries of the Chancery Division.” I supposed old Venables thought that down the Old Bailey we interrupted opponents by winking at the jury and singing sea shanties. It was then my turn to subside and let Featherstone continue.

“Let me ask you something else, Matron. Colonel Ollard had fought, had he not, at the battle of Anzio?”

“That was where he won his Military Cross,” said Miss Beasley, with some understandable pride in the distinction of her late patient.

“Yes, of course. Very commendable.”

That was a tribute, of course, coming from Featherstone. I seemed to remember that he did his military service in the Soldiers’ Divorce Division.

Then Featherstone asked another question. “Matron,” he purred with his usual charm, “did Colonel Ollard tell you that he had frequently discussed the battle of Anzio with the Prime Minister, the late Sir Winston Churchill?”

“I know that Sir Winston was always interested in Colonel Ollard’s view of the war, yes.” Miss Beasley sounded proud, and even the judge looked impressed.

“And that he had also discussed it with Field-Marshal Lord Montgomery of Alamein?”

“Colonel Ollard called him ‘Bernard.’ ”

“And with the then Soviet leader, Mr. Stalin. Did Colonel Ollard call him ‘Joseph’?” Oh dear, I sighed to myself, things were becoming grim when Featherstone tried to make a funny.

“No. He always called him ‘Mr. Stalin,’ ” Miss Beasley answered primly.

“Very respectful. If I may say so.” Featherstone gave the judge a chummy little smile and then turned back straight-faced to the witness.

“You know he told Nurse Waterhouse, one morning last October, that he had been talking to Sir Winston, Lord Montgomery, and Mr. Stalin the evening before. Does that surprise you?” I had the awful feeling that Featherstone had struck gold. There was a sudden silence in Court as Pontefract and I held our breath, waiting for Matron’s answer.

When it came, it was a simple, “No.”

“You say it doesn’t surprise you, Miss Beasley?” Venables, J., leaned forward, frowning unpleasantly.

“Not in the least, my Lord.” The answer was positively serene. I wanted to tell the Judge not to interrupt the cross-examination, after all, we didn’t do that sort of thing in the Chancery Division. But Featherstone, as he went on, was doing quite well, even without a little help from the judge.

“Nurse Waterhouse will also say that Colonel Ollard told her that he had been chatting to Alexander the Great, the Emperor Napoleon, and the late duke of Marlborough,” my opponent suggested.

“Well, of course he would, you know.” Miss Beasley smiled back at him.

“He would say that because he was suffering from mental instability?”

“Of course not!” The witness was outraged. “The colonel had as much mental stability as you or I, Mr. Featherstone.”

“Speak for yourself, Miss Beasley.” Oh, very funny, Featherstone, I thought. What a talent! He ought to go on the Halls.

“Why did you say that the colonel would speak to those gentlemen?” Featherstone asked for clarification.

“Because they were all keenly interested in his subject,” Miss Beasley explained, as though to a rather backward two-year-old.

“Which was?”

“Military matters.”

“Oh, military matters. Yes. Of course.” Featherstone paused, and then asked politely, “But all the names I have mentioned, Churchill and Montgomery, Marlborough and Napoleon, Stalin and Alexander the Great. They’re all dead, aren’t they, Matron?”

“Yes, indeed. But that wouldn’t have worried the colonel.” She gave the Opposition Leader a patient smile. “Colonel Ollard was most sympathetic to people who were ill. Being dead wouldn’t have put him off at all.”

“But did the colonel think he could talk to those deceased gentlemen?”

“Oh yes. Of course he could.”

As Pontefract and I began to see the last will of Colonel Ollard going up in smoke, the judge said, “You really believe that, Miss Beasley?”

I must say the answer that Matron gave was not particularly helpful. She merely looked at the judge with some pity and said, “You could talk to the Emperor Napoleon, my Lord. If you were a believer.”

“A believer, Miss Beasley?” No doubt a churchwarden and chairman of the Parish Council, the judge looked more than a little irked by her reply.

“A believer in communication with the other side.” At least she had the grace to explain.

“And both you and Colonel Ollard were believers?” Featherstone led her gently on, down the primrose path to disaster.

“Oh yes. We had that much in common.”

“Can you communicate with the late Joseph Stalin, Miss Beasley?” It was a shot in the dark by Featherstone, but it scored a bull’s eye.

“Of course I could,” Miss Beasley said modestly. “But let’s just say I wouldn’t care to.”

“Perhaps not. But can you communicate, for instance, with the late Colonel Ollard?”

“Yes indeed.” She had no doubt about that.

“When did you last do so, Miss Beasley?” said the judge, following his leader, Featherstone, like a bloodhound.

“Yesterday evening, my Lord.”

“Oh dear! Oh, my ears and whiskers!” I groaned to myself as the psychic Matron blundered on, addressing her remarks to the learned judge.

“And I may say that the Colonel is very distressed about this case, my Lord. Very distressed indeed. In fact, he thinks it’s a disgraceful thing to argue about it when he’d made his will perfectly clear and left it in his uniform box. I wouldn’t like to tell you, my Lord, the things that the colonel had to say about his brother Percy.”

“I think you had better not, Miss Beasley.” Featherstone brought her smoothly to a halt. “That would be hearsay evidence. We shall have to wait and see whether my learned friend Mr. Rumpole calls the deceased gentleman as a witness.”

Oh hilarious, I told myself bitterly. Guthrie Featherstone is being most hilarious. My God, he’s working well today!

We, that is, Matron, Mr. Pontefract, and self, had luncheon in the crypt under the Law Courts, a sepulchral hall, where, it seemed, very old plaice and chips come to die. Miss Beasley’s legal team were not in an optimistic mood.

“The judge doesn’t like you all that much I’m afraid, Miss Beasley.” I thought it best to break the news to her gently.

“Never mind, Mr. Rumpole. The feeling is entirely mutual.” She looked, all things considered, ridiculously cheerful.

“If you take my advice, Miss Beasley, you should go for a settlement.” Pontefract was trying to talk some sense into her. “Save what you can from the wreckage. You see, once you had to admit that the late colonel used to talk to the Emperor Napoleon—”

“What’s wrong with talking to the Emperor Napoleon?” Miss Beasley frowned. “He can be quite charming when he puts his mind to it.”

“I don’t think the judge is likely to accept that,” I warned her.

“You’d talk to the Emperor Napoleon, I’m sure, if he came across to you.” Miss Beasley didn’t seem to be getting the drift of my argument. I put it more bluntly.

“Mr. Pontefract is right. The time has come to chuck in the towel. On the best terms we can manage.”

“You mean, surrender?” She looked at us both, displeased.

“Well, on terms, Miss Beasley.” Mr. Pontefract tried to soften the blow, but her answer came like the bugle call which set off the Charge of the Light Brigade.

“Colonel Ollard will never surrender!” she trumpeted. “Anyway, you haven’t cross-examined that wretched Percy Ollard yet. The colonel says Mr. Rumpole’s a great cross-examiner!”

“That’s very kind of him.” I tried to sound modest.

“He says he’ll never forget reading your cross-examination about the bloodstains in the Penge Bungalow Murders. He read every word of it, in the Sunday paper.”

“My dear lady. That was thirty-five years ago. Anyway, I had a jury to play on in that case. I’m at my best with a jury. This is a cold-blooded trial in the Chancery Division, by judge alone, and that judge is distinctly unfriendly.”

“The colonel says, ‘Mr. Rumpole will hit my brother Percy for six.’ ” She repeated the words as if they were Holy Writ.

“Tell the colonel,” I asked her, “that Mr. Rumpole isn’t at his best, without a jury.”

A trial without a jury is like an operation without anaesthetic, or a luncheon without a glass of wine. “Shall we drown this old fish, Pontefract, my old darling,” I suggested, “in a sea of cooking claret?”

What I can’t accept about spiritualism is the idea of millions of dead people (there must be standing room only in the Other Side) kept hanging about just waiting to be sent for by some old girl with a Ouija board in a Brighton boarding house, or a couple of table-tappers in Tring, for the sake of some inane conversation about the Blueness of the Infinite. I mean at least when you’re dead you’ll surely be spared such tedious social occasions. Nevertheless, there was Colonel Ollard apparently at Matey’s beck and call, ready and willing to cross the Great Divide and drop in on her at the turn of a card or the shiver of a wine glass. I was expressing some of these thoughts to Hilda in a feverish sort of way that evening as I hugged my dressing gown round me and downed medicinal claret by the electric fire in Froxbury Court.

“Really, Rumpole,” said She, “don’t be so morbid.”

“I can smell corruption.” I sneezed loudly. “The angel of death is brushing me with his wings.”

“Rumpole, Dr. MacClintock has told you it’s only a cold.”

“Dr. MacClintock gave me a warning, on the subject of death.” At which there was a ring at the door, and Hilda said, “Oh good heavens. That’s never the front doorbell!”

With a good deal of clucking and tutting, Hilda went out to the hall and eventually ushered Miss Rosemary Beasley, who appeared to be carrying some kind of plastic holdall, into the presence of the sick. When she asked me how I was, I told her I was dying.

“Well, don’t die yet, Mr. Rumpole. You’ve got our case to win.”

“Don’t you think I could conduct it perfectly well from beyond the grave?” I asked Matron.

“Now you’re teasing me! Your husband is the most terrible tease,” she told a puzzled Hilda. “Listen to this, Mr. Rumpole. The colonel says that he has an urgent message for you. He’ll deliver it here tonight. So I’ve brought the board.”

“The what?”

“The planchette, of course.”

To my dismay, Matron then produced, from her black plastic holdall, a small heart-shaped board on castors, which she plonked onto our dining table. There was paper fixed on the board, and Miss Beasley held a pencil poised over it and the board then moved in a curious fashion, causing writing to appear on the paper. It looked illegible to me, but Miss Beasley deciphered some rather cheeky communications from a late and no doubt unlamented Red Indian Chief who finally agreed to fetch Colonel Ollard to the planchette. Tearing himself away from the Emperor Napoleon, the colonel issued his orders for the day, emerging in Miss Beasley’s already somewhat masculine voice as she read the scribbles on the board. “The colonel says, ‘Hullo there, Rumpole,’ ” Miss Beasley informed us.

“Well, answer him, Rumpole. Be polite!” Hilda appeared enchanted with the whole ludicrous performance.

“Oh, hullo there, Colonel.” I felt an idiot as I said it.

“It’s very blue here, Rumpole. And I am very happy,” Miss Beasley came through as the late holder of the Military Cross.

“Oh good.” What else could I say?

“Tomorrow you will cross-examine my brother Percival.”

“Well, I hope to. I’m not feeling...” here I sneezed again, “quite up to snuff.”

“Brace up, Rumpole! No malingering. Tomorrow you will cross-examine my brother in Court.” Miss Beasley relayed Colonel Ollard’s instructions.

“Yes, Colonel. Aye, aye, sir.”

“Ask him what we said to each other when he visited me in the nursing home, and he drove me up to the Downs. Ask him what the conversation was when we had cream tea together at the Bide-A-Wee tearooms. Go on, Rumpole. Ask Percy that!” Colonel Ollard may have been a very gallant officer and an inspired leader of men. I doubted if he was a real expert in the art of cross-examination.

“Is it a good question?” I asked the deceased, doubtfully.

“Percy won’t like it. Just as Jerry didn’t like cold steel. Percy will run a mile from that question,” Miss Beasley croaked.

“Colonel, I make it a rule to decide on my own cross-examination.” I wanted to make the position clear, but the answer came back almost in a parade-ground bellow.

“Ask that question, Rumpole. It’s an order!”

“I’ll... I’ll consider it.” I suppose it doesn’t do to hurt the feelings of the dead.

“Do so! Oh, and see you over here some time.” At which, it seemed, the consultation was over and Colonel Ollard returned to some celestial bowling-green to wile away eternity. It was perfectly ridiculous, of course. I knew quite well that the deceased colonel wasn’t manipulating the planchette. But, as for asking his question, I could tell by the judge’s attitude next morning that we had absolutely nothing to lose.

Percival Ollard was not, I thought, a particularly attractive-looking customer. The successful manufacturer of kitchen utensils had run to fat, he had a bristling little ginger moustache and small flickering eyes that seemed to be looking round the Court for ways of escape. Featherstone led him smoothly through his evidence in chief and then I rose to cross-examine. The learned judge put a damper on my first question.

“I’m really wondering,” he said, “how much longer this estate is going to be put to the expense of this apparently hopeless litigation.”

“Not long, my Lord,” I said with a confidence I didn’t feel, “after I have cross-examined this witness.” And I turned to the witness box.

“Mr. Percival Ollard. Were you on good terms with your brother, before he went into the nursing home?”

“Extremely good terms. We saw each other regularly, and he always sent my boy, Peter, a postal order for Christmas and birthdays.”

“That was before the colonel started talking to the dead?” the judge asked in a way unfriendly to Rumpole.

“Yes, my Lord.” Percy looked gratefully at my Lord.

“Before he became, shall we say, eccentric in the extreme?” the judge went on.

“Yes, my Lord.”

“Very well.” Venables, J., now seemed to have worn himself out. “Carry on, if you must, Mr. Rumpole.”

“Two weeks after he went into the nursing home, you took him for a drive on the Downs?” Rumpole carried on.

“I did, yes.” Percy’s nervousness seemed to have returned, although I couldn’t imagine why the memory of tea on the Downs posed any sort of threat to him.

“You were then on good terms?”

“Yes.”

“You shared tea, scones, and clotted cream at the Bide-A-Wee café?” It was strange the effect on the witness of this innocent question. He took out a silk handkerchief, wiped his forehead and had to force himself to answer, “Yes, we did.”

“And talked?”

“We talked, yes.” Percy answered so quietly that the judge was constrained to tell him to speak up.

“And after that conversation you and your brother never met or spoke to each other again?”

There was a long pause. Had I stumbled, guided by a dead hand, on some vital piece of evidence? I couldn’t believe it.

“No. We never did.”

“And he made a will cutting out your family, and leaving all his considerable property to my client, Miss Beasley?”

“He made an alleged will, Mr. Rumpole,” the judge was at pains to remind me.

I bowed respectfully, and said, “If that’s what you call it in the Chancery Division, yes, my Lord. What I want to ask you, Mr. Percival Ollard, is simply this — what did you and your brother say to each other at the Bide-A-Wee café?”

Now the pause seemed endless. Percy looked at Featherstone and got no help. He looked at his wife and his ballet-dancing son. He looked vainly at the doors and the windows, and finally his desperate gaze fell on the learned judge.

“My Lord. Must I answer that question?” he said.

“Mr. Rumpole, do you press the question?” His Lordship asked me with distaste.

“My Lord, I do.” For some reason, I was on to a good thing, and I wasn’t letting it go.

“Then it is relevant and you must answer it, Mr. Ollard.” At least the judge knew his business.

“My L–L-Lord,” Percival Ollard stammered. He was clearly extremely distressed. So distressed that the judge had time to look at the clock and relieve the witness’s agony for an hour. “I see the time,” he said. “You may give us your answer after luncheon, Mr. Percival Ollard. Shall we say, two o’clock...?”

We all rose obediently to our hind legs, with Rumpole muttering, “Bloody Chancery Judge. He’s let old Percy off the hook.”

Miss Beasley vanished somewhere at lunchtime, and when I had returned from a rather unhappy encounter with the plaice in the crypt, I found Guthrie Featherstone waiting for me outside the Court. He offered me a cigarette, which I refused, and he lit my small cigar with a gold lighter.

“Horace,” he said, “we’ve always got on pretty well at the Bar.”

“Have we, Guthrie?”

“My client has come to a rather agonizing decision.”

“You mean he’s going to answer my question?”

“It’s not that exactly. You see, Horace, we’re chucking in the sponge. Our hands are up. We surrender! Matron can have her precious will. We offer no further evidence.”

You could have knocked me down with a Chancery brief, but I tried to sound nonchalant. “Oh really, Featherstone,” I said, “that’s very satisfactory.” It was also somewhat incredible. But Guthrie, it became clear, had other matters on his mind.

“I say, Rumpole. A fellow must be certain of his fee. You’ll let me have my costs out of the estate, won’t you?”

“I suppose so.” I warned him, “I’d better just check.”

“With your client?”

“Not only with her,” I said, “with the deceased. I mean it’s his money, isn’t it?” And I left him thinking, no doubt, that old Horace Rumpole had completely lost his marbles.

When Matron came into view I put the proposition to her; I told her that the Percival Ollards would give her all the boodle, only provided that Guthrie, and their other lawyers, got their costs out of the estate. She and the dear departed must have had a convivial lunch together, agreement was reached, and the deal was on. With about as much joy and enthusiasm as King John might have shown when signing Magna Carta, Mr. Justice Venables pronounced, in the absence of further argument, for the will of the first of March, 1974, benefiting Miss Beasley, and against the earlier will which favoured the Percival Ollards. All parties were allowed their costs out of the estate.

When we came out of Court, Matron seized my hand in her muscular grasp.

“Thanks most awfully, Mr. Rumpole,” she said. “The colonel knew you’d pull it off and hit them for six.”

“Miss Beasley. May I call you ‘Matey’?”

“Please.”

“What’s the truth of it? What did the brothers say to each other over the scones and Darjeeling?”

There was a pause, and then Miss Beasley said with a small, secret smile, “How would I know, Mr. Rumpole? Only the colonel and his brother know that.”

However, I was not to be left in total ignorance of the truth of “In the Estate of Colonel Ollard, deceased.” After we had taken off our robes, Guthrie Featherstone did me the honour of inviting me to crack a bottle of claret at the Sheridan Club, and, as he had given me my first (and my last) Chancery will, I did him the honour of accepting. As we sat in a quiet room, under the portraits of old actors and even older judges, Featherstone said, “No reason why you shouldn’t know, Rumpole. Your client had been Percy’s mistress for years.”

“Miss Beasley, Matey, the old dragon of the nursing home, his mistress!” I was astonished, and I let my amazement show. “His what?”

“Girlfriend.” Featherstone made it sound even more inappropriate.

“It seems odd, somehow, calling a stout, elderly woman a ‘girlfriend.’ Are you trying to tell me, Guthrie, intimacy actually took place?”

“Regularly, apparently. On a Wednesday. Matron’s afternoon off. But when Colonel Roderick Ollard went into Sunnyside she dived into bed with him, and deserted Percy. The meeting at the tearoom was when the colonel told his brother all about it and said he meant to leave his money to Rosemary Beasley.”

I was silent. I drank claret. I began to wonder where the planchette came in.

“But why couldn’t your client have told us that?” I asked my ex-opponent.

“His wife, Rumpole! His wife Marcia! She’s a battle-axe and she was kept completely in the dark about Matey. It seems there would have been hell to pay if she’d found out. So we had to settle.”

“Well, well, Featherstone. Matron, the femme fatale. I’d never have believed it.”

What did I believe? That the colonel spoke from the grave? Or that Matron invented all the seances to tell us a truth which would have caused her deep embarrassment to communicate in any other way? As it was, she had told me nothing.

All I knew was that I didn’t fancy the idea of the “other side.” I knew I shouldn’t care for long chats with Colonel Ollard and the Emperor Napoleon even if Joseph Stalin were to be of the party. Dying, as far as I was concerned, had been postponed indefinitely.