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Rumpole
Rests His Case by John Mortimer Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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The End? Could Rumpole
Rests His Case be the last book from John Mortimer about our favorite
star of chambers and the Old Bailey? If so, readers will find about a week’s
worth of stories on the pages of this book, and can savor each one carefully.
Here’s an excerpt from the story titled, “Rumpole
and the Remembrance of Things Past” (p. 26-7) There are no sadder relics of the past than the rows of small, semi-detached houses that line one of the western approaches to London. Once they were lived in and alive. Minis were washed on Sunday mornings inside their lean-to garages, bright dahlias and tea roses grew in their front gardens, their doorbells chimed and, on winter evenings, lights glowed from the stained-glass portholes in their front doors. Now their blind windows are
stuffed with hardboard, their front doors nailed up, their gardens piled with
rubble and their garages collapsed. They are derelict victims of a
long-delayed scheme to widen the main road, and some of these houses have
already been pulled out like rotten teeth. When it came to be the turn of 35
Primrose Drive, a digger, prying up the sitting-room floor, lifted, with
apparent tenderness, the well-preserved and complete skeleton of a young
woman. Reports were made to the police
and the coroner's office. D. I. Winthrop, an enthusiastic
young officer, started an inquiry which led, to his great satisfaction, to
the arrest of William Twineham, the sole owner
of the house since its birth in the sixties. Twineham's wife Josephine had,
the D. I. discovered, vanished unaccountably some thirty-three years previously. I was
standing outside my Chambers in Equity Court, wearing my hat to protect the
thinning top of my head from the drizzle and thinking, as my old darling
Wordsworth would say, of old, unhappy, far-off things and crimes so long ago. Around me in the doorways, under the arches or leaning against
a sheltered wall, were many poor souls like me, driven out of doors. Most of
them were girls. Short-skirted, high-heeled, with cigarettes dangling from
their lips, they would seem to any passer-by to be ladies of the street, and
the same casual observer might have been forgiven for supposing that the
Outer Temple, home of the legal profession, had become a red-light district
in the manner of downtown Amsterdam. The casual observer would have been wrong. Neither they nor
I were out of doors to offer sexual services. We were temporary exiles from
Chambers which had become smoke-free zones. The Inn was all for it, as was Soapy Sam Ballard. Mizz Liz
Probert, who has now taken to coming to work on a daunting motorbike which
pumps more gas into the atmosphere than a lifetime's small cigars, went over
to the Green Party. Claude Erskine-Brown blamed my cheroots for the fact that
his aunt had been flooded out by a climate change in Surrey. In vain I argued
for the democratic rights of minorities. The smoking ban was introduced by a
tyrannical majority, so I basked in the warmth of a small cigar as the rain
settled in the brim of my hat. 'Loitering with intent,
Rumpole?' 'Still polluting the atmosphere
. . . ?' Two grey, almost ghost-like
figures approached through the rain. They were the opera-loving,
wine-tasting, inadequate advocate Claude Erslane-Brown and none other than Soapv
Sam Ballard, the unworthy Head of my Chambers. Each story in this collection excites, and
the question remains, is it true that Rumpole
Rests His Case? Steve Hopkins, December 23, 2002 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the January 2003
issue of Executive
Times For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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