Rumpole isn’t ready to hang up the wig just yet

Fans of the indomitable Horace Rumpole and his redoubtable creator, John Mortimer, may rejoice.

At nearly 84, Mortimer has produced in “Rumpole Misbehaves” one of the best of the 16 story collections and novels centering on the crafty old barrister and self-described proud “Old Bailey hack.” Rumpole’s abiding idealism still is hedged around with decades of courtroom cynicism concerning man’s fallen nature and a store of ready quotes from Wordsworth, all fortified by regular ingestion of Chateau Thames Embankment, the cheap red he purchases from Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, where his tab remains unpaid.

His hostility to overreaching judges and supercilious prosecuting attorneys remains implacable. He still refuses to prosecute and only defends. (British barristers or trial attorneys usually do both, representing the Crown in one trial and the accused in another.) He accepts only criminal cases, holding fast to “the golden thread” of British justice, the presumption of innocence. Fierce and fearless cross-examination remains Rumpole’s weapon of choice, and he wields it to particular effect in this novel.

Rumpole has for many volumes now -- not to mention through many television dramas -- remained fixed in our imaginations at about age 70. Perhaps it’s because of the author’s age, but this novel, which is rather intricately plotted and propulsively rich in incident for so short a narrative, has the feeling of a summation. Over its course, the incorrigible Horace will meet and surmount not only a variety of novel challenges -- political correctness and human trafficking, for example -- but also old temptations, particularly the pressure to sacrifice his generally undeserving clients on the expedient altar of long unrealized ambition, in this case a chance to finally “take silk” and become a Queens Counsel, the senior barristers who act as lead lawyers in the most serious cases.

Hard times

As “Rumpole Misbehaves” begins, a distressing downturn in crime has put Horace in a bit of a funk. He’s bored and as his wife, Hilda -- “she who must be obeyed” -- notes, ill-tempered. His reduced financial situation has deprived him of his customary pub lunch of a meat pie washed down with a pint of Guinness. Instead, he’s bringing sandwiches from home, washing them down with glasses of Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary and consoling himself by smoking one small, cheap cigar after another.

Into this despond comes a case. Here’s Rumpole with the solicitor, offering him the brief:

“What are you bringing me? A sensational murder?”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Rumpole. Not this week.”

“An armed robber at the Bank of New South Wales?”

“Not that either.”

“ ‘Don’t tell me.’ I’m afraid my voice betrayed its disappointment. ‘Not another gross indecency in a picture palace?’ Wartime epics were, I had found, the most likely to produce such regrettable behavior in the auditorium.”

What the solicitor has on offer is a chance to represent a young Timson, the family of minor south London criminals to whom Rumpole is virtually house counsel, who has been hit with one of New Labor’s Anti-Social Behavior Orders (ASBO). Those are extra-legal orders compelling a person to desist from some sort of conduct deemed noxious by neighbors.

In this case, the young Timson has been playing soccer on a prosperous nearby street where he’s unwanted. Much to his outrage, Rumpole finds that while the orders have the effect of law -- the Timson boy faces incarceration if he persists -- there is no due process, no confrontation of witnesses, no cross examination; in other words, he loses the case.

Back in chambers, things go from bad to worse, for Rumpole’s forward-looking colleagues have grown concerned about global warming and pollution. They declare their offices a no-smoking zone and forbid eating in chambers. Rumpole, of course, persists and is hit with his own ASBO by one of the other lawyers, the perennially twit-like Claude Erskine-Brown.

In quick order, Rumpole must not only defend himself but also take up the case of a man accused of murdering a Russian immigrant girl forced to work as a prostitute. The client was discovered standing over the strangled girl’s body and his case seems hopeless -- a Rumpole specialty -- until the old barrister realizes that the victim’s apartment was on the street from which young Timson was banned. Much of great import follows from that not-so-coincidental fact, and Rumpole comes to believe not only in his sad client’s innocence but also in a trail of official malfeasance leading directly back to the Home Office, which has charge of immigration matters.

Long awaited promotion?

Meanwhile, Rumpole has the long deferred prospect of ascension to Queens Counsel dangled before him, if only he’ll stop antagonizing judges and, it is ever so discreetly implied, stop trying to drag the Home office into his squalid homicide.

Here’s Rumpole, taking a break from the trail, to appear before the committee weighing his suitability to take silk:

“It seems your practice is entirely criminal.”

“ ‘As I would wish it to be,’ I told the meeting.

“ ‘Why do you say that?’ came from one of the unknown QCs.

“Because if you go down to the Old Bailey you’ll find that all life is there, the real world with all its sins, mistakes and occasional beauty and good behavior. Go and watch the huge international companies suing each other in the Queen’s Bench Division and you move into a world of fantasy and make-believe.’ ”

Spoken like a criminal defense lawyer. There’s a great deal of what might be called “the inner Rumpole” woven unobtrusively through this novel. One facet of that is the barrister’s unshakable faith in the presumption of innocence and its handmaiden, reasonable doubt. Rumpole will make decisive recourse to “the golden thread” in his desperate defense of his unhappy murder client. American readers may not be aware that this phrase comes not from Rumpole’s eloquence, considerable though it may be, but from a speech delivered by Viscount Sankey during a 1935 debate in which the House of Lords overturned a capital murder conviction:

“Throughout the web of the English Criminal Law one golden thread is always to be seen, that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner’s guilt. . . . If, at the end of and on the whole of the case, there is a reasonable doubt, created by the evidence given by either the prosecution or the prisoner, as to whether the prisoner killed the deceased with a malicious intention, the prosecution has not made out the case and the prisoner is entitled to an acquittal. No matter what the charge or where the trial, the principle that the prosecution must prove the guilt of the prisoner is part of the common law of England and no attempt to whittle it down can be entertained.”

Amen. Horace Rumpole couldn’t have said it better.

timothy.rutten@latimes.com