Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer Page A

the criminal classes in the south Brixton area.
    â€˜So they give me the Sound Universe as a bit, like, of revenge.’
    â€˜Who gave it to you?’ I felt it was time I took charge of the conference.
    â€˜Well, the Molloys, you see. Course it was one of them fingering me to “Persil” in the Needle Arms. I can’t fight them, Mr Rumpole. Not at my age. I can’t do battle with them, not the Molloys.’
    â€˜But if you didn’t do it?’
    â€˜Of course I didn’t do it, but they’ll get me anyway. That’s why I want to go inside. I’ll be much safer there.’
    â€˜Can I get this clear?’ I needed to be sure, because I had serious doubts about Uncle Cyril’s sanity. ‘You want to go to prison?’
    â€˜Safest place for me, Mr Rumpole. I reckons I’ll be looked after there. I’m used to it, of course. Reckon I’ll get Wandsworth. Jimmy Molloy got sent up north somewhere.’
    â€˜So in order to get to what you regard as safety in prison, you’re ready to plead guilty to a crime you didn’t commit?’
    â€˜Seems the only way, Mr Rumpole. They don’t let you into them places, not just by kicking at the door and asking if they got any cells to spare.’
    â€˜And you tell me you never broke into the radio shop in Coldharbour Lane?’
    â€˜Never. At any time!’
    â€˜Then I can’t do it.’
    â€˜Can’t do what, Mr Rumpole?’
    â€˜Let you plead guilty.’ The finest traditions of the bar, whatever they were, seemed at that moment a lot more important than the exact shade of trousers to wear when addressing the Court of Appeal.
    â€˜That’s my business, isn’t it, what I admits to?’
    â€˜We’re here to take the client’s instructions, aren’t we?’ Daisy seemed to think I was being unnecessarily difficult.
    â€˜The world is full,’ I told her from the mountains, or at least the molehill, of my experience, ‘of stories about barristers who defend people they know are guilty. I absolutely refuse to be the first barrister who’s pleaded guilty for a customer he knows is innocent. However attractive you find the idea of prison, Mr Timson.’
    â€˜You reckon I ought to fight it?’ Uncle Cyril seemed puzzled at my objecting to his retreat to a cell in Wandsworth.
    â€˜I know you have to fight it,’ I assured him.
    â€˜Pity we couldn’t get Teddy Singleton.’ Daisy stared at me, whether in admiration or irritation I couldn’t be sure. ‘He wouldn’t have been quite so picky.’
    â€˜I’m scared of the Molloys, Mr Rumpole. That’s the truth of it.’
    â€˜Perhaps you are. But pleading guilty’s not the answer.’
    â€˜It’s the only answer I’ve got.’
    â€˜No, it isn’t,’ I told him. Then I had an idea. ‘If you won’t listen to me, perhaps I might have a word with your family. They looked a fairly sensible lot.’
    Â 
    They were all assembled in the canteen. Harry Timson, then the head of the clan, was there with his wife, Brenda, a spreading grandmother with bright, beady eyes. The much younger Fred, who was in line to succeed his father as the top Timson, was there with his warm-hearted wife, Vi, whom I was to defend on many a shoplifting charge in the future. There was Fred’s brother Dennis, an expert on forged log books and ‘clocking cars’, as I was to discover in the years to come, and Dennis’s wife, Doris, with a glamorous and heavy-lidded expression, a tight sweater and enough perfume to drown a small furry animal. It was Doris who, much later, I had to defend in a difficult case concerning the receiving of a large quantity of frozen shellfish, luxury goods as befitted Doris: langoustines, scampi, crayfish and the like.
    I was only a white wig, taking on a Timson brief at the last moment, but I have to say I have never been