RUMPOLE 
AND 
THE TEENAGE WEREWOLF
by John Mortimer

"We've tried, Mr. Rumpole. No one can say we haven't tried. His own telly—his own telephone number."
"He's on line, Mr. Rumpole. He can access the world from his own bedroom."
"Trainers. And Puffa jackets. You can't imagine the amount he's cost us in trainers."
"And we've always done our best to be fair to him. Not judgmental."
"Chris is always so fair-minded. He tries to reason with him."
"It's very hard, Mr. Rumpole, to reason with a slammed door."
"Chris understands young people. He gives his time freely to a youth club in Worsefield. He helps them to become computer literate."
"It's the struggle, Mr. Rumpole. Every day's a struggle. Will there be a row? Has he gone missing? It's a nightmare for his mother. She's losing weight over it."
The couple who sat in my client chairs were what She Who Must Be Obeyed would have called "thoroughly nice people." They might qualify to represent the best of Middle England—modest and intelligent, capable of serious concern but also able to make jokes at their own expense. They were, I thought, the type of people who supported the local Oxfam shop, gave generously to hospices, read to the blind, whipped round for funds to help the victims of floods and earthquakes in distant parts of the world, and organized free trips to the seaside for the poor and elderly.
They had come with their local solicitor, an amiable old bird named Beazely who looked as if he'd be more at home shooting pheasants than fighting a prosecution for assault and offences under the Prevention of Harassment Act. Notably absent was the sixteen-year-old they had been talking about with such weary resignation. Ben was Hermione Swithin's son and her husband Christopher's stepson. He was due to make his criminal debut before Hartscombe Crown Court.
The family history was also typical of Middle England. Hermione had met Martin Cutler at University and given birth to Ben when she was twenty-three. Cutler, apparently a part-time journalist and full-time drunk, had disappeared to America with Hermione's best friend and little or nothing had been heard from him since. Hermione's first job was as Christopher Swithin's secretary and they were soon in love. "Ben was four when Chris took him on, Mr. Rumpole. He's treated him just as though he was his own son. Our Caroline's different from him in everyway."
"We call Ben the teenage werewolf," Chris explained and they botli laughed gently, apparently comforted by this description.
"Not to his face, of course. To his face we always try to build him up—give him confidence."
"Caroline's such a sweet character." Hermione looked gratefully at Chris, as though congratulating him on not having brought any of her first husband's destructive genes to infect the character of their daughter. "She's always smiling. She's only ten but you can tell she's going to grow up as a thoroughly adorable person."
"She just wants everyone to like her; that's our Caroline."
"The Teenage Werewolf doesn't care if no one likes him at all."
"When we moved into Merrivale and Chris could do all his work from home we thought Ben would be so happy. All of us together in one place."
Was the whole family being together in one place a perfect recipe for happiness, I wondered? Not, perhaps, for the Macbeths or the Agamemnons in their houses of doom, but Merrivale sounded, from the Swithins' account of it, a highly desirable residence. It was an old brick and flint farmhouse with magnificent barns from which the sheep and cows had long gone, and the hay moved out to make way for Christopher's computers and office equipment, installed so he could run his particular dot.com business from a part of what was left of rural England. Both the children went to state schools in Hartscombe, the nearest town, some ten miles from Merrivale ("If people like us don't support the state system it'll never get any better," Hermione had told me). At sixteen, Ben was facing his A-Levels and had been booked into Hartscombe College, where his attendance was sporadic and the lectures were occasions when he found it convenient to catch up on his sleep.
"That's par for the course with teenagers, Mr. Rumpole." Chris was at his most tolerant. "That's what we'd been told to expect. We thought he'd grow out of it. We could see sometimes—when he bought Hermione a birthday present with his own money, for instance—a light at the end of the tunnel. We could live through all that. This is something quite different. We never thought he'd take to serious crime."
"He says he didn't do it," Hermione reminded her husband.
"Of course he does. And we've stood by him. That's why we've come to you, Mr. Rumpole."
The Swithins were involved with the law because of a girl called Prunella Haviland, just seventeen and also at Hartscombe College. "Everyone says she's so attractive, but Chris thinks she's nothing out of the ordinary," Hermione told me. "He used to pick her up on the school run until her father suddenly decided to take her. That was when the e-mails started coming to Prunella." It was the e-mails that constituted the harassment and supplied the evidence of guilt in the case of the teenage werewolf. In the early days they were amorous, then openly obscene, lecherous and full of promises to perform eccentric and sometimes dangerous acts of love. At one stage, walking through a lane in Hartscombe after dark, Prunella had felt she was being followed and then someone close behind her fastened his arms round her. It lasted only a few seconds, but she felt a kiss on the back of her neck before she struggled free and ran. After mat she never walked alone through the town, by day or by night. She was not molested again, but the e-mails continued thick and fast. They had clearly emerged from the computer bought, at considerable expense, to propitiate the werewolf one Christmas, and installed, among other costly technology, in his bedroom at Merrivale.
"We knew he was difficult, selfish, utterly incapable of caring about how his mother or I felt. We didn't know he was a criminal. Do what you can for him, Mr. Rumpole."
"You see how it is." Hermione gave her husband a small, sad smile. "Chris loves Ben. Ben's the son he never had."
And then, it seemed, the conversation dried up. Neither of the concerned adults had any more to say about the accused werewolf except mat he had been given the address and the telephone number, and even a map, of the Outer Temple so that he could find Equity Court and meet his defender. He'd been to a party in London the night before and had promised them he'd be at the conference in my chambers but, by now, it was time to give him up. It had happened before and would probably happen again, and yet again. He was on bail and was kept away from school for the sake of Prunella. Perhaps he'd gone home by now. Perhaps they'd find him there, perhaps not. Hermione looked at me, apologetic, confused, as though she had no reasonable explanation to offer for this human being she had brought into the world.
In the silence that followed I was looking once again at the printed-out e-mails.
"It's interesting," I said. "They're outrageous, of course. But some of these messages are quite poetic."
Chris Swithin was looking at me with deep disapproval. Clearly I had said the wrong thing, and soon after this the couple left.

When were teenagers invented? I tried to remember myself slightly spotty, a great deal thinner, in a cold boarding school beside an unfriendly sea, with a headmaster whose role model appeared to have been Captain Bligh of the Bounty. Despite all the discomforts and the occasional terrors of the place, I had no thought of leaving it. I tolerated my parents, and my father's often-repeated stories. I understood his reluctance to spend more time than was absolutely essential with an adolescent whose favourite reading was Notable British Trials. I put up with my mother's resigning herself, with a sigh, to the fact that my failure to keep my room tidy would make it unlikely that I would ever marry. I kept the other boys friendly by telling them stories and provided defences for them when they were faced with serious charges of giggling in chapel or introducing white mice into the divinity class. I sent no obscene communications to girls—indeed, I knew hardly any girls to send them to. On the whole, I would say I was a more conventional character, a pouter, somewhat easily imposed upon and with a respect for authority which had dwindled, rather than increased, over the years.
"Were you a teenage werewolf?" I asked Mizz Liz Probert as we sat together in the Tast-Ee-Bite in Fleet Street. I was fortifying myself with a bite of breakfast before making my way down to Ludgate Circus, the Palais de Justice, and my customers in the cells.
"I told my mother she was stupid," Mizz Liz admitted. "I did that quite a lot."
"Are you ashamed of that?"
"Not really. It was perfectly true. Someone had to say it. My fadier didn't dare."
"Then I suppose," I told her, "teenagers were invented around the date of your birth."
"Not all teenagers are terrible," Mizz Probert sprung to their defence, "although I must say I've got one odd one now."
"You've got one?" She seemed too young. "Is he, or she perhaps, giving you hell as a mother?"
"Don't be silly, Rumpole. Not my child, my client! At least I've been told I'm going to get the case. Nasty charges of harassment and assault. I got rung up by a firm of solicitors in Hartscombe."
"Is the boy called Ben Swithin?"
"You've got it, Rumpole!"
The teenage werewolf was Mizz Liz's client? This was deeply disturbing and I sought for the only possible explanation. "You'll be my junior?" I asked her. "I'm going to need all the help I can get."
"Oh, they didn't say anything about that. I got the feeling they want me to do it on my own."
With this Mizz Liz got up, leaving me puzzled. As she left, she was immediately replaced by Soapy Sam Ballard, carrying his meagre breakfast of muesli, with hot water and lemon on the side, on a tray which he held with as much care as if he were transporting caviar and some rare wine in a cut-glass decanter. As he put down his tray and laid out his feast, he looked after Mizz Probert's retreating figure.
"Nice little bottom she's got to her, our Mizz Probert. Wouldn't you say so, Rumpole?"
I was profoundly shocked at what Mizz Liz and the sisterhood of young women lawyers would have regarded as outrageously offensive. If made by our clerk, Henry, or one of the Timsons, or even my most regular client and solicitor, Bonny Bernard, it would have seemed no more than background noise in the meaningless chatter of everyday life. None of those people would have thought of making any sort of amorous approach to Mizz Liz. Had she turned to face them, they would have been almost deferential in their approach. But this was Soapy Sam, leading light of the Lawyers as Christians, tied, you might say cocooned, by his marriage to Matey, the formidable nursing sister who manned the casualty room at the Old Bailey, ready with cough sweets or Elastoplasts and calming words for lawyers attacked by disappointed clients and victims of bungled attempts at suicide. To hear Ballard who had adopted self-righteousness as a way of life and regarded the lighting up of a small cheroot as a breakdown in public morality use such an expression about any member of the Bar was like hearing a bishop break out into a couple of verses of "The Good Ship Venus" during evensong. But now Liz was gone, and Ballard was staring at the less potentially erotic subject of his plate of muesli.
"I've been a little unsettled, Rumpole, since you found that old photograph of the Pithead Stompers."
"Forget it," I advised him. "We've all made mistakes in the past."
"I don't regard it as a mistake, Rumpole. Perhaps... as a matter of regret. I can't help feeling that I enjoyed life more then."
"You want to pick up the guitar again? Assemble the old drum kit?" I couldn't believe that Matey would welcome sessions from ageing Stompers in the Ballard home.
"Not that. Of course, I'm happily married now."
"Of course." Why should I dispel his illusions?
"And I have my work. And the Lawyers as Christians to look after. But when I look at that photograph you so kindly gave me, I can't help remembering girls dancing the Shake. Did you ever dance the Shake, Rumpole?"
"Not within living memory."
"Happy days. When we were young.”
"Not always."
"No, I suppose not."
"I've got a client now known as a teenage werewolf. Got himself involved in serious crime because of a girl. You're far safer living quiedy in Belsize Park with Matey. Your days with the guitar are over. Are you going to eat that stuff, by the way?" Ballard had been toying with his muesli, putting a spoon in as tentatively as the toe of a swimmer confronted by an icy pool.
"Of course I'm going to eat it, Rumpole." He crunched a mouthful of what appeared to be wet, flavoured stubble. "We all need roughage."
I had, I felt, quite enough roughage in my life without having recourse to muesli.
As soon as I got back to Chambers, I rang the Swimins' solicitor. We had done various jobs together of an unsensational and rural nature—careless driving, closed footpaths, stolen piglets, receiving stolen diesel—in all of which I had achieved a satisfactory level of success.
"Oh, is it you, Mr. Rumpole?" The country lawyer sounded startled, as though he'd been peacefully reading Trout and Stream and enjoying life until he heard a voice which must have pricked his conscience.
"What do you imagine you're up to, Beazely? Have you entirely forgotten the rules of ethical behaviour which apply even to solicitors? Or was your head turned by the scrumpy or whatever it is you drink in the countryside?"
"Mr. Rumpole..."
I could tell the man was already somewhat shaken, so I twisted the dagger in the wound. "I have been practising at the Bar almost as long as living memory and on no occasion—you hear that? —on no other occasion has a case in which I have been briefed been offered to a junior white wig, a girl to whom the Penge Bungalow Murders may seem an historical event as distant as the Battle of Waterloo. I refer, as of course you know, to Mizz Liz Probert and the case of the teenage werewolf."
"The point was ..." Here Beazely attempted a stammering defence. "The client thought..."
"What do you mean 'The client thought'? Have you met the client? Has he spoken to you? Is he in some way related to Mizz Probert?"
"I've never met him. No. But the Swithins thought..."
"I know what they think. I've had an opportunity to study the Swithins in-depth."
"They think the boy might react better to someone of his own age."
"The boy, as you call him, has had no opportunity to react to me."
"They can't persuade him to come to London for a conference."
"Then Mahomet must come to the mountain."
"Who did you say?"
"Don't concern yourself, Beazely, with Mahomet. A figure of speech. Just find out which evening this week it would be convenient for me to come down to Hartscombe. I can easily manage it tonight. You and I will talk to the client together . . .."
It wasn't until the end of the week that the Swithins could take time off from their charity committees, their book-club gatherings, Chris' prison visiting and Hermione's quiz in the village hall to support the handicapped. Ben was helping out in a Hartscombe restaurant the night I visited Merrivale.
"If he wants a younger brief, I can understand that." This was Rumpole at his most reasonable. "But I want to hear it from the client in person. Neither of you..." I looked at the werewolf's mother and stepfather, comfortable but no doubt deeply concerned people. "Neither of you is in danger of youth custody."
"He promised he'd be here by ten." Hermione's wail was muted and polite, but it had its own brand of desperation. "It's really too bad of Ben."
"He sometimes stays in the restaurant talking," Hermione told me, "even after it's closed."
"He talks to someone—that's encouraging," I told them. "If he does that there's no good reason why he shouldn't talk to me."
"No consideration for others. No manners. Wherever young Ben came from, he didn't arrive from heaven, trailing clouds of glory." Chris' knowledge of Wordsworth put him up a notch in my estimation.
We were waiting, this time, in Chris' study. All his computer technology was, he assured me, in the barn, and the room had an old-fashioned comfort, with a crackling log fire, armchairs, and an impressive collection of books lining the walls with light shining on their golden tides. We had been drinking brandy, listening to the CD player, enjoying all the delights of civilization which had not, apparendy, worn off on Hermione's son. As we waited for him conversation seemed to run out with the brandy until Chris, after prolonged and careful thought, said, "I don't think he'll ever talk to you, Mr. Rumpole."
"We'll have to see about that." I decided the time had come to track the werewolf to its lair. "Oh, by the way, could  I borrow your loo before I go?"
"I'm so sorry." Hermione, who apologized for most things, was also sorry about her bathroom. "It's up the stairs."
"First on the left when you get to the landing." Chris was more practical.
The bathroom, when I got to it, needed no apologies. The air had been freshened with a no doubt chemical, but pleasant, smell of fresh apples. The porcelain gleamed. The loo seat was of dark mahogany. The towels looked soft and inviting. Glass shelves on one side of the washbasin supported Hermione's array of lotions and unguents, her shampoos, perfumes, cotton wool buds, tweezers, and electric toothbrush. The shelves on the other side were dearly Chris', displaying his silver-backed brushes, his electric razor, Floris soap and anti-dandruff shampoo, and a masculine perfume dearly labelled "For Men." I suppose it was the small part of me that wanted, like the Timsons, to get something for nothing that tempted me to sprinkle a little of this on the Rumpole handkerchief. The smell was fresh, strong, and reassuringly male. Smelling like that, I felt, entirely qualified me to meet and tame the werewolf
II Paradiso in Hartscombe marketplace was dosed, but the lights still shone behind drawn blinds. After Beazely had rattled the door, it was opened by a woman in a black trouser suit. Apparendy she knew my instructing solicitor as a regular customer and she was full of apologies.
"Such a shame! We've taken the last orders and the kitchen's closed. We could perhaps do you and your friend a plate of antipasti." She sounded entirely English and had brought Tuscany to Hartscombe byway of the Sunday supplements.
"That's very kind of you," I told her, "but we've really come to meet one of your waiters. Ben Swithin."
"Ben? Of course. I think he's still here. Come in, both of you." My heart warmed to this polite hostess when she led us to a corner table and offered the apparently popular Beazely a bottle of Chianti on the house. I watched her as she went to a long table where teenage waiters, making a few pounds after school hours, were laughing together. After some persuasion she detached one of them and brought him to our table. He approached in slow motion, frowning deeply.
"Who are you?" he said. "What do you want?"
"I want you to sit down. And have a glass of wine."
"I don't drink. Who are you? Or what?"
"I'm a lawyer," I had to admit, "but don't let that put you off."
"Mum and Dad wanted me to see a lawyer. It's like... I can't be bothered."
"Why can't you be bothered?"
"Because it's useless."
"Why is it useless?"
"Because you can't help me."
"Suppose I told you you're innocent." The effect was surprising. He looked at me—a long, wondering look. He was a boy—thin, narrow-shouldered, a little short for his age. His hair looked as though it had been almost shaved and was growing back to an untidy stubble. He had the eyes of his mother, large and luminous with sculptured eyelids. He sat down then, the scowl faded, and he looked younger than his years and quite defenceless.
"What did you say?"
"I said you're innocent. Until they prove you guilty."
"They won't have much trouble. Right?"
"How do you know?"
"Dad told me."
"You call Christopher Swithin 'Dad?'"
"Yes. He asked me to."
"I see." If he was a werewolf, he seemed to be singularly obliging. "Tell me about this girl, this Prunella. She goes to your college."
"I don't go near her. I'm not allowed. I'm not allowed to go within miles of her. Like I'm a sort of fatal disease." All of these sentences ended on a rising inflection, as though they were questions, but he required no answer. I knew about his bail conditions.
"Tell me more about Prunella."
He picked up a table knife and, quite ineffectually, tried to saw at the edge of the table. This occupied him seriously for a while and suddenly, unexpectedly, he smiled at me. "Old Prune? She's alright."
"You've known her a long time?"
"Forever. Since primary school." Again he made it sound like a question.
"Did you fancy her at all?"
"Prune? Like I've known her since we were young. We were just friends. Mates. Dad used to pick her up on the school run and I'd see her every day. Mates. That's all we were. Right?"
"They say you sent her messages."
"Why would I want to send her messages when I saw her all the time? There wouldn't have been a whole lot of point in it."
"So you didn't send her e-mails?"
He was working again with his knife on the edge of the table. "You believe I did, don't you?"
"I never said that."
"Like everyone believes I did."
"Not everyone."
"Who doesn't, then?"
"I told you. I don't. I'm in no hurry to believe anything. Now, as I told you, I assume you are innocent."
He stopped sawing then, having done the edge of the table little visible damage. He put the knife down and looked at me. "No one's said that to me before. You going to speak up for me? Like in court?"
"If you want me to."
"There's nothing much you could do."
"Oh yes there is. I'd see if they could prove it." He was silent then and I felt I had to say, "Your parents think you might want someone younger."
He flicked the knife with a finger and spun it as it lay on the table. I remembered, at his age, spinning knives to make decisions or answer questions, even to point out a guilty party. It came to rest pointing at me.
"All right then." He was looking at me, as though accepting an inevitable conclusion. "You'll do, right? You're cool."
"Thank you very much." I looked at old Beazely and confirmed my engagement. "That's settled then."
"Is that all?" Ben looked longingly back at the table where the other student waiters and waitresses were laughing or blowing across the top of a bottle to produce a strange boom. None of them, so far as I knew, was on bail awaiting trial. Ben wanted to get away to join them, I thought, and not to go home.
"For the moment. Come and see me in London, and don't vanish this time. You can send Mr. Beazely an e-mail, just to confirm you'll be there."
"All right then." Ben couldn't wait to get up. "Thank you very much." It was an automatic thank you. His mother must have taught him to say it when he went to his first party—"Thank you very much for having me." He was not so very much older when it was a thank you for doing my case of harassment and assault.
"Just one more question." I looked up at the young man who seemed, in many ways, still a child. "Do you like poetry?"
"What do you mean?" He looked puzzled and I had to explain.
"Stuff in short lines. It rhymes quite often. Do you read it ever?"
"Not really. I'm not bothered with it." He looked longingly towards his friends.
"But you read some at school?"
"At school, yes. Most of it's boring."
"Have you read Yeats, for instance?"
"Yeats? Never heard of him. Sorry, I've got to go now." And he was away, back in his own world with the young people of the college who found poetry boring and helped out at II Paradiso in the evenings.
"It's hopeless though, isn't it? All the e-mails have got his name on them, for God's sake," Beazely said, as we stood on the windy platform of Hartscombe station waiting for the last train to London. "They all came from his machine."
"He called her 'Prune,'" I remembered.
"What's that got to do with it?"
"If you nursed a secret, powerful lust for a girl so strong that you bombarded her with passionate and sexually explicit e-mails ... if you were tormented with such urgent longings, do you think you'd call her 'Prune?'"
Beazely frowned, puzzled. Clearly I had invited him to speculate on an alien world, a territory far from his quiet, orderly life as a country solicitor. "I still think we're on a loser. Is this Prune business your only point?"
"No," I told him. "Not quite the only one."
It was about two in the morning when I undressed in the bathroom, climbed into my pyjamas and fitted myself into my side of the bed as far as possible from the sleeping Hilda.
"Rumpole," her voice boomed out of the darkness, "where do you think you've been?"
"I'm not sure. Probably dinner at the Ivy with a couple of starlets and then to Stringfellows for the lap dancing. Oh, and I caught a bit of a cold playing chemmy. We'll have to take out a second mortgage."
"Absolute stuff and nonsense! You tell as many lies as your clients. It must be catching."
The voice of She Who Must Be Obeyed died away into the night. I had a momentary vision of a young girl gazing up to heaven in mixed terror and joy as a god, disguised as a swan, swooped down to ravish her. And then I, too, fell asleep.

"Naturally we want to be with him when he sees you, Mr. Rumpole."
"It's worried his mother almost to death."
"It's worried you too, darling ... I told you, Mr. Rumpole, Chris treats him exactly as though he was his own son."
Beazely the solicitor, looking unusually embarrassed, had brought the Swithins to my room.
"I can understand exactly how worried you are." I started to pour a little oil on the troubled parents who appeared outraged.
"He's given us such an incredibly hard time for years. And now this. Have you any idea what we are going through?"
"I'm sure it's been horrible," I hastened to reassure Chris, "so why not take a little time off? Drop into a cinema. Have tea at a posh hotel. I just need to see my client alone. Otherwise he might be reluctant to say things you'd find hurtful."
"Believe me, Mr. Rumpole," Chris gave me a sad little smile, "he's perfectly capable of saying things we find hurtful to our faces. He's quite prepared to tell his mother she's fat, or me that I'm drunk when I just happen to open another bottle of 'wine at dinner.'"
"Then I ask you to leave to save yourselves further pain."
Hermione, with a sigh of resignation, moved towards the door. Chris followed her with displeasure. "I suppose you'll allow us to attend our son's trial?" he said. "That'll be by far the most painful moment for us."
"Of course I want you to be there. I'm sure," I told Chris, "that you'll be ready and willing to give evidence of Ben's good character."
As soon as they left me, the telephone rang. A miracle had taken place and the werewolf was downstairs. I told Henry to bring him up as soon as his mother and Chris were clear of the building. Then I opened the brief and read the last document, an e-mail from our client to Beazely. It was headed "Chimes@Fishnet.co.uk" and the message, which I took a minute to decode, read "HOPE 2CUB4 5PM 2MORROW" It was signed with nothing but a smiling face which appeared, together with the address at the top of the document, on all the messages which were the subject of the prosecution case.
Ben Swithin had dressed down for the occasion, wearing jeans with ink writing on the knees, a baggy sweater with holes in it, and trainers that might have been used for a marathon run through mud. He looked even younger than usual, his face unmarked by the years, a contrast to the carefully, perhaps expensively, preserved good looks of his mother and stepfather.
I turned from the face of innocence to the pile of printed out e-mails which dealt with an encyclopaedia of sexual fantasies—the ritual humiliations to be inflicted on the innocent Prune, a girl doing her A-levels at Hartscombe college. The language was constantly obscene and frequently ugly but, from time to time, as I had suggested to Chris, unexpectedly poetic. The werewolf read through them and appeared genuinely shocked. "That," he said with all the outrage of youth, "is disgusting! Whoever wrote these needs locking up."
However, Ben admitted that the messages were headed by his e-mail address and that he used the name 'Chimes.' "Dad suggested that when he gave me the computer. It was a sort of joke about the Chimes of Big Ben. He thought it was, like, a clever idea so I went along with it. 'Fishnet' is my provider."
"So they all seem to come from you. Did you write them?"
"I've never even heard," he was looking at me steadily, "of doing half these things to anybody."
So we went through the dates and times the messages were sent. The times were late at night and Ben tried to remember which dates he was at home, or when he had worked very late at the restaurant and stayed with friends, sleeping on other peoples floors in Hartscombe. The task of trying to get Ben and his friends to remember dates and places with any accuracy whatsoever was one I was happy to leave to old Beazely. Before we parted, I asked him to get hold of that persistent sleuth Fig Newton, and ask him to keep a discreet watch with a view to satisfying my curiosity about certain aspects of our case.

When I told Hilda that I was defending a boy accused of bombarding a schoolgirl with obscene messages, she looked at me as though she had always known I followed a sordid and debased profession, and announced that she would be off to visit her old school friend Dodo Macintosh in Cornwall. "I don't want to be about, Rumpole, while you're reading disgusting things, even to yourself. I'll enjoy a breath of fresh air in Lamorna Cove."
Some nights later, I was discussing the wear and tear of married life with Claude Erskine-Brown in Pommeroy's when Soapy Sam Ballard joined us in his new companionable ex-Bonzo mode. I told them both that my wife was fleeing to Land's End rather than be near me while I was reading erotic material.
"Does that mean," Ballard looked hopeful, "mat your flat will be empty?"
"Not altogether empty. I'll be there."
"Oh, I don't mind about you," our Head of Chambers was kind enough to say. "I was planning a little gathering. Just a few old friends. And we're looking for a venue."
"What about me desirable family home in Belsize Park?"
"Wouldn't do at all. My wife wouldn't entertain the idea. Can we gather at yours? Of course you'd be very welcome to join us."
"There's just one condition." I was determined to sell the mansion flat for a high price. "Are small cigars permissible in my room in Chambers from now on?"
"Oh, I suppose so." The new, reconstituted, ex-Bonzo Ballard, the character who pined for his youth and gazed longingly at girls' bottoms, gave his permission and we had a deal.

There are certain cases undertaken by a criminal defender in which, on entering court, you feel you've stepped into a giant refrigerator into which you're shut, freezing, for the rest of the trial. The cold winds of disapproval howl at you from all sides and every time you stand up you feel as if you are clearly identified as a septic sore on the body of the nation, closely related to the alleged sex offender in the dock Such was my feeling when I entered the Crown Court, His Honour Judge Denis Wintergreen presiding, sitting at Hartscombe in the Home Counties.
The Swithins were, of course, there, sitting in front of me, holding hands to support each other in what everyone realized was the final and bitterest blow struck by the evil teenager in the dock. The prosecution was in the friendly hands of the owlish Adrian Hodinott, who at least had the decency not to look at me as though I were a serial rapist who happened to have a wig on his head.
Adrian opened the case and read out some of the most horrific e-mails to a stony-faced judge who wouldn't have minded saying "Guilty" right away. I asked him to read one more—page 32 of the bundle. Obligingly the prosecutor read, without emotion:
"How can your terrified, vague fingers push my feathered glory from your loosening thighs? I will produce a shudder in your loins. Ours will be an historic moment when I, the great bird God, swoop down on you."

"Is there any particular reason why you wanted that one read, Mr. Rumpole?" Wintergreen was a hefty, square-jawed judge who had played rugby football for his country. He clearly thought that any defence of this werewolf in the dock would be nothing but an unnecessary waste of time.
"The words don't suggest anything to you, Your Honour?" I asked him.
"Nothing more than that whoever wrote them must have a peculiarly filthy mind."
"That may not be fair to the particular author concerned."
"That will be a matter for the jury to decide, Mr. Rumpole."
"Exactly! So wouldn't it be best if Your Honour would refrain from comment until that time comes?"
"Continue with your opening, Mr. Hodinott." Wintergreen cut me dead and looked only at the prosecution. "Perhaps we may be spared any further interruption from Mr. Rumpole." I'd have to face it—relations between me and the learned judge during this trial were not going to be friendly.
Prunella Haviland gave evidence. She had received all the e-mails. At first she had tried to ignore them, but finally she had told her parents and, when the messages kept on coming, they had told the police. She stood in the witness box—a slim, sensible, pretty girl with clear features who gave her evidence calmly, sensibly, and without embarrassment. You could see her, when the bloom of her youth had faded a little, as a loyal wife and, like Hermione, a frequenter of charity dinners and coffee mornings in Hartscombe.
"What effect did receiving all these messages have on you—on your state of mind?" Adrian asked.
"Well, to start with I didn't take them too seriously. But then I got worried, of course. I didn't want to go out on my own at night. Particularly after what happened down the passage off the market square"
"Tell the jury about that."
So she told them, clearly, calmly, without exaggeration. She'd been to American Pie, the club in Thames Street. She had left early because she'd had an essay to finish, but it was dark when she had walked through the marketplace and even darker when she'd gotten to the narrow passage I'd found with Mr. Beazely on our way to the station. She had been walking quickly, already nervous in the dark, when she'd felt strong arms gripping her from behind and a quick, damp kiss on the back of her neck She had struggled and freed herself. Then she had run, fast and without looking back, until she had reached the main road.
"You never saw his face?"
"No."
"So you've no idea who he was?"
"I couldn't tell. He was just someone strong. He had a smell. I noticed that."
"What sort of smell?"
"An aftershave. Machismo Three. I know it because my dad uses it. It's quite a nice smell, really."
"But it wasn't nice being attacked in the dark alley?"
"Please don't ask leading questions." I rose wearily to my feet.
"Have you some objection, Mr. Rumpole?" Wintergreen could see me standing there with my mouth open—I don't know what His Honour thought I was doing.
"My learned friend asked a question which suggests an answer to the witness. That's called a 'leading question' and I object to it," I explained, to the best of my ability, the situation to the rugger-playing judge.
"I will allow the question." And His Honour asked it again, from the bench. "Was it nice being attacked in that way, Miss Haviland?"
"No, Sir. It certainly was not."
"It certainly was not." His Honour repeated the words loudly and clearly, just in case we had the odd deaf juror, as he wrote them down. And then he asked, as though expecting the answer 'No,' "Have you any questions of this witness, Mr. Rumpole?"
"Just a few, my Lord." I turned to Prunella and became, I hope, Rumpole at his most gentle, charming, and polite. "Miss Haviland, I realize how upsetting these dreadful messages must have been to you. I suppose, at first, all you knew was that they were from someone called 'Chimes?'"
"Yes. That's right."
"Thank you. When did you discover that 'Chimes' was in fact Ben Swithin?"
"When my dad told the police. They found that out."
"Was that after the attack in the dark passage?"
"It was after that, yes."
"So when you were attacked, you didn't think it was Ben who was sending you these obscene messages."
"I didn't know that. No."
"So it might have been any man in the world who happened to use Machismo aftershave?"
"Well," Prunella differed from the learned judge in that she had a completely fair attitude to her case, "I suppose that's right." "But now that you know what you know," the rugger player couldn't help joining in this scrum, "who do you think attacked you?" "I think it was Ben Swithin."
"I think it was Ben Swithin," His Honour repeated very loudly, for the benefit of the deaf juror, as he wrote this down. Then he turned on me, careful to sound more in sorrow than in anger. "Mr. Rumpole. Hasn't this young lady suffered enough?" "She has certainly suffered. I quite agree with that." "Then why add to her suffering by making her go over all these painful matters again? Can't you leave it at that, Mr. Rumpole?" "Your Honour is telling me I shouldn't cross-examine?" "Not to cause this young girl pain, Mr. Rumpole." "Then how about the pain inflicted on the young boy in the dock if he's convicted of a crime he didn't commit?"
"Naturally, when it comes to sentence I shall have regard to the amount of embarrassment caused to Miss Haviland at the trial."
"You mean you intend to punish my client for the way I choose to conduct his case?"
"Mr. Rumpole, that was an outrageous remark!" "Then it was very like Your Honours intervention." The learned judge was staring at me, strongly tempted, I believe, to hurl himself from the bench and tackle me low. So I decided to take preventive action. As I was considering this, I saw Chris Swithin writing a note which he turned and handed up to me. Before reading it, I assured the not-so-learned judge, "If Your Honour stops my cross-examination, I shall have to ask for an adjournment so I can go straight to the Court of Appeal." It was this threat that tackled the judge—perhaps temporarily stunned him. The Appeal Court had spoken unkindly of recent Wintergreen summings up. "Slipshod," they had said. "Misleading . . . clearly not thought out." As he picked himself up and regained consciousness, I read the note from Chris.
"Don't ask any more questions!" was what my clients stepfather had said. I squashed his note into a small ball and dropped it on the floor as the judge kicked the case into touch. "You may cross-examine, Mr. Rumpole. Whether your questions help your case is quite another matter."
"Miss Haviland, have you known Ben for a long time?"
"We were at primary school together."
"And at secondary school. And then you were getting ready for A-levels at Hartscombe College together." "That's right."
"At any time at all, when you were with Ben, has he done anything you would complain of?"
"Not that I remember."
"Did you like him, until you got these messages?"
"He was all right. I mean, well, yes. We were good friends."
"Did he ever kiss you?"
"I was not one of his girlfriends."
"So he never kissed you?"
"Not that I remember."
"Or tried to?"
"I don't think so, no."
"So when you were told that he'd written these e-mails, did it come as a complete surprise to you? Were you amazed?"
"Yes." She gave a sudden smile, which did more than I'd managed to do all that day for the defence. "To be honest, I was gobsmacked."

I invited the friendly prosecutor to lunch at Il Paradiso, where we enjoyed a quick cutlet Milanese and a glass or two of Chianti Red. "Terrible thing," the manageress told us as she poured the wine. "I can't imagine Ben doing a thing like that. You never know, do you?"
"No," I agreed with her, "you never know."
When she had gone, I raised a glass to Adrian Hodinott. "I've thought of a scheme, old darling," I told him. "It'll bring the case to a fairly quick conclusion so you can spend more time with your Great Dane."
"Good old Ophelia." Adrian seemed attracted to the idea. "She deserves a day out in the country."
"Very well. Here's what I plan to do. And I do need your cooperation —" Then I told Adrian Hodinott all I knew.

It was mid-afternoon before I got around to opening my case. I reminded the jury about the presumption of innocence and the burden of proof, giving such matters an importance which His Honour might seek to minimize. Then I announced that I would call young Ben's stepfather first, as he was a busy man and anxious to get away. To the judge's disappointment, prosecuting counsel raised no objection and Chris Swithin made his way to the witness box. I thought he walked a little unsteadily, but there was only the slightest slur in his voice as he took the oath. I had noticed, when we sat in his study waiting for the werewolf's non-arrival, that he had shown such slight lack of focus after yet another large brandy, and came to the conclusion that he had lunched not wisely but too well. However that might have been, he turned respectfully to the judge and answered my questions in clear, ringing tones. I got through the essential preliminaries, then asked him his view of Ben's character.
"Difficult, I have to say. Extremely difficult. At times quite impossible."
It wasn't what you might expect from a character witness, but it delighted the judge, who repeated, "At times impossible," in a loud voice before he wrote it down.
"He's taken your name. He agreed to that, at least?"
"His mother asked him to. He never thanked me for it. Well, I've learned not to expect thanks from Ben."
"And I think he adopted your suggestion of calling himself 'Chimes' on his e-mails. As in the chimes of Big Ben."
"I thought he might enjoy the joke."
"And apparently he did?"
"He never said so."
"He never said so." The judge gave utterance like a ventriloquist's doll worked from the witness box.
"I want to ask you about his computer."
"I bought it for his sixteenth birthday."
"I bought it, for his birthday." Big Sir Echo, was the learned judge.
"It is in his bedroom which is, unusually, downstairs?"
"He was making such a noise coming up to bed at all hours that we moved him down to what had been the farm office. We had it decorated nicely for him."
"Decorated nicely." The judge again.
"Does that room have windows opening onto the back of the house? I mean, it's possible to see into it by standing behind the building?"
"Yes it is."
"Have you ever used Ben's computer yourself?" I asked the question lightly, in all innocence, but it got an angry reply.
"Never. I told you. I bought it for him. I have all my own IT equipment in the converted barn. That's where I run my business. To keep the family going."
"Let me ask you this. You know Prunella Haviland. I think you used to pick her up on the school run?"
"I did, yes, before Ben caused all this trouble. I thought she was an extremely nice girl."
"I'm sure the jury thought so too. Tell me, Mr. Swithin, did you find her attractive?"
"Mr. Rumpole," the judge looked like a referee who's just been kicked on the shins by a delinquent player, "I'm sure Mr. Hodinott will object to that question."
"No objection, Your Honour." I had briefed Adrian the prosecutor well, and he earned the judge's frown of displeasure. Chris, however, spoke up, full of confidence. "I'm perfectly prepared to answer the question. I think any man would find her extremely attractive."
"You say 'any man,' Mr. Swithin." The judge leaned forward graciously to the witness. "Does that include any teenager?"
"It certainly does, Your Honour," was the right answer. The judge noted it down gleefully.
"I want you to look at the e-mails." The bundle of printouts was handed up to Chris Swithin. "First of all, you have sworn that you have never used Ben's computer?"
"He knew how to handle it before we got it. I never touched it. I've told you that on my oath, Mr. Rumpole."
"He's told you that, Mr. Rumpole." Judge Wintergreen was writing aloud.
"Then let's look at them. The first is one he sent to my chambers before a conference. Do you see that?"
"Yes."
"Do you see that it's written in a sort of code? The words 'see,' 'to,' 'you,' and 'be' are indicated by capital letters or numbers."
"That's the way young people send e-mails."
"And yet in all of the obscene e-mails to young Prunella no such code is used. All the words are written out properly in full."
"I believe that is so."
"You can take it from me mat it is so. Is that the way middle-aged people write e-mails?"
"Probably."
"Do you use any of these abbreviations when you send e-mails?"
"I don't personally, no."
"You spell and punctuate properly?"
"I like to do so."
"You like to do so." I glanced at the jury box. Did I notice a stirring of intent? "Let me turn to another subject. Were you pleased at Ben's interest in poetry?"
Chris gave a small, bitter smile. "Ben has no interest in poetry whatsoever, I'm sorry to say."
"Doesn't he even know the names of the major poets?"
"I don't think he does."
"You yourself have a fine collection of books of poetry in your study. All arranged in alphabetical order from Arnold to Yeats."
"I read English at Cambridge. I'm greatly moved by fine poetry."
"And you admire the great poets of the last century, T S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats, of course?"
"Of course I do."
"Mr. Rumpole," the judge put his oar in, "are you wasting the time of my court with this literary excursion? I'm sure Mr. Hodinott would think so."
"I have no objection at all, my Lord." Adrian the prosecutor disappointed His Honour again.
"So far as you know, the name Yeats would mean nothing to young Ben?"
"He's said that your client has no interest in poetry, Mr. Rumpole," Wintergreen reminded us.
"I know he has. Such a pity. Ben missed that beautiful lyric 'Leda and the Swan.' I'm sure you have it well in mind, Mr. Swithin." The witness, for once, was silent, and I thought I saw for the first time on that handsome, lightly suntanned face a hint of fear.
"Some of you may know the legend, Members of the Jury," I told them. "The girl Leda was raped by the King of the Gods, who disguised himself as a swan for that purpose. This is how Yeats described it." I opened a book which had nothing to do with the law and read aloud:

"A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead."

The words rang and resonated in the stuffy courtroom. Then I asked the witness to read out the relevant e-mail. He seemed to have some difficulty finding the page, and further difficulty in reading it out, but in the end he had no choice but to do so.
"How can your terrified vague fingers push my feathered glory from your loosening thighs? I will produce a shudder in your loins. Ours will be an historic moment when I, the great bird God, swoop down on you."
"Did you send that e-mail to Prunella, Mr. Swithin? Were you Jupiter hoping, one day, she might be your shuddering girl?"
The answer came back as a blustering question. "What on earth are you suggesting?"
"I don't know whether it was just because you enjoyed sending erotic messages to a pretty young girl, or because you wanted revenge on a stepson you'd grown to hate. Perhaps it was for both reasons. But you sent these e-mails, didn't you, Mr. Swithin?"
"Mr. Rumpole," the judge was equally outraged at this suggestion, "you've called this witness as to character. You have no right to cross-examine him. I've been waiting for the prosecution to object."
"Perhaps my learned friend," I suggested as politely as possible, "thinks the jury is entitled to an answer. Perhaps I should explain this to Your Honour. That last e-mail was sent only three weeks ago. Just before this trial."
"Which I regard as an act of gross contempt." The judge clung to his brief authority.
"That may be so. It's dated midnight on the seventeenth, a Friday night when my client was enjoying a staff party in an Italian restaurant. I shall be calling a witness, a Mr. Newton, an enquiry agent who observed Mr. Swithin in my clients bedroom, operating young Ben's computer."
It was then that Chris began to shout. "Ben! He's a pathological liar! He always has been! Werewolf! That's what we call him. He's an animal! No, worse than that! Animals have some dignity. He's evil! He's wrecked our marriage. He's ...."
"Mr. Swithin." The judge at least was calm. "I have to warn you that you needn't answer any question that's likely to incriminate you."
"Very well." I saw what Chris was like then. He was like a small child, caught in an act of pointless destruction. "I won't answer."
"Then perhaps you'll tell us this," I said. "A simple question, about the delightful aftershave I saw in your bathroom. What's it called—some dashing masculine title, like, perhaps, Machismo Number Three For Men?"
It was then that it happened, too quickly and far too unexpectedly for the court usher dozing in his chair or the officer in the dock to give chase. Chris Swithin left the witness box in a turn of speed that recalled the days when he had won the hundred yards for Cambridge College, and was out of the town hall and pushing his way through the crowd at the craft fair in the market square. No one recognized him when he grabbed the rail of a moving bus, or knew what happened when he got off at the next country stop. Were his business contacts clever enough to get him out of the country? Would he, some day, be extradited from southern Spain in a case of harassment? Perhaps not. All I know is that he was never seen again by his wife and family in Hartscombe.
When, on the excellent Adrian Hodinott's application, the teenage werewolf was released from the dock and the prosecution dropped, I said goodbye to him outside the court. Hermione, in tears, had her arms around him, holding him tightly with a mother's love. But he was the one who was doing the comforting.
I had a pub dinner that night (at the Trout Tickler beside the river) with Beazely and his wife Avril. It was late when I got home to the flat and as I went up the stairs I heard a noise, a cacophony of overly loud music. Was some new arrival in the building giving a party—a rare event in me tomb that was Froxbury Mansions? When I opened the front door, the noise enveloped me and rattled my brains. It was in the sitting room that it was going on.
I remembered whom I'd lent a key to while Hilda was in Cornwall, far away from the corruption of the e-mails. Owen Oswald from Wales was on drums. The other Pithead Stompers were blowing and scraping hell out of a saxophone, a clarinet, and a double bass. In the centre of it all, in his shirt sleeves and slapping a guitar, Bonzo Ballard was calling loudly on some unknown baby to light his fire.
I went into the kitchen and opened a bottle of Chateau Thames Embankment. How long would it be, I wondered, before these middle-aged men grew up and forgot the girls they might have known in the past? Lacking Hilda's determination, I couldn't turn them out. I poured myself a large glass and hoped for sleep.