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pleased that I at least had a husband who was entitled to put the letters QC after his name.
    I first knew of Rumpole’s decision when Leonard Bullingham, after we had bid and won a satisfying four Hearts, pulled a crumpled letter from out of his pocket. ‘A letter from your old man,’ Leonard told me. ‘Hardly the most tactful way of asking for a favour, is it?’
    He gave me the letter in question for inclusion in these very memoirs, so I am able to quote it in its entirety. It began, as I thought, in a way that hovered between the overly familiar and the downright rude.
    My dear Old Bull
    My wife may have told you, during the course of one of those tedious card games you both appear to enjoy, that I’m thinking of putting on a silk gown and joining those QCs (Queer Customers is what I call them) who loll around the front row in various courtrooms relying on their underpaid ‘juniors’ to do all the hard work. In support of my application I need to call aclient and a judge who can speak well of me.
    As a client I can call any member of the Timson family whom I may have rescued, by my skill as an advocate, from the shades of the prison house. Finding a decent criminal is easy. It’s harder to find a judge who would be equally helpful. Looking back on the cases I did before you at the Old Bailey, I feel sure that you would be pleased to admit that my arguments were, on the whole, arguments based on the interests of justice, so I feel sure I can rely on your support for my present application.
    Your old sparring partner,
    Horace Rumpole
    PS I’m sure my wife would welcome your support for the Rumpole case. She has wondered why my undoubted talent as an advocate has not yet elevated me to the same rank as her late father. It’s for her sake that I have had to plead this most difficult of all cases – my own.
    â€˜What are you going to do about Rumpole’s letter?’ I asked Leonard after I had read it.
    â€˜Put it in the bin for recycling. It might emerge as a decent bit of toilet paper.’ Rumpole’s letter seemed to have brought out the cruder side of Leonard.
    â€˜He does say you had legal arguments…’
    â€˜Nonsense. They weren’t legal arguments. They were… ploys drummed up by your husband with the purpose of getting the jury to dislike me.’
    Leonard looked pained as he said this, so I felt I had to cheer him up. I said, ‘I’m sure he never succeeded in doing that.’
    â€˜Sometimes he did. I think sometimes he made the jury think I was a direct descendant of Judge Jeffreys, dead set on a conviction.’ I was quite touched by Leonard when he said that. He was looking at me in the way of a small boy left out of the football team, pleading for reassurance.
    â€˜No jury would ever think that when they got to know you, Leonard.’
    â€˜Dear Hilda.’ Here he put his hand on mine across the bridge table, where we sat alone for a while after Mash and her partner had gone off to see about the tea. ‘You are such a wonderful consolation to a man.’
    â€˜I try to be,’ I said.
    â€˜I can’t ask a whole jury to meet me for tea and bridge. So Rumpole’s perverse view of my character is never challenged.’
    â€˜It does seem terribly unfair.’
    â€˜But I have one great consolation.’
    â€˜What’s that?’
    â€˜I can tell you about my troubles.’
    â€˜Any time.’ His hand seemed particularly weighty at that moment, so I took mine away. ‘You told me that when you become a QC you rule yourself out from all the smaller, less important cases.’
    â€˜Let’s say you’re no longer offered the bread and butter. You’re kept for the caviar and roast goose.’
    â€˜So Rumpole wouldn’t be able to deal with all the petty crimes the Timson family get up to?’
    â€˜Certainly not. Such minor offences by the south London riff-raff