Denial

by Beverley McLachlin

  Cy launches into a description of the deceased—sick, yes, but nevertheless with much life left and much to live for. I watch the jurors incline to him, sad faced, mourning the loss of Olivia. Having roused their sympathy, he turns to the circumstance of her death.

  He introduces Maria the caretaker, Joseph the long-suffering son-in-law, and Vera. “The deceased called Vera that night, asking for help sorting out her pills. Instead, she was killed.”

  I stand up, a warning shot across the bow. I don’t want to annoy the jury by interrupting Cy’s gripping tale, but neither is he allowed to inflame the jury. Justice Buller picks up my cue, sends Cy a look. Cy gives the judge a small bow. I know Cy well, know he will go precisely as far as the court lets him. But a line has been drawn; from now on he will stick to the facts.

  And the facts, I concede to myself, are damning. Vera Quentin answering her mother’s call for help with her medication; Vera Quentin administering two sleeping pills instead of one. Vera Quentin going up to bed.

  “There was only one other person in the deceased’s house that night—Olivia Stanton’s daughter, the accused in this case,” Cy repeats.

  Vera does not move, gazing into middle distance in preternatural stillness as Cy reviews the morning call to 911, the arrival of the police, the discovery of the needle marks in the crook of Olivia Stanton’s arm.

  He waves Vera’s statement before the jurors. “You will find the truth here, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, but not the whole truth. The accused admits she was in the house when her mother was killed, admits she knew about the morphine stashed in the upstairs cupboard, admits all these things, except for the final crucial element the Crown alleges—that it was she who killed Olivia Stanton.” He works his way quickly through the forensic evidence and moves on to motive. “The Crown will demonstrate that the only reasonable explanation for what happened the night of the murder is that Vera Quentin killed her mother. But why would she do this, you ask? To answer that question, the Crown will lead evidence of Vera Quentin’s mental health the night of the murder: that she suffered from general anxiety disorder and that in her anguished state of mind—but still fully aware of what she was doing—she made the decision to end her mother’s life.

  “In a nutshell, the Crown’s theory, which will be fully substantiated by the evidence you will hear, is that on the night of the murder, Vera Quentin, in her anxious and confused state, decided to end her mother’s life. You will see emails in which the deceased beseeched her daughter, the accused, to end her life—emails that continued until the day before Olivia Stanton was killed. Was the accused’s motive to end her mother’s suffering as her mother begged her to do? Or was it to end the nightmare of anxiety and stress that she, Vera Quentin, could no longer tolerate? Or was it some confused mix of both? It does not matter, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. The stark fact—a fact which the Crown will establish beyond a reasonable doubt—is that Vera Quentin killed her mother with full knowledge of what she was doing.”

  A swing of Cy’s bad leg plants him squarely in front of the jury box. He inclines his bulk toward them, only his crutch supporting his torso. The jurors stare at him, mesmerized.

  “Why is that murder, you may ask?” Cy asks. “The short and complete answer is that under the law of Canada, it is murder, and you, as jurors, are sworn to apply the law of Canada. The law allows assistance in dying, but only if death is imminent and only if stipulated procedures are followed—in a word, legally sanctioned medical assistance in dying, known as MAID.”

  An hour after launching himself, Cy ends with a plea to morality. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I will conclude with this observation. Sad as this case may be, what Vera Quentin did was a crime under the law of Canada. In Canada, we hold life sacred. Only in rare circumstances, clearly outlined in the law, may one person take another person’s life. It is vital that we uphold this principle if we are to avoid the slippery slope and the descent into a state where people caring for ill and fragile parents have license to end their lives because it’s convenient. All life is sacred; all human beings, healthy or fragile, young or old, are imbued with human dignity.

  “Members of the jury, it is your duty to safeguard these fundamental principles. I am confident that when you have heard all the evidence and been instructed on the applicable law, you will accept that duty and render a verdict of guilty.”

  Cy stands motionless for a long moment before he pivots and returns to his table.

  The room is hushed. The foreman of the jury leans forward, rapt. In the row behind him, the beautician wipes a tear from her eye. Even Justice Buller seems captivated. Then she remembers herself and announces the noon adjournment. The clerk springs to open her door, and the judge descends from the bench. The jurors file out.

  Cy sits at his table, head back, eyes closed. He’s done what he set out to do.

  Jeff and I exchange glances, acknowledging what we can’t say—that improbably even we have fallen under the spell of Cy’s opening. We should be pouncing on weak connections and leaps of logic, but if they exist, they are buried in the rhetoric. Cy has told it as it is.

  CHAPTER 29

  “I CALL JOSEPH QUENTIN AS the Crown’s first witness,” Cy announces in stentorian tones.

  “What?” I whisper sotto voce. Bad enough that he should call the accused’s husband at all; unthinkable that he should be Cy’s alpha witness.

  “My Lady, may we have a moment?” I ask Justice Buller.

  She nods, and Jeff and I huddle.

  “No rule you can’t change the order of your witnesses,” Jeff says. “Let it go.”

  “I need to at least raise the unfairness,” I reply. Cy’s witness list started with a suite of police officers to describe the crime scene, with Joseph near the end; now Cy has flipped the order on its head.

  I stand. “My Lady, Mr. Kenge’s calling of Mr. Quentin first is unexpected and puts the defence at a disadvantage. Mr. Kenge, in his communication to the defence, had Mr. Quentin at the end of the Crown’s list of witnesses, an afterthought, as it were. This catches the defence entirely by surprise.”

  Justice Buller looks at Cy, eyebrows arched above the steel rims of her glasses.

  “The Crown seeks only to set the context of the night that Olivia Stanton died,” he says smoothly. “Mr. Quentin is the only other person who was there; the only person who can do this. Should Ms. Truitt require a little more time to arrange her cross-examination, we can, of course, provide that.” He treats me to a patronizing smile. “Although I doubt that will be necessary. I have reason to believe Ms. Truitt is entirely familiar with this witness and with what he will say.”

  “Very well, Mr. Kenge,” Justice Buller says.

  I sit down with a thunk. Chalk up round one to Cy.

  Nursing my wounds, I mull Cy’s strategy. Sure, Joseph will set the scene, describing how Vera got to Olivia’s that night and what happened the next morning, but Cy’s going to do much more. He’s going to put the sad human story that lies at the heart of this case right up front—patient husband, ailing elder, and stress ramping Vera’s anxiety from manageable to out of control.

  Joseph Quentin strides down the aisle to the well of the court and casts a sad eye over the room, allowing it to settle on the frail figure in the prisoner’s box—his wife.

  Spare us the act, I think bitterly. I glare at him as he passes by my table—Whose side are you on anyway, Joseph?

  If the prospect of Joseph testifying against her upsets Vera, she doesn’t show it. She sits immobile—head high, face unreadable, her dress draping her thin shoulders like the folds of a Greek toga. I glance back to see how Nicholas is reacting to the family drama that is about to unfold. My eye ferrets him out at the end of the front bench. He looks straight ahead, his face as expressionless as his mother’s. Stoic breed, the Stanton-Quentins.

  Joseph Quentin enters the witness box, places his right hand on the Bible, and swears to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Saturday he was dishevelled and angry, but today his white hair gleams and his eyes, even from a distance, glint steely grey. He carries himself with a proud yet sad air. The jurors exchange sympathetic looks. Cy’s narrative is sliding into place. A good man, saddled with a sick mother-in-law and a crazy wife. Dragged into court in a murder case through no doing of his own.

  No one tells the jurors that Joseph is a leading light at the bar, although he doesn’t go to court much these days. Those of us who know better—the judge, the lawyers, the officers of the court—are locked in a grand conspiracy that he’s just another witness. You can’t fool the press, however, who are furiously pecking at their laptops.

  “Mr. Quentin,” Cy begins. “Are you the husband of the accused?”

  “I am.” He looks at his wife with a kind smile.

  “And the son-in-law of the deceased, Olivia Stanton?”

  “I am.”

  Cy crosses to the witness box with an envelope and removes its contents. I catch a flash of the photo of Olivia, alive and vital at her seventy-fifth birthday party. Cy never misses a trick.

  “I am showing you a series of photos, Mr. Quentin. Have you seen them before?”

  “Yes, they’re family photos.”

  “And who is in these photos?”

  “Olivia Stanton, Vera’s mother.” A pregnant pause. “The deceased.”

  The photos are duly marked as an exhibit and copies are supplied to the jurors. Olivia Stanton is no longer just an aging statistical victim—henceforth she will live in the jurors’ minds as a real human being, whose life was tragically cut short. Olivia in a white top by Joseph’s pool; Olivia waving as Nicholas comes toward her across the lawn, arms open; Olivia blowing out her birthday candles, streamers descending around her.

  “Can you tell the jury about what transpired between you and your wife the evening of August 10, 2019?”

  “I can. Indeed, the evening is etched indelibly in my mind.” Joseph’s mellifluous voice rings out over the courtroom as he recounts the story he has doubtless rehearsed many times. How he came home after a difficult day’s work, enjoyed a predinner drink with his wife, and dined. How the telephone rang, just as they were finishing the meal—Olivia, complaining that she couldn’t find her medications.

  “Olivia had been battling bladder cancer,” he explains to the jury. “She was having a rough go with her chemo treatment. She took mild medication for the pain but refused opioids or morphine. So she suffered more than Vera and I thought was necessary.”

  I think of the bottle of morphine and syringe in the upstairs cupboard. But Joseph covers that off. “When Olivia came out of hospital after her operation, we were supposed to give her morphine. We had a nurse for a few days and Olivia accepted Demerol. Not that morphine, though, she said. Once the nurse left, she refused even Demerol. I will get through this. She’d glare at us when we suggested some relief. Which made it all the more difficult for Vera—” He breaks off, looks down.

  I shoot Joseph a contemptuous gaze from the corner of my eye. He’s put an evil twist on Olivia’s refusal to take more medication, spinning the simple fact of Olivia’s adamance into a picture of Vera crumbling under increasing pressure. The foreman of the jury nods—he gets it; he’s building the picture Cy wants. And with it, the answer to the question at the heart of Cy’s case: how a gentle person like Vera could kill her mother.

  From lowered lashes, I glance over at Vera. She understands what Joseph has done. Her eyes are burning into her husband’s. Then she looks away in contempt.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” he says in a whisper that carries through the courtroom. “I have to tell the truth.”

  The jurors swivel back to Vera, so does the judge, but she gives no sign of hearing her husband’s apology.

  Cy clears his throat. “Let’s get back to the night of the murder, Mr. Quentin. You were finishing dinner and received Olivia’s call.”

  “Well, to be frank, Vera went into a spin. She suffered from depression and anxiety, and the call set her off. Olivia must be suffering; Olivia might pass out like she had last week; how could Maria—the caregiver—have left early without setting out the pills? I tried to calm her down. I knew how to do it through long practice. Speak slowly, offer comfort, explain. I told her everything was fine, that I had given Maria permission to leave early and told her to put Olivia’s pills out. We would get in the car and drive over and sort it all out. Not to worry, all would be well.

  “I got the keys, and as we were getting in the car, Vera said, No, I think I should stay over with Mother tonight. Let me get my things. So I waited and then we drove to Olivia’s—just ten minutes away. I dropped Vera off at the door, went home, watched The National, and went to bed.”

  “When did you next talk to your wife, Mr. Quentin?”

  “The next morning. I was just about to leave for the office when she called. She was hysterical. She said she thought her mother was dead. I told her to call 911 and raced over.”

  I straighten. For the past five minutes Joseph has been telling the jury what we already knew. Now we’re entering territory we haven’t been over with him.

  “What happened when you got there?” Cy asks.

  “I unlocked the front door, entered. Vera was standing there in her housecoat, tears streaming down her face. She threw her arms around me, sobbing, Mother’s dead.

  “Calm down, I whispered, as I tried to digest what she was saying.”

  Our nurse is looking at Joseph with compassion. Death scenes—the panic, the disbelief, the stronger holding up the weaker while everyone struggles to understand what has happened—she’s been there many times.

  “I rushed to the den and I saw—I saw Olivia. Her body, her face—” Joseph’s voice falters and he turns his face away. Once he pulls himself together, he resumes. “The police arrived about then. I let them go about their work while I tried to calm Vera down.”

  “You said Vera was hysterical. Can you describe how she was acting?”

  “She was crying. Between sobs she just kept saying, Mother’s dead, Mother’s dead. She seemed to me to be in shock, shaking, bending over as if she were about to throw up. I sat her down on the sofa in the living room, put my arm around her.”

  In the prisoner’s box, a tear steals down Vera’s cheek, making a rivulet in the powder she applied this morning. Several jurors bend their heads, taking it in. Good, I think.

  Cy continues on. “What happened next, Mr. Quentin?”

  “At some point they took the body—Olivia—out.” Joseph shudders. “That was hard, seeing her carried out of the house where she’d lived for half a century. But that wasn’t the end of it. It hit me that the officers suspected foul play. There were police officers dusting all the surfaces for fingerprints, measuring the room, going through papers. I was furious. How could they suspect—” He breaks off, looking at Vera, before resuming. “At about nine a.m., a detective sergeant from the homicide department and his partner arrived. Vera and I told them what we knew and signed statements.”

  “He’s out to sink her,” I whisper to Jeff.

  He doesn’t reply, but his contemptuous nod tells me he agrees.

  “Would the clerk pass this document to the witness and distribute copies to the jury?” Cy turns to Joseph. “Mr. Quentin, can you tell us if this is the statement you signed?”

  He examines the paper. “Yes, this is my signature.”

  “And do you stand by what you said in that statement today?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I tender Joseph Quentin’s statement as the next exhibit,” Cy intones.

  Jeff stands up. “No objection.”

  “Does what you have told the jury represent your total involvement in the events of August 10 and 11, 2019, Mr. Quentin?” Cy asks.

  “It does—my involvement in what happened at Olivia’s house, I mean. Of course, the whole day was filled with the aftermath, phoning people to let them know, taking calls from the police about what to do abou
t this and that. Trying to comfort the family. We were all in shock, grieving.”

  We adjourn for a short break, but Joseph’s testimony isn’t over. After we return, Cy asks who had access to Olivia’s house, and Joseph confirms only Olivia, Vera, Maria, and himself had keys.

  “How can you be sure of that, Mr. Quentin?”

  “There had been a break-in at Olivia’s house a few months earlier. Some jewelry stolen, not much else, but it was traumatizing for Olivia. We decided to change her locks. I dealt with the company and ordered four sets of keys. For extra security, we decided to go with Medeco keys that can’t be duplicated. To get another key you’d have to go to the security company. My name was on the file. They would have contacted me.”

  “You said that you unlocked Olivia Stanton’s front door the morning after the murder?”

  “Yes, I remember trying the knob, in case the door was open. I was panicked and desperate to get in as soon as I could. But it wouldn’t open so I used my key.”

  “Was the alarm on?”

  “Yes. I distinctly recall that I had to enter the code on the panel.”

  Cy glances at the jury to make sure the point of this questioning has hit home—no outsider could have entered Olivia’s house the night of her death. Inference: only Vera could have done the deed. He goes to the counsel table and whispers something to Jonathan before turning back to Joseph.

  “Mr. Quentin, I’m about to enter an area of questioning that you may find difficult. I know you love your wife and are concerned about what happens in this trial. But I ask you to answer as honestly and completely as you can, so the ladies and gentlemen of the jury have a clear and true picture of her mental state.”

  Joseph nods, and Cy launches himself. “You mentioned that your wife suffered from depression and anxiety. How did her anxiety manifest itself?”