Trial of Passion

by William Deverell

  “Frankly, I didn’t want to get Egan in trouble.”

  “Frankly, I suspect, you hoped no one would come forward with the incident.”

  “I didn’t think it was that big a deal.”

  “And this cocaine put you right to sleep, did it?”

  “I’m sure it had worn off.”

  “In half an hour?”

  “Well, maybe I just passed out, Mr. Beauchamp, I don’t know. I remember feeling a little dizzy, and I closed my eyes. I heard voices, and I couldn’t make sense of them.”

  “Ah, yes, but Jeanne d’Arc made sense of hers.”

  “Well, these definitely weren’t from God. Everything just went black.”

  It is nearing lunch. I will add a touch of pepper to this debate to whet the jury’s appetite.

  “Now, you claim you woke up naked, ankles tied to a bed.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But that never really happened, did it?”

  “It did, Mr. Beauchamp. It really did.”

  “You went willingly to bed with him, didn’t you?”

  “I certainly did not.”

  “You desired him.”

  “Mr. Beauchamp, I was engaged. I believe in sexual loyalty.”

  “You pretended to sleep; you found yourself alone with him. He was receptive to your advances —”

  “My advances!”

  “Yes, your advances.”

  “Your memory is better than mine, Mr. Beauchamp.”

  “There indeed seems to be a major gap in yours, Miss Martin.”

  She doesn’t respond to this, and only bites her lip again, frowning, as if trying to fill in that gap.

  “This is what I am putting to you, Miss Martin: As he leaned over you with a blanket, you suddenly opened your eyes. You put your arms around him and you kissed him deeply.”

  “That is quite wrong.”

  “You took off your earrings and laid them on the table, and you continued to embrace him.”

  “I deny that.”

  I turn up the volume control to full stentorian vigour. “You went upstairs. The two of you undressed. You hung your clothes up. And then you threw yourself upon him, embracing his naked body. You made passionate love —”

  “That’s an absolute lie!” Kimberley shouts. She waves her arm with an exasperated gesture, knocking over her glass of water, dousing the front of her dress.

  “I think we had best adjourn for the day,” says Wally. The heat of the moment is too much for him; he flees.

  As Kimberley bends over near the witness stand, dabbing at her skirt with tissues, Jonathan appears from behind me. He extends to her a folded light-blue handkerchief. To my astonishment she accepts it, though without word or expression.

  “It’s not a flag of surrender, Kimberley,” Jonathan says, and draws me aside and speaks with an air of weariness. “I want to give evidence, Arthur.”

  I am not sure I have heard him correctly. I have him repeat it, then I respond: “Over my dead body.”

  “I can’t stay silent in the face of her lies.”

  “It’s a good thing your psychiatrist is here, Jonathan. She can have your head examined immediately.”

  “Talk to her, Arthur.”

  I sigh. “I’ll go change. Meet me across the street at the El Beau Room.”

  We are subpoenaed into chambers, where we find Wally in shirt sleeves, changing into his suit. He refuses to look at me, still aggrieved.

  “This sort of intimidation doesn’t sit well with me, Beauchamp. I’d handle her differently were I defending. Kid gloves.”

  “I am reminded of a saying: ‘Nothing is given so profusely as advice.’ “

  Wally looks as if he is about to square off with me, but Patricia intercedes. “Arthur, Mrs. McIntosh is anxious to get back to Reverend Hawthorne. He’s at home with a temperature. Can we do her first thing in the morning?”

  “No, I do not want my cross of Kimberley Martin blunted by delay.”

  Wally grumbles, “We’ll just carry on in the normal way, then.”

  I must make amends to his pouting lordship. “What do you say, Patricia, shall we invite our esteemed judge out to dinner tonight?”

  “I’ll make that a joint submission.”

  “Okay, Wally? You and the four lawyers. And bring Melanie. We’ll let our hair down a bit. Like the old days.”

  Wally stands before his dressing-bureau mirror, adjusting his tie. “Well, we were planning to have dinner out. . . .”

  “Splendid,” I say. “Pierre’s. I’ll reserve for six at seven-thirty.”

  The El Beau Room is the bar at which in former times I held Dionysiac court, regaling friends with drunken, salty wit. I recognize many cronies here: lawyers, court staff, sheriffs, a former crooked constable I once defended, now in real estate.

  Jonathan is alone at a table. I ask him what happened to Dr. Dix. “She had an emergency, seriously ill patient. She’d like to meet you this evening.”

  I tell him of my dinner arrangements. Tomorrow, he urges.

  “What can she tell me that you can’t?”

  “Why I need to give evidence.”

  I shake my head in disbelief. “This is the right thing you are so set on doing? Jonathan, the trial is finally on the proper course. Read the jury. They are in doubt. It is a reasonable doubt. When they learn that no sperm was found within her, that doubt could expand exponentially. Rape with a condom? How unlikely that will seem.”

  “She claims she took a douche, Arthur. Only I can prove we used a condom. . . . Look, what’s the through line for the rest of Kimberley’s cross-examination?”

  “What do you think it is?”

  Jonathan takes a deep breath. “Okay. The drunken couple have boisterous, bruising sex. They fall asleep. She awakes. Hangover and reality set in. She panics when she realizes how late it is. Her fiancé is the spoiled heir to a fortune. She doesn’t want him to know she made love to her professor on Remy’s first night back. She doesn’t quite have both oars in the water yet, and scripts this ridiculous scenario whereby she is tied and raped, and defaced with a tube of Shameless lipstick. She runs next door: A, to secure a witness, and B, to call Remy. She never expects charges will be laid, but a battle royal ensues over the issue. Remy grabs her by the wrists to control her, and bruises her up some more.”

  “And is that how it was?”

  “I’d like you to talk to Jane.”

  “I’ll meet with her tomorrow.”

  Obviously, Dr. Dix will be his surrogate truth-teller and, I fear, the bearer of unwelcome news he cannot himself impart.

  Back in my room, I try to quell the disquiet I feel about Jonathan’s absurd urge to tell the jury . . . what? Are we yet to have another amended history? Why can’t Jonathan simply keep his mouth shut and stick to one perfectly satisfactory if inoperative version of the truth?

  I am quite prepared to resign as counsel if he refuses my advice. Let that be an end to it.

  I attend to a more important matter, a little toot of my favourite non-prescription drug. This evening Margaret is by her phone. As always I savour that pleasant numbing sensation when I hear her voice. She is cheerful, through worried about the weather: More rain is forecast on the weekend for gloomy Garibaldi.

  She describes a typical island day: One of her geese escaped down Potter’s Road and attacked a cyclist; Stoney and Dog are back on the job, but are still hiding from the law, sleeping on air mattresses in my garage; Kurt Zoller has had to shut down his water tanking business and is “wandering around with some rip-off logger trying to bribe people to clear-cut their lots.” After she concludes her report she asks for mine.

  “It’s looking very good. I am starting to smell acquittal from this jury. “There commences an hour-long strutting gasconade as I boastfully describe my pas de deux with Kimberley Martin. But I am fair: I give my fencing opponent the points she earned, the touchés. I also tell Margaret of my client’s eagerness to bare all, his crisis of conscience — if t
hat is what it is.

  “But isn’t that what the jury should hear — the truth?”

  How do I respond without seeming the sleazy lawyer? Truth, disagreeable truth. Does it play a part in the theatre of court? Saint Joan burned in the flames of truth and so, I fear, may Jonathan.

  ” ‘Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.’ Aristotle.”

  “Don’t hide behind your dead philosophers. What is that other thing you always say? Truth does not blush. I mean, honesty is a kind of important concept, isn’t it? And if it means so much to your client, shouldn’t it be important to you?”

  More important than winning? I shy from the topic with some ambiguity about life being a constant search for truth. I ask her if she has yet gone to see George Rimbold.

  “I’ll do that tonight.”

  I want to put her to the test. I want to whisper through trembling lips those daunting three little words. But I would barely survive rejection: the mumbled apology, the vague promise to “think” about it.

  After we disconnect, I try to reach George. But after several hollow, distant rings, I hang up.

  Probably starved, though I am unclear about that (for one in love, hunger seems a mere irritant) — I embark on a tramp through the dense West End, between high-rises that hide the murky sky, at twilight the colour of lead. Tomorrow, Thursday, the remaining witnesses will testify. Friday, final addresses. At day’s end the jury will go out to discuss reasonable doubt. By Saturday morning I will be on the Queen of Prince George. This will be so.

  I make my way to Denman Street, near the beaches of English Bay, and when I arrive at Chez Forget I find Pierre fluttering over Augustina, Patricia, and Gundar, telling them what they will have as entrées. He waves me forward, scolds me. “Mr. Beauchamp, I do not forgive you. Two hours’ notice of a reservation for six. This is not some cheap joint where you can just walk in for a bowl of soup. As punishment you will have the tenderloin. It will cost you.”

  Wally and his wife have not yet arrived. Gundar Sindelar is wrestling with a monstrous martini; the women share a bottle of pricey Bordeaux. Everyone knows that my generous client, the Faculty Association, will be picking up the tab tonight. Patricia will protest, for form, but the Attorney General doesn’t honour chits for fancy dinners.

  I settle in beside Augustina, who looks quite alluring tonight, leggy in a brief skirt. I must find a quiet moment tonight to tell her of O’Donnell’s mad urge to testify.

  “Excellent performance today, Arthur,” Patricia says. “But it ain’t over until the horizontally challenged woman sings.” She seems too buoyant for one whose vessel seems so close to foundering. “Kimberley’s bearing up pretty well, I’d say, and we’ve still got Mrs. McIntosh. Come on, Arthur, let me get rid of her; she’s nagging me.”

  In a giving mood, I relent. It is uncaring of me to keep the good Mrs. McIntosh from her employer’s bedside, so tomorrow Patricia may call her as the first item of business. I am still unsure how I will deal with the screams from next door; I must think of something.

  We consume escargots and pâté until Walter and Melanie Sprogue finally arrive: both seem out of sorts, their clenched, false smiles giving evidence of a recent zealous exchange of words.

  “Sorry, “Wally says. “Heavy traffic.” He has had a few preparatory drinks: I can smell his breath as he helps Melanie into a chair next to me. In her mid-forties, she is a tense woman who hides emotions behind heavy makeup.

  “You sit beside the great one. I’ll join the ordinary mortals.” Wally squeezes in between his wife and Patricia. “Boy, girl, boy, girl. I think I’ll start off with one of those.” He points to Gundar’s power martini.

  “Go easy, Walter,” Melanie warns. She turns to me. “He has already knocked back three scotches.”

  I try to divert her with innocuous chit-chat, but she proves an inattentive audience, watching Wally like a nervous cat as he slavers at Augustina from across the table and slugs back a couple of martinis. After our food orders are taken, he holds forth: it’s the old Wally, pre-sensitized.

  “You’re going to have to buttress your case, Patricia, or it’s going to be your word against Beauchamp’s. No question, that Kimberley is a bright young thing. Candid. Charming. But when O’Donnell takes the stand — well, he’s a man of prestige. Hard to picture him doing this terrible thing, tying someone up and reaming her from behind.”

  “Darling,” says Melanie. “Your mouth.”

  “He may have seduced her, but that’s short of a crime. And if that’s all he did, I guess in a way you can’t blame him. Hard for a guy to keep his belt buckled when a banquet like that is spread for him.”

  “Please, Walter.”

  A nervous silence as Wally reaches for the wine, slopping some as he tops up his glass.

  “I think you’ve had enough, Walter.”

  Now he refills Augustina’s glass, and boldly winks at her. His political correctness in full remission, he entertains with a racy joke that only Gundar laughs at. While he engages for a while with the prosecutors, I confer with Augustina, who looks alarmed when I relate my discussion with Jonathan.

  “It’s that shrink he’s seeing. She has him all confused. I’ll straighten him out.”

  Wally is studying the wine list. “How many for white and how many for red?”

  As we feast into the night, Wally attains truly Chornickian heights: two massive martinis and much Bordeaux and cognac, and now he is insisting on, as he calls it, a Kimberley Martin: a dollop of Benedictine in his snifter.

  “Hey, Arturo, I saw your divorce on the list the other day: coming up in a few weeks. Bet you can hardly wait — free again, eh? Thank God a’mighty.”

  “Walter, shut up!”

  “Hey, I’m jus’ having fun, why’s everyone so uptight?”

  He navigates his way around the table, and bends, wobbling, between me and Augustina, supporting himself with an arm around my shoulders. “This guy’s a weenie. I jus’ love him. My pal, my ol’ pal. We had our little spats, eh, ol’ buddy? All forgotten. Hey, how’m I doing? Conshidering it’s my rookie trial.”

  “You’re doing fine, Wally.”

  “I try. I do my best.” A repulsive little tear glistens in one eye. I fear he is about to become maudlin.

  Melanie rises. “Walter, we’re going home.”

  “I wanna be fair. Justice mush not only be seen but done.”

  Suddenly Augustina starts, then sits there frozen. It will seem obvious to a careful observer that Wally has reached up and touched someone.

  Melanie is such a careful observer. “You can do your pig act when we get home, Walter.”

  “Evening’s young. I got my Kimbly Martin coming.”

  “Walter!”

  A hush descends. Nearby patrons pretend to avert their eyes. Wally slowly straightens up, slightly losing his balance, taking his wife’s arm for support.

  “Yesh. Yes. Time to go.”

  Melanie marches the sobriety-deprived judge smartly out, and we wait until they are on the street before we all give in to the rudest of laughter. Such moments fire the coals of my resolve to maintain my lifetime pledge.

  “Where did he get you?” Patricia asks.

  “It was just a thigh shot. His aim was grossly impaired.”

  More peals of laughter.

  “Boy, girl, boy, girl,” mimics Patricia. “Les’ all have another Bimberly Martin. Hard for a guy to shay no when that cherry pie is spread on a platter.” She has his voice down pat. I applaud.

  But it is also time for me to go. I must ready myself for tomorrow, for Kimberley, for Mrs. McIntosh and Dr. Sanchez, the screams and the bruises. I brush aside offers of rides. I bribe Pierre and his staff lavishly, hinting at my displeasure were I to read anything untoward in the gossip columns, and I walk out into the cold drizzle, suddenly tired. I wave down a taxi.

  My message light is blinking, an urgent, rhythmic throb. Midnight. Who calls? Now I hear a recorded message from Margaret.
/>   A deep unease wells up within me as I listen to her halting broken phrases. “Arthur, I don’t . . . I don’t know how to tell you . . .”

  A stab of fear: I am being rejected by voice mail.

  Her voice continues. “It’s awful. I’m still at George’s . . .”

  Oh, dear God. But I pray futilely, too late, to the deity he denied: George Rimbold has committed the final sacrilege.

  Her voice becomes tearful. “Oh, Arthur, he hanged himself. From a balcony post. We’re all over here now, neighbours, his friends in AA — Doc Dooley is here. Call me.”

  I had sent Margaret on a tragic mission and she found him swinging from a rope. The call came in three hours ago. She will not yet be asleep. She answers immediately.

  “Oh, Arthur, I’m a wreck.”

  I am, too. I must be strong for her. “Is someone with you?”

  “No. But that’s okay. I’m just . . . I found him, you know.”

  “Yes. I don’t know if it helps, Margaret, but you know you have my love.”

  “It helps.” She sniffles.

  “Had he been drinking?”

  “Yes. There was an empty bottle.”

  I lay my shattered frame upon the bed and close my eyes. “I was deaf to what he said. He told me he’d just bought a graveyard plot, and wasn’t going to make it to the fair.”

  “Arthur, he left a will. Just a note, really. He . . . thanked all his friends for their support, and asked forgiveness.” From whom? Not God. “He wanted you to have … well, his words were: ‘I give to my dear and noble friend Arthur Beauchamp my fishing gear, my blessing and my love.’ Everything else to the AA.”

  As she describes her busy, grisly night, ridding herself of it all, she becomes more composed. I ask her what arrangements have been made.

  “Doc Dooley is going to call it natural causes so we won’t have all sorts of police and coroners. He says, ‘I think we should just pop good old George in the ground quickly tomorrow.’ We’re not to talk to anyone. What’s tomorrow? Thursday. Well, we’ll be doing it in the after-noon. There’ll be a sort of AA honour guard. They asked about you.”

  “I’ll be there.”