I deeply regret, milord, that I lost control again. I am possessed by this case; my nights are sleepless, filled with gallows nightmares. I am distracted by the closeness of my junior, who dumped me after a one-night stand. The RCMP’s Red Squad is following me wherever I go. My mother hates me. ‘Spurious, mendacious, ridiculous’? That wasn’t me talking, milord, it was Satan – he visits me during psychotic episodes that frequently come just before lunch. Gutter tactics? No one admires our gallant upholders of the law more than Arthur Beauchamp.
In fact, I have always had a high regard for the police. Theirs is the most over-romanticized job on the planet, tedious with routine and detail, endless paperwork, pounding the pavement, passing out tickets, listening to citizens’ woes. Dangerous to boot? Maybe, but every cop I know enjoys a shot of risk: their antidote to boredom. Bad apples were probably no more common than in my own line of work. But a statistical fluke had me facing off against three such apples. This court will not permit the maligning of peace officers. What defence did that leave me with?
Ophelia lifted her nose from a magazine article by her latest feminist hero, a Mrs. Friedan. “Why are you mumbling?”
“I’m doing my prayers.”
“Do you actually believe in God?”
“I’m going to find out soon.”
Soon might have been overstating it. The clerk had been on the line with Hammersmith, and now was consulting Lukey over a telephone book opened to the Yellow Pages under “Restaurants.”
Efforts to reach Smitty at the Timber Club and other of his known venues bore no fruit. At twenty after two the chambers door squeaked open and Hammersmith peered out, surveyed this unsatisfactory scene, then strode stiffly to his chair and sat.
The clerk called, “Order in court!” but too late – almost everyone had already got up, except for Lukey, who was focusing all his energy toward the back, trying to beam Smitty through that door. He looked over his shoulder to see Hammersmith glowering at him.
“If I might interrupt your meditations for a moment, Mr. Lukey …”
He shot to his feet. “Yes, sir.”
“Given that Mr. Smythe-Baldwin declines to honour us with his presence, I assume you are ready to proceed with the next witness. Because I see he’s already on the stand, raring to go.”
“Ah, no, I didn’t want to leave that impression. I can’t … I’m sorry, milord, I haven’t prepared the civilian witnesses. I’m doing the police. Mr. Smythe-Baldwin may have thought we were resuming at two-thirty. Or maybe he became ill.”
“When I prosecuted, young man, counsel were prepared for all exigencies.”
“Well, yes, but I don’t have instructions, I wasn’t expecting –”
“Never mind, just stop babbling. Has anyone checked the hospitals? That is the only excuse I will accept – he had better be on a stretcher. I don’t care if it’s Cyrus Smythe-Baldwin or the prime minister or the Duke of Edinburgh, no one delays this court for nearly half an hour unless he can satisfy me he’s just survived a near-death experience. I will not be treated like some minor functionary –”
He ended it there abruptly. Who knows what heights he might have reached had not a Falstaffian form suddenly entered. Smitty bowed and advanced at a calm, leisurely pace, affecting an insouciance that added to Hammersmith’s irritation. “I’m so pleased that Your Royal Lateness has deigned to visit,” he snapped.
“Horrible table mix-up at Chez Antoine, milord, quite embarrassing. I was with Chief Justice Harry McRory and his granddaughter, celebrating her eighteenth. Add to that an inordinate wait for the bill and an awkward struggle over it with Harry, then my taxi getting bogged down in Chinatown. I’m immeasurably sorry for discommoding the court, but the time will be made up as I go full speed through the day’s remaining witnesses.”
Hammersmith had no choice but to hastily rethink his position. The emphatic dropping of the name of the chief of the Appeal Court had altered the rules of combat, effectively stripping The Hammer even of the weapon of his tongue. Meanwhile, the jury had been hurriedly summoned.
“I call Mr. Buck McLean.”
Hammersmith made a late try at saving face. “Just a second. Mr. Smythe-Baldwin, that was such an utterly flimsy excuse that I almost want to applaud it. To save you from a failing grade, I have given you marks for honesty. Full speed, then.”
Miraculously, I had performed the scientifically impossible feat of making myself invisible. The Hammer never even glanced at me. And what could he do to me now? My minor transgressions of the morning were dwarfed by His Lateness’s brazen dawdling, and he’d got off with a jocular scolding.
I caught Smitty’s eye as Buck was being sworn in. His expression was almost blank but I read, You owe me one, son.
Smitty led Buck through his skimpy résumé as tree-falling husband of Thelma, and his equally meagre dealings with the professor next door. “I wouldn’t exactly say we was friends, eh. I don’t think we was anything.” One couldn’t escape the sense he’d felt put down by Mulligan’s courtly patronizing. “Hobby farmers,” he called the couple, the adjective emphasized like a dirty word.
“How long have you known the accused?”
Buck just sat there as if waiting for the rest of the question. “The accused what?”
“The accused person.” Indicating Gabriel, who gave Buck a nod of greeting.
“Oh, yeah, Gabriel. Well, I seen him around a lot as a kid. His dad used to work for my outfit. Gabriel did some cash work for us sometimes, cleaning up the sites.”
“What were your reactions on hearing he’d been hired by Dr. Mulligan?”
“I didn’t figure him for a bad Indian. He took a swing once at Roscoe Knepp, and his dad is a lush, but Gabriel’s a hard worker. Smart too. Thelma and me never had no problems with him. Never expected to. We didn’t talk much, but he was always polite, never asked no favours.”
Gabriel gave me a speculative look as Buck completed this clean bill of health. I was sorry I hadn’t interviewed him, assuming he would parrot his spouse. (I continued to be baffled by Buck’s unexpectedly benign assessment until, days later, I learned he’d told some drinking mates that if the fruity professor had come on to him that way, all buck naked with a hard-on, he’d have chucked him in the river too.)
Smitty went quickly to Easter weekend and brought out that Buck was among the posse that pursued Gabriel to the fishing spot. “We lost sight of him real soon; we couldn’t keep up.”
“He was that fast?”
“Well, we was slowed because Brad Jettles had to stop and catch his breath. He wasn’t in the best of shape.” A chuckle from one of the jurors.
They lost sight of Gabriel for ten minutes, he figured.
“No more questions.”
I wanted to ask Buck if he was aware that Gabriel had already come upon the clothes, but that’s the kind of question, when wrongly answered, we lawyers call an exploding cigar. I helped Smitty speed through the day by asking nothing.
“Call Mr. Doug Wall.”
The greying bootlegger looked around casually as he came forward – he was an old hand in the courtroom. With a recent cut and a beard trim for this occasion, he no longer looked so bear-like, except in girth.
Smythe-Baldwin stripped his testimony to the bone. At about two o’clock Wall was driving south on Squamish Valley Road, intending to meet some friends for a beer in Squamish. Half a mile below the Mulligan gate, he saw Gabriel cross the road with his rifle and enter the bush on the river side. He identified his signed statement, Exhibit Fifteen.
“My learned friend may have some questions.” The dry tone suggested Smitty was well aware of my threat to come hard after Wall.
I began by asking about his means of income, and had to pry out the truth. “I do it as a courtesy to friends” became “I just run a delivery service,” then “I never sell to minors.” That proved a lie when I put his record to him: he’d been fined for that very offence. There were eight other convictions on his sheet, and I
decided to run them all. Two bootleggings, two assaults, two thefts under fifty dollars, one possession of stolen goods over fifty, and one arson of a warehouse. For that, in 1957, he’d got four years in the penitentiary but was paroled in 1959.
“Quite an enviable record, Mr. Wall.”
“There ain’t been nothing recent.” A surly demeanour. I had expected misunderstood, wounded.
“Yes, they’re all at least three years old.”
“I been clean ever since.”
An implausible claim, given his continued flouting of the Liquor Act, and it produced a sound from the bench, something like a snort. The Hammer’s long career as prosecutor had bred in him a hearty dislike of the criminal class.
The way seemed open to safely add Roscoe Knepp to the mix, and I brought out that they were well acquainted. Wall added lamely, “I like to be friends with everyone.” He agreed that everyone included the entire RCMP detachment.
“When was Sergeant Knepp posted to Squamish?”
“Ah, three years ago, 1959, I think.”
“Just about the time you got out on parole for torching that warehouse?”
“Around there.”
“He kept a good eye on you?”
“Yeah, he checked in on me.”
“Had a bit of a hold on you, didn’t he. A parolee plying an illegal trade.”
“I kept my nose clean. I was always okay with him.”
“That’s because you became his informer, correct?”
“No, I never done that.”
“You would call him from time to time with information, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t remember calling him about anything.”
“Do you deny calling him right after you and I met in Brackendale last spring?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You informed him I was in the area taking witness statements.” I got a blank look. “Come now, Sergeant Knepp told me as much.”
“Okay, yeah, I did. Now I remember.”
“That was your deal with him. ‘Anything interesting comes up, you call me’ – that’s what the sergeant told you, am I right?”
“I ain’t sure what you’re getting at.”
“Let’s be plain. The fact is that the local RCMP knows you traffic in alcohol. They let you do it, they turn a blind eye to it, and that’s why your slate has been clean for three years. In return, you reward them with information.”
“There was no deal like that.”
“Come now, be honest. You’re their faithful informant.”
“I don’t fink on my friends.”
“But you don’t regard Gabriel Swift as a friend, do you?”
He’d set a trap for himself. “I guess not. But I ain’t a snitch.”
My accusation wasn’t good for either his business or his safety, so he was not going to back down. Still, every juror with a brain must have put two and two together. No one was objecting, and the judge was giving me room. A couple of approbative looks from Gabriel, who was otherwise intent, jotting notes.
“Okay, tell us when you first heard about Dr. Mulligan’s disappearance.”
“It was all around the valley by the next morning. I heard there was a call for a search party, then heard about them finding his clothes and stuff.”
“That was Easter Sunday. And what were you doing that day?”
“I would of helped search, but it was a long weekend. I had a lot of friends to see.”
“Did you talk to the police that day?”
“I had no chance. They was busy.”
“When did you hear Gabriel Swift had been arrested and charged?”
“My memory ain’t that good, but maybe Monday.”
“And what were you doing that day?”
“The same, I guess. Seeing friends.”
“Customers.”
“Whatever you like.” He’d been making eye contact earlier but was faltering now, looking past me, at the wall, at the Queen, as if hoping for royal support.
“What about the next day, Tuesday?”
“I had a day off. Drove down to Vancouver to see my ex and help her out a little financially.”
“And it was not until the following day, Wednesday, that you talked to the police?”
“I kind of bumped into Brad Jettles.”
“After which you gave him this skimpy statement.” I displayed my copy.
“That’s right.”
“For three days you withheld this critical information. Why?”
“I was busy. The cops was busy. They already nicked Swift, so I didn’t think there was no emergency.”
“Dr. Mulligan’s disappearance and Mr. Swift’s arrest were the talk of the town, right?”
“Lots of people was carrying on about it.”
“Including all those friends you were seeing.”
“I guess.”
I came close enough to Wall to pick up a boozy scent. “So no doubt you regaled them about seeing the accused cross the road with a rifle near the Mulligan farm at two o’clock on the day Dr. Mulligan vanished.”
“I can’t remember what I said.”
“Really?”
“Maybe I was drinking too much.”
“But surely you told many people about having seen him?”
“I guess naturally it would of come up, yeah.”
“Okay, give me the names of all the people you told this to.”
Again he was looking away from me, at the gallery this time – Celia Swift and her group of stalwarts. The bear retreated to the safety of his den. “I don’t remember.”
“You kind of bumped into Brad Jettles. How did that come about?”
“I was out at the sports grounds and he came up to me.”
“What was going on at the sports grounds?”
“Nothing. It was getting dark, around seven.”
“So no one was there but you and Constable Jettles?”
“I don’t remember seeing no one.”
“Okay, let’s not play games. Not only was this meeting prearranged, it was instigated by the RCMP. Brad Jettles phoned you to meet at the usual place, isn’t that right?”
That caused Wall to pause. “That was a few months ago. Maybe he did … No, I must’ve called him. I’d been meaning to, so I must’ve.”
I took him back to Saturday the twenty-first. He was hazy about when he’d got up and about what he’d done that morning. He was “pretty sure” he’d slept in till noon, because he’d been up late with pals.
“You were hungover?”
“You could say.”
“And of course you took a couple of drinks to relieve the pain?” An assumption based on my own expertise.
“I may have added something to the coffee.”
“Okay, so we have you recovering from one hangover and getting a good start on another as you take off in your Nash Metro. When did you set out?”
“Just before two.”
“You weren’t wearing a watch.”
“No, it got stole.”
“And though you were drinking and had no watch, you maintain you saw Gabriel Swift at around two o’clock.”
“I seen him walk across the road with a gun.”
“Was that where the road cuts through the Cheakamus Reserve?”
“No, sir, it was nowhere near the reserve. Where I seen him was four or five telephone poles from the Mulligan driveway.”
“And what did you think he was doing with that gun?”
“Deer hunting, like everybody does illegally up there.”
“Did he cross the road in front of you or behind you?”
“In front.”
“How far in front?”
“Maybe fifty yards.”
“So obviously he must have seen you. Or at least your Nash Metro.”
“Yeah, he waved –” Cancel that thought. “No, that had to be another time. No, he wouldn’t of seen me, I was too far back of him.” The image of a friendly wave from a man on a murder miss
ion was unhelpful to his patrons on the force. Skepticism was writ large on the face of the foreman, hockey coach Ozzie Cooper.
“How many times that day did you drive down to Squamish?”
“Just that once.”
“Did you see anyone else while you were on the road?”
“I don’t recollect no one in particular.”
“Irene Mulligan?”
“I seen her sometimes having her walk, but later in the day.”
“Did you see her at her mailbox that Saturday?”
Long pause. “I can’t remember.”
I had the court reporter read back to him Irene’s testimony: Around eleven a car like that drove by.
“A red Nash Metro, Mr. Wall.”
The struggle to keep his flimsy structure from collapsing was too much for him; I saw surrender in his sagging shoulders. “Like I said, this stuff all happened over three months ago.”
Ophelia cheered me on with a smile. Yes, my love, there is something I’m good at.
“Mr. Wall, you’re not sure whether you saw my client in the afternoon or the morning, or a day earlier, or in another week, right?”
“I guess anything’s possible.” Total surrender.
“It’s hard to tell the days and weeks apart when you’re half in the bag from sampling your own merchandise.”
“Was that intended as a question, Mr. Beauchamp, or are you merely chopping wood?”
“I think I was chopping wood, milord.”
That produced a faint smile. “You have probably covered all the bases with this witness.”
Code for Stop beating a dead horse. “No more questions.”
Hammersmith beamed at me; we were on the same side for the moment. We all followed his gaze to the clock. “Nearly four-thirty, Mr. Smythe-Baldwin. Are we on time?”
“Most assuredly so.” And that was the end of Day One.
Ophelia and I didn’t join the race for the door. “That was almost cruel,” she said, bringing out her pack of Players. “Smitty had the look of someone enjoying live theatre. He likes you – I think it’s an avuncular thing.”
The clerk caught her lighting up and exiled us to the hallway, where we followed the trail of cigar fumes to the Law Library. He was flipping the pages of a thick reference tome, apparently looking for a quote source. “Ah, yes, Quintilianus. ‘A liar needs a good memory.’ ”
I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel Page 19
