April Fool

by William Deverell

  “And what else did Eve say?”

  Delvechio shrugs. “I think she surprised herself running on like that, and she looked up kind of startled, as if she forgot I was present. And she put on the brakes. I gave her a hug, and she smiled and shook off her little blue funk, and that was it, and she never mentioned Daisy again. It was like she just disappeared from the map.” She straightens, returns to an earlier theme. “And then…well, it was like magic the way it happened–Eve and I fell in love.”

  “Please tell us what was in the letter that Eve caught you reading.”

  “I hardly looked at it!”

  “Come now, what was in that letter that was so upsetting?”

  “I didn’t!”

  The tears return, but no one on the jury seems to share her sorrow. Martin Samples has seen bad actresses cry before. One and a half stars out of five.

  “No more questions.”

  That exchange has Arthur in a contemplative mood during the break, as he stands by the vine-draped terrace of level six, staring down at three scurrying figures in the Great Hall, a sheriff leading two lawyers with gowns flapping. A jury has rendered its verdict. He shivers at the thought of that intense, taut moment, the jurors shuffling into court, red-faced from battle, the last holdout grim-faced and sour.

  Delvechio’s imagery sticks in his mind: Daisy Mae Yokum in her ragged skirt and polka-dot blouse, pretty and bouncy and refreshing and real. As portrayed in the funnies, read furtively when he was a boy, his father frowning upon the practice. Who is the abusive Li’l Abner?

  Could Ruth Delvechio have dreamed up this complex murder? Yes, this clinging creature has a jealous, conniving mind. She has become an admirable suspect. Her mother holds high office in a drug company. Does Advance Biotechnics do DNA testing? Manufacture Rohypnol for export?

  Bloom and Quong are in intense conversation near the stairs. Arthur approaches, asks if he may speak with them.

  When court resumes, Arthur asks to have Dr. Bloom recalled. Buddy has become increasingly fidgety through the afternoon, and says, “He’s had his one kick at the cat, that’s what he’s allowed.”

  Kroop may be tiring of these spurious objections. “I trust you will keep it brief, Mr. Beauchamp.”

  “Thank you, milord.” Courtesy reigns.

  Bloom is sworn again, and Arthur draws from her that she knows nothing about a woman named Daisy, never heard Winters speak the name.

  “Were you aware she was writing a letter while you camped on the trail?”

  “She was constantly writing. Letters, notes for her column.”

  “And at any time did you see her with an address book?”

  “Yes. She had a schedule for the Lady Rose folded into it, and we checked it to make sure we had the correct sailing time.”

  “That was the day you departed Bamfield?”

  “Yes.”

  “You heard Ms. Delvechio describe Eve’s address book.”

  “A small ring binder with a stiff grey cardboard cover. That’s what I saw.”

  “Thank you. I would now like to recall Sergeant Flynn.”

  This generates yet another huddle at the Crown end of the table, three bent heads. Buddy rises, but Kroop says, “Same objection, Mr. Svabo?”

  “Yes, he…”

  “Same ruling.”

  His Lordship finally seems interested in the whodunit Arthur has been spinning, maybe he’s a fan of the genre. Buddy hasn’t helped his cause with his slapdash style and inelegant tongue–the Chief is a stickler for the Queen’s English.

  Flynn abandons his doodle pad and takes the stand, holding himself with the stiffness of a prairie dog sniffing the air for danger.

  “Did you find Dr. Winters’s address book anywhere in the cottage?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Or any address book?”

  “No.”

  “Or a letter written by the deceased?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “A writing pad?”

  A hesitation. “No, sir.” Working at his moustache.

  Arthur shares a moment of silent speculation with the jury, then sits.

  In the old days, Arthur would start celebrating a good day by raising two fingers to the bartender. In the sober present, he will rejoice with a double latte–one doesn’t celebrate with tea.

  As he tackles Hubbell’s complex machine, he tries to put aside Daisy Whatever–Eve never told me–but she clings. She kept wandering into his head this afternoon while unimportant witnesses, owners and staff of the Breakers Inn, were on the stand.

  Maybe Daisy is a nickname or pseudonym–Doctor Eve’s column used them frequently. Her advice to abuse victims was always blunt. To one beaten wife it was simply, “Flee, flee.” Daisy may not have been a patient, of course, but it seems a fair guess she was–how else would Winters have met someone so out of her milieu?

  Behold: designer-coffee issues from a spout. From another comes a frothy topping. Feet up, latte at hand, he probes the multichannel universe as he waits for the six o’clock news. Here, incredibly, is a channel devoted solely to reruns of Star Trek. Eerily, here is one for book lovers. And something called Court TV.

  Back comes Daisy, Eve’s true love. Delvechio had reason to spirit away an incriminating love letter to her rival, an address book with Daisy’s name. But why would Adeline Angella do so, why would she filch so much as a writing pad? Angella is beginning to seem an inconvenience. Harvey Coolidge is barely in the running.

  Yes, Arthur has cultivated a garden of reasonable doubts, any of which may win an acquittal–but is that enough? Nothing would satisfy him more than to bring the real killer to justice, to play Perry Mason, point the stern finger of retribution at a quavering figure in the pews: You, madam, callously slew this fine young lady!

  On the supper news (We take you to Garibaldi Island), he’s treated to the spectacle of Winnie Gillicuddy linking arms with her mates beneath a banner: “We are the Raging Grannies.” When it’s her turn to be arrested, the officer has to duck a sweeping handbag.

  An exasperated RCMP spokesman carries on about the “thankless task of upholding the law in this difficult situation,” regrets the arrest of a woman of such years, and stakes a claim to magnanimity for not charging her with attempted assault.

  Here’s Kurt Zoller, complete with lifejacket, finally earning his chance for fame. “As elected trustee, I want to express our wholehearted outrage at this treatment of a gentle old lady…” His rhetoric seems about to take flight, like a kite catching the wind, but is snipped, and viewers are treated to Winnie being escorted from the hoosegow by a squad of Raging Grannies. She raises a fist of triumph.

  “Ma’am, what are your plans?” a reporter asks.

  “I’m going to go home and feed the chickens.”

  Arthur is into his second latte when Lotis calls, elated. While remarking on Winnie’s bravura, Justice Mewhort mused, obiter dictum, about his own wonderful bossy grandma. After that, he ordered the release of today’s catch of protestors and directed there be a one-week détente. No logging, no arrests while everyone talks turkey. Arthur’s hope for Margaret’s return soars. She vowed to come down when the arrests end, now she can claim victory.

  He sets Lotis a task: she is to search in her computer for the name Daisy, who may show up in the CD that Svabo reluctantly delivered up. If Winter’s clinical records are Daisy-free, the computer will be asked–somewhat like a genie, Arthur supposes–to locate accounts of abused wives raising two boys in mean surroundings.

  Lotis and Selwyn are cleaning up the flotsam left in the wake of the contempt hearings, but she’ll try to join him tomorrow.

  The chiming clock has long ago counted out its monotonic midnight, and Arthur is still wide awake. The day’s adrenalin has been slow to burn off, and he overloaded on the lattes. He’s been reading fitfully, putting Doctor Eve’s columns aside, picking up Medea (The streams flow with ambrosia by Zeus’s bed of love), finally turning off the light.


  Anticipation of Margaret’s homecoming. so often felt and so often denied, has added to his insomnia. How is he to react to her? How will she react? There’s an awful chance she’ll be closed to his embrace, rigid. The more pleasant imagining has her melting into his arms, but what then? A long hot shower, of course, a decent meal, her own bed, where she waits for the great swordsman to slip into the sheets beside her…

  A distant siren. A car alarm and its raucous sonata of whoops and wails. The thrum of a ship heading out to sea. He ought to have closed the window but can no longer abide unfresh air.

  The moon glows through his undraped windows, and he can make out the pillow pictures, feels a disturbance, a roiling below. He squirms, shifts. He rises. He goes to the bathroom, reads the label on the Viagra.

  27

  It is only as his taxi is hurtling down Georgia Street that Arthur realizes he’s forgotten his briefcase. He has his cellphone, though, and is still trying to get word to the Chief Justice through the clerks’ office. But what can he say? It was a hard night, milord. In my stiffly discomfited state I set my alarm for the wrong hour.

  Finally a response, someone in the registry: “Mr. Beauchamp, I don’t know how to say this, but the Chief has started without you.”

  Time-obsessive Wilbur Kroop must have gone off the rails. A murder trial is chugging along in Court 67, and neither accused nor counsel are anywhere near the building. However exhausted, Arthur will find the strength to demand a mistrial.

  Who was on today’s list? Several denizens of Bamfield. The Cotters of Cotters’ Cottage. Holly Hoover, the seafaring hooker.

  The taxi gets jammed in a one-way street, so Arthur jogs the last block, through the Great Hall and into the barristers’ room. He fumbles with his locker combination. Shirt, dickey, gown. What a tragedy–he’d been getting on with Kroop, and now must face his wrath. Privileges will be withdrawn, objections overruled.

  He takes a deep breath, then enters 67, and stands for a moment in a fog of weariness, getting his bearings. Elderly, spindly Inez Cotter is in the witness stand. Buddy is by the far wall, shouting at her.

  “Sorry, ma’am, but you’ll have to speak even louder. I want to be able to hear from across the room.”

  “Is this better?” Her tiny, piping voice. “Three o’clock on Friday was the last time I ever seen or talked to her.”

  “This was when you brought Dr. Winters her laundry?”

  She nods.

  “Get your lungs into it, Mrs. Cotter, we all want to hear.”

  “Yes, sir.” She would not be more intimidated were she facing a bully at a bus stop. Arthur is fascinated, perplexed, and immobile.

  “Describe her demeanour on that tragic day, the last of her life.”

  “Looked like she didn’t have no worries, like she was free of all burdens, that was the impression I got.”

  “And how much time did you spend with her?”

  “She made tea, and she paid me for the laundry and something extra, and we had a little chat about this and that…”

  Buddy cuts her off. “I want to thank you for coming all this way to help us, ma’am. That’s all the questions.”

  Arthur decides, for a lark, to join this travesty. As he advances past the bar, Kroop glances his way with little interest, the merest nod of recognition. Jurors, for some reason, offer looks of sympathy. He’d not had time to shave, he must appear a mess, a ghoul in a gown.

  “Cross-examination,” says Kroop.

  A tousle-haired shorty rises from behind the cover of bulky Sheriff Willett. Lotis Morningstar Rudnicki. “You’re, um, seventy-nine years old, Ms. Cotter?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you still manage to maintain that beautiful cottage for rent. That’s wonderful.”

  “Kind of you to say, dear.”

  Arthur sits beside Lotis, who starts, then her face floods with relief. “Can I…may I please have a few seconds, your Lordship?”

  “Welcome Mr. Beauchamp back for me. I trust he’s feeling better.” Adding to the surreal atmosphere is this display of good humour by Wilbur Kroop. Lotis looks absurdly formal in her black barrister’s gown. No makeup–she eschews it except as an occasional art form. A silver ornament in her lower lip, small and fine, discreet enough. She’s cut her hair.

  An angry hiss: “Where have you fucking been? Act like you’ve had gastroenteritis. You told me to carry on till you got here.”

  Lotis has pulled his pants from the fire, but his gratitude is slightly soured by resentment. Something else for the whippersnapper to crow about. Let’s see how she handles the heat of the courtroom. She can’t do much damage with Inez Cotter.

  “Carry on, my dear.” Arthur winces for the judge, as if fighting off another attack.

  Lotis looks at him pleadingly, is denied. He’ll be damned if he’ll mention the Viagra, the long, unsettling night. She takes a deep breath. “Okay, Ms. Cotter, your chat with Dr. Winters–what was that about?”

  “Objection. Hearsay.”

  His Lordship, still aggrieved at Buddy for his lumpish prosecution, says, “I didn’t hear you objecting when Mr. Beauchamp went on a hearsay rampage yesterday.”

  Lotis looks uncertain. “Have I won that one?”

  “Having already heard you on the subject of hearsay, Miss Rudnicki, and having been thereby persuaded that the rules of evidence are no longer taught in our law schools, I rule that Mrs. Cotter’s chat with the deceased comes, as you put it, somewhere within the zillion exceptions to the hearsay rule.”

  Arthur cannot help but laugh. The pixie has been getting her comeuppance from a master of the art. It is just as well for her that Kroop is in a sanguine mood, content to throw light barbs. He probably admires her gumption. He dislikes weakness in lawyers. In anyone.

  Lotis resumes. “Okay, what did Dr. Winters say to you?”

  “She asked how long mail takes to reach the mainland.”

  “What did she want to mail?”

  “She had a few postcards and a letter.”

  Which were never found and, one assumes, never sent–none of Winters’s friends mentioned receiving a card from her.

  Though Lotis has trouble framing her questions, she brings out Sergeant Flynn’s lackadaisical reaction to the squabble between Ruth and Eve. “He had a little chuckle over it,” says Mrs. Cotter.

  The morning break finds Lotis hectoring Arthur. “A murder case! Half past nine, I phoned, no answer. I’m thinking, What if he’s had an accident? An illness, an attack? Then it’s five to, and everyone, Gilbert Gilbert, Buddy Svabo, his nerdy junior, are giving me horror stories about how the Chief Justice is going to rip your face off if I don’t come up with something. I lied for you! In open court.”

  He sits. “Well done.”

  A theatrical, gasping look of amazement. “What happened to you?”

  “Far too complex to explain.” A quick shift of topic: kudos for her cool head in a crisis, her admirable relief pitching. Excellent rapport with Mrs. Cotter. A few rough edges that will rub smooth with the years.

  “Don’t give me that bullshit. They were trying to make a fool of me.”

  Buddy probably seized every chance to do so, but the patronizing tones of the judge would rile her most. In her arena, the street, she is queen. In court, uniformed, she has to abide by the rules and rigorous formality she despises. She can adjust or chuck the job. But she is mollified by his compliments, and her temper subsides.

  “What have I missed?”

  She reviews her notes. “Bill Links, the whale-watching guy, asked Nick if he heard about the robbery last night, and they sat over cappuccinos speculating that it was an inside job. In front of the jury, Buddy went, ‘Cool as a cucumber.’ The prick.”

  “You have to fire back, Lotis.”

  “You kidding? I’m scared shitless. It’s a murder charge! I’m not defending some teenager who climbed a tree!”

  “Easy, my dear.” Arthur mustn’t take pleasure from Ms. Know-it-all’s discomfort. N
o one is born a trial lawyer. The dues of sweat and fear and error must be paid. Maybe by your fifties you get it right.

  “Mr. Cotter was next. He’s hearing impaired, that’s how Buddy got into the habit of shouting. Came by to see if Eve had enough firewood, stayed for granola. ‘Damn fine young lady,’ he said. She asked to be invited to their fifty-fifth anniversary next year. Gave him a peck on the forehead as he left.”

  Lotis slumps into a seat beside him. “It’s all about Eve, isn’t it? Everyone loves Eve. Flighty young students, eighty-five-year-old codgers. I love her. I even like that she sometimes acts the queen and sleeps with married women.” She’s talkative, peppy, she got through it. “What I don’t understand is, why am I talking about her in the present tense?”

  Maybe because Eve is somehow floating around, a frustrated spirit demanding their ear, calling, like Buddy, from across the courtroom.

  “I’d like you to remain at the helm for the rest of the morning.” The next witness is Meredith Broadfeather, the Huu-ay-aht sociologist. She’ll do the defence no harm. “I will save my strength for this afternoon.” Holly Hoover.

  “Whoa, I filled in, it was an emergency, you overslept after doing God knows what last night. I’m not prepared.”

  “It’s a test you’ll face many times. Cross-examining on the fly against surprise testimony. Ninety per cent of good cross-examination is knowing when not to ask a question. The rest involves good instincts. Let’s see how yours work.” He sits back, closes his eyes.

  “The judge thinks I’m dumb as cowflop. I don’t understand the hearsay rule.”

  “No one does.”

  “I expected to watch and learn. I don’t do impromptu…Arthur?”

  He’s back in Dogpatch, daisies growing everywhere, faceless, beckoning. Find me. Find me. Lotis squeezes his knee and he blinks awake.