MS. BLUEMAN:
This is becoming too much —
THE COURT:
I will decide who is to be believed, Mr. Cleaver.
MR. CLEAVER:
You said Mr. Clarence de Remy Brown spent a fair bit of time with Miss Martin before he ushered you to her bedroom.
A
It seemed quite a while.
Q
Time enough to have a good long conversation with her.
A
Well, I wasn’t there.
Q
You said Mr. Brown was angry. He was fuming, swearing, carrying on like that?
A
Like that.
Q
Okay, I take it you knew that Mr. Brown’s father is a wealthy industrialist. The Brown Group of Corporations.
A
I didn’t at the time. I do now, yes.
Q
Did you see an engagement ring?
A
A big diamond, yes, on her finger.
Q
The heir to a great fortune would be quite a catch for any young lady, wouldn’t he?
A
I guess so.
Arms folded, Mrs. Margaret Blake stands sternly at my doorstep amid the rubble of my former veranda. Her cocker spaniel, an energetic creature named Slappy, sniffs me with contempt.
“So you are tearing down the house.”
“Merely alterations, my dear Mrs. Blake.”
“It’s a historic old place. There should be a law against this sort of thing.”
“I am sure you will find one if you look hard enough.” I intend to say this in a jocular tone, but the words emerge with gruffness. I am not in a good mood this morning.
“Well, I’m afraid I’ve had my fill of laws and lawyers.”
Perhaps the source of her enmity to me is some wound suffered at the hands of my ever-maligned profession. But she doesn’t elaborate. Slappy keeps sniffing at my feet, as if detecting something unusual or foul.
I try to be pleasant. “Can I offer you a morning coffee?”
Her tone softens slightly. “Thank you, but I have a zillion things to do. I just dropped by to ask if you’ve seen one of my sheep.”
“I presume that’s the animal I chased away this morning upon finding it defecating on the back porch.”
“Oh, dear, I don’t know how they get through the fence.”
“Perhaps they use the holes.”
Again I have been brusque, and this comment riles her. “Mr. Beauchamp, I have built and rebuilt that fence with my own two hands, and I think you should be prepared to take some responsibility for your share of it. I mean . . . you obviously have money to burn.”
The resentful tone, together with her apparent fondness for rules and regulations, suggests this feisty woman is some manner of socialist. She seems determined to distrust me, and I find no reason to apologize for or explain myself.
But as she and Slappy take their leave, I reproach myself for my unkind thoughts about her. She lost her husband not many years ago, and grief shows its colours in ways often harsh. Eventually, perhaps, she will learn I am merely a harmless pouf who prefers to be alone with his dead Latin poets.
Her visit, however, causes some inner rumblings of disquiet that remain with me through the day. In former times, the antidote was usually a bracing tumbler of Beefeater gin, a cure that sad experience taught me was worse than the disease. But as the days pass, I feel a slow ebbing of strength, of will. In every cell of my body, I can still taste that dulcet syrup, can sense its seductive offering of warmth and courage.
Oh, what a worshipper of Bacchus was I. Until one night, nine years ago, locked out of my house, and vigorously seeking audience with a wife temporarily estranged, I fell through the skylight and onto her exercise bicycle. Promises were made at my hospital bedside. (I kept mine; she broke hers. She tried. I believe she tried.)
After a few days of doubtless pensive rumination, Stoney and Dog return to their tasks: sweaty, resolute work, pouring concrete pads, and nailing up supports for the new veranda. They patch the roof, too, though in a fashion they assure me is temporary, much plywood, and plastic sheeting. The house begins to look like something a hillbilly might inhabit, Ozarkian, ungainly. I suffer a temptation to have the place torn down and a new house built by a reputable city contractor. But I cannot bear the thought of having to confront my current crew with layoff notices . . . and Mrs. Blake lurks down the lane.
On an afternoon as I watch my veranda rise Sistine-like from the rubble, I am visited by the local media, one Nelson Forbish representing the Island Echo. A man of impressive girth, he emerges awkwardly from his compact car, armed with notebook and camera. He is about thirty-five, his cherubic face sheltered by a felt porkpie hat, the brim turned down in front.
“Mr. Bochamp, I’ve been waiting till you settled in to call. Like to do an interview.” He has a high, whining voice, a nasal dentist’s drill.
“Beecham is how it’s pronounced. The name became corrupted after my ancestors raped and pillaged Anglo-Saxon England.”
Nelson Forbish seems to have some difficulty absorbing this concept. “Would a good time be now?”
“As you see, the house is in disarray, so shall we just sit outside here? It’s a splendid day. Would you care for a refreshment?”
“Something to eat, if you got.”
I bring out a bowl of fruit and some slightly burnt homemade biscuits, and lead Forbish to my dock, where I have set a table and a plastic chair. I have been fishing, offering fat worms from my newly spaded garden.
“Caught two very tasty perch the other day. Possibly that could be your headline, Mr. Forbish.”
The reporter peels a banana and lowers it down his throat as if into a food blender.
“I’ve been reading your newspaper, Mr. Forbish, and I was wondering — if it’s not subject to journalistic privilege — about Mr. George Rimbold, who tried to jump through a window at the local bar dressed as a frog.”
“That was at Halloween. He’s a bit of a tank.”
“Ah, I see.”
As he wolfs down a biscuit, he takes a photo of me, then produces some clippings from various Vancouver journals.
“Says here you’ve won fourteen straight murders in a row.”
I hear echoes of his idiosyncrasies of composition in the Island Echo. Fourteen straight in a row.
“I have had my losses.”
“This here magazine article says you left your office for a couple of years to work with bums on skid row.”
Two years dimly remembered, two years of bibulous fog when Annabelle had separated from me.
“It was an interesting time.”
“And the article goes on to say you’re really colourful in court.” He is on his second banana now, and eyeing an apple. “Much exaggerated.”
“You used to keep a pitcher of vodka on your table when you were on a trial. The judges all thought it was water.”
I ponder his odd interview technique — he has yet to ask a question. “An utter lie. It was a pitcher of Beefeater gin. Nor did the judges suspect it was anything else.”
“So there was also this time when apparently you were drunk in the middle of a trial, and you began reciting the Ruby . . .” Nelson is studying an obscure word in the magazine article.
Was I also drunk when being interviewed for that piece of literary embarrassment? In vino veritas. No, it was later — newly admitted to the Trial Lawyers’ Chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous, I tended in those days to indulge in frenzies of truth and openness.
” The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. ‘ Fill the cup that clears today of past regrets and future fears.’ I once sought escape in such a cup. I am an alcoholic, Nelson.”
“So what are you doing here on this island?”
“Making peace with God and nature. I am retired.”
“So, for our readers, why did you choose Garibaldi?”
“I’m not sure. I think my brain may have snapped.�
��
Nelson finally sees this as a joke and stops writing it down. He removes his hat, wipes his sweating brow. I note that my various comestibles have by now entirely disappeared down the man’s ravenous maw.
“So, that’s it? For your career? No more cases?”
“In fact, I just turned one down.”
“What sort of case?”
“Oh, a sexual assault —”
“It isn’t that law professor’s case?”
I am sorry I have stumbled into this, but Nelson seems hugely titillated, his eyes bugging slightly. “I heard he kidnapped one of his students, took all her clothes off and chained her up, and took a bull-whip to her until she was bleeding.”
“I ought not to discuss it.”
“Then made love to her over and over until she couldn’t take it any more. Do you think he did it?” There seems something almost obsessive about his interest.
“Nelson, I judge not my fellow man. And one shouldn’t really discuss a matter that is before the courts.”
His only response is a burp. Oh, pompous Beauchamp. Making peace with God and nature. Judging not my fellow man. But how innocent in God’s eyes is our dashing acting dean of law? Does that matter? Do I care?
I am retired. That’s all the news that’s fit to print.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MS. BLUEMAN
Q
Your name and occupation for the record?
A
Sergeant Henry Chekoff, detective, West Vancouver Municipal Police.
Q
You’ve been a police officer for how many years?
A
Going on ten.
Q
Tell me what you did in connection with this case.
A
Well, your honour, I came on duty at nine o’clock on the morning of November twenty-eighth and there was a message on my desk to go to 141 Palmer Avenue, complaint of a sexual assault.
Q
This complaint had not been investigated earlier? During the night?
A
Well, I was told the allegations —
THE COURT:
Just what you saw and did, sergeant.
A
We’re pretty badly understaffed during the graveyard shift, so I guess I was the first officer to attend the, ah, alleged scene.
Q
Okay, so you went to 141 Palmer Avenue that morning?
A
Well, I did. Um, I attended at nine-twenty hours and there was a gentleman out front there raking some leaves.
Q
Do you see that person in court?
A
Yes, sitting beside Mr. Cleaver.
Q
Indicating the accused. Can you tell us about his demeanour?
A
Well, he seemed normal. He was clean-shaven. Casually dressed. He was surprised when I identified myself, but he wasn’t unpleasant.
MS. BLUEMAN:
Entering a voir dire, your honour.
MR. CLEAVER:
Not necessary. For the purposes of this preliminary hearing I agree the statements are voluntary.
THE COURT:
Very well.
Q
What conversation did you have with him?
A
Well, I said I was here to investigate a complaint about an incident that was supposed to have happened the night before. I asked him if he knew a Kimberley Martin. And he said, “Yes, she was here last night” And he said . . . Can I look at my notes?
THE COURT:
Go ahead.
A
He said, um, “Has something happened to her? I was worried. She disappeared” I then related to him the substance of the complaint that he had confined her and assaulted her sexually, and he didn’t say anything at first, just looked kind of puzzled. And then he said, “Is this some kind of practical joke?” and I said, “No, not that I’m aware.” He went sort of white, and said, “I did no such thing.” I said, “Are you saying you didn’t touch her?” And he said, “Didn’t touch her? Of course I touched her. I took her to bed.”
THE COURT:
Just a minute. “Of course I touched her. I took her to bed.”
A
And he then added, “She was very drunk.”
Q
Was there any more conversation?
A
Well, basically no, because he wanted to call his lawyer, but he invited me into the house while he did so.
Q
And what transpired there?
A
While he was in another room making his call I looked around the living room, and I could see a rumpled sheet on a couch there, and, ah, there was an end table beside it on which I found two women’s earrings, which were items I seized. Oh, and I found a woman’s coat. Also on the table, a small black lady’s purse.
Q
Did you look inside it?
A
A wallet, with Miss Martin’s identification, credit cards and so forth, and$115 in cash.
Q
Was there a makeup kit in the purse?
A
Yes. I took note that there was a tube of bright-red lipstick that was worn down to the end.
MS. BLUEMAN:
That’s shown as Exhibit Nine on the admission of facts, your honour. A tube of . . . a product I ascertained was called Shameless.
THE COURT:
Shameless? Carry on, witness.
A
Mr. O’Donnell came back, and while we were waiting for his lawyer I asked him if he minded if I looked about his house. He didn’t say no, so I checked in all the rooms, and in a bedroom closet upstairs I seized a woman’s dress hanging there, um, along with some undergarments, panties, pantyhose, and a brassiere, and a pair of high-heeled shoes on the floor.
THE COURT:
May I look at Exhibit Eight? (Exhibit handed to the judge.)
THE COURT:
This is what would be called a mini?
A
I guess so.
THE COURT:
And these are the panties?
A
Yes, bikini briefs, I guess you call them.
THE COURT:
Scanties. Okay?
A
And there were sheets on the bed there, which looked like it had been slept in, and I also seized them.
Q
Describe this bed.
A
A queen-sized brass bed with posts at either end.
Q
Then what did you do?
A
Well, I went out to the car to call headquarters and I had a conversation with the chief, and, ah, well, it was decided I would ask Professor O’Donnell if he’d mind if we took a few pictures in there. And that’s what we did.
MS. BLUEMAN:
Your witness.
CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. CLEAVER
Q
Sergeant Chekoff, I am curious about a phrase Professor O’Donnell used in your interview. Do I have your words right? “Of course I touched her. I took her to bed. She was very drunk.”
A
That’s right.
Q
So it appears from your notes. When did you make them?
A
Uh, some time later that day.
Q
Not immediately afterwards?
A
No, back at the station.
Q
Is it possible there was an error?
A
I don’t think so.
MR. CLEAVER:
Excuse me, your honour, may I consult with my client?
THE COURT:
Of course. (Mr. Cleaver consults with the accused.)
Q
Did he not say, “I put her to bed”?
A
Um, that’s not what I wrote.
Q
“I never touched her. I put her to bed. She was very drunk.” That makes more sense, doesn’t it?
A
Okay. Yes,
it does, I guess.
Q
Thank you.
THE COURT:
Excuse me, Miss Blueman, you’re pulling a face — do you have a problem with this?
MS. BLUEMAN:
No, I . . . well, of course I have a problem. He’s changing his —
THE COURT:
Police officers have the right to change their mind, Miss Blueman. Just like members of the fair sex. (Laughter.)
THE COURT:
Sorry, Mr. Cleaver, we’ve interrupted.
Q
Now, sergeant, you found her dress and some underclothes hanging neatly on hangers, her purse and jewellery carefully arrayed on a table?
A
Yes.
Q
The dress didn’t seem rumpled?
A
Not that I could tell.
Q
When you looked around the house, did you see anything of interest you haven’t reported?
A
Well, I saw a man’s brown suit lying crumpled up on the bedroom floor. I didn’t take it.
MS. BLUEMAN:
Of course he didn’t.
THE COURT:
What was that?
MS. BLUEMAN:
Never mind.
Q
See any ropes or bindings?
Trial of Passion Page 5