Trial of Passion

by William Deverell

  “Well, you do get ripped, but, yeah, it was probably cocaine.”

  “Surely your supplier told you that’s what it was.” A tone of impatience: Wally will teach this ruffian a lesson.

  “Not really, your honour.”

  “What exactly did he say?”

  “All he said was it was pure Ivory Snow, and had never been stepped on.”

  “Stepped on?”

  “Like, it was very powerful. Never diluted.”

  “M’lord, has your cross-examination concluded?” Patricia asks. “Or is there more inadmissible evidence you’d like the jury to hear before this finds its way to the Court of Appeal?”

  I marvel at her boldness. A shock wave seems to pass through Wally, who has the horrified expression of one who has observed a dead rat in his soup. The magic words, Court of Appeal — their lordships love to put the whip to new judges — seem to cause him to reflect, and he says petulantly, “I was just clarifying, counsel.”

  Wally is doing such a fine job for the defence that I worry the jury may conclude we sleep together. I’d actually feel more comfortable if he was well on the other side of the bed.

  “Your witness,” says Patricia. “For what it’s worth.”

  I do not want to risk another debacle by cross-examining Chornicky. I have been dealt good cards and will stand pat. “Thank you. No questions.”

  “Not many questions left, are there?” Patricia glares at the judge, who has begun to look worried: His fly is open and his bias is showing.

  “Call Constable Gavin Peake.”

  He enters, a cordial, husky boy in blue with an Arizona tan who I sense is not unsympathetic to his fellow white male in the dock. He tells his tale efficiently, describing his reception by Clarence Brown at a few minutes before six o’clock in the morning, his long wait while the couple conferred, then finally his visit to the bedroom, where he awkwardly accepted Kimberley’s offer to view her scrubbed and bruised bare bosom.

  I rise and snap my suspenders for luck. Do this right. No more bumbling, Beauchamp.

  “A weird business, constable.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Not your usual sort of West Vancouver mischief.”

  “No, sir. Although you’d be surprised.”

  A sprinkling of laughter from the jury: a hopeful sign some of them may not be taking this case too seriously.

  “Mr. Brown was in quite a fury when you showed up, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cursing, carrying on, vowing revenge, that sort of thing?”

  “That’s right.”

  Never ask a question without knowing the answer — the primary rule of cross-examination. But sometimes it must be broken.” ‘I’m going to get that son of a bitch’ — did he say something like that?”

  “Close.”

  “How close?”

  “He said, ‘I’ll kill that fucking son of a bitch.’”

  “Thank you.” A pause to let this surprise gift sink in. “Mr. Brown had a red substance on his hands and clothing, did he not?”

  “Yes, some lipstick he got from —”

  “Be careful,” Wally warns. “That sounds like it could be hearsay.”

  I give him a warning look: Stay out of my yard. “Let’s assume it’s this Shameless-brand lipstick he got from being in contact with Miss Martin. On what part of his clothes was it?”

  “Well, he had on a white shirt, and the front and sleeves were discoloured. He changed into a fresh shirt before we went up to talk with Miss Martin.”

  “No lipstick on her?”

  “No, sir. She’d bathed.”

  “It was obvious she had been drinking?”

  “I smelled it on her breath, yes.”

  “From a few feet away.”

  “Yes.”

  “Any other signs of intoxication?”

  “Her words were somewhat slurred. I had a little trouble getting a sense of what happened.”

  “You’re not alone. Thank you, that is all.”

  I sit with a grunt of satisfaction. I shot accurately enough, managed to miss my foot.

  Augustina seems relieved. “Good show.”

  At the recess, courtesy requires me to dally awhile with Gowan Cleaver, who has dropped in, gowned, from another courtroom.

  “Good God, Arthur, I thought I advised you to avoid that Jackson-Blyth woman at all costs. She’s your bloody foreman.”

  “I think I must admit to a tactical blunder. How bad can she be?”

  “Well, try on for size an article she wrote in . . . I don’t recall, some left-wing rag. I think it was titled ‘Assaults the Law Ignores.’ About so-called unwanted touching. In the workplace and in the home. Ultra-militant stuff: you have to get down and beg for it, that’s her attitude. Please, darling, pass the nookie. Anything else is rape.”

  I proceed outside and hide myself in the gloomy shroud of my pipe smoke.

  As the jury returns, Hedy Jackson-Blyth looks at me with puzzlement, as if curious why I would even dream of letting her on the jury. A union boss — she will be arguing that her jurors stand on principle, in solidarity with aggrieved women everywhere.

  On the other hand, she may not be sympathetic to that corporate exploiter Clarence de Remy Brown, who has been known to hire strikebreakers at his northern mines. He, not his future wife, may be the key to winning this juror’s heart and mind.

  Brown walks in aggressively. As he takes the oath of truth, he thrusts out his wide, dimpled chin like a salute. Patricia leads him through the preliminaries: he is thirty-five, holds a degree in business administration from the University of Alberta, and has been engaged to the complainant for almost a year.

  Patricia asks, “Do you know the accused, Professor O’Donnell?”

  “I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.” A deep baritone edged with malice. He looks at the man who defiled his spouse-to-be as one might study a turd the family dog had deposited on the rug. “I was aware he was one of Kimberley’s teachers.”

  “During the final week of November last year, where were you?”

  “I was in Venezuela. We were negotiating purchases of some mining leases. The trip came up suddenly.”

  “When did you plan to be back in Vancouver?”

  “Early on the Friday, on an overnight from Caracas. I’d promised Kimberley I’d be back for her dance. That turned out not to be possible.”

  “She was expecting you that morning?”

  “Oh, yes, we talked on the phone every day.” His voice alters abruptly: con spirito, tenderness and devotion. On early impression he seems not a man in whom reside deep wells of altruism; there is something mean and crabby behind that manly façade. The jurors, however, seem far too non-judgemental. Instead, curious, perhaps overly impressed — he has wealth, he has looks, he has power.

  “Excuse me,” says Wally, “you and she talked long-distance every day?”

  “At least once or twice.”

  “Did you talk to her on November twenty-seventh? The day of the dance?”

  I am liking this as little as Patricia. We may have to bind and gag our frustrated former counsel.

  “We . . . yes, I believe I called her that morning.”

  “Then she knew you wouldn’t be back for the dance.”

  “Yes, I think I told her I wouldn’t be getting in until midnight.”

  “Thank you, “Wally says. Having elicited this unadulterated hearsay, he looks at me and nods smugly. Does he wish to do my work, or merely impress me?

  “May I continue, m’lord?” Patricia says acidly.

  “By all means.”

  “So she was expecting you to be late?”

  “Yes, I told her to enjoy the dance, and I would go straight home and wait up for her.”

  “Were you living together?”

  “Yes, for the most part. She also has her own apartment.” “And when did you get into Vancouver that night?” “Well, there was a long layover in Seattle so I had our executive
aircraft come . . . about one o’clock in the morning, another fifty minutes to my house.”

  “And was Kimberley there?”

  “No, and I knew the dance must be over. I called to her apartment and she wasn’t there. I decided she was just out having a good time. I was deathly tired. I tried to stay up, but I fell asleep.”

  “And were you awakened during the night?” Patricia asks.

  “Kimberley phoned some time around a quarter after five.”

  Yet another unwelcome intrusion from the bench: “Now, you know you can’t repeat what Ms. Martin said to you. That’s hearsay.”

  “What was her emotional condition?” Patricia asks.

  “She was distraught. Hysterical. She wanted me to —”

  “There, that’s exactly it,” says Wally. “She told you something. That’s hearsay.”

  I have had enough of this. It is time for the Commander to move Wally smartly into line. “M’lord, when I decide to object, you will hear it loud and clear. ‘Out of the arena and above the fray,’ as a wise man once said.”

  The message is cryptic enough, but Wally looks as if he has been stabbed: I have affronted him before this vast audience. “I wanted to make the ground rules clear. Carry on, Ms. Blueman.”

  Wally’s vanity has been pricked. His sour look says: Don’t expect me to do you any more favours, Beauchamp.

  With no further flack coming from the bench, Patricia sweeps along at jet speed, taking Brown to the house of the Reverend Dr. Hawthorne, Jonathan’s neighbour, where he rescued his lipstick-slathered fiancée.

  “When did you first observe these red markings on her?”

  “She was wrapped in a blanket, but when we got to the house, she showed me. There were red smears all over the lower half of her body and circles painted around her nipples. Sort of like targets.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Some very prominent bruising on her wrists and her chest.”

  Hedy Jackson-Blyth’s eyes narrow: This is beyond unwanted touching.

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I tried to settle her down — she was still pretty panicky — and we had some more conversation, and then I called the police. It seemed to take till doomsday to get someone I could talk to. I finally connected with Constable Peake, and he said he would come right over.”

  “And what was Kimberley doing as you were on the phone?”

  “Well, she disappeared upstairs into one of the washrooms, and she bathed and put on her nightgown and went to bed.”

  Patricia is looking at the clock: almost noon. I think she wants to bring Brown’s evidence to a swift close, to avoid building his role as promotion manager for the complainant.

  “Briefly, tell us what happened after Constable Peake arrived.”

  “I had a detailed conversation with him, and then he interviewed Kimberley. He took us to the North Shore Hospital, where she was examined by the doctors. By this time, she had settled down quite a bit, but she was still very angry.”

  Patricia is awarded a dramatic note upon which to adjourn for lunch. “At whom?” she says with a flourish.

  “At him.” He points a six-gun at Jonathan, the thumb raised as the hammer.

  Tactless and callous, the gesture backfires, and Patricia stalls, seeking to salvage the moment, then says, “No more questions.”

  As we take the noon break, Jonathan says, “Don’t think I’d want to meet that man in a dark alley. Where did we get this judge, Arthur? Institute of Political Correctness?”

  “He spent the summer getting his consciousness tuned up.”

  “God spare us all.”

  He offers to buy lunch, but I decline. Augustina eagerly accepts — I sense she has begun to enjoy his company too much.

  I return to my hotel suite. I telephone Margaret. No answer. Preparing her pens? Grooming her animals? Or is she purposefully avoiding me, unable to deal with my adolescent crush, my stumbling attempts to pursue her? Will my beloved tree hugger continue to flee like Daphne from rude Apollo only to transform herself into the unbudging laurel tree of legend? Abate, fair fugitive, abate thy speed, dismiss thy fears, and turn thy beauteous head….

  Before court resumes, Wally again calls us into his chambers. “Beau-champ, I don’t particularly enjoy being upbraided before the jury.” He is still smarting from this morning’s spanking, and has obviously been mulling over his bruises through the lunch break. “I intend to be an activist judge. I will interfere when I feel it’s necessary.”

  “Not during my cross-examination, if you don’t mind, Wally.”

  “When it’s necessary. I’m running the show here. Let’s get back to work.” Almost a snarl.

  I have underestimated his pridefulness. If we tangle in open court, fine: I will work to a keener edge. Friction pumps me up, and I feel I am finally getting into this trial, freeing myself from the seductive pull of Garibaldi Island.

  As court convenes, Brown sits down, checks his watch, then leans forward, ready, the promontory of his chin thrust out like a target he dares me to hit.

  I begin with some risky target practice.

  “Mr. Brown, you personally picked up the phone and called the police that morning.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you did not do so at Miss Martin’s behest.”

  “I called them.”

  “Miss Martin did not want the police brought in?” I don’t know this as a fact, but all indicators point that way.

  “She was very confused.”

  “She specifically told you she didn’t want the police involved.”

  “Not after I explained to her . . . Can I say that, my lord?”

  “Mr. Beauchamp has opened it up,” Wally says. “I assume he knows what’s he’s doing.”

  A juror smiles at me, the nurse, Mrs. Beiran. She can tell the judge is in a snit.

  “We had a discussion. She didn’t want to be put through this whole rigmarole . . . this show, what we’re going through right now.” His voice again takes on that false note of tenderness. “It has caused her a lot of pain.”

  “Not to mention the pain it’s caused you.”

  “She is the one who was raped, counsel.”

  “But you are the true complainant. You are the one who insisted that charges be laid.”

  From the bench, Wally makes a show of shaking his head, letting us all know this line of questioning doesn’t wash with him. Too many sexual assaults go unreported.

  “I advised her, yes.”

  “You persuaded her. In fact, there was a heated discussion.”

  “I advised her.”

  “I put it to you that you made your point quite firm and clear.”

  “It’s not something about which I would give orders.”

  “However much you’re used to giving them.”

  “That’s uncalled for,” Patricia says.

  “You don’t have to answer that,” says Wally.

  “Were you upset when you arrived home and found Miss Martin wasn’t there?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “On the telephone that morning, you told her to enjoy the dance and you would wait up for her.”

  “Yes.”

  “You expected her, as instructed, to come home after the dance?”

  “I wasn’t instructing her, counsel.”

  Counsel. A form of address one might use to a peon in a board-room. “You’d been away for a week. You’d made plans to see her that Friday night. She didn’t show up. And you weren’t upset. Do I have all that correct?”

  “She likes to enjoy her parties.”

  “It wouldn’t have been the first time?”

  “Not really. She is a very independent spirit.”

  “Which I hazard is the cause of some friction between you?”

  “Not at all. We never fight”

  It seems a palpable lie from the mouth of this controlling person. Even Hedy Jackson-Blyth must see that — though she remains expressionless.

>   “Later on, after you fetched Miss Martin home, were you surprised when she went upstairs and . . . did she have a shower or a bath?”

  “Both. Yes, I didn’t want her to. But as I say, you can’t tell Kimberley what to do.”

  “Did you have an argument with her about that?”

  “I told her . . . I suggested she shouldn’t destroy evidence.”

  “And you had quite a tiff with her?”

  “I never touched her. I’ve never laid a hand on Kimberley.”

  A firm denial of an unmade accusation. Was there a tussle? Would that explain some of her bruises?

  “She asked you not to call the police. You insisted. You told her not to bathe. She insisted. This was not a calm discussion, was it, Mr. Brown?”

  “You have to understand, counsel, the state she was in. She had been to hell and back. She was crying, hardly able to —”

  “Answer the question!” The Commander’s blared order rebounds from wall to wall within this hushed courtroom.

  Brown seems taken aback; he is not used to being dictated to. “We had some words.”

  “Despite the horrible ordeal she claimed to have suffered, you and she had a fight?”

  “I was trying to get her to act rationally, counsel. She was all over the place, confused.”

  “Understandably. She was drunk, was she not?”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “Oh, come. She was intoxicated, and you know that to be a fact.”

  “She’d been drinking, but I’d say she was in a state of shock. She managed to explain quite coherently what had happened to her.”

  “While Constable Peake waited to meet with her, you were up in the bedroom helping her with her story.”

  “It wasn’t a story.”

  “The jury may feel differently.”

  “You’re bullying the witness, Mr. Beauchamp,” Wally says.

  I ignore him. “Mr. Brown, is it fair to say you felt the police were lax in handling this case?”

  “Lazy and lax.”

  “The accused not visited until several hours later. No arrest made until the afternoon. The complainant poorly interviewed. That bothered you, didn’t it?”

  “I will definitely agree with you there.”

  “That’s why you hired a private detective to try to dig up some dirt about Professor O’Donnell, isn’t it?”