“I think there’s probably a lot of use there yet, Mr. Beauchamp.” She is smiling. Kroop isn’t, and seems poised to shut down this cocktail-party colloquy.
“She was entertaining?”
“Usually.”
“Occasionally volatile? She had a temper?”
“She had a temper and could use it.”
“And what might cause it to show?”
“Frustration if things weren’t going her way. Impatience with some of her clients.”
“You gave an example to my assistant, Ms. Rudnicki.”
“Yes, Eve was in a rage over a threatened lawsuit by a woman who claimed to see herself in one of her columns.”
Lorelei. Arthur glances at Brian, who gives a little shake of his head. Quite right, Arthur shouldn’t risk pursuing this now. Dr. Bloom can be recalled later. He asks about Winters’s mood during the hike.
“Usually carefree, but there was an underlying strain.”
“That had to do with the relationship between Dr. Winters and Ruth Delvechio?”
“It was faltering.”
Winters and Delvechio were together for six months. Lotis surmised it started as a fling-Delvechio moved in after staying a night, then stuck like glue.
“In fact, they had a very serious quarrel, did they not? At the cottage?”
The witness hesitates. They hadn’t mentioned this to Lotis when they met because Delvechio was present. “Yes, I think that’s fair to say. Ruth wanted to stay on in Bamfield with Eve. Eve wanted to be alone.”
Arthur has a sense Bloom isn’t fond of the young student. “This had been simmering?”
“Well, Eve once told me she felt like a leaning post…”
“Nope,” says Buddy. “This is pure hearsay.” He’s disgruntled by the relaxed rapport between counsel and witness. Though he has kept his temper well, he can be counted on to blow his top at least once per trial.
A lecture from the bench: “Madam, you were poised to jump into the troubled waters of the rule against hearsay. It is offended when we are asked to believe the words of one who is not a witness.”
“Let me just say I sensed a dependency that made Eve uncomfortable.”
“Angry words were used on the morning of your departure?” Arthur asks.
“It was no love duet.”
“I understand Dr. Winters told Ruth, ‘It’s over.’”
“Exactly, yes.”
“And Ruth Delvechio’s response was what?”
“She told Eve to fuck herself.” Kroop looks up sharply, displeased at this woman’s bold use of taboo language. “Then the landlady came by and Eve went out for a walk. The rest of us packed to leave.”
“For the Lady Rose.”
“Yes, we’d left our car in Port Alberni.”
“Ms. Delvechio was in a dark mood on the journey home?”
“She wasn’t a barrel of laughs.”
Arthur draws from Bloom that Delvechio spoke little during the drive to Vancouver, stared morosely out the car window. She asked to be dropped off at her mother’s house. Bloom and her partner had no contact with Delvechio between then and April 1. They’ve seen her infrequently since.
Arthur is satisfied with this sketch of a heartsick vassal of her royal highness, curtly uncoupled and shamed. Motive enough for murder? Likely not, but another red herring for the bouillabaisse he’s stirring.
Arthur is about to sit, then remembers to ask about the balky door of Cotters’ Cottage.
“I almost put my back out tugging it closed.”
“And the lock would then click shut?”
“Correct.”
Something else is niggling at him. Buddy hadn’t asked how this hike came about.
“It was Eve’s idea,” the witness explains. “We first talked about it almost a year ago, but left it too late to make reservations for the summer, so we chose the end of March and prayed for sun.”
“Reservations are required?” This is news to Arthur.
“Parks Canada restricts the numbers who can enter. For summer, you have to book a year ahead.”
“And when did you book?”
“Four months earlier, in November.”
“They check you off as you enter the park?”
“And lecture you about bears.”
“Did you see any?”
“We were trying hard not to.”
Arthur thinks he’s done, but again something is bothering him. He fiddles with papers, buying time.
“Are you through, Mr. Beauchamp? The jury might prefer enjoying their mid-morning coffee than watching you stand there ruminating. Himf, himf.”
“A final question. How did you learn there was a cottage for rent on Brady Beach?”
“The Internet, a list of places to stay in Bamfield.”
“And when did you make reservations with the Cotters?”
“In November. At the same time we booked for the trail.”
Here is food for thought. A magazine writer capable of basic research could have tracked Winters’s movements, learned she reserved for the trail, for Cotters’ Cottage.
“Can I assume that’s your last final question, Mr. Beauchamp?”
Wilma Quong, a timid, bespectacled accountant, must be prodded through her testimony. She isn’t as forthright as Bloom about the spat, and blushes even to use the inane euphemism “f-word.” She is so apprehensive and soft of voice that Arthur makes her ordeal brief-she is blunting the force of Bloom’s more candid testimony.
Quong squeezes beside her partner, a few rows back, as Ruth Delvechio takes the stand. Auburn-haired with wide pale eyes, pretty if her face weren’t so stretched and tense. This tautness is only slightly relieved as she catches the eye of Glynis Bloom, and she frowns again as she looks upon Arthur, the defender of her lover’s murderer, the enemy.
Buddy draws from her that she met Winters in September while researching for her master’s thesis, a history of sexual misbehaviour in an isolated farm community. Their meetings grew more intimate and, Delvechio says with a flourish, “We fell desperately in love.”
She moved into Winters’s upscale condo and lived, according to Delvechio, in sweet harmony. “We were so happy, so, so much in love.” At another point, she says, “It was so fairy tale.” Cloying, Lotis warned, but the sugar is coated with a bitter shell. “And despite what some people may say, we shared that love till the end.”
The Crowns must have taken Delvechio aside during the break, prepared her for Arthur, filled her in on his cross of Glynis Bloom. He asks if there was strife during the hike.
“There’s always a little friction in close quarters like a two-person tent. I don’t think we had many cross words. We were too tired in the evenings even to talk.”
“We heard something this morning about an exchange in the cottage…”
She blurts: “That was so tempest in a teapot. You have to know Eve, she didn’t mean it.”
“She didn’t mean what?”
“She didn’t mean it was over. It was just a silly little thing. We would have had a good laugh about it when she came back home from her…whatever, her meditative holiday.”
Buddy assesses the pros and cons of punctuating those last few words. Finally he can’t resist. “But she never did come back home, did she?”
“I think I’m going to throw up.” Again, it’s Brian, directly behind Arthur.
Kroop glances up so quickly that he may have pulled a neck muscle, because he winces. “Who said that?”
No one responds.
Kneading his neck, Kroop looks about for a likely culprit, sees only a sea of innocent, sheeplike faces. He pins his fierce eyes on Arthur, his preferred suspect, then turns to the clerk. “Mr. Gilbert, did you hear someone say something about being sick?” He will wheedle the truth from the spineless clerk.
“I heard…” Gilbert clears his throat. “Something to that effect, sir, but I was looking down.”
“You must keep a better eye on the courtroom. Was he close by?”
“Near the front, I believe,” Gilbert says faintly. Almost everyone in the front benches heard Brian clearly, but none wants Gilbert’s role as conscripted fink. Now the judge inspects the row of young lawyers. A long study of Brian Pomeroy, who, with magnificent gall, turns and looks behind him, redirecting the search.