“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 detente. 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.”