“You didn’t mention this cocaine in any of your early interviews?”
“Frankly, I didn’t want to get Egan in trouble.”
“Frankly, I suspect, you hoped no one would come forward with the incident.”
“I didn’t think it was that big a deal.”
“And this cocaine put you right to sleep, did it?”
“I’m sure it had worn off.”
“In half an hour?”
“Well, maybe I just passed out, Mr. Beauchamp, I don’t know. I remember feeling a little dizzy, and I closed my eyes. I heard voices, and I couldn’t make sense of them.”
“Ah, yes, but Jeanne d’Arc made sense of hers.”
“Well, these definitely weren’t from God. Everything just went black.”
It is nearing lunch. I will add a touch of pepper to this debate to whet the jury’s appetite.
“Now, you claim you woke up naked, ankles tied to a bed.”
“Exactly.”
“But that never really happened, did it?”
“It did, Mr. Beauchamp. It really did.”
“You went willingly to bed with him, didn’t you?”
“I certainly did not.”
“You desired him.”
“Mr. Beauchamp, I was engaged. I believe in sexual loyalty.”
“You pretended to sleep; you found yourself alone with him. He was receptive to your advances — ”
“My advances!”
“Yes, your advances.”
“Your memory is better than mine, Mr. Beauchamp.”
“There indeed seems to be a major gap in yours, Miss Martin.”
She doesn’t respond to this, and only bites her lip again, frowning, as if trying to fill in that gap.
“This is what I am putting to you, Miss Martin: As he leaned over you with a blanket, you suddenly opened your eyes. You put your arms around him and you kissed him deeply.”
“That is quite wrong.”
“You took off your earrings and laid them on the table, and you continued to embrace him.”
“I deny that.”
I turn up the volume control to full stentorian vigour. “You went upstairs. The two of you undressed. You hung your clothes up. And then you threw yourself upon him, embracing his naked body. You made passionate love — ”
“That’s an absolute lie!” Kimberley shouts. She waves her arm with an exasperated gesture, knocking over her glass of water, dousing the front of her dress.
“I think we had best adjourn for the day,” says Wally. The heat of the moment is too much for him; he flees.
As Kimberley bends over near the witness stand, dabbing at her skirt with tissues, Jonathan appears from behind me. He extends to her a folded light-blue handkerchief. To my astonishment she accepts it, though without word or expression.
“It’s not a flag of surrender, Kimberley,” Jonathan says, and draws me aside and speaks with an air of weariness. “I want to give evidence, Arthur.”
I am not sure I have heard him correctly. I have him repeat it, then I respond: “Over my dead body.”
“I can’t stay silent in the face of her lies.”
“It’s a good thing your psychiatrist is here, Jonathan. She can have your head examined immediately.”
“Talk to her, Arthur.”
I sigh. “I’ll go change. Meet me across the street at the El Beau Room.”
We are subpoenaed into chambers, where we find Wally in shirt sleeves, changing into his suit. He refuses to look at me, still aggrieved.
“This sort of intimidation doesn’t sit well with me, Beauchamp. I’d handle her differently were I defending. Kid gloves.”
“I am reminded of a saying: ‘Nothing is given so profusely as advice.’ “
Wally looks as if he is about to square off with me, but Patricia intercedes. “Arthur, Mrs. McIntosh is anxious to get back to Reverend Hawthorne. He’s at home with a temperature. Can we do her first thing in the morning?”
“No, I do not want my cross of Kimberley Martin blunted by delay.”
Wally grumbles, “We’ll just carry on in the normal way, then.”
I must make amends to his pouting lordship. “What do you say, Patricia, shall we invite our esteemed judge out to dinner tonight?”
“I’ll make that a joint submission.”
“Okay, Wally? You and the four lawyers. And bring Melanie. We’ll let our hair down a bit. Like the old days.”
Wally stands before his dressing-bureau mirror, adjusting his tie. “Well, we were planning to have dinner out. . ”
“Splendid,” I say. “Pierre’s. I’ll reserve for six at seven-thirty.”
The El Beau Room is the bar at which in former times I held Dionysiac court, regaling friends with drunken, salty wit. I recognize many cronies here: lawyers, court staff, sheriffs, a former crooked constable I once defended, now in real estate.
Jonathan is alone at a table. I ask him what happened to Dr. Dix. “She had an emergency, seriously ill patient. She’d like to meet you this evening.”
I tell him of my dinner arrangements. Tomorrow, he urges.
“What can she tell me that you can’t?”
“Why I need to give evidence.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “This is the right thing you are so set on doing? Jonathan, the trial is finally on the proper course. Read the jury. They are in doubt. It is a reasonable doubt. When they learn that no sperm was found within her, that doubt could expand exponentially. Rape with a condom? How unlikely that will seem.”
“She claims she took a douche, Arthur. Only I can prove we used a condom. . Look, what’s the through line for the rest of Kimberley’s cross-examination?”
“What do you think it is?”
Jonathan takes a deep breath. “Okay. The drunken couple have boisterous, bruising sex. They fall asleep. She awakes. Hangover and reality set in. She panics when she realizes how late it is. Her fiance is the spoiled heir to a fortune. She doesn’t want him to know she made love to her professor on Remy’s first night back. She doesn’t quite have both oars in the water yet, and scripts this ridiculous scenario whereby she is tied and raped, and defaced with a tube of Shameless lipstick. She runs next door: A, to secure a witness, and B, to call Remy. She never expects charges will be laid, but a battle royal ensues over the issue. Remy grabs her by the wrists to control her, and bruises her up some more.”
“And is that how it was?”
“I’d like you to talk to Jane.”
“I’ll meet with her tomorrow.”
Obviously, Dr. Dix will be his surrogate truth-teller and, I fear, the bearer of unwelcome news he cannot himself impart.
Back in my room, I try to quell the disquiet I feel about Jonathan’s absurd urge to tell the jury. . what? Are we yet to have another amended history? Why can’t Jonathan simply keep his mouth shut and stick to one perfectly satisfactory if inoperative version of the truth?
I am quite prepared to resign as counsel if he refuses my advice. Let that be an end to it.
I attend to a more important matter, a little toot of my favourite non-prescription drug. This evening Margaret is by her phone. As always I savour that pleasant numbing sensation when I hear her voice. She is cheerful, through worried about the weather: More rain is forecast on the weekend for gloomy Garibaldi.
She describes a typical island day: One of her geese escaped down Potter’s Road and attacked a cyclist; Stoney and Dog are back on the job, but are still hiding from the law, sleeping on air mattresses in my garage; Kurt Zoller has had to shut down his water tanking business and is “wandering around with some rip-off logger trying to bribe people to clear-cut their lots.” After she concludes her report she asks for mine.
“It’s looking very good. I am starting to smell acquittal from this jury. “There commences an hour-long strutting gasconade as I boastfully describe my pas de deux with Kimberley Martin. But I am fair: I give my fencing opponent the points she earned, the touches. I also tell Margaret of my client’s eagerness to bare all, his crisis of conscience — if that is what it is.
“But isn’t that what the jury should hear — the truth?”