I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (59 page)

Cross-dressers tend to grow into their fetish, Dr. Dare told me. I remember how flustered Mulligan was in the guise of Irene, when as a student I visited their home on the wrong day. Emboldened, he later made up scenarios, testing me, testing others, getting thrills from the game. That powerful performance when I interviewed his alter ego, who expressed such shock at seeing Frinkell's letter.

So many clues went over my head. The cloistered, boring life they ostensibly shared, never seen out for dinner or at entertainments. Gabriel didn't mention ever seeing them together; in fact he didn't see much of her at all during her brief times in the Squamish Valley. She never answered when Thelma McLean came calling. No photographs of them together.

Other clues: his talent for the stage, delighting audiences with his high tenor. In the lecture theatre: an uncanny ability to change pitch. In court: his clumsiness in high heels, overdressed, over-powdered. In the A-frame: no sofa where a couple might sit.

The modus operandi seems almost self-evident now. At the fishing hole he unpacked the women's clothes he'd brought, all but socks, and began taking on the guise of Irene. The excitement of the moment, the thrilling plan to disappear, and the erotic stimulus of the nylon tricot panties gave rise to an act of masturbation. An erring toss or an errant wind sent them flapping onto the tree root. He put his undershorts back on, finished dressing, fastened his wig in place, then made for Squamish Valley Road, becoming Irene taking her daily walk.

Heedful of Dermot's age, April rises when a kettle whistles, leaves for the kitchen to help. Wentworth's book is beside me. I ruefully flip through its pages and find a passage highlighted with two pencilled exclamation marks:
He was torn in another, deeply personal way over defending the suspected killer of a man who'd been his professor and mentor. He wondered if he'd be able to give it his all
.

Dermot's voice: “Thank you, young lady, you're very gracious indeed.” I close the book quickly as they return. April sets the tea tray down but Dermot insists on pouring.

“New meaning is given to the plucky expression ‘Never say die,' ” he says. “A murder trial
sans mort
. No murder, no murderer. Novel, I suppose, even in the wide experience of so celebrated a counsel as you, Arthur. Wisely, you scorned my advice to become a classicist. The sheer, beautiful irony of it is not lost on us, is it?”

I am unimpressed by his sang-froid. Does he imagine he can seduce me with courtliness? “I hardly scorned your advice. You were no less a hero to me than you were to Gabriel.” A gentle poke; too gentle. I'm fighting my emotions.

“I was appalled when he was arrested. I'd never thought such an eventuality might occur. You surely must have realized that I left that legal letter to be found by the police – a considerable motive for suicide. In the end I was left praying you would prove me wrong, would brilliantly demonstrate that your choice of the law was the right one.” A poke back at me that I feel in the gut. “At all events, he's a folk hero now, either despite or because of my vast disservice to him. I, however, am now lost to history, a squalid figure of fun.”

“The self-pity leaves me dry-eyed, Dermot.” My idol. The great guru of moral values. What a repulsive person.

“So, Rome has indeed fallen. What was the precipitating factor, Arthur?” He is seated now, in a recliner, his feet up. “My supposed reflections parroting Camus and Nietzsche and Sophocles? Quotes cribbed from my works. I give the forger, whoever he or she may be, a failing grade.”

“You may be relieved to know, Dermot, that the Appeal Court found it equally unpersuasive.”

“Or were your endeavours inspired by that pair of repellent slime moulds Frinkell and O'Houlihan?”

“In today's tolerant society, your legacy might have outlasted the vulgar headlines prompted by a few titillating photos. But it would never have outlived the rape of a young teenager under your charge.” An icy silence descends. “Sebastien visited you, didn't he?”

Dermot studies April, who has stayed out of this, though is alert, absorbed. “You must be very clever at what you do,” he says.

“It's your great-granddaughter you should thank, Dr. Mulligan. She's fourteen.”

As Dermot reflects on the significance of that – Caroline's age when raped – the teacup shakes in his hand; he's struggling to maintain his self-assured manner. “Poor Sebastien. What was one to do? He was … what, nineteen? Drunk, when he appeared on my doorstep. Threatening at one moment, sobbing the next. A litany of injustices. A few thousand to tide him over – until his next fix, I suppose. I could have paid him, but what follows that? Can money ever cure such problems?”

My thoughts spin back to that windshield-smashing spree and Sebastien's wry reflection on his crushing sense of futility: “It seemed to be the most sensible thing to do at the moment.” Anger has been welling up in me, the cumulative anger of weeks, months, decades, and I can no longer master it.

“Sebastien was your son! You denied him his birthright! As callously as you ravished his mother, an adolescent, your student! You condemned her to a life of prostitution and addiction! And
by God, you were no less pitiless during the trial. Brilliantly playing the tearful widow over an unclaimed human foot, knowing it would further sabotage the defence of a young man who admired you unstintingly. Whom you contrived to sacrifice to the hangman at what you dare call a murder trial
sans mort
. Were you so desperate to retain your legacy that you'd have sent him to his death? I believe so! I believe you have the heart of a murderer. Damn you!”

This is not me. I never let go like this, I am a great masker of anger, but now I'm fighting tears of wrath and revulsion, and I look away, look out his open windows, where a wren is sweetly carolling. I murmur. “A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.”

“One of the great sage's loveliest aphorisms. How apt.”

I want him to decrypt and solve this riddle. I can't help myself; I'm his student again, impatient for his knowledge.

He takes a mere second. “Don't look for obscure motives.” He puts his cup down, yawns. “Well, I wish I could offer more hospitality, but it is getting on. These old bones demand some respite.” Unruffled, calm in the storm.

We rise with him. We have no right or power to do anything more. The rest is up to the authorities.

“Oh, let me not forget. Would you do me the honour, Arthur, of signing this lip-smacking inverse
argumentum ad hominem?
In the jargon of the pop critics, unputdownable.”

I open
A Thirst
to the title page and inscribe:
.

Dermot's face crinkles into a wry smile. The words are Greek to April, and he interprets for her: “Plato. The unexamined life is not worth living.”

He holds the door for us. April has the last words, and speaks them first in Cantonese, which she must translate in turn. A Confucianism: “Do good, reap good; do evil, reap evil. Thank you for the tea.”

“You are most welcome. Adieu.” There is desolation finally in his aged, weakened eyes as he closes the door.

As we walk by, Morg barely looks up from her task, raking the leaves that escaped the blower. We carry on toward the beach, through the woods, and find Marie and Kestrel perched on a shoreline rock, close and confiding in the dying sunlight. We let them be, and my passion cools in the crisp evening air.

I play with my cellphone awhile. I'm at a loss as to whom to call. I have Hollis Wotherspoon's home number, and it would be pleasant to ask the senior prosecutor how soon our appeal court panel could be called into emergency session. I look forward to seeing Martha Schupp, C.J., fall all over herself, to watching Ram Singh struggle to find something funny about this outcome.

There will be reparations for Gabriel, of course. Many millions – the state must pay for what it stole. I ought to call my travel agent. I hope Kestrel and her mother have passports. But maybe Gabriel can be persuaded to meet us here, in the country of his former persecution.

Marie cries out, “Look!”

April and I turn. She starts running along the grassy verge above the high-tide line, but I can't see why. Twilight has set in. I search the dimness, the rocky beach where Marie and Kestrel are pointing.

A skinny naked figure is wading into the ocean. Dermot Mulligan. His clothing is sitting in a clump on a barnacle-encrusted rock. He is up to his thighs, his hips. April is clambering across the rock-strewn shoreline. Now I am running too, all of us are, including Morg, who is thundering toward the water.

But Dermot will have his suicide after all. The wind has risen and the tide is up, a big tide, and a wave quickly catches him. He may have been caught in a swift current, because he is swept off, disappearing, a sandaled foot rising from the chop, vanishing.

April is hesitating at the water's edge, contemplating a treacherous rescue. “Don't even think of it!” I shout.

Even Morg has stalled, up to her knees. She slips and makes a great splash, flounders a while, then crawls back to shore, wailing. Neighbours are out by now, and two young men rush a skiff into the water, clamber in, lowering its thirty-horse engine. But
darkness is enshrouding the strait as they take off, and the only living creature bobbing in the water is a curious seal.

April has just finished calling 911 when I catch up to her.

“Goodnight, Irene,” I say softly, staring at the voracious sea.

“I
wish I could join you in court,” Margaret says. “Sorry to miss your big day.”

“You didn't. My big day was November 18, 1994.”

“I only married you then because you're such a great bullshit artist.”

We came off the
Queen George
a short while ago and are heading to the airport by taxi. She has already extended her Thanksgiving weekend and can't afford to miss her spot in question period tomorrow.

I will continue on to Vancouver but return forthwith, after my duties in court. I left my Fargo in the lot at the Garibaldi ferry, not chained to anything, a ripe target for the trucknapper whose Mustang has been impounded for bad brakes and bald tires by a newly installed constable, determined to restore law and order on the island.

I'm feeling rather pillowy after the long weekend – meals with the Nogginses, the Sproules, and an event at the community hall. I had a dream last night about being pursued by turkeys, and I woke Margaret up by going, she claims,
gobble, gobble
.

“Let me try this on you.” Margaret has her Blackberry out and is thumbing words onto the screen. “Question for the Honourable Minister of Energy. How much longer does he plan to be giving blow jobs to the oil bosses?”

“Too subtle.”

We're nearing domestic departures, and she tucks the device into her bag. “Try to come to Ottawa before Christmas. Not for a few weeks, though; I'll be pretty cramped.” Her friend Les Falk has split up with her boyfriend, will be batching awhile with her. “You should really treat yourself to a holiday.”

“I have an invitation for Costa Rica.”

“Brian Pomeroy? Oh, I don't know, he'll just get you in trouble … What the hell, do it.”

A kiss, a hug, another kiss, declarations of love, and I proceed away, wondering what's going on with her and Les Falk. I laugh at myself for falling prey to suspicion. Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous …

I have plenty of time to stop at the office and pick up my court gear. Gertrude isn't here; she's off to Hawaii with her daughter and grandkids (and why shouldn't I go to some similar tropical clime?). Bully is here, though, who denounces holidays as wasteful exercises in indolence. As he escorts me out I make my standard declamation of final retirement.

He scoffs and offers to bet a hundred thousand dollars, then laughs when I fail to take him up on it. “Junkie,” he calls after me.