I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (6 page)

Jettles's next incident report was longer, hammered out the
following morning, a Sunday, presumably over coffee – there was a brown ring-shaped stain on the reverse side of one of the pages.

On 21/4/62 at 2005 hrs, undersigned arrived at Squamish Valley Road north of Cheakamus Reserve, which is reached by gravel road, area mostly scrub, also some small farms including the above-noted with a hay field, barn, corral, and a few horses and fenced garden plot. Residence is a typical A-frame structure with large addition at the back, on a rise over the Squamish River, which had flooded its banks in places. This is a vacation home which the missing person, a Vancouver doctor, DR. DERMOT MULLIGAN, shares with his wife IRENE when not in Vancouver
.

On arrival, U/S met with BUCK AND THELMA MCLEAN, neighbours across from the Mulligans on Squamish Valley Road. They had just finished a search with flashlights along the nearby riverbank where Dr. Mulligan went fishing. Chinook and steelhead were running. They said he went off somewhere in the afternoon on foot with his gear and hip waders
.

The McLeans and other civilians hiked up and down beside the river from dusk until it got too dark. They found no sign of Dr. Mulligan. U/S asked if he had a boat, and was informed he has a canoe, which I observed had been pulled from the water and was on high ground. The family vehicle, a 1960 Buick Invicta station wagon, was in the driveway. The only other vehicle present was Buck McLean's new 1962 C120 4×4 International pickup, plus a 1956 Massey Harris 444 Standard near the barn
.

Jettles clearly suffered a fetishistic interest in rolling stock. It was a struggle getting through the report, and I didn't know how I would survive until day's end, when I hoped to meet with Ophelia and review – subtly, carefully – the events of the past evening. Gertrude, a mind reader, entered the Crypt with a tall mug of hot coffee, then slipped silently away.

I read on. Mrs. McLean had escorted Jettles into the Mulligan cottage, where a couple of other local women were gathered
around Irene Mulligan, comforting her and encouraging her to eat what she could of a re-warmed dinner made for two. The constable, still under the misapprehension that Mulligan was a medical doctor, learned little from her, only that she had warned him not to slip on the mossy rocks and not to be late for supper. She had gone for a half-hour walk that afternoon along Squamish Valley Road, as she often did, then returned home to prepare their meal.

Mulligan was a hardy outdoorsman despite his slight build and donnish way of dressing. This I knew from my own conversations with him, when he'd talked of his love for canoeing, hiking, skiing, and fishing, though he recoiled at the thought of hunting. He'd once confided, somewhat ruefully, that Irene was pretty much a homebody and didn't share those enthusiasms. He said her one passion was duplicate bridge – a hobby not easy to pursue in the wilds of the Squamish Valley. She much preferred to stay in the city.

On further inquiries, U/S learned the Mulligans employ an Indian groundskeeper who also house-sits for them during their absences. Name GABRIEL SWIFT, who is known to the detachment, as is his 1953 Triumph Tiger 650 twin-cylinder motorcycle. When not house-sitting, this individual resides at the Cheakamus Reserve, and according to Mrs. Mulligan wasn't around that day. She insisted he was a “faithful” employee and “entirely honest” and has never been any kind of trouble
.

However, in private Mrs. McLean approached U/S to dispute this, and she agreed to attend
RCMP
Squamish today, 22/4/62, at 0900 to fill out a witness statement form. U/S did not have backup to make inquiries on the reserve at night, and postponed that. Aided by Buck McLean and some other men, we did one more riverbank search to no avail. Dogmaster called in from E Division, with civilian search-and-rescue effort continuing today, Sunday, 22/4/62
.

Signed at 1037 hrs
,

Cst B. Jettles

Irene Mulligan had been in too distressed a state to be interviewed at length. Obviously I had to talk to her soon, before the prosecution could persuade her to alter her good report card for Swift. She would be a valuable character witness.

Thelma McLean was the neighbour who'd later alerted the press to Gabriel's unsavoury habit of hiding in books, thereby seeming “troubled.” In her police statement of Sunday morning, she voiced other grave concerns: Swift had “worked his way into Dr. Mulligan's confidence” and “had the run of the place.” He also tended to look at her in a way that unsettled her (she did not describe this look). Swift, she said, had been in the Mulligans' service for thirty months, since they'd bought the riverside farm. “The professor would come most weekends, sometimes longer, two weeks, a month, and Irene, she came less frequent, usually only a weekend or two in summer, but otherwise their caretaker had the place to hisself. Slept in their bed, I believe.”

Her statement was made not to Jettles but to Staff Sergeant Roscoe Knepp, whose efforts to draw her out had born dubious fruit. She said the neighbourhood was “a thieves' playground,” with “tools and building materials and anything you leave outside your house constantly disappearing, including clothes, even my own underthings and stockings I left on the line overnight.”

One would have thought her insinuation that Gabriel stole her underwear would prompt at least a sideways look from Knepp, but instead he prodded her: “Q: Did you observe that he had any sexual problems, or unusual perversions?” Mrs. McLean was likely having difficulty sorting out which of the known perversions were unusual, and could only reply: “I thought he was very spooky.”

That seemed so at odds with Irene Mulligan's assessment that I could only conclude that Knepp and his witness were in competition to show who was the more intolerant. Gabriel had told me he and Knepp had “a bad history,” which I took to mean the staff sergeant had a grudge against my client. I found a clue to that in Gabriel's blotter, which was stapled to the police reports. In October 1959 he'd been convicted of assaulting a peace officer.

His sheet also showed a juvenile offence for shoplifting (he was fourteen) and two adult convictions under the Fisheries Act. A minor record, paling against those earned by most of the sorry folk I'd defended. The one indictable offence, assault of a peace officer, would provide fodder for my next session with Gabriel. He'd been let off with a six-month suspended sentence. (Some years later the magistrate confided to me over a dram that he had an unsavoury view of Knepp, and had suspended that sentence to stick it to him.)

The mere reading of these reports was wearying. I thought of crawling under my desk for a snooze, but of course that would, by some arcane means, trigger a visit by a senior partner. They liked to poke their heads in to see if the worker bees were putting in their billable hours. I compromised by setting my chair into a semi-reclining position and resting my feet on the desk. I began reading Jettles's next incident report.

He'd shown up at the Mulligans' early on Sunday with two other constables. A score of mountain-hardy men had gathered in the pre-dawn morning – back-country guides, white-water experts – and Jettles had briefed them on their task. Both riverbanks were to be scoured by foot and by boat, five miles each way.

Jettles and his backup team had intended to carry on to the Cheakamus Reserve and seek out Gabriel Swift. But that turned out not to be necessary, for he noticed Gabriel standing among the volunteers, hiking boots on, a rucksack, a rope coiled around his shoulders, a Brooklyn Dodgers cap on his head.

As the search crew began dispersing upriver and downriver, U/S politely asked the subject if we could sit down together. He said he had “no time to sit down” and he “knew where to go.” When I ordered him to stay, he used foul language and set off by foot south, downriver, very fast, leaving everyone behind. U/S pursued but lost the suspect and radioed CST. GRUMMOND and CST. BORACHUK to follow Squamish Valley Road south and intercept …

I awoke to Gertrude's nudge and her soft voice. “It's five-thirty, Mr. Beauchamp. I'm going home.”

Through sleep-blurred eyes I made out that my feet were still on the desk but shoeless – my black brogues were on the floor beside me. Gertrude was in her coat, maintaining a straight face as she handed me a list of calls she'd intercepted. I managed a hoarse thank-you before she left, and took a few minutes to work the kinks out of my neck.

Among the afternoon callers, my mother, a reminder about Sunday dinner:
Six-thirty, please don't be late
. I recalled that Professor Winkle from the History Department would be there. He'd been a colleague of Dr. Mulligan, so I expected the evening to be even more joyless than usual.

Two calls from a client in constant need of coddling: a Liquor Branch quality controller facing his second impaired driving that year. Jim Brady, the labour activist, Gabriel's friend and political mentor. And finally, Ophelia Moore – but she left no message, no greeting, no offer of sympathy or affection. Gertrude had appended a note:
I told her you were tied up
.

Worried that Ophelia might have assumed I was putting her off, I shod myself, stuffed the Swift file into my briefcase, and hurried down to her floor, the twelfth. I found her office empty. A few overtime toilers were still about, and one called, “Try the Georgia.”

My long nap had resurrected me, and I sped on the wings of Mercury to the Georgia Hotel, across from the courthouse. In its street-front bar a dozen young lawyers and articling students were crammed around two joined tables, Ophelia sandwiched between two slavering wolves from Russell, DuMoulin.

She appeared to be enjoying herself with immoderate gaiety. There wasn't room to slide an extra chair in beside her, and anyway I wasn't about to demean myself by joining this sordid competition for her favours. The chief challenger was the dashing Jordan Geraldson, who'd recently won a $150,000 personal injury case, a West Coast record.

I slipped onto a barstool, my back to them, pretending eagerness to chew the fat with Harvey Frinkell, a divorce lawyer. “I heard you sprang O'Houlihan,” he said. “Good job.” Jimmy “Fingers” O'Houlihan was a slippery gumshoe I'd got acquitted of suborning a witness. Frinkell made wide use of his services against adulterers.

“Hey, I know her,” he said, eyes fixed on the mirror behind the bar, watching Ophelia in the reflection. He bent to my ear. “I did her husband's divorce. Pretty good job – she walked out of that courtroom practically naked.”

“What were the grounds?”

“O'Houlihan caught her
flagrante delicto
in the back seat of the co-respondent's Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk. The photos turned out real good. She's a honey trap – she's looking to fuck her way to the top. I heard she slept with at least two of your senior partners just to stay on after articles. Confirm or deny?”

I was too furious to respond. My hands, under the bar, were curled into fists.

“Look at those gazongas.”

I did look, and met Ophelia's eyes in the mirror. Her smile faded as she took in Harvey Frinkell leaning to my ear.

I slid off the stool and fled.

From “Where the Squamish River Flows,”
A Thirst for Justice
, © W. Chance

HARVEY FRINKELL, THE DIVORCE LAWYER who Ophelia Moore claims “screwed” her in the courtroom, was disbarred in 1974 for sleeping with and bilking a client. In subsequently drinking himself to death he has relieved this author of libel risk, and I can freely say there was ample reason why only six people showed up at his funeral.

Ms. Moore told me she well remembers seeing Beauchamp sitting at the bar, hip to hip with Frinkell, on that late afternoon of April 25, 1962. Her account was forthright: “Of course they were talking about me. Arthur was looking right at me while that noxious worm was practically sticking his tongue in his ear. I have to say I did lose respect for Arthur then – the cowardly way he retreated without trying to set the matter straight.”

During my sessions with Beauchamp he balked at repeating his brief conversation with Frinkell. Though he insisted that his reticence about talking about Moore was out of polite discretion, some light is shone on their relationship by a tangle they got into twenty-four years later, when as a high court judge she chastised him for his cross-examination of a sexual assault complainant.

Moore, eighty-three at the time of this writing and eight years retired from the Court of Appeal, still owns one of the tartest tongues in the women's movement she helped pioneer. She vividly recalled her evening with Beauchamp at the Lotus Land's beer parlour (“a hilarious time”) and driving him home. But as to whether and in what manner she spent the night, she said dryly, “If Arthur doesn't want to say what went on, I shall not embarrass him.”

So we are left to speculate as to whether this, the first of Beauchamp's handful of significant female relationships, played a part in shaping difficulties he later endured with the opposite sex, particularly with his first wife, the effervescent Annabelle Beauchamp …