I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (7 page)

A
fter picking up five days' worth of cups and glasses, balling up the sheets for the laundry, and putting the coffee on the hotplate, I reopened the Swift file and tried to find my place. But my mind fluttered back to the Georgia lounge, that awful moment when Ophelia saw me giving ear to Harvey Frinkell's filthy calumnies.

Early evening was upon the city, the sun dipping behind the blocky apartments of the West End. I had much work to do before my next visit to Gabriel Swift, but I felt stalled, unable to get my brain in gear. I pawed through my
LP
s, looking for something gentle and melodious – a Mozart quartet, a Beethoven sonata – but all my albums were in disarray, as were my books, my literary journals, my clothes, my unwashed dishes, my entire flat, my life. Anyway, Ira had begun to play his own records on the other side of our thin shared wall. He was into mainstream folksingers, Belafonte, Odetta, but also unfamiliar names he'd hosted in his coffeehouse, names that seemed playful, made up: Ochs, Lightfoot, Hicks, Baez, Buffy.

The hoarse whisky voice of Leadbelly penetrated the wall. “Good night, Irene, I'll see you in my dreams …” The plaintive, almost legendary ballad startled me with its ironic relevance: “Sometimes I take a great notion to jump in the river and drown …” The Weavers' version, popular in the previous decade, could not have escaped the attention of even a recluse like Dermot Mulligan.

I settled down with my coffee and picked up where I'd left off: Easter Sunday morning. Gabriel Swift has taken off running. Jettles puffs along behind, along with a dozen volunteers, and loses him.

At 0747 hrs the search party led by U/S finally encountered Swift standing by a boulder overlooking the river. He led us down a narrow gap in the rocks overlooked by previous searchers, a steep decline that
led to a flat overlook approx. 5 feet above the river. There I observed a number of personal items including jacket, shirt, undershirt, trousers, hiking boots, hip waders, a watch, wallet, ring. There was also an open tackle box and a fishing rod
.

This scene of abandoned clothing pointed plainly toward suicide. Jettles was experienced enough not to muck about with evidence, though he did go through pockets. Someone produced a camera and took photos. There seemed a chance of rain, so a canvas tarpaulin was laid over everything to await crime scene personnel.

Jettles seemed not to have had further conversation with Gabriel then, or later, when they got back to the Mulligan farmyard. By that time Constables Grummond and Borachuk had returned from their fruitless search by road, and presently Staff Sergeant Roscoe Knepp and an
ID
officer showed up.

Gabriel wasn't mentioned for the next few pages of this folio, which mostly comprised interviews with Mulligan's neighbours – only a handful, for there were just five occupied small farms in this chunk of flatland forest north of the Cheakamus Reserve. All responded that they'd noticed nothing remarkable on the previous day. No shouts, no screams, no floating bodies, no strangers, and, said one, “No bands of thieving kids off of the reserve.” All knew Gabriel Swift, knew he was the Mulligans' handyman and house-sitter. All knew he travelled about by motorcycle or, because it was frequently in the repair shop, by bicycle or foot. None of the neighbours but the McLeans had more than a nodding acquaintance with Dermot, and they only rarely encountered Irene, usually on her afternoon walks. “She barely acknowledged me,” one said. I picked up a slight disdain, a backwoods snobbery toward the hoity-toity hobby farmers.

Irene was subjected to a second interview, in which she remained Gabriel's stout defender, insisting he was “almost like a son to Dermot,” had never done anyone harm, never shown signs of violence. That seemed a slight exaggeration, given his assault of
an officer and the fact that, as she admitted, she had limited dealings with him.

She wouldn't be much help for a suicide defence. She'd told Borachuk her husband had been deeply involved in “his work” – presumably his memoir – and she discerned no signs of depression. They'd been looking forward to a visit the following week to the newly opened World's Fair in Seattle.

I'd met Irene only twice, on visits as a student to their Vancouver residence. On one occasion, having been invited for a glass of port, I arrived on the wrong day. Dermot was out and she seemed flustered, apologetic, her hair a mess of bobby pins. I saw her staring at me from a window as I left, and felt spooked. In my graduating year I came by to thank Dermot for endorsing me for a Cambridge scholarship. She invited me in, appearing less frazzled, and informed me that Dermot was hard at work in his study but would soon be down. She brought me tea and shyly scurried off, and I waited in their parlour for twenty minutes until my idol appeared, rubbing his eyes, apologizing – he'd obviously been having a nap.

They'd married late, both in their forties. She was now fifty-two, two years older than him, a minor academic from an agricultural college associated with the University of Minnesota. They'd met at a conference there. A laconic woman, rather busty but otherwise shapeless, and somewhat dowdy. I often wondered if he'd married her only to discount rumours that he might not have all his male genes in place, with his high voice and his occasional fluttering manner. But he'd confided to me she was indispensable, a studious editor and researcher who also typed his manuscripts and formal correspondence.

An appended exhibit list offered no clues as to what had happened on that hidden ledge above the river. The only papers found in Mulligan's wool-lined jacket were a six-month-old restaurant receipt and a more recent B.C. Electric bill. Coins, paperclips, and other pocket litter in his pants. The wallet had a driver's licence, membership cards in a few learned societies, an Esso credit card and a Carte Blanche, a pocket calendar, a snapshot of Irene, and
three ten-dollar bills and three twos. Curiously missing from Jettles's list of clothing were underpants and socks.

Gabriel was not arrested on Sunday, contrary to media reports, though he was picked up on Squamish Valley Road just after noon, while returning from the riverside search.

On 22/4/62 at 1230 hrs, with Cst. Borachuk driving and undersigned Grummond in the back of a patrol car with Gabriel Swift, the following conversation took place as copied into my notebook shortly after:

Grummond: So what were you up to yesterday, Gabriel?

Swift: I was on our traditional hunting grounds
.

G: Bag anything?

S: (shakes head)

G: So you like to do a little shooting, Gabriel?

(no response)

G: Maybe a little fishing too? On the river?

(no response)

G: When did you get back?

S: I was with my girlfriend all afternoon. Anything else?

G: What's her name?

Swift then asked if he was a suspect, and U/S Grummond said we had no reason to suspect him, we just need the whole picture from someone who knew the deceased so we can figure out what happened. I asked him again to state the hours he was with his girlfriend, and he said he had nothing more to say. Subject was released pending further inquiries and told not to stray far
.

Below Grummond's signature was a handwritten note:
Later ascertained girlfriend is one Monique Joseph, daughter of Chief Benjamin Joseph, Cheakamus Reserve
.

I was having an increasingly hard time figuring out what the Crown's case was based on. I suspected worse must be coming, but my curiosity was put on hold by a phone call.

“I hope I'm not interrupting anything.” She would have said something like that, a typical opener.

“Not at all, Mother.” The telephone cord uncoiled as I searched my cabinet for a part-bottle of rye I'd stashed on the top shelf. It was there, but empty.

“Not that there could be anything interesting to do in that hole you call a bachelor suite. What are you listening to?”

“ ‘The Volga Boatmen.' Paul Robeson.”

“Such a sad man. Lovely talent, but tainted by his adherence to the great false god. At least he's open about it” – unlike the communist sympathizers who, Mavis Beauchamp maintained, lurked on campus, especially in the arts and science faculty – “I need not remind you of Sunday?”

“Half past six. Professor Winkle is coming.”

“I would very much appreciate it if you did not get as potted as when we entertained Dean Prentice. And I don't want you challenging Winkle about his distaste for Lord Macaulay.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Another thing – it's in the papers that you're going to represent Dermot Mulligan's killer, so I imagine Winkle will ask about it. They were fairly close, you know, but I beg you not to carry on about it in sordid detail.”

“I shall be seen but not much heard.”

She finally asked after my welfare and I told her I was eating well – an outright lie. In days gone by I'd always had someone to feed me: the cook came Monday to Friday and on weekends there was takeout or Mother might make something. For that evening's meal I'd planned a tin of sardines with soda crackers, perhaps topped off with a bowl of cornflakes.

I apologized for having to cut the call short. The music from next door had stopped and Ira had come calling.

Ira Lavitch called himself a member of Kerouac's “beaten-down generation” – for short, a beat. He'd fled from Philadelphia a year before, certain that President Kennedy would be calling on him to kill for God and country in Vietnam.

“So who was that lady you snuck in here last night?”

“I must have had the radio on too loud.”

A skeptical laugh. “I give food for rides.” He pulled on his jacket. “We're serving up some chili at the Beanery.” His coffeehouse on Fourth Avenue. “Let's split.”

“Split?”

“Be gone, man.”

Chili sounded exponentially more appetizing than cornflakes. I wanted a break; my concentration was coming poorly.

As we descended the outer staircase we happened upon Crazy Craznik, as we called him, the bewhiskered landlord, raking trash near the back fence. Ira was sure he'd been a Nazi camp commandant in the Balkans.

Craznik bent down beside my Volkswagen and rose triumphantly, thrusting at me a lipsticked cigarette butt. “No ladies! No ladies!”

We stopped at a gas station before tackling the Burrard Bridge. I hadn't driven the
VW
since Ophelia brought me home the previous night. Realizing she'd filled the tank, I sheepishly paid thirty cents for a one-gallon top-up.

Ira kept prodding me about the night, the husky laughter, the smutty bumps and grunts. I declined to play along, though I was avid to know if I'd been deflowered.

“Didn't hear the rhythmic beat of the springs … Where'd you do it, Stretch, on top of your hotplate?”

Maybe on the floor, where I'd found the sheets. I wished I could tell him it was a night to remember.

“She a pinup? Straight or kinky? You looked so wiped out this morning I got the impression your kama couldn't keep up with her sutra.”

My boxer shorts hanging on the doorknob, like a trophy from the hunt. Was that straight or kinky?

“How come I never met her? How did
you
meet her? Not at the Beanery, I hope – only nice girls go there.”

Long-haired, long-legged twenty-year-olds, so cool, so mysterious that I hadn't the foggiest notion how to approach them. Different from plump, blunt Ophelia. I vaguely remembered telling her I frequented the Beanery, hoping to impress her with my bohemianness.

We swung off the bridge onto Fourth Avenue – a Kitsilano artery to the
UBC
campus, low-rent, architecturally bland, but with a few oases affording escape from the confines of academe. Ira often maintained that “a scene is about to happen here, man.” The scene was undergoing a slow birth, but there was a bookstore near the Beanery, an art gallery across the street, and nearby, a busker playing a harmonica – curly dark hair, a guitar slung over his shoulder, a glowing cigarette stuck between the frets.

Night had fallen, a half-moon rising. A clutch of people huddled in a darkened doorway sharing a bottle; the Beanery was a no-booze zone, and Ira's window sign made that clear, particularly to the licensing inspectors who often harassed him. Other signs promoted coming attractions: a jazz trio called the Alley Cats, a sitar player from Calcutta, and the Melodians, a smiling, stomping, singing threesome. But those were the class acts, justifying cover charges. Most nights featured raspy, off-key protest singers who played to thin houses and afterwards passed the hat.

Ira wasn't losing his shirt, but he was having trouble keeping it on. Competition was tough in those days, with live acts – Liberace, Tony Bennett, Sophie Tucker – at the Cave and Isy's and the infamous Penthouse, a
BYOB
club frequented by hookers, gangsters, gamblers, and lawyers.