Trial of Passion (36 page)

Obviously it is she who really needs the extra time. I have managed to push her far ahead of schedule. ”
Tempus fugit,
my dear. Proceed with your case.”

As the room clears, Gundar Sindelar passes me a thin file. “Graphs, transcripts, examiner's report. Mr. Mackleson is available if you need to talk to him.” The polygraph examiner.

I pass the file to Augustina. “Talk to Mackleson and meet Jonathan and me in my hotel room for lunch.”

“Sure. Order me a salad.”

Jonathan and I take the stairs down, and walk silently out past the statue of solemn, firm-breasted Themis, goddess of justice and consort of Jupiter, onto the second-storey promenade and its artificial forest and waterfall, then down to busy Robson Square. Only a minute's stroll away is the Hotel Vancouver, grande dame of the city's better inns, a blocky Gothic fortress. My suite on the ninth floor overlooks Georgia Street, the exterior façade guarded by concrete gargoyles, griffins craning their necks, looking malevolently below.

“Gruesome decorations,” Jonathan says.

“A conceit of Gothic architecture,” I say, and reach into my store
of trivia. “Evil spirits, seeing their own images, were thought to be deterred from entering Christendom's grand palaces of worship.”

“That one looks a little like Dominique Lander. Bloody woman tried to accost me during the last recess.”

“Try to avoid her.”

“She's on my side, she said. She wants to help me.”

But he seems less than eager to continue this conversation. Nor does he respond to my urgings to expand upon his so-called clearer picture. His mood remains solemn and dark. It is hard not to feel his pain.

When Augustina arrives she spreads several papers and graphs across the desk.

“There's just a little more activity on the charts than I think there should be when the examiner asks the critical questions: Was she raped? Is she telling the truth? I'm no expert. Mackleson is, and he says that's normal, just a natural autonomic response to a stressful memory.”

“The actress Kimberley Martin,” says Jonathan. “This is her shtick, the violated woman.”

“But here, look at this — the lines almost go off the sheet.”

All four lines on the graph paper shoot upward at the point she indicates.

“What was the question?”

“‘Were you physically attracted to Professor O'Donnell?' She answered, ‘Not really.' Mackleson said she was lying, and so it was a terrific control question.”

A sharp intake of breath from behind my shoulder — Jonathan seems unduly startled, but his tone is cynical. “Should I be flattered? Yeah, she's attracted to me, all right. That's why she wants me locked up for about twenty years. Remove the temptation.”

I ask Augustina, “Does she know she answered untruthfully?”

“Mackleson didn't tell her. But Patricia is having lunch with her so I imagine it will be discussed. Here's another jump: ‘Have you ever
been sexually assaulted before?' And she answered, ‘Never.' The examiner said Kimberley was emphatic, but he called her big reaction a stress anomaly — there would be no reason for her to lie.”

Jonathan says, “Maybe I should take the test.”

“To prove your innocence to whom?”

“Well, maybe to you, Arthur,” he says with a strained vehemence. Does he question my allegiance to his cause? “I'm sorry, that was a dumb thing to say. I just feel so damn alone sometimes, a nonperson, ignored, a neutral object caught up in a clever courtroom game. Why is innocence treated as incidental, a kind of academic irrelevancy? The aim is to work the system, right? — get the bad guy off, who cares if he actually
did
it? Oh, shit, forget it, I'm just shooting off my mouth when I should be down on my knees to you, Arthur. I'm frustrated; I'm scared.”

This dithyramb of pent-up grief impresses me as deeply felt. I feel ashamed that he has so obviously tuned into the niggling sense of distrust I have secretly harboured.

Augustina takes his hand. “We're here for you a hundred per cent, Jonathan. You're not alone. You're innocent and we're going to prove it.”

She speaks with an earnestness I can't quite summon, but I must make an effort. “Quite so. There can be no question.” How sincere does that sound? Yet his emphatic plea, his offer to put his credibility to the test of a machine, argues strongly for his innocence. I must try to put my petty doubts aside.

In the fifth-floor mezzanine, Charles Stubb, our future prime minister, approaches Jonathan and me with a salesman's smile and shakes our hands in turn, speaking in conspiratorial undertones. “Everything going all right? Any last-minute advice?”

Try not to sound bombastic? Avoid long speeches? Beware of coating Jonathan with too much sugar?

“Just don't overdo it, Charles,” I say.

“I don't catch your meaning, sir.”

Jonathan interprets: “He's telling you not to spread the butter on too thick.”

Stubb's protruding ears turn as red as sails at sunset, but the damage to his ego heals promptly — he will make a fine politician. “Sure, I get the point, don't come on too strong.”

But as court resumes, Charles Stubb embarks on a pathetic eulogy for Jonathan, sadly ignoring our advice not to fawn over him, describing him as “a man of fierce intellect who is highly respected by students and faculty alike.” Patricia works like a sheepdog to keep him in line, cutting him off when he becomes discursive. This is clearly not the fat part of the Crown's case, and she hopes to make his long story short.

Wally, who can't keep his mouth shut, runs interference for the witness, chastising Patricia for amputating the limbs of his answers. I can find no occasion to object: Wally is doing everything for me, my surrogate, my gofer — though I am finding his interruptions time-wasting and annoying.

After Stubb concludes a rambling account of Kimberley tagging doggedly after Jonathan at the dance and after-party, impatient Patricia ushers the witness quickly into Jonathan's Jaguar and up to his house.

“By then I was pretty well the only sober person in the car. I may have had one beer. I'm not a —”

“What about the others?”

“Well, I sure wasn't going to let Professor O'Donnell drive. Paula Yi was okay — she'd had a few, I guess. Egan Chornicky was higher than a kite, and Kimberley was
very
boisterous — I don't know how much she had to drink. I would say a lot.”

I watch for reactions from the jury as Stubb tells them about Kimberley's costume change, but only one censorious-looking woman in the front row seems at all offended.

Seated at the back, I am distressed to see, is Dominique Lander, busily sketching. I must advise Patricia that as a possible witness she should not be here; she will cause Jonathan unneeded discomfort.

Patricia asks, “While she was still in her dress, did you notice any bruising on her? Especially her ankles or wrists?”

“I can't say I did.”

“Did she ever fall down or bang into anything?”

“Not that I saw.”

Those bruises remain the Crown's strongest weapon. How are they to be explained?

Stubb's lame reason for leaving Kimberley behind at Jonathan's house: “She was going to be heading off in another direction anyway.”

“Where?”

“Up to her boyfriend's place in the British Properties.” “How do you know that?”

“Well, she told me —”

“Objection,” says Wally Sprogue. “That's hearsay.” He has risen an inch from his chair, but sheepishly settles back. Wally has forgotten he is no longer a lowly barrister: I cannot help but smile.

“Objection sustained,” I say. “Old habits die hard, m'lord.”

“Yes. Quite. Carry on, witness.” He is flustered; how easily the vain embarrass.

“Anyway, it would make more sense for her to take another cab after she slept it off a little.” Stubb adds: “We knew she'd be okay. We knew Professor O'Donnell wouldn't —”

“Thank you. Those are all my questions.”

“Let the witness finish,” says Wally.

“He wants to answer a question I didn't ask him,” Patricia says.

Wally purrs to the young man: “What were you about to say, sir?”

“Professor O'Donnell acted like a gentleman all evening. He would never do a thing like this.”

“Thank you. Cross-examination, Mr. Beauchamp?”

I have not liked Stubb's evidence at all. Too glossy, too puffy, too
sycophantic. Cross-examination would seem utterly self-serving. “Nothing, thank you.”

Stubb walks from the stand looking disappointed; he had more to say. Patricia, in a severe pet, talks heatedly with her assistant, Sindelar, then turns on Wally. “I hope it's clearly on the record that his last little speech was elicited by your lordship.”

Wally assumes a hurt expression. “That's what you get for cutting him off. We'll take the mid-afternoon break.”

In the mezzanine, Kimberley Martin and Clarence de Remy Brown are chatting with Paula Yi — much too amicably. Miss Yi will be the next witness: a rebel, a feminist, a victim herself of male assault, she must be handled with scrupulous care.

Farther down the hallway I am shocked to observe Jonathan in an altercation with Dominique Lander, who has him backed against a wall. From their expressions, the exchange seems sharp.

Jonathan tries gently to push her away and she slaps his hand. As I advance quickly to intervene, she slaps him again, in the face, then rushes away. I look about for jurors, but thankfully none are present, though others have observed this tatty scene — including Kimberley Martin, seeming quite taken aback.

Jonathan is breathing heavily. “Love taps. It's her way of showing affection. I told her to get out of my life, Arthur, that's all that happened.”

The Commander is severe with him. “You will not converse with anyone but your lawyers, do you understand that?”

“
Mea culpa.”

I am unsure what effect the episode has on Kimberley, but as I pass her on my way back to court she is smiling. A small benefit is derived from the contretemps: Miss Lander does not return to court.

“Call Paula Yi,” Patricia says.

Petite Miss Yi enters the courtroom tentatively, obviously nervous. She is dressed casually: jeans and a floppy sweater rolled at the sleeves.

Patricia repeatedly asks Miss Yi to keep her voice up; she is so
soft-spoken we must strain to hear. Our untrained puppy of a judge continues to intervene, seeking clarifications, expanding the answers; he will earn a poor reputation if this keeps up. Like a child, a good judge should be seen and not heard.

But my love-addled mind is unable to concentrate — as the scene Miss Yi describes is about to shift from the student dance to the
danse macabre,
my brain shifts, too, blown by a sudden southwesterly down Potter's Road, past Stoney's place to where the chickens freely range upon the road. I pause there to seek Margaret, but she is not to be found.

I feel a need to hear her voice. I require an earnest of faith from her, a reassurance. I must know that her whispered contemplation of the possibility of love has not been scrutinized in the cold, hard light of day, withdrawn, discarded with the morning's compost.

I'm not ready. Yet
.

“ Mr. Beauchamp?”

Dimly, I hear a voice that doesn't belong in my reveries.

“Do you wish to cross-examine?”

I plummet from the clouds and plop onto my chair at counsel table. One of the trial's most important witnesses is on the stand, and I have missed a vital scene: the snorting of coke in the rumpus room. I look uneasily about. Has anyone noticed I was gone? Augustina, for one. She frowns, a warning look: Stop gambolling in those fields of daisies.

I rise in cross-examination with a snap of my suspenders. But I have early trouble finding my bearings. “Miss Yi, I understand you had never met Kimberley Martin or Jonathan O'Donnell before that evening?”

“That is right. That's what I said.”

“And they were so friendly at the dance, you thought they were paired off as a couple.”

“Yes, I already said that.”

“Yes. Now, you told the jury about an interesting episode in the rumpus room.”

“Well, no, I didn't.”

“We didn't hear anything about a rumpus room, Mr. Beauchamp,” Wally says. “Maybe we should check if that's just water in your pitcher.”

This is a disaster. I have taken on the role of the court jester. But worse, has this reluctant witness gone over to the other side? In my confusion, I overreact. “Do you deny it? I'm talking about the cocaine, Miss Yi.”

She looks at me with puzzlement. “No, I don't deny it. The prosecutor never asked me.”

“Mr. Beauchamp, are we at different trials?” Wally is enjoying this tremendously, spearing me as I writhe on the floor.

“Sixty-two years of losing brain cells may have caught up to me, m'lord. Let's work our way out of this maze, Miss Yi. There
was
an episode in the rumpus room.”

“Yes. Sort of between acts.”

Meanly, Patricia has left it up to me to call evidence that could injure reputation. “Tell us exactly what happened.”

“Well, there was a bathroom break, and Egan Chornicky sort of pointed to his nose.”

“His nose?”

“Well, giving me a signal. So I followed him downstairs, into this room with a bar and a pool table. I don't want to get anyone in trouble….” She falters.

“I'll say it for you. Mr. Chornicky produced some cocaine.”

“Yes. From a little folded-up envelope, and he laid out some lines on the bar. Chopped them with a penknife.”

“Was there conversation?”

“He was pretty drunk. Didn't know whose house he was in, actually.”

“That's hearsay,” says Wally.

“This is cross-examination.”