I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (24 page)

Perhaps this mushrooming state of senescence – am I to become a vegetable myself? – has led me mindlessly back to the law courts. It's a deeply personal case, one that I and no other can argue, one that still evokes dreams of being naked where the Squamish River flows, of feeling its pull, its remorseless, lethal pull. This will definitely be my last role in the
theatrum lex
. I mean it. This time I mean it.

How many times have I made that vow? Since fleeing to the island from Vancouver a dozen years ago, intending to retire to book-lined den and garden patch, Arthur Ramsgate Beauchamp,
Queen's Counsel, has been dragged back multiple times to do battle, usually at the wheedling insistence of Roy Bullingham, my flint-eyed ancient partner at Tragger, Inglis. This re-entry, though, is my own risky, ineluctable choice.

I wait for Dooley to finish up, then limp toward him for our traditional exchange of insincere well wishes. He reads my slow progress and confidently announces his diagnosis: “Plantar fasciitis.”

“Yes, I've been to a foot specialist.” Something to do with inflamed heel tendons. “He told me to get fitted with orthotics.”

“For that advice he goes to some fancy city specialist.” Dooley shakes his head. “Smoke a little pot. Works wonders for my arthritis.”

“I am shocked.”

“Get with the changing times, Arthur.”

I take a moment to assimilate this new information: Doc Dooley, eighty-nine, a decade and a half my senior, lithe, sharp, everything still working, has taken to soothing his aches and pains with pot. I am leery about cannabis; I experimented with it years ago and found it pleasurable and therefore dangerous, like alcohol. But it's as available as gumdrops on this island, especially now – high season, harvest time.

Dooley glances at my offerings with shrugging indifference. “Nice collection. The kohlrabi ought to win.”

“I always like to throw in a few oddballs for the A.O.V.” Any other vegetable. “Not in it for the competition, of course.”

“Of course not, Arthur.”

“Answering the call of the community, that's what it's all about, isn't it? Sharing this fine island tradition with our neighbours in relaxed conviviality.”

“As I see it, we're educators. Grow local, buy local, eat local.”

A noble cause that discredits my platitudinous twaddle. “Absolutely. Encourage others to grow their own healthy food.”

“I'm not one to count ribbons,” Doc says. “Educate, spread the organic word.”

I nod vigorously. “Amen.” The Mabel Orfmeister is the last thing on my mind.

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

BEAUCHAMP WENT INTO TRAINING in the final weeks before the trial, much as a young contender might in preparing for a match against the heavyweight champ. Having traded the many temptations of downtown for the relaxed ambience of Kitsilano (a neighbourhood soon to become an international hub of the psychedelic sixties), he spent his free time taking long beach walks and swimming and rowing, toning up his body while seeking to relax so he would not come into court tight and mentally stressed.

He even managed to abstain from drink during that time, and consequently was seeing less of his cocktail companion Hubbell Meyerson. With Ira Lavitch gone and Beauchamp's romance (if we dare call it that) with Ms. Moore having collapsed under the weight of sheer implausibility, he felt almost friendless. Frequent visits to Oakalla Prison Farm helped make up that deficit: long sessions with his client, lively debates about art, history – especially the heroic, tragic life of Louis Riel – current politics, and even occasionally about the case.

Worries constantly broke through during Beauchamp's training regime, a sense he wasn't competent for the task ahead. The elaborate effort to frame Swift had gone forward, he believed, because Knepp and his intimates regarded the young counsel as green, naïve, credulous. They wouldn't have dared such a game against Harry Rankin.

Legal historians have already noted the case's significance as a clash between the reigning champ, Smythe-Baldwin, and the young upstart who would one day wear his mantle.
^*
There has been much written as well about the controversial role played by the judge, Anthony Montague Hammersmith, the former city prosecutor, a man of acerbic temper and caustic tongue.

It is fortunate indeed that a transcript of the trial survived Beauchamp's efforts (often alcohol-fuelled) to turf out many of his early records. For some reason he kept his copy – indeed, the entire file – papers that ultimately made their way to the
UBC
Law Library's archives. (The cross of Doug Wall is now regarded as a classic and is recommended reading in criminal practice seminars.)

Very well. The deck has been stacked and the cards have been played, so let us move smartly toward the scene of combat, up the main steps between the impassive stone lions that guard the doors of 800 West Georgia Street …

I
'd hesitate to say how many thousands of times in my fifty-plus years of practice I've walked up those hundred-year-old steps. Once, before Vancouver took off skyward, you could see outlined against the horizon the crouching lions of the North Shore that inspired their stone-faced brethren. The courthouse had the stolid British Empire look that was expected of Francis Rattenbury's designs, but it served its purposes perfectly well, its high-ceilinged carpeted corridors and oak-panelled rooms providing a proper gravitas, a sense that justice is serious business. (Sadly, a glass and concrete greenhouse has since replaced it – Arthur Erickson's flighty view of a house of justice – and the Vancouver Art Gallery now occupies the old building, awkwardly, unsuited to its ponderous ambience. But don't let me go on …)

Ophelia was already in the rotunda when I entered, beckoning me as she joined a few others studying the posted dockets. Until now the name of the judge seconded to this trial had been a secret of the registrar and the Chief Justice. I was praying for a liberal.

“Justice Hammersmith,” Ophelia said, as I drew up behind her. “Isn't he the one they call The Hammer?”

I groaned. The former city prosecutor was an acid-tongued conservative and, worse, gifted with an intelligence rare on the bench, at least among the many failed politicians awarded judgeships as consolation prizes. At least he wasn't one of the dullards who barely listened to the evidence and convicted blindly. His charges to the jury were constructed to survive the Appeal Court, and most did.

I went directly to the gentlemen's changing room and gowned up, shrugging into a robe that gave evidence of previous sweaty battles, old stains, and repairs – it was a hand-me-down from a retiring barrister. This was Long Vacation, as the midsummer months were called, and only a few lawyers were at their lockers,
mostly doing continuations. I exited through the barristers' lounge, earned good-luck wishes from a few colleagues working out a plea deal.

I smilingly greeted the many standing in the hall outside the assize court. They were on the jury panel, dutiful citizens summoned from the voters' list, waiting to be escorted into the courtroom. I didn't see many non-Caucasian faces there.

The court was a high-ceilinged chamber with stained glass doors and windows and cascading daises in darkly varnished oak. The judge overlooked the court clerk and official reporter and, a few steps below, Crown and defence lawyers at their adjoining tables. A raised prisoner's dock was the room's centrepiece. For the spectators, rows of seats at the back and a gallery above. To the right was the witness box; behind it, the press table. To the left was the jury box, with its twelve uncomfortable chairs.

As I headed up the centre aisle I was aware of a hushed tension, reporters nudging each other. The clerk, a straight-backed old boy, seemed about to take flight; his elbows were out like vestigial wings, but he remained glued to his chair. Smitty and Lukey were watching him struggle, glancing occasionally at Ophelia.

I saw what the problem was. Ophelia was wearing trousers. Black, sedate, formal, but trousers nonetheless – unheard of in those days. I felt a little aggrieved that she'd chosen this ticklish murder case to push the boundaries.

Alerted to the emergence of his Lordship from his chambers, the clerk was propelled upwards as if on a pogo stick. “Order in court!” Anthony Montague Hammersmith in his crimson-enhanced robe stepped stiff-legged from the chambers door and mounted the steps. A halo of russet hair around a bald dome, manicured moustache, half-moon reading glasses that made him look four-eyed.

“I have a sense, Mr. Clerk, that someone is missing.” Sardonic off the bat.

The clerk looked confused and glanced again at Ophelia, as if she might in some sense be the one missing. Then he realized that the centrepiece of this arraignment was absent.

“Bring up the prisoner,” he bawled, and a pair of uniformed court officers led Gabriel from the well below the prisoner's dock.

More flustered than ever, the clerk had trouble with his lines. “Oyez, oyez, oyez. All persons having business at this Court of Oyez and Terminator and General Gaol Delivery holden here this day in, ah, Vancouver, draw near and give your names when called. God save the Queen!”

He meant
Oyez and Terminer
, to hear and determine. More orotund in Latin:
audiendo et terminando
. Such lovely though arcane jargon – calling for prisoners to be brought before the assizes – is meaningless even to most lawyers, a throwback to England's Dark Ages.

“You may release him,” said Hammersmith, and Gabriel's cuffs were removed. He sat, looking about, rubbing his wrists, taking in this grand and sombre court. He caught my eye, nodded, then looked behind him, spotting his mother and several friends from the Cheakamus Reserve. A nod and smile for them.

He was in better shape than his lawyer: clear-eyed, unafraid, finding strength from his Métis hero. On my last visit, two days ago, I had explained that the Prince Albert diocese had taken a cowardly stance, and he said, “Why are you surprised?” His cynicism hinted he was almost looking forward to a pronouncement of guilt, a chance at martyrdom, noble defeat. He often quoted Riel's simple, stirring words at Batoche:
In a little while it will be over. We may fail. But the rights for which we contend will not die
.

“Are we ready, gentlemen?” Ignoring the gentle lady beside me, at whom the clerk was still looking with steely disapproval.

As Smitty and I put our appearances on record, Hammersmith nodded at me and bowed slightly, which I took as a salute to my successful appeal against the most recent of his wrongful convictions. He did not remark on Ophelia's attire but looked at her with discomfort: an unknown quantity, a courtroom
rara avis
, in pants but unmistakeably female.

I applied to have my client join me at counsel table. “I would
appreciate having him at hand to seek his counsel during jury selection.”

Hammersmith studied Gabriel coolly. Here was the insolent young Native who'd blown up in the Chief Magistrate's court. A troublemaker. “I would imagine, Mr. Beauchamp, that he needs your counsel more than you his. Mr. Smythe-Baldwin?”

“I make no objection.”

His reaction displeased Hammersmith. “It is not my practice to let prisoners stray from their historic and proper station, and I cannot see how I can countenance it in a capital case.”

Smitty raised his eyebrows at this lack of appropriate servility. Hammersmith clearly distrusted the old Q.C. – he was defence-oriented, not a real Crown. They'd fought many bruising battles when the judge was senior prosecutor, so there were likely unhealed wounds.

Leroy Lukey caught my eye and winked. I wouldn't have put it past him to have gone judge-shopping. However else could we have ended up with The Hammer?

Jury selection, as was typical in those days, was a speedy process; members of the panel remained mute, not subject to questioning. I had names, addresses, occupations, and the right to challenge up to twenty without cause. I weeded out whom I could: the lugubrious dog trainer (probably worked with the police a lot), the red-faced hausfrau (imagined as a scold), the red-necked steelworker (who scowled at my client), the banker, the lumber executive, the prim vice-principal, the retired army officer.

The ones who got seated looked only marginally better: six of each sex, a range of ages, occupations varying from waitress to electrician to antique dealer to pumphouse operator. Two jurors got on after I ran out of challenges, a grumpy-looking customs agent and a hockey coach and former minor league workhorse, Ozzie Cooper. He had enough of a reputation among his peers to
get himself elected foreman. This was the Vancouver jury I had expected and feared – not a person of colour aboard.