I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (53 page)

“I saw your determined look, thought you were about to ask for a raise. A chilling concept.” A sly grin. “Your quitting, I mean.”

“And you dangled the gift of a murder trial.”

“Turned your life around, according to that fellow Chance. You'd have had a second-rate career had you not been scarred early. Fear of failure, Beauchamp – that's what makes for greatness.” Another follower of the wisdom of Wentworth Chance, who cynically implies I practised on Gabriel and learned from my rookie mistakes.

I remain at the window after Bully leaves, watching clouds gather doomfully, working through that brief exchange, remembering my pencil-chewing anxiety when defending Gabriel, the drinking, the sweats, the gallows nightmares, trusting him, doubting him. Admiring him, fearing him. Discovering the brother I'd yearned for, as he must have too, another only child. Yes, Bully, I was too raw. And cowardly, and too in awe of Smythe-Baldwin.

The phone bleats. I've asked Gertrude not to put through anyone lesser than president, prime minister, or pope, but I'm almost thankful to be snapped out of this dreary reverie.

“What kind of court have you got, Arthur?”

“How lovely to hear from you, Ophelia. I was just about to jump in the river and drown.”

“Yeah, I hear it's pissing there. I'm ever so happy here in the Okanagan drylands. Did you draw Webb?”

“Yes, thank God.” Bill Webb, a charter member of
AA
's trial lawyers chapter and a liberal.

“That gives you a little leg up. I suppose the Chief Justice appointed herself to the coram?”

“To be sure.” Martha Schupp, politically connected, more a formalist than a feminist. Catholic, anti-abortion. Stickler for rules, prickly, prideful.

“Martha loves her big media dramas. She never got ink when she was in practice. I don't know how you'll get around her. Your famous sex appeal ain't going to work. She has several cats – maybe there's something kinky about that you could play with.”

“I'll add that crucial information to my arsenal. The third justice is Ram Singh. I recall he was a bit of a class clown when he was counsel. You served with him in the trial court.”

“Wine, women, and song. All of which ingredients were in play during his affair with a lounge singer. Like most Tory appointees, he's without morals. He's probably known some racial intolerance, so that might help him relate to Gabriel. Careful how you use the word
Indian
. He's your wild card.”

We chatted a little about personal things. She is alone, widowed five years, doing some writing, a memoir. “Won't be as scandalous as Wentworth's,” she says with her throaty chuckle. Then, softer: “I'm so sorry I got on your case back then, Arthur. We were both too fond of Gabriel, but it's been harder on you. I called to wish you well today.”

“It will be a test for the eroding brain cells.”

“I'm not buying that. You're far fucking sharper than you were at twenty-five, and infinitely fucking wiser.”

“You still believe I should have referred this to another counsel?” A concern she expressed a few months ago. It's too personal, the appeal needs someone with balance, with a perspective unclouded by feelings.

“No, I've changed my mind. Or maybe Wentworth changed my mind. Now he has an excuse to rewrite his final lousy chapter. For you it's an act of redemption. So mount your white charger – avenge injustice. Save your soul.”

I have already made grumbling noises about the glass-roofed arboretum that is 800 Smithe Street, Vancouver's modernist courthouse. It's set within what planners call an urban park: an artificial hill, reflecting pool, waterfalls, manicured shrubbery. Within, a lattice of trusses supports an acre of sloping skylight that suffuses the Grand Hall and seven ascending galleries with a false greenish light.

The courtrooms of appeal are, befittingly, at the highest levels. Barristers may take a furtive back elevator from the ground-floor robing room or return to the Great Hall and ascend by a wide carpeted stairway. That is the way I choose, demonstrating to the
throngs below that the old boy is still peppy and spry. Outside room sixty I pause to catch my breath – it wouldn't do for their lordships to see me panting – then smilingly enter, with the confident swagger patented by Cyrus Smythe-Baldwin. The heads that turn include those of several aboriginal leaders, including Chief Gibby Jacobs of the Squamish Nation, and a score or more of young faces – law students conscripted to attend. Only half a dozen reporters, but appeals aren't as sexy as trials; fireworks are rare.

There is a case ahead of mine, an appeal against a multi-year sentence for some thuggery or other. The judicial troika of Schupp, Webb, and Singh are chewing alive an inexperienced lawyer, who expends most of his efforts quailing and apologizing. They use rhetoric like, “Do you mean to stand there and say …” and “Are you seriously suggesting …” and “If I comprehend your drift – and I'm not sure I do …” These efforts are led by Martha Schupp, C.J., the meanest of our appellate justices. A pinched face, the expression of one with a permanent case of acid indigestion.

The Crown Attorney is Hollis Wotherspoon, Q.C., a lazy old boy from a proper Upper Canada family. He doesn't know much law but manages to blunder through. Right now he is relaxing, knowing he won't be called upon, and he swivels about to give me a wink as I settle on the counsel bench. He has checked and tested my new proofs from the National Archives, from Jim Borachuk, the
DNA
analysis of the foot, even the videotapes of O'Houlihan's deathbed repentance and his naughty photos, and has generously consented to their admissibility as fresh evidence. He has balked, however, over admitting the videotaped statement of Ethel Brière. The confidences of Caroline Snow about her defilement were “ancient, second-hand hearsay.”

The young fellow ahead of me is reciting some rudimentary rule of sentencing. “We are well aware of that principle, counsel,” Chief Justice Schupp tells the supplicating wretch. “We're not complete idiots, you know.”

“I'm sorry, your Lordship, I didn't realize that.” Not intended as a wisecrack, more of a verbal knee-jerk reaction.

Schupp ignores, or pretends to ignore, the poorly smothered laughter in the gallery. “We do not need to hear from Mr. Wotherspoon. Appeal dismissed.”

The loser flees with his files. Wotherspoon is fighting for a straight face as he announces our case.

I take my place at counsel table and Ram Singh says, “I don't know if we're ready for you, Mr. Beauchamp, but I assume you're ready for us.”

“Ready to try our fortunes, milord.”

Singh smiles under his lavish moustache. He's a thickset man but athletic, a squash player. He is the one I will have to sway. I will not win over Schupp (unless I dazzle her with my love of cats) but I ought to be able to count on Bill Webb, a former corporate counsel who surprised everyone by being the court's sternest upholder of the Charter of Rights. His preferred manner is collegial, his look avuncular: bald but with a bushy outcropping on cheeks and chin. He's the justice who granted me leave to appeal.

All give me uninterrupted attention as I trace the history of why we are in this courtroom. They are not slow or lazy, like some of their lower-court brethren; they've read the appeal books and factums and know the issues.

I sense that Schupp is smarting from the wayward shot she took from the frightened rookie; with her look of pain, she seems determined to inflict some on me. When I finish my recitation of facts, she jumps in. “Can we agree, for the record, that your client has not given us the courtesy of being present in this courtroom?”

I was expecting this. “Let us say he is at liberty.”

“It's a notorious fact, is it not, that he has fled the country? And that he faces a charge of escaping lawful imprisonment? I need not tell you there is ample precedent in such cases to order a stay of the appeal.”

“Milady, the blunt truth is I have advised him not to appear, because of the risk, however slight, that I may not persuade this court to free an innocent man. Dr. Swift would then spend his remaining life in prison. As we speak he is in Bolivia, somewhere in
the Cordillera Oriental in the province of Cochabamba, recording voices of aged speakers of a vanishing tongue. He is leading an initiative to preserve and revive Native dialects, a program that has the sanction of the United Nations, and from which he cannot break free. In the meantime, the Canadian government has made no recent moves to return him to this country.”

“Is that right, Mr. Wotherspoon?”

Lost in other worlds, Wotherspoon seems puzzled for a moment, as if not quite recognizing his name, but finally stands. “May it please the court, the Canadian government has little recourse, because Bolivia has granted him refugee status.”

I add, “Ottawa has shown far less interest in his return than certain of our high-ranking universities, which have honorary doctorates waiting for him.”

Webb and Singh have said nothing through this. They seem embarrassed for the Chief, who has lost this one, particularly in the eyes of the press. “Proceed with the appeal,” she says.

I hardly get going before she again pounces like a hunting cat, when I admit to taking on the additional burden that my client pled guilty.

“Surely that's an overwhelming obstacle, Mr. Beauchamp. Appealing a conviction based on a guilty plea is exceedingly rare. My sense is it ought not to be countenanced except in the most special and unusual circumstances.”

Singh chimes in, grinning. “Especially when that guilty plea was advised by a counsel well-known for his mental acuteness.”

“Milord, at that point in my career I was about as green as the young gentleman who preceded me today, and far less keen-witted.”

Webb plays along. “You give yourself too much credit, Mr. Beauchamp.”

My hope is that when these justices look at some of the pathetic boners pulled by the young Arthur, they will let him off lightly. But the Chief Justice, with her penchant for rigid rules, must be confronted about the guilty plea. “If special circumstances be the
test, milady, this case is replete with them. You have an affidavit from a retired
RCMP
inspector that the two chief investigators lied under oath. There's evidence from a washed-up foot that, if I may be so crude, stank. Compelling fresh evidence is on offer that supports suicide. What circumstances could be more special and rare than those?”

“None of this proves your client's innocence, however.” Singh, flipping through my books of cases. “That's your burden, isn't it?”

Have I already lost this lover of wine and women songstresses? I let him know I'm affronted. “I have never understood our laws as requiring any person to prove his innocence.”

Schupp seeks to modify Singh's distressingly hardcore position. “I think what my brother Singh is saying is that your appeal can't succeed unless there is no reasonable chance the appellant was guilty.”

“I submit, with respect, that the appeal ought to succeed on the traditional basis, that there is reasonable doubt – an excess of it. No jury properly charged would find it safe to convict.”

Webb offers a helping hand. “I take it you're saying, Mr. Beauchamp, that the same rights and rules of appeal apply whether the appellant has been found guilty or has pled guilty.”

“Especially when the plea was practically forced upon the defence to forestall the risk of a death sentence. The guilty plea was based on matters as they stood in August 1962. Recent developments have caused so much structural damage to the Crown's case as to give reasonable apprehension of an intolerable miscarriage of justice. Our courts are not in the business of sanctioning such miscarriages.”

I get up quite a head of steam, leaning heavily on that grand phrase
miscarriage of justice
, associating it, for the benefit of her Ladyship, with abortion, though in the sense of a fiasco. And so it carries on through the entire morning, heavy wading but I'm up for it, no excuses needed, no pretence about the slowing mind. I am in a courtroom, therefore at home, in the comfort of debate, as others might be around their fireplace or television set.

When we break for lunch, I am too keyed up to deal with food. I head out through the West End, a peninsula of towers now, with few survivors of the sixties, those grand old houses. My old home on Haro has been spared, though. A stroll down the lane reveals a backyard swing set and a trampoline – evidence of normalcy, of happiness, the memory of Crazy Craznik erased.

Life was simpler then. I wasn't burdened by eminence; there were no high expectations. But now I sense those every time I walk into a courtroom. From the visitors' gallery, from the press table, from court staff and counsel. But I doubt that Dr. Swift shares those expectations. I have received no communication from him other than that crisp, chilly email authorizing the appeal.