William Deverell - April Fool

“She phoned, she’s relieved to know I’m innocent. We want to have the pleasure of you and your wife to join a small group of friends next month, God willing, for our wedding.”

“I shall definitely ask her.” I’m sorry, Arthur, weddings only make me sad. But thanks for calling.

Outside the courtroom, Arthur toys with his cellphone. As soon as he turns it on, it rings. Reverend Al, frantic and panting, as if he’s running. “It’s chaos here. Selwyn has disappeared.”

This is the information he gasps out: The celebration has become a shambles. Garlinc has reneged on the deal. The billionaire Arizona developer trumped the Save Gwendolyn offer by doubling it. There was an angry confrontation with Clearihue, almost a mob scene. No one was aware Selwyn had wandered off until Margaret raised the alarm. A group of kayakers spotted him disrobing at a deserted stretch of shoreline, letting out his ponytailed hair, wading out, swimming languidly. They thought he was enjoying himself, and they paddled on. That’s what they told the search party a few minutes ago. Everyone is rushing to that area of beach.

Arthur is in shock twice over. The perfidy of Garlinc. If Selwyn drowns, they have driven him to it. “I’m being called to court. I feel helpless, but I’ll pray.”

He can barely digest this horrible information. A genius IQ, a boundless future, but a depressive condition. Arthur is overtaken by a powerful image of G’win d’lin drowning in the Salish sea, her hair pulled by the tides like strands of kelp.

The Owl doesn’t like the way Mr. Beauchamp comes back to court looking like his doctor told him he has a month to live. When he approaches Faloon, his eyes are damp and red. “Excuse me if I seem distressed. I may have lost a dear friend.” He slumps into his chair.

Faloon isn’t sure if he means the friend is dead or has run off, like an absconding wife. Given he was ready to paste Sergeant Flynn for sabotaging his marriage, it sounds like the latter.

You wouldn’t believe from his defeated look that the trial’s been coming up roses all day. A normal lawyer would be looking forward to finishing off Angella. There’s nobody in here who looks happy. Mr. Svabo is smouldering, his dreams of besting the great Beauchamp burned to ashes. Sergeant Roadkill obviously wants to be somewhere else, anywhere, the South Pole in his Jockey shorts. Faloon’s sharp eyes made out a cartoon on his writing pad, gross, a woman eating cock. Flynn caught himself, scribbled over it.

Everyone stands for the judge, who is feared widely and known as Father Time. The Owl is thankful that his fate is in the hands of twelve peers, ordinary, lowly citizens like himself.

Mr. Beauchamp takes a minute to compose himself, staring at Adeline Angella as if she’s a picture in a museum. Maiden Turning on Tap, dabbing her eyes. He waits a bit more, then launches in, very controlled at first but you can tell he’s furious inside, trying to keep the lid on.

She, on the other hand, looks like she’s unravelling when Mr. Beauchamp gets on her about how she was living a fantasy life with her movie magazines and dreams of seduction. And how she had a sexual arousal disorder, as Doctor Eve called it. Flirting, then not making it to the end game. Faloon remembers how it was like making out with an air mattress, how she faked orgasm, though you can’t ever tell.

The great barrister is getting into it now, he’s on lockdown. He’s put his wife worries aside, he has a trial to win. Now he’s reading snatches from Doctor Eve’s files. “Adeline appears to be in deep denial,” “Adeline demonstrates little awareness of the source of her turmoil.” The last note, “Adeline failed to show up for today’s session.” When Mr. Beauchamp asks why, he gets, “I didn’t feel we were going anywhere.”

A month later, Adeline got into Doctor Eve’s column as Lorelei. Mr. Beauchamp reads it to her, her strict upbringing, her need “to discover inclinations which may be truer to her heart.” Which seems a nice turn of phrase, reminding Faloon of Doctor Eve’s poetic way of talking about the wind in the pines.

“I considered her a charlatan,” Angella says at one point.

The coup de grace is a recorded call, which Mr. Beauchamp manages to play on a cassette player after some fumbling. “You’re an unprincipled, unethical bitch who pokes fun at her patients in print. You think you’re so high and mighty and clever, wait till I see my lawyer, you bitch. I hate you.” Very unbuttoned, and an extreme reaction considering nobody would have a clue who Lorelei was.

The jury is all ears. The judge is staying out of it, but maybe that’s because he’s having trouble with his false teeth, you can hear the clicking. You have to wonder what he’s thinking behind his wide fleshy face and dark buried eyes.

Angella starts getting sniffy with her answers. If she felt this column was libellous, why didn’t she hire a lawyer? “Unlike some people around here, I couldn’t afford high-priced help. Anyway, I decided it was beneath me.”

A magazine writer ought to be adept at research, does she agree? Surely she researched date-rape drugs? Weren’t these drugs mentioned on her own Web site? She knew, didn’t she, that Rohypnol was easy to get on the black market? She has to concede to most of this, but won’t admit she knew Dr. Winters reserved for the West Coast Trail.

She denies knowing much about Bamfield, but then has to admit she knew Faloon was running a small lodge there. She had a right to know where her brutalizer was living on parole, so she consulted the police, who keep a sexual offender registry.

Mr. Beauchamp asks about her reaction to Faloon getting nailed for this bad beef.

“I wasn’t surprised.”

“And the reason for that is that you, madam, framed him for your own act of murder, an act as exquisitely planned as it was cold-hearted.”

So far, Mr. Beauchamp is keeping his temper. He owns the courtroom, everyone else is a bit player, even Faloon, even the judge. It’s his finest hour, it’s got to be the cap to his noble career.

He wades right into it, the whole gruesome scene, right up to Angella closing down Eve’s pipes. And maybe he’s too relentless, maybe he’s taking out his marriage crisis on her, this is becoming what’s called badgering the witness. He begins shouting at her, accusing her of having sneaked into Bamfield on a mission of death, and she screams right back. “It’s a lie, I didn’t, I didn’t! I wasn’t anywhere near that place…I’ve never been there!”

“I put to you that on the night of March 31 and in the ensuing small hours you were indeed in the village of Bamfield.”

“Help me!” She calls this out to the back.

A deep bass answers: “She was with us!”

The Owl swivels around, sees four suits, all balding and porky, all in bow ties, standing shoulder to shoulder, looking like they’re about to belt out “Down by the Old Mill Stream.”

“Sit down! One more eruption and I’ll have you behind bars!”

They retreat to their seats, but Mr. Beauchamp looks like he was just hit by a truck.

“Your Lordship, please let me explain,” Angella says. “These gentlemen escorted me home at one o’clock that morning. That’s what they came here to say. I was a little tiddly, I’d been celebrating.”

A while ago, Faloon was thinking about Sebastien Plouffe, buried underneath millions in the basement suite at the Cimitiere Saint Pierre. Now he’s thinking he might not be paying respects at his gravesite any time soon. Mr. Beauchamp isn’t reining Angella in, he’s still staring at the bow ties, it’s like he’s drifted somewhere. She’s taking advantage. “They’re the Whalley Wanderers, your Lordship. I have fifty other witnesses. My story had just come out, I was giving copies to my friends…”