William Deverell - April Fool

Mr. Beauchamp takes a slow, heavy breath, braces himself. “Cease, madam! The question then arises, whom did you hire to murder Dr. Winters?” That’s what he comes up with, his voice hoarse. To Faloon, it’s a bad question, the jury’s going to think he was B.S.’ing them earlier, it’s a retreat to plan B, maybe C, maybe the end of the alphabet.

She gets him good. “I can barely afford to hire a cab, Mr. Beauchamp.”

Faloon turns to see Lotis Rudnicki, the gorgeous sidekick, coming in, hair flying all over, shorts and flip-flops, a top which you can tell there’s no bra under it. She runs past Faloon to Mr. Beauchamp, speaks urgently into his ear.

“Miss Rudnicki, you may not enter the bar of this court looking like that. You may not enter the courtroom period , dressed like that.”

“He’s alive!” she shouts, as if expecting everyone to know what this is about.

Silence, then Mr. Beauchamp speaks softly. “There was a near-drowning, an event involving our colleague, Mr. Loo.”

“Yes, yes…the fellow without sight? Brilliant counsel. Well, I see the time is…We’ll adjourn for the day.” The judge scrambles off awkwardly.

As the court empties, Angella gives Faloon a gotcha look. Gotcha again.

Arthur pries open an eye, sees a multicoloured sky. The sun’s dying breath on Japanese lovers on the wall. It’s 9 p.m., he’s been down three hours, a needed refuelling. The bedroom door is ajar. Low conversation. Lotis Rudnicki and Hubbell Meyerson are still here. He can sense her pacing because of the ebb and flow of her distressed voice. “Todd Clear-cut! That prick!” The smell of her cigarette. “That shit-eating limousine liberal, he nearly killed him!”

Before Arthur took his nap, he’d talked with Selwyn by phone, in the Vancouver Island hospital where he’d been taken by helicopter. He’d swum as far as McGuff’s Islet, where he was dashed against the rocks. Cuts, bruises, a twisted knee, nothing broken. “I was sincerely thinking about it, Arthur.” Suicide. “But instead I just kept swimming. Then suddenly I was tossed onto the shore like a gaffed fish. I gave up. Decided to save it for a more propitious day.” Still cynical, but his life force had overpowered the dark urgings of Thanatos.

We’ll block the sale, Arthur vowed to him, with far more confidence than conviction.

He can hear Hubbell talking to an associate at Tragger Inglis. The terms bandied about are breach of contract, unjust enrichment, restraining order . Bullingham computed the cost of pro bono services, deducted that from the surge of new business its gesture will earn, offered legal aid to the Save Gwendolers.

Arthur can’t remember much of his cross of Angella this afternoon, except those gruelling moments when it blew up in his face. The Whalley Wanderers, Angella’s honour guard, three local merchants and a retired fire chief, standing proud in their bow ties. Arthur felt as if he were dying on his feet. Had a bottle been handy he might have ended a fifteen-year dry spell.

His former number-one suspect had given a brief reading at the Wanderlust on that last evening of March. Digital photos were taken of the literary event. Strangers bought her drinks. “Sweet Adeline,” that’s how the boys serenaded her from the stage. Lotis had uncovered this shatterproof alibi too late.

What, then, could account for Adeline’s molecules showing up in Exhibit 52? Contamination between exhibits seems likely, Angella’s DNA in accidental mix with Faloon’s, a scandalous forensic error. Dr. Munni Sidhoo may not be the expert she’s cracked up to be…

He can only pray her findings will be confirmed by Crown forensics-their DNA people are working overnight, checking her results. But then what? Did Angella engineer the murder some other way? How? Or does the answer lurk elsewhere, another paradigm?

Upon hearing Brian Pomeroy make noisy entry and smelling his steaming takeout cartons, Arthur rises, finds plates, chopsticks. Lotis is perched on the counter, morose, wiggling her flip-flops. Brian is digging into the bar, about to break his weak vow of temperance.

Hubbell protests that he’s expected home, his dinner is being held. “Got your second wind, I hope. By the way, Margaret is arriving tomorrow on the noon ferry. Told her I’d pick her up and bring her here.” He goes to Arthur’s ear. “You won’t whisper about you-know-what.” Margaret’s a casual friend of Hubbell’s wife. Marital cheating seems fraught with complication. How can it be worth the effort?

He’ll be in court when Margaret arrives, another misaligned attempt to link up. To ask her not to come would send a dangerously wrong message. Now it’s too late to call her, she’s early to bed, rises with the dawn. He wonders what she made of his pathetic messages of yesterday.

Lotis shouts. “Fucking Clearihue. Fucking Whalley Wanking Wanderers. Fuck everyone !”

Brian downs his shot of vodka and pours another. He seems somewhat in dread of her. Maybe he truly thinks she’s a dryad. Maybe he suspects she sees through him.

She has shed copious tears of grief and relief for Selwyn, reinforcing Arthur’s impression that her feelings are not platonic. Maybe she too is blind, denying these feelings, regarding herself as too tough to fall sway to the bourgeois concept called love. She’s devastated by the failure of the Gwendolyn campaign. Arthur wants to comfort her but isn’t sure how. He lacks hugging skills.

While picking at her chop suey, Lotis issues a string of epithets, crowned by a threat: “I’ll kill that cocksucker.”

“Right on, sister,” Brian says. “Kill the capitalist pig.” Drink has loosened the recidivist’s tongue. “There’s something I want to share with you, my love. I too am a kitchen communist.”

“Hey, man, get therapy. Release the self-centred child within. Learn to relate to normal human beings.”

“I’ll tell you about therapy.”

“Not interested.” She stalks away.

Arthur makes tea, leads Brian to the living room, where Lotis is making up the couch as a bed. “Shall we presume you’re staying the night?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

He regrets his formal tone, extends an invitation.

Brian is unrelenting: “You’ll want to keep your bedroom door locked, Arturo, so you don’t wake up with vampire bites on your neck.”

She says nothing, kicks off her flip-flops, bends to her packsack, pulls out a bag of dirty clothes, proceeds to the laundry room.

“I told you, she’s a loose cannon. It was her bright idea to test the jism for Angella’s prints. That test doesn’t hold up, we’re tits up, Adeline will be dancing off to sign a contract with Real Woman for a story about how she bested you again.”

He’s right, if the jury thinks Arthur targeted the wrong perp, they’ll suspect he’s been selling false goods all along. He made the mistake of running a prosecution, not a defence. Hubris.

Arthur steels himself when Brian asks if he may bend his ear. He supposes today’s session with Ms. Chow-Thomas went poorly. Here is a marriage crippled by truth and confession, too much sharing of sins.

“Caroline’s intimes were milquetoasts. A colleague of hers, American Poets 200, a pity whore, can’t get tenured, can’t get published. Lasted three months. Number two was in her birding club. Three or four times a year, always out of town. They allegedly share a quality I lack called sensitivity.”

Arthur slumps into a chair, feeling addiction prickles as Brian sips.

“Lila had the gall to tell me that Caroline’s relationships , her word, were a reaction to my womanizing, also her word.” His voice rising. “Womanizing! She’s been womanized, she’s infatuated with Caroline.” He explodes: “Damn it, that witch sent us off on that weekend with the sole intention of ending our marriage! She wants Caroline for herself! Christ, I’d like to strangle the conniving…”