William Deverell - Trial of Passion

“Got a timber here to shore her up,” Stoney says. “Couldn’t get nobody to mill it.”

The timber, roped to the flatbed, is a sticky, freshly skinned trunk of a fir tree, still bleeding its sap.

“It’ll add a kind of funky look.”

He is unusually muted, perhaps because I am scowling. He offers no explanation for his long absence, and I refrain from asking if he was serving a jail sentence for house-renovation fraud. But my grumping subsides. The true Garibaldian, I have learned, is not beholden to the cruel dictates of time. After a few courtesies, he and Dog gather their tools and advance with determination upon the veranda.

But before I can return to my georgic chores, the sound of a small aircraft rents the placid air, and it settles in my little bay and taxis to the dock. I sense immediately that the firm has sent bounty hunters to return me to justice — as it were — and indeed the passenger who alights is Hubbell Meyerson, old friend and senior partner at Tragger, Inglis, Bullingham. (Tragger and Inglis now haunt from their graves, though Bully, over eighty, wanders in occasionally in the flesh. He is the spiritual leader of a firm with 110 lawyers.)

Hubbell seems ill at ease, but wears a mask of bonhomie as I show him about the grounds. “Fabulous outfit you’re wearing, Arthur. The hick look. Where’s the straw between your teeth? I’m kidding, you have a very nice spread here. The word bucolic springs to mind. Arthur, you got out before they could destroy your soul.”

“The Lord maketh me to lie down in green pastures. As you see, I can offer something spiritual but, I’m afraid, nothing spirituous.”

“Good, you’re sticking to it. You’re to be admired, Arthur.”

We take tea on the patio lawn chairs while, presumably, the meter runs in the chartered plane at the dock, its pilot squatting on the port float, staring down at the minnows. There are larger fish than those in that bay. A boat must be purchased somewhere.

Hubbell stares at my two workers, who are both scratching their heads as they contemplate their task.

“Seems to me I heard somewhere there’s a lot of inbreeding on these islands.”

“Nonsense, those are skilled factotums of the many varied country crafts. What brings you here, Hubbell?” I cast a wary eye upon the plump briefcase that sits by his feet. “I fear you. You come not empty-handed, as a friend.”

He pretends not to have heard me. “Quitting at the peak, it took guts, Arthur. Here’s the best trial lawyer in the country sitting in front of me in goddamn coveralls. All those people who say you had a nervous breakdown, I tell them, hell, you just had a minor stroke, you want to slow down for a while. And in the meantime you’re giving a chance to some of the others. Cleaver, he’ll be doing most of the major trial work.”

Gowan Cleaver, whose surname suits his art. Why is this name dropped so casually in conversation? From a corner of my eye I can see Stoney working with a pry bar, wrenching out a rotting board. A robin carols from the pear tree. A turkey vulture patrols the sky above the bay. I wait for Hubbell’s second shoe to drop.

“By the way, I’d like you to glance at something, Arthur.”

“Wild horses will not drag me, Hubbell.”

“The preliminary hearing’s complete except for the complainant’s evidence. Kimberley Martin. She had a bad time with her exams, has to rewrite a couple, so the judge adjourned her evidence to this summer so she can get her school year out of the way. Gowan will finish the prelim, then hand it over to you to do the trial. Probably this fall. Three, four days, maximum a week. You whiz over, demolish a couple of witnesses, and you’re quickly back digging your farm-fresh potatoes.”

A heavy banging. The house shudders a little.

Hubbell opens his briefcase: accordion files, volumes of transcript.

“He wants you, Arthur. Honourable Jonathan Shaun O’Donnell, the acting dean of law at UBC. He wrote that savage attack on the Supreme Court — A Law Unto Itself. His father is Lord Caraway, a British viscount. Juicy trial. Big headlines.”

“I know Jonathan O’Donnell. I have already declined his retainer.”

“Yeah, but there’s some real money here. The Faculty Association has agreed to pay the whole shot. It’s become a cause to them, out-and-out harassment of a prof by a young lady who, for some unknown reason, cried rape. It’s not a consent defence, Arthur. He didn’t do it. You’ve never had a more innocent client. Just, you know, glance through the file. Christ, what else do you have to do out here in the godforsaken middle of nowhere?”

He has raised his voice in frustration, as if my placid countenance has suddenly confirmed for him the utter futility of his task.

“Hell will freeze over, Hubbell.”

“Look, I’m going to leave you these transcripts. Police, foren-sics, O’Donnell’s neighbour, they’ve already testified at the prelim. An interesting read. Hey, you’ll get a kick out of some of this stuff.” He brings out a few cassette tapes. “You have a machine to play these?. . What are those guys doing?”

Stoney is noisily at work with a chainsaw, Dog with a sledge hammer. “They are repairing the veranda.”

“Well, they — ”

The remainder of Hubbell’s reflection is drowned in the roar of the veranda roof collapsing and shingles cascading from it. The rest of the house has taken on a slight starboard list.

As dust swirls and settles, Hubbell cannot restrain an infuriatingly smug smile. “Why do I have this feeling you’ll be back?”

For a long while after the float plane takes off, Stoney and Dog stand by staring dully at the wreckage.

Dog kicks at the shingles. Stoney pulls from a pocket what I take to be a marijuana cigarette and lights it.

“Toke?” he says to me.

“No, thanks.”

Wild horses, I repeat to myself.

DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MS. BLUEMAN

COURT CLERK:

State your full name and rank please, for the record.

WITNESS:

Constable Fourteen Gavin Oswald Peake, West Vancouver Police.

Q

And were you on duty on the early hours of November twenty-eighth last?

A

I was.

Q

Tell us what you did and observed.

A

On that day, as I was working midnight shift, I received a call at oh-five-forty-eight hours to attend at the home of a Mr. Clarence de Remy Brown at 4214 Kildonan Drive in West Vancouver.

Q

And what did you do there?

A

May I refer to my notes made immediately afterwards?

MR. CLEAVER:

No objection, but I’ll want to take a very careful look at them.

THE COURT:

No question about it. You’ll have full opportunity later.

MR. CLEAVER:

I’d appreciate that, your honour. My learned friend has been keeping her evidence a little too close to her chest.

THE COURT:

You are entitled to full disclosure, Mr. Cleaver.

MR. CLEAVER:

Of her chest? (Laughter.)

THE COURT:

Oh, dear. I’m sorry, Miss Blueman.

MS. BLUEMAN:

If Mr. Cleaver wishes to continue making me the butt of his humour -

MR. CLEAVER:

Not the butt, Miss Blueman. (Laughter.)

MS. BLUEMAN:

I think it hardly appropriate -

THE COURT:

Order.

MR. CLEAVER:

Oh, I’m sorry, just trying to relieve the tedium.

THE COURT:

Order. Let’s carry on with the witness.

MR. CLEAVER:

Well, since the subject of disclosure has been raised, I am giving notice I will be seeking production of some tape recordings the complainant apparently dictated to my learned friend, Miss Blueman.

MS. BLUEMAN:

Long after the fact.

THE COURT:

You know the rules of disclosure, madam prosecutor.