I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (41 page)

My second ground involves the foot that washed up on Gambier Island in its men's size-eight Puma. I got an order to exhume it – which of course attracted great public chatter – and to everyone's shock, including mine, two X chromosomes showed up in the skeletal tissue. The defence had been misled by the Crown, I will argue, encouraged to believe it was a male foot – Dermot's foot – a factor that led to the plea bargain.

That exhumation was also prompted by a dig through Dr. Mulligan's archives that turned up a kind of suicide note – more a meditation on suicide than a cry for understanding. It had been buried in his papers for almost five decades. But how could that be? Would not scores of thesis researchers have pored through them?

The discovery of that note inspired an appeal that, old Riley informs me, holds the Commonwealth post-trial lateness record. I'd got leave to appeal from Justice Bill Webb, a crony, a fellow
AA
. That was in May, after advance proofs of
Thirst for Justice
showed up in Blunder Bay's P.O. box. Though I read with dismay the personal calumnies in “Where the Squamish River Flows,” I will not deny that Wentworth's dissection of my efforts helped propel me to action.

I finally clump my way to Hopeless Bay, the island's commercial hub. Overlooking the public wharf is Abraham Makepeace's General Store and Post Office, a venerable institution, and next to
it his new licenced lounge. An architectural novelty thrown up by local tradespersons paying off their tabs in goods and labour, this sturdy post-and-beamer is several degrees out of plumb. It still smells of fresh-cut cedar – Makepeace couldn't afford kiln-dried – and walls are already warping. Its most notable feature: a deck dangerously cantilevered over rocks and tidal pools at the toe of Hopeless Bay. Ernst Pound's
RCMP
van is sitting among the beaters and rusting pickups parked out front, and he and his auxiliary, Kurt Zoller, are up there on that deck, lecturing several of the regulars.

Before tackling my shopping list, I head up the ramp to the deck, hoping to be a soothing presence. Pound has been testy of late, and Zoller, who runs the island's water taxi, is an odd fellow with his twitches, flinches, and hints of paranoia. Slightly built, buried in a uniform a couple of sizes too big. Right now he is acting the nuisance, getting into peoples' faces, smelling their breath.

“This one has definitely been smoking.” Zoller jingles his handcuffs.

“Cool it, Kurt,” Pound says. He is trying to ignore me, but my presence may be adding to his irritation. “None of you individuals are the required three point two metres from this building, so I'm gonna have to pull Abraham in for not enforcing the smoking bylaw.”

A chorus of insincere apology – unnecessary, as the case fails for lack of evidence. No cigarettes are visible, nor an ashtray. Presumably all exhibits disappeared when the boys saw the cops driving up.

“None of us want Abraham doing hard time, so I'll let this infraction go if you gentlemen help us out about some of the local plantations.” Pound is referring to Garibaldi's main agricultural export. It's harvest time. His pathetic ruse to extort information is greeted by grins and silence.

“Come on, guys, or they're going to transfer me off this rock.” He's reduced to begging. “Don't want nobody's names, just locations. A couple of small grows. A hundred plants is all, just to show I'm doing my job.”

Ernie Priposki, already in his cups, issues a challenge. “Hey, Ernst, instead of putting the squeeze on us lawful abiding citizens, why ain't you out lookin' for that runaway girl from … from …” He tries to get his tongue around it. “Skachewan.”

Pound turns to me. “See what I'm up against? A wall of silence. Kurt, I'm gonna have a word with the counsellor here while you explain to these losers they can either do their duty as citizens or we'll be waiting around the next bend with a radar gun and a breath test kit.”

He leads me inside, takes a stool. I pause by the bulletin board, study a missing persons notice. The girl from Saskatchewan, Kestrel Dubois: fourteen, pretty, dark, slight, staring sullenly at the camera. She went missing five days ago, was spotted on a B.C.-bound bus.

Emily LeMay, the voluptuous barkeep, sets down coffees, then chucks me under the chin. “You old sweetie. When I think what coulda been.” A sigh. It disheartens me that Emily seems to have given up pursuing me, further proof I'm over the hill.

“Cut Priposki off,” Pound tells her. “I see you serving intoxicated individuals, I'm filing charges.”

“No wonder she gave you the heave-ho.” She flounces off.

The island is abuzz over the open affair between the constable's wife and the telephone man. Unable to sustain the mellowing effect of two stints on Garibaldi, Pound has become a surly, snarling cuckold.

“I'm way down on my catches for this year. Unless I pull something off they're going to put me behind a desk.” He looks at me in a needy way. “You're in the know around here, Arthur. Just a little tip – nobody'll guess it came from you.”

I am offended by the presumption I would rat on fellow islanders. I intend a sharp response, but Pound is drawn away by Zoller, who has entered shaking his head, still jingling the cuffs, obviously having failed to break through the wall of silence. Finally the two officers drive off, whereupon the boys on the deck light up again.

The opening bars of the fourth Brandenburg have me grabbing my pack from under the barstool, fumbling for my cellphone. My hello is answered by the seductive, breathy voice of April Wu, the enigmatic Vancouver private eye. She is on a retainer to unearth long-buried evidence in the Swift case.

“Arthur, I have come across something very interesting.”

“Do say.”

“I would prefer not to. Not on a cellphone. How soon can we meet?”

The possibility of a breakthrough persuades me to cut the long weekend short. “I can come in on Monday.” Margaret is leaving for Ottawa then to meet with her rump caucus, so a trip to Vancouver will allay the bout of loneliness that accompanies her every departure. “Surely you can give me a hint.”

“Silence is a friend who never betrays.”

April has a Confucian proverb for every occasion. My favourite:
If you don't want anyone to know, don't do it
. Quite the seductive beauty, this mystical young woman.

The afternoon is waning and I must attend to business, so I make my way down the ramp to the General Store, collecting oranges, pepper, allspice, figs, and pipe tobacco – foreign exotics not found amidst the bounty of our farm. Mint jelly too – Margaret is doing lamb; Al and Zoë Noggins are coming over for dinner tonight.

At checkout I engage with two fellow members of the Organic Garden Club, busty middle-aged back-to-the-landers whose tanktops read, respectively, “Wellness” and “Wholeness.” They're unafraid to flaunt hairy armpits, messages of female earthiness that have always excited me. I'm not sure why, and I'm not sure if I care to know.

My final stop is at the mail counter, where Abraham Makepeace is sorting this morning's delivery. The postmaster lightly slaps my hand as I reach for a pile of envelopes addressed to Blunder Bay. “I haven't checked these yet for junk mail.”

He pulls them away, tosses a couple of fliers into the waste along with a letter fat with coupons, then holds up an embossed
envelope to the fluorescent light. “This seems legit. Invitation to speak at the Commonwealth Law Conference in Mumbai. Chance for you to get off this rock. When do I ever get a holiday? Here's your
Small Farm
magazine. Wentworth Chance copied you a bunch of reviews for
A Thirst for Justice
. I don't suppose my name ever gets mentioned, though I was a major contributor. And here's something you might be interested in: a postcard from Germany. ‘Looks like François and I are quits.' Signed ‘A.' That would be your first wife, I guess.”

“Annabelle.”

“That's right, Annabelle. Sent you a Christmas card last year with her picture on it. Society gal. Looked pretty good in that low-cut dress.”

I have always envied the postmaster's sharpness of memory. Wentworth, an avid cyclist, spent many days pedalling up and down this island's byways, and many lucrative hours with this local archivist, recording mirth-provoking anecdotes: the time I showed up at the store unaware I'd sat on a wet sheep turd, the night the entire island was out searching for me when I got lost on Mount Norbert.

“Yep, Annabelle Beauchamp. She kept your name – I always found that odd.” Makepeace finally forks over her card, which illustrates the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, site of her husband's many triumphs.

My dearest Arthur
, it begins, disconcertingly, then goes on to apprise me of her pending divorce. No smudged teardrops, no sighs of regret or sorrow. Her marriage to that foppish conductor was bound to go under. She'd probably been outrageously disloyal to him too.
I'm quite well set up but I shall be taking up an offer from Opera Vancouver as sets manager, just to keep active. It would be lovely if we bumped into each other
.

I would prefer that a comet strike Earth and all life perish. But I will suppress mean thoughts. I have a moment of fellow feeling for the fop, the former wunderkind. Broken-hearted, no doubt, but generous in the divvying up. I have a loving wife now – preoccupied
at times, yes, burdened with important duties, but caring and loyal. Growing more restless as she prepares to dive again into the parliamentary whirlpool.

Margaret has been so engrossed in her preparations that she's almost oblivious to me. Her hug last night, after her return from an off-island fundraiser, was perfunctory and cool. Lips failed to touch lips. I don't mind that she's more in love with politics than me. I'm honoured to be husband of a woman who calls for carbon taxes and massive spending to stave off ecological collapse; these concepts are a hard sell to the air-conditioned masses.

Makepeace bundles Margaret's thick pile of mail in an elastic band, hands it to me.

“Nothing interesting in here?” I say.

“It's not my role to discuss other people's private correspondence,” he says.

Hoping I might cadge a ride to avoid the hike home, I relax with a pipeful on the steps outside the pub. Though
relax
is hardly the correct word: Annabelle's card, folded in my back pocket, feels somehow radioactive, hazardous.

I am finishing my pipe as Stan Caliginis pulls up in his Lexus and calls, startling me. “ ‘Where the Squamish River Flows.' Must have read that part three times. Can't put the damn book down. Truly Boswellian, Mr. Beauchamp, amazingly candid.”

“Arthur.”

“Stan.”

He exits the car with a thick bundle of mail-outs and passes me one. It promotes a public “planting party” next weekend at his vineyard. “Come in Your Best Western Garb.” This is the kind of function I despise, and when he invites me to share in the food and wine and frolic, I politely demur.

Caliginis accurately assesses my situation – no vehicle, full pack, walking stick – and without my asking (and I wouldn't dream of
doing so) insists on giving me a lift after he “hops up” to the post office. This fellow bores me with his pretentious wine-tasting jargon, but no intervening bids come in the several minutes it takes him to mail his flyers. He returns with a six-pack from his personal wine wholesaler. He wins a brief struggle for my rucksack, holds the passenger door for me.

“Good luck on reopening the Swift case, Arthur. Such a noble thing.” He shakes his head as if in awe, and we drive off.

To stifle further discussion of the topic I make the mistake of seeming curious about his boxed set of fine wines. A New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is on his favourites list, with its “incredible clarity and amazing tension.” In contrast, a Napa Chardonnay promises to be “steely and crisp, with a majestic nose of hazelnuts and tropical fruits; very good length.”