Arthur sat in silence, pondering. There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same. April’s aphorism bugged him. The view, the solution, was obvious if one made the effort to see it?
On entering the great hall, he watched steely-eyed as Cud held court on the stairs, Socrates-like, dispensing wisdom. His bandwagon was growing, former doubters climbing on board. He’d become the adored teddy bear of the West Coast arts scene, his evenings spent drinking beer, slapping palms, and signing books and CDs at the Western Front and other hip venues.
Felicity drifted around the fringe of this ecstatic mob, notebook out, and bore down on Arthur. “Help. Help. What rhymes with ardent?”
“Retardant.”
Cud was carrying on about how the oligarchy stifled dissent by crushing the artists. Arthur beckoned him, sliced his throat with a forefinger.
“The masses are hungry, counsellor, I got to feed them.”
“Not another peep for the duration of this trial.”
Cud looked peeved. “It’s about over, ain’t it?”
“It ain’t. Cud, please tell me how you managed to offend the entire Edmonton Local 305 of the Steelworkers Union.”
“Uh, what’s that about?”
“Juror number two, Tom Altieri, knows about your escapade with an underaged girl-”
“Under…She was a woman. All of seventeen.”
“You might start looking a little less triumphant and more concerned.” He strode off to the robing room. The view is always the same…There are many ways to defend Cud Brown, but the outcome is always the same. There are many ways to win, but the effort isn’t worth it.
Arthur’s temper rose when the clerk told him the trial would be delayed while staff ran a video feed into the adjoining empty courtroom. The weekend had brought the crowds out: murder, wealth, sex, and politics-cheaper than the movies. He leaned over the railing, gazed down at the scurrying figures six floors below. There are many paths to the top of the mountain…He was stumped. Damn that woman.
Coming up the stairs was Dalgleish Ebbe, back for another fix of Regina v. Brown. Here was a chance to buttonhole him, spell out Tom Drew’s insinuations, ask about his alleged role as informer. But as Arthur worked his way toward the stairs, he lost the judge in the swarming citizenry.
The witness room door opened to cast out Abigail, affording a view within of black-stockinged legs, crossed, a dainty sandal dangling from a toe. Shawn Hamilton shut the door, but not before Arthur saw a puff of smoke, the illegal burn of a cigarette.
Abigail took Arthur’s arm, walked with him. Arthur enjoyed the camaraderie between them, wasn’t sure why he deserved her respect. But feminists tended to react to him that way. Non-threatening A.R. Beauchamp.
“Florenza has something to hide, and I want it out of her. Give her your famous third degree, and I’ll pick up the pieces.”
“If it were only that easy.”
“It’s a hard one, isn’t it, Arthur?”
She knew the peril he faced. Ask the wrong question, get the wrong answer, and counsel implicates his own client. Help me escape. We’ll just have to find some way to get rid of him. He dares not quote those pithy lines.
As the jurors sat, Tom Altieri, whose robust and persuasive tongue could be a potent force in the jury room, fixed on Cud, now in the second row with Felicity, and flared his nostrils as if reacting to a repugnant odour. In compensation, Arthur won a smile from foreperson Jane Glass. He couldn’t pinpoint where he’d had a tete-a-tete with this retired classicist, a reception after some do or other, but he recalled, embarrassingly, that she’d corrected his Latin.
Silent Shawn’s deadpan look mutated briefly into one of wincing discomfort when Judge Ebbe, unable to find a seat in the gallery, settled beside him on the counsel bench. No words were spoken, but the brittle chemistry was palpable.
Kroop welcomed the jury to this unusual Saturday session, assuring them they’d have the rest of the day off after hearing one witness. “Depending on counsel, of course.” The innuendo: any grant of early freedom depended on the windy cross-examiner for the defence.
“Call Florenza LeGrand,” Abigail said, looking sideways at Arthur. They were in this together.
Enter Donat LeGrand’s misbegotten child, costumed as femme fatale: a stylish mid-thigh black dress, a cream V-necked top exposing a dagger of flesh between her breasts. As she went by counsel table, she gave Arthur a quick sizing-up. Florenza had heard of the cagey old dog defending Cuddles.
When asked to take the oath, she addressed the judge. “I’d like to make a statement. I am here against my wishes. I want to bury all of this. It can only hurt my family and friends, who have already been dragged through the mud.”
Kroop’s benign expression slowly transformed into something more familiar. “Madam, in this forum we do not offer witnesses a choice to stand mute. I shall take severe measures if you do so.”
She glanced at Silent Shawn. He gave her nothing, not a twitch. Back to the judge. “Severe measures?”
“The appropriate order, madam, would be to hold you in the Women’s Correctional Facility until you expunge your contempt.”
“How long could that be?”
“Life.”
That was a stretch-in more ways than one-but Arthur kept silent. Kroop was showing uncommon patience; a less prominent witness would have been harangued mercilessly.
Abigail rose to intercede. “Let’s see how far we get, Ms. LeGrand. We can discuss this further when we touch on areas that bother you.”
A subtly attractive offer that had Florenza biting her lip, as if wrestling with an image of herself as a dowdy elder in prison brown. “Heavy,” she muttered, then looked up. “I’ll go as far as I can.”
Abigail warmed her up slowly, taking her through innocuous personal information, age, family, education, abode, some scattered work experience-light sinecures with her father’s shipping business and, until her marriage, manager of a chic dress shop the LeGrands owned. Though Abigail carefully avoided her wilder escapades, the jury must have seen a spoiled woman of leisure.
She’d met Whynet-Moir on a Danube cruise in the early summer of 2006. The coincidences of shared home town and shared acquaintances led to a romance quickly consummated and an extended holiday. Vienna, Salzburg, Florence, the erudite lawyer wooing her with his learning in history and the arts.
They flew home together and were regularly seen, in the better social milieus, as the couple to watch. In early September 2006, Raffy won his ticket to the Supreme Court and they married within the month. Among the lavish gifts: joint title to 2 Lighthouse Lane.
All this was narrated in a casual, idiomatic way, as if in her living room. Arthur read much between the lines. Clearly the courtship had the near-fanatic approval of Donat and Thesalie LeGrand, an opportunity to get their naughty girl out of their hair. Let someone else rescue her if she got busted again.
Coddling Florenza, Abigail drew her through their twelve months of marriage, an unremarkable time, he spending long days mastering his new trade, she managing the house. “Believe me, it was a full-time job.” A juror made a face, the young restaurant hostess, who doubtless earned the minimum wage plus tips.
“How were you and Rafael getting along?”
“Copacetic.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we just carried on. Like any married couple.”
“Can you expand on that?”
She went silent, and Arthur thought she was about to balk, but she nodded, decision made, and there came a surge of words. “Okay, if I have to get into it…How do I put it? The bloom went off, the thrill was gone, the power went out. I kind of woke up one day and realized we weren’t made for each other. Raffy wasn’t…maybe adventurous is the word. I’m sorry, but people are built in different ways, I guess.”