“Are we going to put Cud on the stand?”
“I’d rather cut off my left arm.” A drawn-out groan. “You have two days to prepare him.” He rose. “I need time alone to think.” As he walked off, he sighed and said, “There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.”
Sinking into a soft chair in the barristers’ lounge, Wentworth fiddled with his phone as he worked through what to say to Margaret Blake. He didn’t want to tell her the trial had taken a nasty turn, that Arthur had suddenly turned old in front of him. The case was taking a toll, her campaign compounding it.
“I should never have encouraged him to defend that arrogant clown,” Margaret said. “What was I thinking?”
“Not to worry, Ms. Blake, he’s rounding into top form.”
“Where is he now?”
“Well, he went out for a walk.”
“I hope he’s bundled up, it’s very cold.”
“He needed time to plan his cross-examination.”
“Florenza LeGrand? How is she coming across?”
He may as well tell her, she’ll hear anyway. “She set up Cud as the fall guy. We kind of anticipated it, so we’re ready. Yep, totally under control. Oh, and Mr. Beauchamp told me to wish you well, he knows you’ll do great this afternoon. That goes for me too.”
“Give him a hug for me.”
On his way to Taco Takeout, his preferred inexpensive eatery, Wentworth tried and failed to conceive of himself hugging the boss. He wished there was some way to buoy him up; he felt sad for the great man, the pressure he was under. It would be tragic to end his career with a loss, a black blot on the archives.
He worried Arthur might falter in cross, wouldn’t be able to crack that snake-she’d really pulled the rug out from them, and this had suddenly become a very sticky case. Her evidence accorded pretty much with Cud’s, so there wasn’t that much working space for cross-examination, no room to contradict her. The boss was handcuffed, didn’t dare accuse her of egging on Cud to help her escape a life with boring Whynet-Moir.
I don’t want to implicate anyone. Said with a straight face just before she caved in and tearfully grassed on her lustful savage. Silent Shawn had probably come up with that one, it was brilliant. And she’d been good. She, not Leich, wins the drama critics’ prize.
He’d expected Cud to come bounding up to the counsel table at the break, demanding the lying slut be charged with perjury, ordering Arthur to carve her to pieces. But he’d wandered out in a daze, abandoning Felicity, abandoning his followers, looking like a man in need of strong drink. What rhymes with disaster?
Tomorrow he’ll spend some quality time with Cud, who had better come up with a straight story this time. Wentworth should check to see how Pomeroy has written it.
He wondered where Arthur’s walk was taking him. Somewhere in the West End, or English Bay, the deserted beaches of winter. Maybe he was taking one of those paths to the top of the mountain.
He slipped onto a stool, ordered the meatless taco and a side of refries, $7.35 plus tip. Taco Takeout discouraged dining in, but they had counter seating, a polyglot place, skins of many colours but mostly Latino. That cool dude in a suit kind of looked like Carlos. Drawn back to the scene of the crime, to claim his mistress and her fortune.
The Mexican lunged, but Wentworth caught his wrist, twisting until the knife dropped, piercing the taco with a twang. “Who paid you? Silent Shawn?” Carlos winced with pain. Wentworth twisted harder.
“I tell you, amigo, I tell you. Some hombre from Ottawa, I don know hees name.”
“Describe him.”
“Beard, round face like back of ass.”
When court resumed, Cud and Felicity were back together, seated in the third row. Cud must have been to a tavern, he smelled beery. He continued to avoid his lawyers, which was abnormal. Arthur wasn’t any more communicative, he’d returned to court sombre and thoughtful.
Flo looked composed enough, but she’d repaired the damage with too much mascara and eye shadow, like a punk rocker. Wentworth found it odd that her parents weren’t here to support her.
“Witness, you’re still under oath,” Kroop said.
“As if that mattered,” Arthur murmured. Good, the boss was getting himself pumped, booting up for his cross.
Abigail had a few more questions, she wanted to nail down Flo’s evidence. Were the windows of the maid’s room curtained? No. Were they open? No. How well could she see the action? Well enough, she had a good view from higher up, it happened near one of the night lamps. How did the accused make his approach? From behind. Show us Cud’s pushing motion. Palms out, arms extended, contact made with Whynet-Moir’s buttocks. Describe how he fell. A leg got caught on the railing and he went down headfirst.
Abigail brought out these specifics methodically, Flo unemotional in her responses, detached. As if she was resigned to the disagreeable task of putting Cud behind bars.
“What did you do next?”
“I don’t know, I was in a total fugue state. Scared, confused.” She picked up the pace, in a hurry to get to the end. “I was gathering up my clothes. I heard the garage doors open, and I looked out and the Aston Martin was roaring out of there. I didn’t see the crash, but I heard it. I ran to the house. I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do. I went up to the bedroom, half-convinced I’d been hallucinating, but he wasn’t there, Rafael wasn’t there.”
She was starting to blink tears again. Abigail must have decided not to push her any more, she had what she needed. “Your witness.”
Wentworth was displeased when Arthur didn’t snap his suspenders like usual when about to pitch into a lying witness. You could see it on his face, he wasn’t confident, he was distracted. Wentworth didn’t want to see a repeat of the bingo hall massacre in 1984, a limp cross, a rare loser.
Arthur liked to stand near the jury when he worked, to fraternize, but he took his time getting there, pausing to throw his first question: “So you didn’t know about the four-million-dollar gift to the groom from your father?”
“You’re already on thin ice, Mr. Beauchamp.” Kroop wasn’t wasting any time getting on him, which was good, would stoke the fires.
“I have no intention of mentioning the bribe, milord.” Touche. Kroop deserved it. Wentworth will never forgive him for that mortifying dressing down. “Is that right, Ms. LeGrand? ‘I knew zero about that,’ you said.”
“Until I read it in the newspaper a couple of days ago.”
“So it was a deep, dark secret. You didn’t know how the money was spent.”
“That’s right.” Looking right at him; Shawn had told her to do that, look confident, convinced.
“And of course you didn’t know how this dowry, as you call it, came into being, or who helped engineer it.”
“No.”
“How long have you known your counsel, Mr. Hamilton?”
She seemed taken aback by this shift. “Several years.” She looked for help from Shawn, but he only glowered at Arthur.
“You’re looking at the tall gentleman in the blue suit on the counsel bench, Shawn Hamilton. He’d acted for your family on several matters?”
“Solicitor-client privilege, Mr. Beauchamp. Beware.”
Arthur ignored Kroop’s backseat driving. “And they’d retained him on your behalf over several scrapes you got into, yes?”
“I had a hit-and-run a few years ago. There were no injuries.”
“A two-thousand-dollar fine and six-month driving suspension.”
“That’s correct.”
“And he acted for you on a charge of assaulting a sales clerk.”
“I was acquitted of that.”
“Mr. Beauchamp, I will not allow you to establish bad character by eliciting a record of acquittals.”
“If her bad character hasn’t been established by now, it never will.”
Kroop didn’t fire back, he was distracted by activity at the door, Judge Ebbe returning late, taking up his spot beside Shawn Hamilton.