In the few minutes it took him to drunkenly paw through the mess in his car, he missed the awkward moment between Naught and Joe Johal, then was disappointed to find Naught retreating the way he’d come. Brian hurried down the ramp nonetheless, determined to take a photo to pass among the bar, showing Naught on a naughty midnight ramble. If he hurried, he might at least be rewarded with a record of His Lordship throwing up into the saltchuck.
But Naught had straightened up in time to see the camera flash. He swung an arm at Brian, clipped him on the shoulder. Brian pushed back, abrupt, heedless, and the judge tripped on a coil of rope, went backwards into the water.
“He didn’t come up. I panicked. I split.” Brian retreated inside, sat on his bed with a rasping sigh of relief. “It’s out. Maybe I can finally get rid of it.”
“Haunts you, I imagine.”
“It wasn’t homicide.”
“Your flight makes it seem so.” He returned inside, his pursuit not done.
“Have you ever killed anyone, Arthur?”
“No, but I imagine it comes easier the second time.”
Brian was expressionless, all but his eyes, which held tightly to Arthur’s.
“Poor Astrid, needlessly embarrassed. Had she stuck to her guns she might have saved herself from the ridicule that has branded her a false witness to murder.”
Brian slumped, his shoulders heaving-with grief, Arthur thought, but it was laughter, morbid and soft. Brian shook his head. “And everyone said I was clueless. I say, Holmes, what else have you got there? Lay it out. ‘Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”
“Your continued insistence that the two murders were connected. Darrel Naught and Whynet-Moir, you said, were connected in an unusual way. ‘You have to dig deep for this one,’ you said. A teaser from the author within. Well, there’s no obvious nexus between those deaths, no common motive, no shady relationship between the two men. The modus was similar, but that’s not what you meant. You were the connection.”
Brian lay back on the bed in crucifix position.
“Found in your bottom desk drawer by the estimable Ms. Wu was a crumpled page from the Georgia Strait, October 11 last year, two days before Raffy’s charity dinner. An article with your ex-wife’s beaming countenance, a Q and A interview. A note that she’d be dining Saturday night at the manse of a man you abhor among all others, Rafael Whynet-Moir, who you believe slagged you in court, who sundered your marriage, and who, in your coloured view, was openly flirting with Caroline.”
Brian broke the silence, still splayed on the bed. “Is this how it should be written? The alleged perp, who for the last month, post-divorce, had been in a disgusting, drunken stupor, wasn’t aware that the author of Sour Memories had been swapped for Cud Brown and switched to a soiree in West Point Grey.”
“That interview piece was found scrunched up into a little ball, as if waiting to be found. Screaming to be found. Here I am, another clue. Outwit me, reader, dare guess before the final chapter that the assailant is none other than the author himself.”
Brian snorted, half laughter, half grunt of appreciation. “That’s the twist, Arthur.” He sat up, looked hard at him, as if assessing him, measuring the extent of his disapproval, his disgust, his capacity for forgiveness. “Thank God you’re not a priest, Arthur, you’d be imploring me to turn myself in and praying for my soul. No, I’m in safer hands with Arthur Beauchamp than with the Almighty. The law extends no privilege of silence to the confessional. But confession seals every lawyer’s lips.”
Arthur understood then that Brian needed catharsis, was consumed by a need to share a searing, gut-clenching secret that had driven him beyond nervous breakdown, beyond the borders of sanity. An irresistible need to escape reality had led to addiction, to cocaine-induced delirium. Now, finally, safely, he could expel the demons.
Brian gained his feet once again, checked the hallway, kicked a slipper under the door as a wedge. He again began to pace, to the balcony and back, smoking, defying house rules. “Okay, here is how it should have been written. The revelatory final chapter. Beset by jealousy, unable to sleep, Pomeroy paced and smoked and drank through the night. If indeed the judge and the ex were balling each other-such were the twisted thought processes of this pizzled perp-the divorce decree must be quashed and the judge suspended from office until inquiries are complete.”
He was performing, like the old Pomeroy, loquacious, amorally sardonic. “Armed with his faithful camera, he pulls up a few houses from 2 Lighthouse Lane in his Toyota Tercel. It is nigh on three o’clock as he vaults the stone wall, steals to the back of the house. His initial investigative process will involve checking for Caroline’s car. Is it on the street? No. In the driveway? No. Perhaps in the garage. But something was confusing about this scene, lights were on behind the house-that would be the maid’s room, of course-and someone in a dressing gown was carrying a chair to the deck railing and boosting himself up onto it.” He had two cigarettes on the go now, a pace of a pack an hour.
“Pomeroy scrambles across the lawn for a better view. It’s the gaseous, oleaginous smarmaholic himself, staring over the gutters. So what we have here are the perp and the peep. Two tragedians in grand Shakespearian style, equally inflamed by jealousy. Pomeroy’s alcohol-addled sensory system picks up that something dirty is going on, something evil. What has this monster done with Caroline? A yelclass="underline" ‘That dirty fucker is spying!’ Sounds like Caroline, could be.
“Then bingo, the perp snaps, everything goes haywire, love, anger, jealousy, hatred, it all boils up until there’s no reason left, just mindlessness.” He was breathing hard, his eyes locked with Arthur’s, imploring him to return with a fair and favourable verdict.
“Was it just a reflex action, Brian? Or were you bolder now, less afraid of detection-after all, you’d got clean away with the first one, there hadn’t been a whisper of suspicion. Second time, easy, they say.”
Brian walked stiffly out to the balcony railing, stared down at the rock-strewn slope below. “I went mad, Arthur, I did go mad.” There was such an tremor of insistence to these words that Arthur, who had been playing with the buttons on the radio, felt uneasy. He joined Brian at the railing. Close enough to restrain any dangerous, despairing final gesture.
Who could deny him a true moment of madness? It wouldn’t be right to abandon him to hopelessness. “Undoubtedly temporary insanity is there. It could be strongly argued. Gib Davidson, I’d suggest, for that.”
Brian picked up a remote, turned the radio on, the volume up. Music. Commercials. The news on the half-hour. “Canada tonight chose its first Green Member of Parliament, but only by the slightest of margins. With all polls counted, Margaret Blake leads by twenty-seven votes…”
“Thank you, Brian, turn it off.”
He did so. “Give her my love.”
Several silent minutes. A plinking of rain. Arthur didn’t know where Brian’s thoughts were, but he was with Margaret, delighted for her, vastly relieved.
Brian cried out. “I didn’t plan for Whynet-Moir to die! Christ, I came armed with a camera!”
“Take any pictures that night?”
“No.”
“Well, take one tomorrow. Of Cud Brown, as he’s being shackled and led to the wagon. Give some thought, as you wave him a fond farewell, as to how you eagerly undertook his defence, then sabotaged it. That’s the real twist, Brian.”
“How do you plead?” Kroop asked Arthur, who was bound and gagged on the witness stand. “My client has the right to remain silent,” said Pomeroy, who was working rapidly at a keyboard. Despite his mightiest efforts, Arthur couldn’t shout, not a squeak. The scene morphed to a suite in the Confederation Club, a telephone ringing. “I can’t talk!” he yelled, finally coming awake.