Sing A Worried Song

William Deverell

Description

Everything is going well for Arthur Beauchamp in his early middle age. Life is so good for the top-notch defence lawyer that, in a moment of career restlessness, he decides to switch sides, just the once and prosecute a young man charged with murdering a clown. Beauchamp is confident he can prove Randolph Skyler is guilty. Confident, but still worried and surprisingly blind to how precarious the evidence is - and, worse, to the fissures opening in his personal life.

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Ecw Press
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781770907287
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

To the memory of Josiah Wood, my former law partner, a humanitarian, and a powerful progressive voice as a counsel and as a justice in the British Columbia Supreme Court and Appeal Court. His legacy is enshrined in the MI LELUM S’ULXWEN (Elders Court) Society, which he designed to train elders for the First Nations Court in Duncan, BC, as a means to encourage, in his words, “the reconciliation of cultures made necessary by the imposition of residential schools and the resulting deep-rooted suspicion of our community and its justice system.”


CONTENTS
PART ONE FOR THE FUN OF IT
Wednesday, Noon
Wednesday Afternoon
Wednesday Evening
Thursday Morning
Thursday, Noon
Thursday Afternoon
Thursday Evening
Friday Morning
Friday Afternoon
Friday Evening
Saturday
Sunday Morning
Sunday Evening
Monday Morning
Monday Afternoon
Tuesday Morning
Tuesday Afternoon
Tuesday Mid-Afternoon
Tuesday Evening
Wednesday Morning
Wednesday Afternoon
Wednesday Night
PART TWO WORRYWART
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Monday, September 17
Wednesday, September 19
Thursday, September 20
Saturday, September 22
Sunday, September 23
Monday, September 24
Thursday, September 27
Friday, September 28
PART THREE BAD TRIP
Wednesday, October 24
Thursday, October 25
Friday, October 26
Saturday, October 27
Sunday, October 28
Tuesday, October 30
Wednesday, October 31
Sunday, November 11 - Remembrance Day
AFTERWORD
THE ARTHUR BEAUCHAMP NOVELS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT


Skyler. Transcript, p. 453, December 16, 1986.
DIRECT EXAMINATION OF MANFRED UNGER (CONT’D)
Q : And when did you return to your hotel?
A : Sometime after midnight. I read for a while, and went to sleep.
Q : And when did you next see the accused?
A : I’m not sure. Mid-morning. Randolph came into the room and I woke up.
Q : Tell the jury what he said.
A : He said, “I really did it this time.” I was confused, still half asleep, and I asked him, “Did what?” And he said, “He wouldn’t die. I must have stabbed him ten times, and he wouldn’t die.” I thought he was joking. He said, “It took him forever to die. There was blood all over.” He showed me his leg.
Q : And what did you see on his leg?
A : Tooth marks. Blood.





WEDNESDAY, NOON
“For you, Monsieur Arthur Beauchamp, pâté végétal aux champignons, then coquilles sautées. Baked brie for Monsieur Meyerson, and le coq au vin, which I do not serve Beauchamp, who has sworn off wine in any form.”
The year was 1987, in late April; the event was lunch, and the place was Chez Forget, ill-lit and intimate, known for the inspired cuisine of the irascible, despotic Pierre Forget. Arthur had long given up ordering from the menu, having learned it was best to let Pierre have his way.
Arthur was shakily working on a coffee, his fifth that day. With him was Hubbell Meyerson, being supportive — he’d denied himself his favourite Chablis. Hubbell, his friend for thirty years, since college days, headed up domestic law at Tragger, Inglis, a well-established Vancouver firm. Arthur ran the criminal defence side.
Pierre studied Arthur with rare solicitude. “How long are you sober now, Beauchamp?” Pronounced, typically, the wrong way, the French way. Beechem was correct, Anglicized over the many centuries since the William the Bastard led his cavalry onto Hastings Field.
“ Dix-huit jours d’enfer .” One does not keep secrets from the chef de cuisine at Chez Forget.
“ Bonne chance .” The wiry little man bounded off.
Arthur had been sober since a weekend wassail eighteen days ago at the Gastown office of Pomeroy, Marx, Macarthur, Brovak for a young counsel who’d just been called to the bar. At midnight, the party had spilled onto the street outside the building’s ground-floor tavern, the Shillelagh and Shamrock. John Brovak, a brawny, wild barrister, somehow got into a feud with the bouncer, and punches were thrown.
Arthur had been belting out a favourite folk song, “It takes a worried man to sing a worried song,” as squad cars pulled up. The officers stuck him, Brovak, and six other raucous, inebriated trial lawyers in the drunk tank for two hours, then had a good laugh as they ordered taxis and let them go. The incident seemed, happily, to have been covered up.
“Taking a little time away from the family this week,” Hubbell said. “They’re off to Florida with their grandparents. Easter break.”
“I’m sure you’ll keep your nose clean.”
Hubbell looked indignant. “My behaviour will be angelic.” This family lawyer had a history of marital misconduct. Arthur couldn’t understand that. Hubbell had a perfectly lovely wife, two bright kids. Age had done little damage to this ruddy, handsome man, with his mane of silvery hair and winning smile. He was the one who used to get the girls, back in their college days. Gawky, slat-ribbed Arthur got seconds.
“And Annabelle?” Hubbell asked.
Arthur considered the many possible answers to that roomy question. She is well , he wanted to say, she is true, the marital seas are calm, her days of dalliance are over . But then he would have to knock on wood. He contented himself with: “Working feverishly on next week’s Tristan .” Arthur’s flamboyant spouse was artistic director of the Vancouver Opera. His cup rattled in its saucer as he lowered it.
“You feel you have it under control, Arthur?”
“For the moment. The addiction lurks, though — you always sense it there.” Like a crouching predator, ready to spring at the first sign of weakness. Arthur had just survived a long, long Easter weekend. Evenings were the worst, especially when Annabelle worked late and only fifteen-year-old Deborah was there to help him through it. But he tried not to involve her in his struggle, tried to shield her from his pain. Teenagers had better things to do. He’d had to call Bill Webb a few times, his AA sponsor.
“How many days will the trial go?” Hubbell asked. The Skyler case, set for the next day, Thursday, April 23. It would be Arthur’s first stint as a prosecutor.
“I’m desperately hoping we’ll be done on Monday.” Otherwise he’d be about the only lawyer missing from the Tuesday afternoon office party honouring him and Hubbell — a celebration to mark their promotion to partnerships. Arthur might yet find himself uninvited to the event and to the partnership. Managing partner Roy Bullingham made his offer contingent on Arthur “not running afoul of a situation that might grievously embarrass the firm.”
Though the debacle in Gastown was known among criminal lawyers, word had yet to reach Bully’s forty-third-floor office.
“Different kind of game for you,” Hubbell said. “Hitting instead of pitching.”
“Far simpler than defending. The entire machinery of the state behind you. Everything presented in a neat package by experienced investigators. And it’s been test-run, though abysmally. If I can’t do better, I shall retire from the bar.”
By test-run, Arthur meant an earlier trial, in December, which ended with a deadlocked jury. A new trial had been ordered. In the face of angry mutterings from the public, the Attorney-General had approached the West Coast’s preeminent defence counsel to lead the prosecution.
For Arthur, the prospect was a challenge, something different: a sensational murder case, with its dark irony of a happy-faced clown being bumped off by an alleged thrill killer. It was a chance to see things from the other side, to work with the vaunted Homicide section of the Vancouver police. A chance to demonstrate how a prosecution should be run: transparent and even-handed, without guile or hostility.
The press had dubbed it a thrill killing because the crime seemed otherwise motiveless. The victim, Chumpy the Clown, as he was popularly called, had no enemies or anything worth stealing. He’d been a fixture on downtown streets, from Gastown to Theatre Row, busking with a harmonica, pratfalling, beeping his bright red nose at the kids. He’d been at this for ten years; he was an institution. Tour guides pointed him out. He was named Number One Busker by Vancouver magazine.
In his other life he was Joyal (Joe) Chumpy, a beer-bellied alcoholic. A gentle, bubbly fat man with lumpy features he exaggerated under clown makeup. He was fifty-three when, on the morning of Sunday, August 3, 1986, he died in his skid road apartment, hemorrhaging from seven deep knife wounds.
Arthur himself was among Chumpy’s many fans, and had regularly dropped him a few bills. But he was resolved not to let his feelings cloud his role as dispassionate agent of the state. Prosecutors were not allowed to show feelings. Properly, they weren’t even allowed to have feelings.
“I should think you’d be concerned about your image among the criminal class,” Hubbell said. “The underworld doesn’t much abide turncoats.”
“Be realistic, Hubbell. A spoiled brat who killed for pleasure, not profit, gives crime a bad name. The Mob will be cheering me on.”


WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
Arthur spent the rest of that day at the Crown office in the Law Courts, interviewing witnesses and reading transcripts until the words blurred. He puffed for a while on his newly purchased Peterson bent — he’d taken to nicotine to stave off desire for that other, crueller drug — and looked balefully at the array of interviews, the death scene photos, the grisly autopsy report.
None of which much helped Arthur resolve the stickiest puzzle of the case: What made the accused, Randolph Skyler, tick? The handsome, charming twenty-three-year-old seemed an unlikely suspect — studying for a business masters at York University, no previous record, sole offspring of a well-to-do Toronto couple. He was a col