The long shot trial, p.1
The Long-Shot Trial, page 1
The Long-Shot Trial
An Arthur Beauchamp Thriller
William Deverell
Contents
Praise for William Deverell
Also By William Deverell
The Trials of Arthur Beauchamp: A Biography by Wentworth Chance
Arthur — February 2022
The Trials of Arthur Beauchamp
Arthur — February 2022
1966 — The Handoff
1966 — I Think I Shot Him
The Trials of Arthur Beauchamp
1966 — The Lady on My Lap
Arthur — March 2022
1966 — Owls and Howls
1966 — The Loudness of Ravens
1966 — How She Rattled Me
1966 — Against All Odds
Arthur — April 2022
1966 — Hush Money
1966 — God’s Will Be Done
Arthur — May 2022
1966 — Just Shake Your Head
1966 — The Shit End of the Stick
1966 — I Like It Hot and Buttered
1966 — I’m Gonna Kill You
1966 — They’re Tired of Being Treated Like Shit
Arthur — June 2022
1966 — Guilty or Not Guilty?
1966 — The Valley of the Shadow of Death
1966 — Never Suck Up
1966 — The Specialist in Ladies’ Issues
1966 — I’ll Never, Never Do It Again
Arthur — July 2022
1966 — Inconvenient Evidence
1966 — The Barber of Ocean Falls
1966 — The Sound of Music
1966 — Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Arthur — August 2022
1966 — Contempt of Clerk
1966 — The Opening
1966 — Do Not Disturb
1966 — The Preacher, the Painter, and the Pilot
1966 — The Date from Hell
Arthur — September 2022
1966 — Confused by the Echoes
1966 — Surprise Witness
Arthur — October 2022
1966 — The Cat Is Out of the Bag
1966 — One-Ton Pickup
1966 — Murder or Nothing
Arthur — November 2022
1966 — Great Speeches Flow from the Heart
1966 — The Stanley Cup Runneth Over
1966 — Entrancing Views
Arthur — December 2022
1966 — Unscrupulous Deliberations
The Trials of Arthur Beauchamp
Arthur — April 2023
1969 — Summer Solstice
Arthur — May 2023
Arthur — May 2023
2023 — Afterword, Afterwards
Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright
Praise for William Deverell
Needles
“Deverell has a narrative style so lean that scenes and characters seem to explode on the page. He makes the evil of his plot breathtaking and his surprises like shattering glass.”
— Philadelphia Bulletin
High Crimes
“Deverell’s lean mean style gives off sparks. A thriller of the first rank.”
— Publishers Weekly
Mecca
“Here is another world-class thriller, fresh, bright, and topical.”
— Globe and Mail
The Dance of Shiva
“The most gripping courtroom drama since Anatomy of a Murder.”
— Globe and Mail
Platinum Blues
“A fast, credible, and very funny novel.”
— The Sunday Times
Mindfield
“Deverell has a fine eye for evil, and a remarkable sense of place.”
— Globe and Mail
Kill All the Lawyers
“An indiscreet and entertaining mystery that will add to the author’s reputation as one of Canada’s finest mystery writers.”
— The Gazette
Street Legal: The Betrayal
“Deverell injects more electricity into his novels than anyone currently writing in Canada — perhaps anywhere . . . The dialogue crackles, the characters live and breathe, and the pacing positively propels.”
— London Free Press
Trial of Passion
“A ripsnortingly good thriller.”
— Regina Leader-Post
Slander
“Slander is simply excellent: a story that just yanks you along.”
— Globe and Mail
The Laughing Falcon
“The Laughing Falcon is, simply, a wonderful book.”
— Vancouver Sun
Mind Games
“Deverell is firing on all cylinders.”
— Winnipeg Free Press
April Fool
“A master storyteller with a wonderful sense of humour . . . one hell of a ride.”
— Quill & Quire
Whipped
“[A] smart, funny, and cleverly plotted series.”
— Toronto Star
Kill All the Judges
“Compelling. . . . For all its seemingly lighthearted humour, this is a work of great depth and complexity.”
— Globe and Mail
Snow Job
“Fine writing and tongue-in-cheek delivery with acid shots at our political circus, and so close to reality that it seems even funnier.”
— Hamilton Spectator
I’ll See You in My Dreams
“[Beauchamp is] endearingly complex, fallible, and fascinating.”
— Publishers Weekly
Sing a Worried Song
“[Deverell] may be the most convincing of all writers of courtroom stories, way up there just beyond the lofty plateau occupied by such classic courtroom dramatists as Scott Turow and John Lescroart.”
— Toronto Star
Stung
“Irreverent, bawdy, and boisterous, Deverell’s foray into radical environmentalism on trial keeps the reader riveted until the last page. The courtroom scenes are brilliant.”
— Beverley McLachlin, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada,
author of Full Disclosure and Truth Be Told
Also By William Deverell
Fiction
Needles
High Crimes
Mecca
The Dance of Shiva
Platinum Blues
Mindfield
Kill All the Lawyers
Street Legal: The Betrayal
Trial of Passion
Slander
The Laughing Falcon
Mind Games
April Fool
Whipped
Kill All the Judges
Snow Job
I’ll See You in My Dreams
Sing a Worried Song
Stung
Non-Fiction
A Life on Trial
The Trials of Arthur Beauchamp: A Biography by Wentworth Chance
Foreword to the second edition
Though some will attribute the first edition’s success to the legal fireworks that followed its publication, I prefer to believe it quickly sold out because I pulled no punches. It was the frankness — the nakedness, as one reviewer put it — that drove sales. Readers found Arthur Beauchamp1 to be warmly human when stripped down to his many quirks and failings.
Happily, this new edition afforded me a chance to amplify Chapter Three, “A Will to Die For,” adding content (newly unearthed) and thickening the fog of mystery surrounding a spectacular murder trial in a remote community in the Canadian far north.
The case of Regina v. Angelina Santos is still much debated today, and popular articles have been written about it. Regrettably, my earlier acknowledgements failed to mention a series about the trial that I found in back issues of the now-defunct magazine Saturday Night. Crime reporter Charles Loobie did an astounding job of reportage, and I was so transfixed upon reading it that I may have unconsciously replicated several passages. Mr. Loobie is to be assured that I have revised those, as well as various other bits that suffered from coincidental phrasing.
This new addition also affords me the luxury of correcting various errors and omissions that escaped the sharp-eyed appraisal of two editors and a lawyer.
As well, I am pleased to have the opportunity of complying with BC Supreme Court Directive 10967-20. I regret having described divorce attorney Harvey Frinkell as having drunk himself to death. That was false, and the error, which appeared in the section titled “Where the Squamish River Flows,” has been corrected. I apologize fulsomely to Mr. Frinkell, who is a healthy, active eighty-three-old whose lively
Readers will notice significant changes in the cover design: the static facial profile of Beauchamp has given way to a Star Weekly photograph from 1967, depicting my biographee barrelling angrily from the old Vancouver courthouse after a scrap with a judge. As well, I have shortened the title to simply: The Trials of Arthur Beauchamp. Too many read A Thirst for Justice as mocking him for his drinking problem. As far as I’m aware he hasn’t tasted alcohol since 1987, and for that he deserves applause. Cheers, Arthur!
However, I remain saddened that the subject of this biography found fault with it and am distressed by the coolness he has shown me. I wouldn’t call it a rift, but Beauchamp has blocked my emails. I sought to assure him that the section heading “Lion of the Courtroom, Lamb in the Bedroom” was intended not to be cruel (as I’ve heard it alleged) but tender, showing a soft yang to his fighting yin. In deference to the renowned barrister I have reworked several passages he considered “inappropriate.”
The feeling that washed over me when I finished those changes was not so much relief as freedom: I was free of the great man’s scowling countenance. I stopped caring what he thought of my opus. Did Boswell care what Johnson thought?
Wentworth Chance,
North Vancouver, BC
* * *
1 Pronounced Beech’m, in the English way.
Arthur — February 2022
I’ve planned a lazy Sunday, puttering in my potting shed, then enjoying a slow ramble through the cold, wintry woods with my best friend. Afterwards, I will towel him off and park him at my feet, where he generously serves as a rug, albeit furry and alive: Ulysses, the Irish wolfhound. I will then settle into my club chair with the Goldberg Variations and a good book.
Everything goes as planned except for the good book. I’ve just finished a gripping literary thriller partly set on these very Gulf Islands. Its sequel is on order. I’m hooked, hungry to know if the hapless hero will ever get a grip on his auditory hallucinations. I’m reluctant to begin another book before You Talkin’ to Me? shows up at Garibaldi’s post office.
I’m in my so-called private study, seeking a thin book of poetry to tide me over — one of the moderns for a change, Auden, Yeats, Belloc — when I notice a gift-wrapped, book-sized parcel on my desk, leaning against the computer screen. “To Arthur, my love,” reads the heart-shaped card pinned to a gay red ribbon. Signed “M.” Short for Margaret, last name Blake, i.e., my wife — or, as she prefers, in the lexicon of the woke Left, life companion.
And of course I have completely forgot that this is Valentine’s Day. I’m shattered — I have nothing for Margaret. She must have sneaked the parcel into the room on returning from her invasive species workshop. I turn to respond to a soft “Ahem” — she’s at my open door, eyebrows arched, faintly smiling.
“I’m embarrassed,” I say. “The occasion slipped my famously absent mind. I have no gift to offer but the consuming love I shall hold for you for all eternity.”
She kisses me. “You bullshitter. You won’t be so sucky after you open it.”
I peel off the gift wrap, and when the book is revealed I realize my mischievous wife is teasing me with a joke gift: the second edition of Wentworth Chance’s unspeakably prying biography of Arthur Ramsgate Beauchamp, QC, OC, hon. LLD.
The cover of the first edition had profiled my lordly Roman nose. The publisher must have decided it scared off readers, because the restyled image is a news photo of youthful me dashing down the steps of a courthouse, black robes flying.
The title has been reworked as well. The Trials of Arthur Beauchamp is in a large, flashy font. The new edition is also thicker. A diagonal banner reads: New material!
The Trials of Arthur Beauchamp
Excerpt from Chapter Three, “A Will to Die For” © W. Chance
It was 1966, he was twenty-nine, and though not much was happening in his personal life he had a thriving practice at Tragger, Inglis, Bullingham, mostly in narcotics trafficking, but also thefts, frauds, and assaults, while indulging in what his firm considered a bad habit: working pro bono for the poor.
Beauchamp was a grinder but more had been expected of him — his seniors feared he was not ready for another go at the prime-time offence of homicide. His confidence had been shattered four years earlier, when, as a supposed rising star, he was entrusted with representing a bright, rebellious Salishan accused of murdering his white mentor.2
He felt an overwhelming remorse and an enduring sense of shame after his young client was sentenced to a lengthy penitentiary term. Arthur’s alcohol intake crept higher. He had little social life. He felt friendless, particularly as regards the opposite sex.
Still, Beauchamp carried on doggedly in the criminal courts, though with only one notable case — the successful defence of Nick “the Owl” Faloon, a diamond heist. Over the following two years he slowly regained a sense of competence, besting the Federal Crown on several narcotics indictments. In 1966 he was co-counsel in a controversial conspiracy case against the d’Anglio family that entangled Vancouver’s mayor and three city councillors.
By that year he had built a fair clientele of professional criminals, and — to the delight of the firm’s grasping senior partners — was earning healthy fees. They were impressed enough, as of the fall of that year, to offer Beauchamp another shot at a murder.
* * *
2 This fascinating case is related in I’ll See You in My Dreams, ECW Press.
Arthur — February 2022
I’ve tried to will my Valentine’s gift into non-existence, but I’m being stalked by the ghost of my biographer. Wentworth’s book keeps showing up on my bedside table or in the parlour or the toilet’s reading rack: Margaret’s continuing prank. I keep opening it at random, and invariably get riled at the slights and errors and exaggerations.
My extravagant return gift to Margaret is the honouring of an oft-repeated vow: to clean out an abandoned otters’ den beneath our old waterfront cabin. There is nothing in nature that smells with such repellent gusto as an otters’ nest, with its faeces, rotting fish tails, frog guts, and other forms of decomposing offal.
Three months ago, I contracted with the infamous island handyman Robert Stonewell, alias Stoney, to take on the task. His mantra, when reminded about his promise to jump to it, is a fervent “No problem.”
To shame him, I have put the job out for tenders, with a notice in the Island Bleat. No one has answered. Frustrated, unaided, I now have to prove my manly worth to Margaret, who complains I leave it up to others (meaning herself, usually) to do the nasty chores.
It’s raining as I stride up the beach to Blunder Point: a stunning headland, with views of the Salish Sea, east, south, and west. The cabin, perched on a low bank just above high tide, is embraced by the gracefully twisting boughs of a giant arbutus.
The cabin is twenty feet by thirty of cedar logs and shakes, with a narrow wooden staircase to a loft. It was built by hippies in the 1960s, before my time on Garibaldi. It has a sturdy woodstove but no electricity — the nearest power pole is 300 metres away — and no plumbing, though water is piped from our well. There’s also an outhouse. We use the cabin mostly for storage, but hardy young guests often bunk in its bunk bed.
Ulysses romps ahead, apparently eager to help. But wolfhounds, who move with grace when on foot, were not built to crawl under a two-foot gap beneath a log cabin. So alone in my Carhartts and Wellingtons, armed with rubber gloves, a mask, a flashlight, and a metal rake, I spend two hours wiggling and squirming in and out, gagging and cursing. Even Ulysses can’t stand the smell of me.
The never-ending trials of Arthur Beauchamp . . .
* * *
