WEDNESDAY MORNING

Arthur tried mightily to present a calm, untroubled face as he arrived at the Law Courts on this drizzling, mournful morning. Apart from greeting the sheriffs and court staff, he kept to himself, taking his place at the counsel table to resume working on a crossword puzzle, which he went at ferociously, with pencil and eraser.

No one approached him but Mandy. She touched his arm briefly, gently, as she passed by to take her place beside Pomeroy, who was intensely engaged with the speech he would shortly give.

The room was packed and buzzing. Skyler, in a blazer, sat stiff and straight, a wounded but brave warrior. He looked hard at Arthur, his lips curling into a little message of a smile conveying the merest hint of triumph, of awareness that the tide had turned in his favour.

Pomeroy rose and scanned the jury with his best, winning, boyish grin. He began by offering solicitous words about Joe Chumpy, whom all of Vancouver loved, and Manfred Unger, a tragic figure driven to take his own life, driven by guilt over his murderous act.

“My client was severely tested by Mr. Beauchamp, who — and let’s make no bones about it — is one of the best anywhere at his craft. But Mr. Skyler not only survived the shelling, but stood up very well indeed. Some of you ladies and gentlemen might be troubled by some aspects of this young man, but he’s a bright graduate student with a future, and he deserves a scrupulously fair trial.”

Brian then walked around the counsel table and stood beside Arthur, who carried on with his crossword, occasionally chewing his pencil end.

“Now, I’m not going to pretend I’m any kind of match for Mr. Beauchamp here; I’m just a simple journeyman. You ladies and gentlemen can expect a vigorous and eloquent address from my learned friend, who I see is so absorbed in his crossword puzzle that the cynical among us might think he’s trying to distract attention from me.”

Several jurors laughed. And there was more mirth when Pomeroy stood in front of Arthur, blocking the jury’s view of him. Arthur, caught out, smiled sheepishly, and put his puzzle away.

“The jury can expect my learned friend to attack Mr. Skyler’s testimony with great gusto, but he’ll be grabbing at air, because there’s absolutely nothing in the Crown’s case to rebut a single word he spoke. In the end this is about reasonable doubt. There’s ample reason to doubt Mr. Gillies’s shaky identification, to explain the thumbprint on the Coors, to justify my client’s lack of frankness with the police, to conclude that Manfred Unger was morbidly inspired by the thrill-killing villain from a popular mystery novel.”

“‘You don’t have the balls’ — that was the challenge hurled at poor Manfred, who hero-worshipped my client, who took that dare seriously and did a horrendous act to win his approval. Out of loyalty to Unger, the accused kept his awful secret until it drove his friend to suicide.”

After canvassing the evidence, drawing from it every exculpatory crumb and particle it afforded, he exhorted the jury in the revered words of Viscount Sankey: “Throughout the web of the English criminal law one golden thread is always to be seen” — the prosecution must always prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

“As you deliberate, ladies and gentlemen, please spare a thought for the many cases where persons have been wrongly convicted, and how shattering and soul-destroying that must be, a lifetime sentence for a crime done by another.

“So I urge you to return this young man to his family and his studies. Has he not suffered enough? Must he live out his life within the cruel walls of a cold, dank, and merciless prison?” With trembling voice he recited a verse from Oscar Wilde’s remembrance of Reading Gaol: “‘All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; and that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.’

“In closing, I remind you your verdict must be unanimous. There will be debate, but to those of you not convinced, not morally certain, that this young man did this horrible deed, I call upon you to stand firm, stand tall for justice, and return a verdict of not guilty.”

There was a single handclap as he sat, and it came from Juror Twelve, in the back row. She was red-faced as she joined the rest of the jury for the morning break.

§

Pomeroy had considerably raised the jury’s expectations for Arthur, to the point that anything less than a roof-rattler might seem a letdown. So, rather than allowing his opponent to dictate the rules of the game, he abstained from any histrionics when he stood to address the jury. There would be no drama in his voice, no anger, no fustian arm-waving. No notes. More like a fireside chat with folks from the neighbourhood.

“Let me start off, my friends, by offering my apology for having been absorbed in my crossword. Frankly, I was bedevilled by one stubborn clue: ‘Whose nose grows.’ Thirteen letters, so it couldn’t be Pinocchio. Starts with a B and an A. Should have known better than to start the darn thing — I get obsessed. I actually got into serious trouble one time when I missed about six bus stops working on one, and got home to a cold dinner and a colder wife.” Juror Five, the crossword fan, led the laughter.

“‘Whose nose grows.’ I don’t know why that clue bothers me so much. Maybe because my own oversized sniffer is one of my more distracting features. Anyway, let’s get to work.”

With the jury warmed up and relaxed, Arthur began by praising Pomeroy: “Such a charming and adroit lawyer. Such a well-wrought speech.” Turning to Brian with a broad smile. “Hell of a job, Brian, given the obvious difficulties of your case.” To the jury: “Let’s face it, he made some of his most awkward arguments seem almost rational.” Pomeroy had no choice but to grin and bear it.

“But at the end of the day, the issue here is a simple one, isn’t it? Either Mr. Skyler was telling the truth or he was lying. No middle way. If his story is false, there’s only one verdict open. It’s as simple as that, isn’t it, ladies and gentlemen?” A couple of jurors nodded. A good start.

For the next half hour, he methodically picked away at Skyler’s many slips and fibs, adding subtle brush strokes intended to portray a bigoted, arrogant, posturing narcissist. “Falsus in uno, it is said, falsus in omnibus. Untrue in one thing, untrue in everything.

“So are we to believe Mr. Skyler, or are we to believe Manfred Unger, who saw the teeth marks, who attended to that wound, who heard his bosom friend say, ‘I really did it this time. He wouldn’t die’?”

So began the process of resurrecting Manfred Unger from his previous role of stumbling, self-contradicting witness. Arthur raised him on a pedestal, shone a sympathetic light on him, reminded the jury of the terrible pressure the sensitive young cadet must have been under, with his military dad and pious mother.

“Add to that, the poor fellow was in love with a man who held a metaphorical pistol to his head, who could out him, shame him, destroy him, if he didn’t reshape his evidence. And who did indeed destroy him. Manfred Unger had failed his idol with his too-obvious cover story, and Manfred knew that. He was wretched and desolate with self-reproach, and so he jumped from Granville Bridge.

“Having observed poor Manfred, having heard him, having felt his pain, did he seem to you, my friends, to be a man capable of savage, cold-hearted murder? Yet that is what Randy Skyler begs you to believe. The ‘baboon-in-the-toque’ theory wasn’t going to fool you — he finally figured out that you folks were too smart for that, so he came up with this last-gasp effort to blame his dead best friend.”

Arthur saw that Skyler was looking at him with a smirk of disbelief, and he took an impulsive shot at him: “And no one’s buying this one either, Randy.” There was a massive intake of breath in the courtroom. Taking a swat like that was simply not done in a summing-up. But no one issued a challenge.

Skyler’s smile did not go away, though it was stiff and fixed as Arthur carried on calmly, reminding the jury what Skyler had scribbled in the margins of For the Fun of It: “‘You’d think his hands would be tired! Nice!’ ‘One less loser!’ Well, folks, that’s pretty much how the smiling gentleman over there regarded Joe Chumpy. ‘One less loser.’” All eyes were on Skyler as his smile slowly faded.

Arthur gathered together a few loose ends, spoke of the jury’s high responsibility, and asked them to listen attentively to the judge’s instructions. He returned to his chair, glanced at the crossword lying there. “‘Whose nose grows.’ Thirteen letters. Aha!” He looked in triumph to the jury, then to Skyler, and spelled it out: “B-A-R-E-F-A-C-E-D-L-I-A-R.”

That caused some laughter in the back. Mandy Pearl stifled a smile, as did Justice Horowitz, who covered up by briskly ordering the noon break.

Arthur slipped outside. He had no appetite for lunch, nor for the reviews, the polite, lukewarm praise that would tell him he hadn’t quite pulled it off. Composing himself, like an athlete returning from the field of play, he strolled about the gardens of Robson Square, puffing on his Peterson, occasional raindrops spitting on him from the leaden sky.