Free I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel by William Deverell

chummy with Harvey Frinkell. He is a revolting skunk.”
    â€œThank you, but I’m talking about the previous night.”
    A throat-constricting silence. “I’m … mixed up about that. Sorry, I’m exhausted. Hard day in court.”
    â€œWe really should talk. Not now, but after seeing Gabriel. I’ll be in my office.” She walked off briskly and was soon replaced by Gertrude, holding coat and purse.
    â€œI called Oakalla. They’ll expect you at seven. I guess I’m off.”
    I leaped to my feet. She took a fearful step back before I was upon her, pressing folded bills into her palm, apologizing, currying favour. She’d earned one hundred per cent on the firm’s next performance review. National Secretaries Week was coming up – might she be free then for dinner?
    She answered with a shy smile. Pretty Gertrude with her crooked stockings. My previous secretary was half as efficient and had the temperament of a mule.
    I’d put off too long one more pressing duty: calling Irene Mulligan with words of consolation. I reached her at her Point Grey home, where she was being attended to by a few members of her bridge club. She remembered me as her husband’s former student and was pleased I was acting for Gabriel. “He didn’t do it,” she said in a husky, trembling voice. “I’m just praying Dermot is still alive.”
    She thanked me for my words of sympathy but wasn’t able to continue. The phone was taken by a woman who apologized. “She needs her rest, Mr. Beauchamp. Perhaps in a week or so?”
    I’m praying Dermot is still alive
. One could hardly blame her for maintaining that hope. The likelier premise of suicide would invite gossip, that he saw it as the only way to escape an empty and unhappy marriage. I settled the phone into its cradle and heard thrumming in my head.
Sometimes I live in the country, sometimes I live in town
. Leadbelly’s song had started to haunt me.

    Affecting a desire to catch up with the world, I paid the local newsboy ten cents and a nickel tip for the evening Sun, then buried myself in it, silently handing Ophelia the keys to the Bug. This is how I hid my shame at my abysmal handling of our previous chat. Other than to ask if the gas tank was full she didn’t try to engage me, but her temper was on display as she directed oaths at rush-hour drivers.
    A U.S. nuclear test somewhere over the Pacific. Doctors in Saskatchewan threatening to strike. The federal election campaign in high gear. Howard Hughes still missing.
    Running out of news, I toughed my way through the sports (“Koufax Fans 18”) and the strips (Pogo, Major Hoople). I tried to keep my eyes off Ophelia, though I could not escape glimpses of hitched-up skirt, bared knees, nyloned legs working the pedals.
    We pulled into Oakalla’s driveway half an hour later, just as I was reading the want ads (“West Point Grey bungalow, $14,500” – at that rate, could I ever afford my own house?). Walking over to the prison building, I was looking stiffly ahead and almost tripped.
    â€œCareful of the curb,” she said, taking my arm.
    â€œSorry.”
    She squeezed my hand. I felt much better for that.
    In the admissions lobby I immediately sensed tension among the staff. Jethro wanted the deputy warden’s say-so before signing us in but wouldn’t tell us why. Astonishingly, it was not I but Ophelia who was summoned to the deputy’s office. As I twiddled my thumbs I heard a distant, confusing female chorus. “We shall not, we shall not be moved.”
    I looked through the visitors’ book. Gabriel had had another visit yesterday from Jim Brady, the organizer for Mine, Mill. It was a Communist union, and I hoped they weren’t trying to use Gabriel for some political end. I had tried to return Brady’s call but got no answer.
    Ophelia returned, looking purposeful, and took me aside.