Whipped: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel(84)

That worked. “Let’s get through this,” Farquist said.

“I have a standing objection,” Cowper said.

“That is on record, Mr. Cowper.”

Arthur pushed on. “She had no romantic relationships after he left his home, wife, and child?”

“I refuse to couch the matter in such a way. They separated.”

“As you wish, but did she have such a romantic relationship?”

“I believe she was seeing a gentleman, yes.”

Arthur wasn’t expecting that, and was thrown off balance. “And who might that have been?”

“A widower, I believe. Someone from her church. A gentleman.”

Arthur asked for details, but Farquist stayed deliberately vague. A businessman, building management, something to that effect. Edward or Edwin, his surname a blank. Average height, slender. He visited only occasionally.

Arthur assumed a convenient fiction had been concocted. But he had no recourse but to follow through. “Was she sleeping with him?”

“This is outrageous. I am not aware if they slept together. It was none of my business, and it should be none of yours.”

Arthur had the sense Farquist had prepared for this peripheral line of attack. He was hostile but not rattled. Arthur’s strategy wasn’t showing profit.

“In those troubled years, you were very close to your mother?”

“Of course.”

“She loved you.”

“Is that not what mothers do?”

Arthur let it go at that. He couldn’t bring himself to boldly suggest she’d been pregnant with his child. With that mysterious lover on the scene, Arthur would only appear desperate and slimy.

A washroom break for the court reporter allowed Arthur to confer with Nanisha in the corridor. “Keep at it,” she said. “He’s famous for his temper.” Despite her encouraging words, she seemed disappointed at Arthur’s meagre results.

Margaret was also famous for her temper, and Arthur worried she would lack Farquist’s controlled cool when it came her turn. She was standing by a window, looking at Calgary’s snow-thickened rooftops. He wanted to embrace her, offer strength, but his sense of propriety forbade that.

§

“Mr. Farquist, I understand you keep homes in Ottawa and Calgary.”

“A residence here and a condominium in Ottawa.”

“And, as well, a chalet in the Gatineau Hills near the town of Kazabazua.”

“I recently sold that.”

“‘A stunning, private lakeside chalet on four pristine acres,’ to quote your real estate agent. The sale was effective as of December eleventh, two weeks ago?”

“You’ve done your research.” A more relaxed tone. His instructions had been to cool it, to be civil. Cowper would have told him, “Beauchamp is firing blanks. It’s all bluster.”

“And why did you sell it?”

“Mr. Beauchamp, perhaps your good wife need not be concerned about her legal bills, but I am not so blessed.” A gotcha look. A good answer to a bad question. Cowper seemed embarrassed for his opposing counsel.

“And it was then encumbered with a mortgage for $200,000 taken out last May twenty-fifth?”

“As to the date, you have the advantage of me. Close enough.”

“And what did you do with those proceeds?”

A glance at his watch. A shrug. “The market looked attractive. I turned everything over to an investment advisor. He operates a blind trust, so I have no idea what stocks were bought.”

And so the rabbit scampers down another escape hole. Farquist had been prepared well by his counsel. Lugubrious Cowper, his eyes constantly on Arthur, offering nothing, no hint of triumph.

Arthur had abundant experience with lying witnesses, and read them well — the talent was in his bones, almost instinctive. But there was no noticable discomfort here, no perspiration, no shifting in his chair, no clearing of throat, eye contact rarely broken.

He assembled himself, pressed for details. Had Farquist any proof of payment of those proceeds into that blind trust? Yes, there was a record in his personal financial files. He hadn’t thought to bring that along. Farquist wasn’t reluctant to provide the name of his investment advisor, whose firm was based in Calgary. James Kenniworth, Northern Allied Investments. A trusted friend of long standing.

It would be hard to prove that this trusted friend had funnelled the funds to Svetlana Glinka. He could be subpoenaed, but that might backfire. He may have innocently set up a blind trust that Farquist surreptitiously cleaned out.

“May I suggest that what you really bought was Ms. Svetlana Glinka’s silence. After she threatened to go public with your sado-masochistic relationship.”

Farquist looked as if he’d been slapped. “That’s as ridiculous as it is insulting.” He shot an importuning look at his counsel.

“We can be confident none of this is admissible,” Cowper said.

Arthur changed tack. “Among the documents your counsel has provided is your day book for the current year.” A leather binder, comprising the fifty-two pages marked for each week of the year, crammed with notes and appointments, but nothing politically sensitive. “Please mark that an exhibit, Madam Reporter.”

The key date was Sunday, January 6, the date stamped on Glinka’s video, but Arthur opened the binder to the first calendar page, the week ending January 5. That Saturday showed Farquist in his Parliamentary office in the morning, the environment ministry in the afternoon, and at his Ottawa home that evening with a few friends over drinks. A reminder: “Rhoda prefers Riesling.”