Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

‘I’ve never encountered a schizophrenic that clever that quickly: they’re cunning but not conventionally or logically so,’ insisted Mason. ‘We need to know a lot more about her personal history – a hugely lot more, in fact – but we do know from the newspapers she was a highly intelligent trader in Lomax’s office before they got married. Some papers are calling her a genius. So OK, let’s go along with your disbelief that she’s genuinely ill: that she’s faking it. If she’s faking it, why is her only concern to be declared sane! That doesn’t make any sense. Mentally ill she has a defence, a sympathetic sentence. Sane and she’s a calculating murderer looking at life.’

‘Could the voice be her own invention, without her realizing it?’ suggested Perry. ‘Her guilt that Jane died after she’d started the affair: imposing her own punishment upon herself?’

Mason smiled at the lay effort. ‘A very outside possibility. There would have been symptoms before that would have shown up on her medical records, I would have thought.’

‘So would I,’ agreed Fosdyke.

‘What other contradictory features are there?’ intruded Hall.

‘People who are mentally ill don’t argue as forcefully or as logically as she did: they shout and scream but again out of context. She argued logically. Schizophrenics don’t complain of feeling frustrated or impotent at their condition. She does,’ recited Mason. ‘The meeting today was disjointed, on our part…’ Once more he gestured towards the neurologist. ‘… In fact the closest we came to a structured Schneider clinical interview was when George asked her the personal questions…’

‘During which I intentionally miscalculated how old she was, after she told me her date of birth,’ Fosdyke pointed out.

‘She corrected him at once,’ reminded Mason. ‘That wouldn’t have been important to anyone suffering a schizophrenic dysfunction.’

‘That all?’ queried Hall, anxious now to get to his own points.

The psychiatrist shook his head. ‘There are appearance exceptions – there’s even a clinical description for it – but predominantly mentally ill people don’t bother about how they dress: they’re usually a mess, with no attempt at colour co-ordination. Her appearance upset Jennifer: she was embarrassed at looking like she did, in a hospital gown and robe that somebody else would have worn before her and didn’t fit her anyway…’ He paused, needing more coffee. ‘And I’ve got a problem about the uncontrollable limb movements. That’s why I wanted her to walk to the scanner, even before I knew there was going to be sudden arm or leg movements. If she was faking, she would have performed something as we walked down the corridor for the scan. She didn’t…’

‘And I’ve never got a genuinely mentally ill person into a scanner unless they’ve been catatonic or sedated,’ said Fosdyke. ‘They’re invariably terrified of being put into what looks like a claustrophobic tunnel. We actually hesitated, to test her out. She asked us what we were waiting for.’

There was an abrupt, empty silence in the room. The concentration settled upon Hall, who stood up and used the coffee machine as Mason had to become the centre of everyone’s attention. By letting him do so – instead of hurrying condescendingly to fill the vacuum – Perry had deferred to him, establishing the proper solicitor-barrister relationship. Hall hoped it wasn’t an isolated concession: he didn’t enjoy the idea of being manipulated by Perry and Feltham, as he was sure he was being manipulated. Perry hadn’t even bothered to argue against the accusation when confronted with it.

Hall said, ‘I’m still confused but I’d like to get some things clear in my mind. After an initial examination you can’t say she’s suffering a mental illness, nor can you say she’s faking one?’

‘No, I can’t,’ agreed Mason.

‘A person – a very clever person, like Jennifer Lomax – could have learned of schizophrenic symptoms, even know what Schneider guidance is, by reading a psychiatric text book?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Mason.

‘And there’s no pathological reason for how she’s behaving?’

‘None,’ agreed Fosdyke.

‘I haven’t read up on it yet, but I remember a discussion when I was a law student about-’

‘Multiple Personality Disorder?’ anticipated the psychiatrist, smiling once more at a lay question.

‘Wouldn’t that come within the range of schizophrenia?’ agreed Hall, wishing he hadn’t been interrupted.

‘It’s an American favourite,’ said Mason, still smiling although not patronizingly. ‘It goes all the way back to 1957 and the film The Three Faces of Eve. Joanne Woodward won an Oscar playing a woman in whose body three separate personalities existed, a housewife, a good-time girl, a sophisticated woman…’

‘I’m not interested in Hollywood films,’ dismissed Hall, aware of Humphrey Perry’s vague smirk.

‘The American Psychological Association is,’ offered Mason. ‘It has published accepted Papers that the condition affects up to five hundred thousand Americans, practically all women. In nineteen-eighty it was accepted as an official psychiatric diagnosis, even though at that time only two hundred cases recognized as genuine were on record

… in nineteen-ninety a man in Wisconsin was charged with rape for having sexual intercourse with a consenting twenty-six-year old who became a six-year-old child during the act: at the beginning of the trial each of the twenty-one personalities occupying the woman had to be sworn in separately…’

‘Could what Mrs Lomax appears to be suffering be Multiple Personality Disorder?’ Hall saw that his instructing solicitor wasn’t smirking any more.

‘In America, probably,’ conceded Mason. ‘It’s not a diagnosis accepted here, as far as I know, although there are widely known case histories. I’ve actually heard The Three Faces of Eve discussed among professionals as if it was a clinically diagnosed and proven case, not a movie.’

‘It’s never been offered as a defence in an English court, to my knowledge,’ said Perry.

‘Nor mine,’ said the psychiatrist. ‘You’re going to get other opinions as well as mine, of course?’

‘Of course,’ agreed Perry, happy to be back on solid, legal procedural ground.

‘Then use an American psychiatrist who’s familiar with the syndrome.’

‘We will,’ accepted Hall, at once. ‘But you want more sessions?’

‘Very much so. I’d particularly like to examine her under hypnosis, if she’d agree to it.’

‘Can people lie under hypnosis?’ demanded Hall, recognizing a new opportunity.

‘They’re less inclined to. There are some people who can’t be hypnotized.’

‘If she were – if she agreed and was a suitable subject – would you be able to decide whether or not she was faking the voice?’ asked Hall.

‘I might get a better indication than I’ve got so far,’ offered the psychiatrist, guardedly.

‘I think she’s undergone enough examinations, of every sort, for one day,’ came in Lloyd, protectively.

‘I agree,’ said Mason, at once.

‘There’s something you don’t know,’ Hall said, remembering. It only took him minutes to explain the local authority approach about Emily’s care but before he reached what he thought might be important Mason broke in to demand how she’d reacted.

‘Outrage at the very beginning,’ recounted Hall. ‘Then calmly, logically. She’s instructed us to oppose it. But there was something I thought might be important. There was no second voice. She was quite rational, throughout.’

‘Did she explain that?’ frowned Mason.

‘No. Perhaps you should have been there?’