Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

‘That’s not…’ began Keflin-Brown, from behind, but Hall impatiently closed him down. ‘For God’s sake stop telling me what is or what is not possible! You’re seeing it with your own eyes!’

‘I wish I hadn’t.’

‘So do we all,’ said Hall. Abruptly he realized that the stink had completely disappeared.

The meeting was already scheduled but Jeremy Hall had not originally intended it to be anything more than an apology for their psychiatric analyses no longer being necessary, coupled with the assurance of their being paid, in full, despite their not having been called. The seemingly uncontrollable, but now understandable, media hysteria – by the time he returned to the Temple that morning there were four book publishing offers, one from America opening at $1,000,000 – and the unavoidable revelation of the coffin’s contents made him change his mind. They could, after all, work for their fee.

The Temple Inn yard is a public day-time thoroughfare and although there was a police guard directly outside the Proudfoot chambers there were pockets of loitering media representatives, circling in ambush like medieval skirmishers and Julian Mason, the first psychiatrist to arrive, entered shaking his head in bemusement.

‘I didn’t imagine it would be like this, despite what I’ve read and seen on television.’

‘No-one did. It is unimaginable.’ Flexing his newly developed muscle Hall had told – not asked – Bert Feltham that he needed the main conference room. Which he’d got, without question. In addition to which Feltham had politely asked – not autocratically decreed – if he could attend. Despite Keflin-Brown’s cemetery opinion of his unstoppable future career – which he had anyway already assessed for himself – Hall realistically acknowledged Feltham’s unique position and influence within chambers and went as far as saying he’d welcome the man’s presence. He was, at Mason’s arrival, already by the window overlooking the Thames in head-together conversation with Humphrey Perry. At that moment Johnson was on the telephone, Hall presumed arranging the collection of Jennifer’s belongings from jail.

‘I heard on the radio coming in that there was a sensational discovery at the cemetery, although they didn’t know what it was?’

‘Let’s wait for the others,’ suggested Hall.

The American, Milton Smith, whom Hall had intended calling as an authority on Multiple Personality Disorder, was the next to arrive. Hall was in the process of introducing him to Feltham when Steven Denning and Walter Elliott, his other two psychiatrists, entered together.

The introductions completed and the already prepared coffee served Hall quickly disposed with the original purpose of the gathering, asking each to submit their bills to Feltham.

‘There’s no doubt about the outcome of the trial?’ queried Denning, a heavily tweeded and bearded bear of a man. It had been Denning who’d used the truth drug, scopolamine, during one of his sessions with Jennifer and been totally satisfied with the honesty of her answers.

‘Not after this morning,’ said Hall. The four psychiatrists listened without any exaggerated reaction to his account of the exhumation. Neither Feltham nor Johnson, already briefed by Perry, showed any surprise.

‘Have you realized yet that you’ve made history?’ demanded Walter Elliott. Like Mason, he was a laid-back exponent. He wore open sandals, jeans and a roll-necked sweater: the sweater had a heavy darn in the left elbow.

‘It’s being thrust upon me,’ said Hall, making a general arm movement in the direction of the outside yard. ‘But that’s not what I want to talk about, not directly. After what we found in the grave the DNA comparison is largely academic. I’m going to make history by having an English court of law rule that Jennifer Lomax is physically possessed by a ghost. And that it was the ghost of Jane Lomax that murdered her husband-’

‘Jesus!’ intruded Denning.

‘Where the hell’s that going to take you?’ demanded Mason.

Hall shook his head against answer. Instead he went on ‘… That disposes of the charge against Jennifer. She’s not guilty of murder…’ He paused, looking around the assembled group. ‘But she’s still possessed…’

‘… By a homicidal maniac, whom she can’t always control,’ completed Elliott.

‘So,’ demanded Hall, ‘you’re the experts. How do we get rid of Jane?’

He asked the question looking at Milton Smith. So did everyone else.

‘Woa!’ cautioned Smith, an angularly featured, sparse-bodied man. ‘It’s becoming accepted – legally recognized in some states in America – that a person’s mind can consist of two or more, sometimes many more, separate personalities. And that each personality, each different person if you like, can at any one time control the body it’s in: be the person. There’s medically and clinically recorded and analysed cases. But we’re not talking Multiple Personality here. There’s an alien presence inside Jennifer Lomax. She’s been invaded…’ He returned the attention being concentrated upon him by the other three psychiatrists. ‘OK, you guys. I’ve never heard of anything like it before, encountered anything like it before and quite honestly I wouldn’t know how to begin helping or treating this lady. Any of you got a contribution?’

One by one the three men shook their heads. Denning said, ‘I asked to speak to Jane.’

‘Did you?’ said Hall.

‘For what it was worth. It was just foul mouthed.’

‘That’s what it is, most of the time,’ said Perry.

Mason sniggered, despite himself. ‘I talked to her, too. How many people have been told to go fuck themselves by a ghost?’

No-one laughed. Briefly, into Hall’s mind, came Keflin-Brown’s cut-off-at-the-court-door cynicism earlier that day. He said, ‘How can we – any of you working separately or all together, as a group if necessary – rid Jennifer of her ghost?’

‘I don’t even…’ began Elliott, ‘… didn’t, until now,’ he corrected, ‘… believe in ghosts.’

‘I don’t think any of us did,’ said Hall. ‘Now we do. So let’s try to answer the question.’

‘I’ve already told you I can’t,’ said the American. ‘I don’t know how to. If anyone’s got any idea I’ll go along with it.’

Again, one after another, the other three psychiatrists said the same.

‘You can’t say that,’ protested Hall.

‘There’s nothing else for us to say,’ insisted Mason, in return. ‘We’re psychiatrists, not exorcists.’

‘We suggested exorcism,’ reminded Perry.

‘She refused,’ Hall told the other men. ‘She said she didn’t helieve in God.’

‘I said I didn’t believe in ghosts,’ repeated Elliott, ‘I think exorcism’s worth trying, whether she believes or not.’

‘Anything’s worth trying, the jam she’s in,’ said Smith. He paused. ‘But I’d like to spend a lot more time with her…’ He looked vaguely embarrassed.

‘Like a culture under a microscope,’ accused Hall.

‘Think of what she is! We can’t begin to imagine her clinical value, to psychiatry. Psychology. Every science of the brain!’ urged the American.

‘I’m not going to think of her as an experiment,’ refused Hall. In sudden realization, he said, ‘But she’s sane, isn’t she?’

‘That’s what we were all going to tell the court,’ agreed Mason.

‘So there couldn’t be a committal order for her own protection?’

The psychiatrists considered the question. Elliott said, ‘She could admit herself.’

‘That’s what she told me Jane was trying to do, get her declared insane and locked up in an asylum,’ remembered Denning.