Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

‘Yes.’

‘Did you believe Rebecca in court? That he was going to divorce me and take Emily away?’

‘I thought we were trying to forget things, just for a moment.’

‘We can’t, can we?’

Honesty, he reminded himself. ‘Not for very long.’

‘So what’s the answer?’

‘She was performing: wanting the jury to make a comparison. She couldn’t be challenged.’

‘Still not an answer.’

‘I can’t give you one. If I’d had anything to challenge her with, I would have done.’

He followed her lead again, accepting they were returning to the clinic. He waited for her to lead the conversation, too.

‘Did Gerald do it?’ she demanded, abruptly.

Gently to warn her might lessen the shock, according to the psychiatrist. ‘There are a lot of things that don’t add up: things the police would have investigated, if they’d known.’

‘Do you believe I wasn’t involved.’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you prove it to her?’

‘If it’s based on the remark I think it is, yes.’

‘What if it isn’t?’

‘Then at least I’ll know where to go on looking.’

‘Why is she letting me alone, now?’

‘Because of what happened in the chapel?’ he suggested.

‘Wouldn’t it be…?’ Jennifer began, then stopped.

‘Yes,’ he agreed, not needing her to finish.

Jane wasn’t there the following morning. Of all the setbacks and reversals Jeremy Hall attempted to anticipate – accepting as he tried to forearm himself there were too many unknowns possibly to insure against – he’d never imagined that when he came to argue Jane’s possession with legal objectivity she wouldn’t be there to argue back.

Cox had declared Jennifer fit for the ordeal and all of them – Hall, Dawson and Julian Mason – were startled by the visibly obvious recovery. It was not so much physical although her face, still free of make-up, had for the first time in weeks a glow about it and her freshly washed hair still hung with the flow of expensive, if long past, attention. It was more in Jennifer’s demeanour. The apathy had lessened – lessened, not gone completely – to give way to something Hall held back from identifying as an eagerness for the confrontation.

Jeremy Hall was frightened, far more apprehensive than he had been entering the Old Bailey that first day to argue ghostly possession as a murder defence to a hostile, God-fearing judge. The desperation of the whole idea, which had seemed reasonable, even logical, in those adrenalin-exploding first hours of their anything’s-possible escape from hospital now seemed preposterously absurd.

Jennifer’s words the previous night – normal, ordinary – echoed in his mind. Which Hall acknowledged to be his difficulty. For two days – three because to begin with night had merged into new day and new day into night – he’d been normal and ordinary, a lawyer immersed in the normal and ordinary defence of a client. So immersed, inconceivable though it now was for him to concede, that he’d dismissed from conscious thought who that client was and the circumstances and to whom he would be presenting her defence. He’d lapsed – relaxed – into becoming ordinarily normal. Which nothing was. Or could be. He had to step back into the supernatural, into the unknown and the unpredictable, unable to judge anything by the safe and logically enshrined rules and process of law.

And now he was being off-balanced before he’d started.

‘I reached her,’ argued Dawson, hopefully. ‘She prayed. Renounced evil.’

‘She didn’t come afterwards. Not at all during the night,’ agreed Jennifer, just as hopefully, eager for omens.

‘She was devout, before she died,’ accepted Hall, although less convinced. ‘Incredibly so. But I can’t imagine it could have been this easy.’

‘You hadn’t tried God before,’ reminded the priest, critically.

‘We hardly had the opportunity!’ protested the barrister. ‘We were arguing a murder charge.’

‘What do we do?’ demanded Mason, delighted at Jennifer’s very obvious mental recovery although secretly disappointed there wouldn’t be more to take to its exaggerated limit his participation and the honour-awarding thesis that would come from it.

‘We wait,’ decided Hall.

‘For how long?’ asked the priest.

‘As long as it takes.’

Mason was about to protest the glib near-cliche but stopped at the thought of how it might sound to Jennifer. Instead he said, ‘Yes. We wait.’

Which they did. Every day Jennifer attended services in the chapel and underwent analysis, sometimes under hypnosis, with Julian Mason, who even – dangerously – invited Jane to join them. Jeremy Hall read and re-read everything he’d assembled, actually glad of the opportunity the delay gave him to search for something that incriminated Jennifer that he might have missed. And found nothing.

His solitary walks with Jennifer in the clinic grounds, each evening, grew longer – the building not needing to be in view any more – and afterwards the four of them ate together, sometimes joined by Cox. And Jennifer did eat, hungrily, and the priest boasted his knowledge of the wine list, showing off in front of a beautiful woman.

On the second day Hall had Bert Feltham send him the outlines of the four most urgent briefs, simply by posting them care of Dr Cox. He instructed Geoffrey Johnson to arrange the private security protection for the Hampshire mansion. He didn’t even consider telling Jennifer of the problems with Emily or of Annabelle’s growing reluctance to continue the role of surrogate mother.

All five of them were at dinner on the sixth night, as usual in Jennifer’s suite. It was Dawson who ordered the Roederer Crystal with the promise to pay for it himself, declaring a celebration for the complete return of Jennifer’s physical health that had just been announced by Dr Cox.

Jennifer insisted upon joining in her own toast. ‘Here’s to Jane’s departure. I know she’s left me.’

‘ I haven’t,’ said the familiar American voice. ‘ I’ve had a lot to think about.’

Depression swamped them. Jennifer was devastated although she didn’t fall back into immediate apathy. Legally it was a recognized ploy, acknowledged Hall: protract a case to unsettle its participants and then spring the surprise of a hearing.

‘ I’ve been looking forward to this ’ It was virtually automatic for Jennifer to mouth the words, as Jane’s puppet.

‘So have we,’ said Hall.

‘ I’m right, aren’t If I was murdered. ’

Jennifer sat with her head slightly bowed, both hands gripping the table edge. If Jane threw Jennifer into a fit she’d probably upend the table over all of them, Hall calculated. How they would stage this was something else he hadn’t anticipated: as they were, encircling a table, actually made it look like a seance. Or what he imagined a seance to be like, although he thought people were supposed to link hands. ‘I’m not sure. I haven’t heard your argument.’

‘ You first.’

‘Prosecution before defence.’

‘ My rules, not yours.’

‘Making me the prosecutor as well as the defender?’

‘ With me as the judge. The way it always had to be.’

Dawson’s head was more bowed than Jennifer’s. He had his hands clasped before him and his eyes tightly shut, his lips moving in silent prayer. Julian Mason was tensed forward, eyes bright with excitement. Cox appeared frozen, transfixed.

‘Your death wasn’t properly investigated,’ conceded Hall.

‘ It was murder! ’

‘There wasn’t a proper investigation,’ repeated the barrister, reluctant to concede anything.

‘ Do you think you’ve conducted one? ’