A Mind to Kill

Chapter Twelve

Neither Mason nor Fosdyke was talking when the other three men entered the neurologist’s rooms. Both were lounged with polystyrene cups balanced on their chests, Fosdyke behind his desk tilted far enough back in a much-used round-back chair to gaze up at the ceiling, Mason with his feet propped on some unrecognizable carved protrusion from the front of the equally much-used desk. The surprise didn’t finish with desk and chairs. In total contrast to Fosdyke’s over-starched, pristine appearance it was a cluttered, disorganized room of half-open drawers and sagged cabinets. On top of one paint-chipped cabinet a neglected, unidentifiable plant had withered into the vague shape of a sacrificial cross. The only cleared space on the paper-littered desk was around three photograph frames: close by a tower was slowly rising from previously much-fingered polystyrene cups placed one inside the other.

Fosdyke brought himself up at their arrival, gesturing towards three straight-back chairs obviously newly installed in an uncertain, formal line opposite Mason. Opposing combatants again, thought Hall.

Fosdyke said, ‘Waiting Room issue, I’m afraid…’ He raised his coffee container. ‘Like this: can you believe cleaners and patients steal anything else! God knows what for! But I grind the coffee myself. Colombian…’ There was another gesture, to a table near the window where a full pot stood on its hotplate. ‘… Help yourselves.’

Lloyd continued straight on to the coffee. Perry hesitated, then followed. Hall sat down, looking around the room. Perhaps, he thought, the mess was a camouflage against further larceny. The idle reflection was short lived. A few hundred yards away there was a mentally ill murderer who’d cut another human being – her husband – to pieces and this meeting to help her began with an apology about hospital furniture and coffee cups. Wrong, Hall corrected himself, at once. They were doing a job, all of them performing different expertise from different perspectives. But as proper, dispassionate professionals, not allowing the distraction or influence of personal involvement. My first murder, he reminded himself: their attitude was right, his was wrong.

Still at the machine the solicitor turned and said, ‘You sure?’

‘Black, no sugar,’ accepted Hall. He hoped Perry hadn’t imagined he’d waited to be served. He was sorry taking it within seconds of Perry giving him the container: it was too hot to hold without a handle, and he hurriedly placed it on the floor. The returning Lloyd repositioned his chair more towards the doctors before he sat down. Combatants, Hall thought again.

‘Well?’ invited Perry. ‘What’s the verdict?’

‘Limited, from my side,’ said Mason, lowering his feet to the floor. ‘So let’s start with medically provable findings.’

On cue Fosdyke came further upright, too, assembling a few sheets of paper and some X-ray plates before him. As he did so the psychiatrist said, ‘Remember, as far as I am concerned, this isn’t a verdict. It’s a very preliminary impression.’

Fosdyke coughed. ‘Quite obviously mental problems – insanity even – can be brought on by physical factors or illness. We know now, from symptoms still recorded in the archives, that George III wasn’t mad: he suffered from porphyria, which we’d control by pills today…’ He was playing with his notes but Hall didn’t think the neurologist needed them.

‘As well as for organic reasons, apparent mental illness can be caused by head or brain malformation or injury,’ continued Fosdyke, looking up. ‘A difficult birth, the use of forceps or Caesarian section, things like that can result in cerebral anoxia, damage the temporal lobes and bring about epileptic dysfunction in later life… cortical atrophy even…’

Perry stirred, smiling sideways to Hall. ‘This could be better than any defence we’ve thought of so far…!’

‘If I could find any of it, which I can’t,’ stopped Fosdyke, immediately puncturing the expectation. He made an inclusive gesture towards Lloyd. ‘As a part of my assessment, we’ve carried out faeces, urine and blood tests. Earlier today there was even a lumbar drain, to examine spinal fluid for any cranial bleed or infection. In nothing we have done have we found the slightest evidence whatsoever of any medical conditions or illness from which Mrs Lomax might be suffering: most certainly nothing that would reflect upon or cause the mental collapse she appears to have undergone-’

‘What about physical damage or malformation?’ pressed Hall, reluctant to lose an acceptable defence avenue.

‘She responded a hundred per cent normally to every sensory test I carried out in the ward,’ refused Fosdyke. ‘In the examination room I even extended the scan, beyond the brain, to include the upper part of the body. There is absolutely no brain abnormality or malformation to account for Mrs Lomax’s behaviour. Neither is there in the upper body: anything that could be interrupting the oxygen or blood supply to the brain, for instance…’

‘… In short?’ invited Hall.

Fosdyke lifted the plates and printouts from the scan and said, ‘In short, Jennifer Lomax is, physically and neurologically, probably the fittest thirty-two-year-old woman I’ve ever examined in my life. Actuarilly, she’ll live to be a hundred.’

Hall finally picked up his cooled coffee. It was excellent, despite its container. ‘There’s no other test left you could carry out?’

The neurologist shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I,’ said the barrister, with feeling.

Beside him Perry said to Julian Mason, ‘Which means our hope comes back to you.’

‘I’m not sure you’re going to be any better pleased,’ said the psychiatrist. He got up, refilled his cup and stayed slightly propped against the window in an attitude reminding Hall of how his tutor had sometimes tried to explain particularly esoteric points of law. The recollection prompted a reminder of its own, which he put aside until he’d heard Mason out.

‘You can’t have found nothing,’ challenged Perry in irritation.

Mason smiled, unoffended. ‘The problem may be that I’ve found too much but that I need even more.’

Hall detected a move of fresh irritation beside him and quickly said, ‘Perhaps you should talk us through it.’

The psychiatrist paused, preparing himself but unencumbered by any notes. ‘You’ve got to understand from the outset that one session, like we had today, was always going to be totally inadequate. I’ll need more – probably a lot more – if I’m ever going to be of any practical use to you or to a court.’

‘Of course we accept that,’ said Hall. ‘What we’re looking for today is a suggested way to go forward.’

Mason nodded, extending the gesture towards the neurologist. ‘George was looking for a pathological cause for Mrs Lomax’s condition. And didn’t find one. On face value Mrs Lomax is showing some of the classic symptoms of schizophrenia. There are no pathological tests for schizophrenia. It’s decided upon by the psychiatrist from visual and behavioural perception. For which they observe the symptoms devised by a German psychiatrist named Schneider: technically it’s called the Schneider Present State Examination. Mrs Lomax’s most obvious symptom is Second Person Auditory Hallucination: people – in this case one person – are talking to her. Equally obvious is Delusion of Thought Insertion: Jane can think for Jennifer, is aware of Jennifer’s thoughts… is inside her head, listening.’

Mason paused to sip his coffee and Hall waited, far from impatient at the lecture. Rather, he wanted a lecture: whatever defence they decided upon, he was going to need the phrases and the methodology. To be able to use and understand them.

‘There are some other schizophrenic indicators,’ resumed the psychiatrist. ‘The apparent uncontrolled movement of her arms and legs. Not having many friends is schizoid. Using obscenities is another… the actual murder would come under the heading of dyssocial personality disorder…’

Humphrey Perry didn’t have Hall’s patience. ‘So she’s genuinely mentally ill? Not properly aware of what she’s doing so we can suggest she’s suffering diminished responsibility or is unfit to plead?’

‘No,’ said the psychiatrist, shortly.

‘No!’

‘I’ve treated and diagnosed dozens of schizophrenics: a lot of paranoid schizophrenics who’ve killed. And I’ve never before encountered anyone like Jennifer Lomax.’

‘So she’s faking it?’ persisted Perry, easily able to dance to a different rhythm.

‘I don’t think that, either.’

There was a sharp sideways look from Lloyd. The neurologist gave no reaction and Hall presumed the two specialists had fully discussed everything before their arrival. He had to remember the absence of the voice, as well as raise the query from the long ago Cambridge debate. He said, ‘Until this moment I’ve understood everything you’ve said. Now you’re losing me.’

‘What was the first thing that interested her when we met, knowing I was a psychiatrist?’ demanded Mason.

Perry shook his head.

‘Your name,’ recalled Hall.

‘Exactly. And she smiled. A schizophrenic wouldn’t have been interested in my name. Nor have smiled, to fit the circumstances of the introduction. Facial reaction is usually dysfunctional, out of context or keeping with the moment: she frowned in the right places at the right time and she smiled in the right places at the right time.’ Mason seemed surprised his polystyrene container was empty and added to it. ‘Mouthing obscenities is a common manifestation. But being embarrassed by them isn’t. When she told me Jane had called her a good fuck and I asked her if she was, she visibly blushed, discomfited, although she admits to using the word herself. The context of everything she did and said is vitally important. And everything she did and said fitted, as if there was a person none of us was aware of, taking part in the discussion…’

Perry sighed, too heavily, and Mason grinned at him. ‘You think I’m enjoying saying this… even considering possession…!

‘Faked!’ dismissed the solicitor.

‘Then answer me this!’ demanded Mason, coming forward with the challenge that reminded Hall again of his Cambridge tutor when he’d laid a trap for an inattentive student. ‘If you were faking a mental illness and were confronted by two supposed experts…’ He waved his hand towards the neurologist. ‘… Like George and I, what would be absolutely vital for you to know…!’

Once again, uncomfortably, Perry shook his head.

‘Whether we believed you or not,’ supplied Fosdyke, re-entering the conversation and confirming Hall’s guess of a rehearsal. ‘When we came out of the scanner Peter and I said we had sufficient and Hall asked if it was enough for a preliminary finding-’

‘-And Jennifer stopped either of us replying,’ came in Mason. ‘She actually said “Not in front of me: I don’t want her to know” and claimed the voice called her a bitch for not letting us speak, even if we’d intended to.’

‘All part of a damned clever act,’ suggested Perry.

‘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?’

The psychiatrist shook his head. ‘It’ll be a starting point tomorrow. With the hypnosis.’

‘If she agrees,’ cautioned Lloyd.

Jennifer did, at once, fifteen minutes later. Still without any physical sensation of Jane’s presence she asked, too, for the sedation to keep the voice away during the night.

‘Don’t you want to hear about the preliminary findings?’ asked Mason, experimentally.

‘No!’ refused Jennifer, anxiously and at once.

‘He said what?’ demanded Feltham. They were in El Vino again, because Jeremy Hall had insisted on returning to chambers and Perry hadn’t wanted obviously to meet the chief clerk there. And Feltham was annoyed because he didn’t like being around this late. Lunch was his time.

‘Words to the effect that he knew there was a hidden agenda and that to keep whatever else was on offer he’d get a leader – Sir Richard himself, he hinted – for the Lomax case.’

‘Cheeky bugger! What did you say?’ One advantage of not having to return to the office to work was that he could drink claret instead of lighter white wines. The St Emilion was excellent.

‘Nothing.’

‘Didn’t you even deny it?’

‘I dismissed it. Said the case was indefensible.’

‘How is it shaping up?’

‘Bloody nightmare. Hall is taking it all so seriously, as if there is a worthwhile plea to enter. And he’s far more confident than I thought he might be at our first meeting. Had me call the Hampshire Social Security people from the car, on our way back, and then dictated a list of instructions as long as my arm before we got here. His last insistence was that I go down to Hampshire with him tomorrow. When I asked him how he expected me to do that as well as everything else he said he had every confidence in me.’

Feltham nodded to another claret. ‘Judges don’t like cocky young beginners. You want me to have a word in his ear?’

‘No,’ said Perry. ‘Just wanted to keep you up to date with things.’

‘How is she?’

‘Totally mad.’

‘No leader from my chambers is going to appear in court and talk about ghostly murderers,’ decided Feltham, positively. ‘I don’t give a damn whether Jeremy bloody Hall is a nephew of Sir Richard’s or not. He’ll do as he’s told, like they all do.’

In Jennifer’s hospital room, less than two miles away, the sedative began to take affect. The last thing of which Jennifer was aware was Jane’s distant voice. ‘ You can’t begin to guess the plans I’ve got, Jennifer. It’s much more fun than I thought it might be.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I,’ said Patricia Boxall, beside him in the darkness.

‘I’ll be all right later,’ promised Hall.

Was it still too late to leave: call Alexander from the car? Probably. It had been close to midnight before they’d got back from the poxy Italian restaurant with its stale spaghetti and acid wine. ‘Wake me,’ she said, turning away from him. If the sex was over then so was everything else.