by Packer, Vin
On the diary
Dr. Evans: “Any two highly imaginative girls might write as they did in their correspondence, and in Mary Drew Edlin’s diary. The callous sound to ‘polishing off Mother’ is not out of character with the current, almost universal interest in violence among today’s adolescent. Her recording that both are ‘mad as March hares’ is no indication of insanity, rather of a quite perverse adolescent mind rambling on in a typical juvenile outpouring.”
Dr. Mannerheim: “I believe it would be very nearly impossible for anyone to read Mary Drew Edlin’s diary and the correspondence without feeling the gradual slipping away from reality, the rising tension and exaltation. Evil becomes more and more paramount, even before their plans to ‘polish off’ Mrs. Edlin. They have their Palace of Torture, their Horrible, their Druid’s egg, their violence at Trumpet Head, and ultimately their decision to kill, their experiences in blackmailing and stealing. Both girls suffer very obviously from a form of insanity known as folie simultanée, that is, simultaneous insanity. There is also a systematized delusional insanity coupled, in paranoia, in this exalted type, with a state of exaltation and a sense of grandeur. The paranoiac can carry out the most detailed scheme, act like the most normal sort, murder with complete ease, and feel wholly elated, exalted and right.”
Here Crown Prosecutor Baird questioned Dr. Mannerheim about the meaning of folie simultanée:
“It is a variety of folie à deux.”
Mr. Baird: “Such as was mentioned in the American case, the Loeb-Leopold case, of two American youths who killed a small boy?”
Dr. Mannerheim: “Yes. And they were found insane.”
Mr. Baird: “In that case, I believe, one of the youths was described as being the stronger; that is, the leader. Who would you say was the leader in this case?”
Dr. Mannerheim: “That is why I make the distinction. In simultaneous insanity, as is implied, there was a simultaneous appearance of delusions by reciprocal influence. Both the Edlin girl and the Kent girl reacted upon one another, with neither one leading the other, but both hand-in-hand.”
Mr. Baird: “If these two girls had never met, could it be possible that they would have never become, as you consider them, insane?”
Dr. Mannerheim: “Completely possible.”
The jury is expected to return a verdict sometime tomorrow afternoon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It is a sad fact that the majority of people think of an insane person only in terms of the type who exist inside the padded cell of some bar-windowed asylum. That is the difficult part about the notion of insanity. It is quite possible to live with, and work along side of, a potential or even fully developed lunatic without having any suspicion until something provokes him to act like a lunatic. In this instance, the threat of separation provoked Mary Drew Edlin and Martha Kent … Even after the insane mind has shown his hand, one cannot expect a demonstration of insanity from there on in. More often, this sort of lunatic behaves much as he always did, for the most part. Insanity is far too complicated for the oversimplified concept most people have of the disease.
— Dr. Rose Mannerheim, testifying at the Edlin-Kent trial
AUGUST 29, 1956
Mary Drew Edlin sat behind the visitors’ screen, picking at her nails while she talked to Tony. The matron, Mrs. Terrence, waited at the opposite end of the room, her hands folded behind her back, her feet spread apart. The woman was so stick-thin and straight that she looked like a giant letter Y, turned upside down.
Tony was telling about his exams, how miserably he’d fared. Well, had he expected any different? D was his average; always had been.
Mary Drew interrupted him to say, “Father’s rather peeved with me, isn’t he?”
Her father had only been to visit twice; both times he had behaved more as though he should be the one receiving visitors here in the damned jail, and she, Mary Drew, calling on him. He could barely manage conversation, and he fidgeted with his hands like a nervous old maid. Not Tony — Tony acted as though he were sitting across from her in the living room at home, rambling on about this and that, the way he always did when he came home from college.
“Father is in deep shock,” Tony said, “but he’s not peeved, Mary Drew.”
“Thanks for bringing me the note paper, Tony. I want to write, to help while away my time here. They turn the damned lights off at nine in the evening, though.”
“Anything else you need,” Tony said, “just tell me.”
It was a pity, Mary Drew thought, that she was just beginning to like her half-brother. He might make a good doctor one day. When everything was settled, she’d make a concentrated effort to be friendly with him.
She said, “Tony?”
“What?”
“Wasn’t that a lot of foolishness about defective stock! You remember what Dr. Mannerheim said, about Mother’s having me and Belinda by her second husband, and you by her first. They think I’m as crazy as Belinda.”
“Don’t think about it, Mary Drew,” Tony answered.
“I bet it made Father angry, all right!”
“Just forget it. Forget everything they say in there, Mary Drew.”
“Oh, it’s not worrying me.” She cupped her hand to her mouth and guffawed. “When they read my diary that way, I do sound really crazy!”
“We don’t have much more time together now,” Tony said. “Is there anything else you want?”
“Tony?”
“What?”
“I’m sorry about using your sock that way.”
It had seemed like a wonderful joke at the time, slipping the rock in one of Tony’s old red wool socks, but he now was acting awfully nice about everything …
He said, “All right, Mary Drew.”
“Do you think I was horrible?”
“It’ll be all right,” Tony said. He jerked his arm up to see his watch, then slid his cuff back over its face. “Time,” he said.
“Mrs. Terrence hasn’t said anything yet.”
“She will, no doubt, in an instant. Anything else?”
“I suppose not. Tomorrow, I suppose, I’ll know what’s to become of Moly and me. I really can’t wait to see Moly. I don’t get much of a glimpse of her in court. They’d better return our novels too, or there ‘11 be a row.”
Mrs. Terrence was walking toward Mary Drew now, in that soldier-straight, marching step of hers. “Here she comes,” Mary Drew said. “Back to the dungeon, it is.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mary Drew.” Tony stood up. He held a straw hat in his hand, and the collar of his white shirt, under the light summer-weight suit, was curling from the heat. “One thing more,” she said to him. “It’s quite comfortable where I am, weather-wise. There’s a wonderful fan just outside in the corridor. I get most of the benefit from it.”
Mrs. Terrence said, “That’s all for today,” to Tony.
“Thank you,” Tony answered, with that slight half-bow of his. Then he said a preposterous thing to Mary Drew:” Will you be all right?”
Mary Drew giggled “You’re the stickler for manners, Tony.”
She waved and followed Mrs. Terrence through the door of the visitors’ room, down the corridor toward the cells.
When Mrs. Terrence waited for her to come alongside, she said, “I have my paper now, so I’ll be busy writing.”
“You have a very nice brother,” said Mrs. Terrence as they went along.
“He’s only a half-brother. He was by Mother’s first,” she chuckled, “Mother’s by Daddy have lost their marbles.”
“Well, he’s very nice,” Mrs. Terrence said. “Mother thought so too.”
Mrs. Terrence stopped at the first cell, held the door back while Mary Drew entered. “Dinner will come in about an hour,” said Mrs. Terrence.
“I’m glad I have my paper now,” Mary Drew answered, walking across to the cot, tossing the opened package there. “I have a special assignment to begin on immediately.”
Mrs. Terrence
nodded. “You keep busy,” she said, turning the key in the lock.
Mary Drew Edlin sat frowning, trying to compose in her mind the letter she would write to Moly. Tomorrow, in court, she would slip it to her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
These are not two girls suffering from some complicated mental disease, which the two psychiatrists would have us believe both came down with at the same time! These are two filthy-minded children who had an evil friendship and an evil plan — to murder one of their mothers. The defense would have us call the evil a sickness, and the act of murder, a symptom! The defense would have us say ‘My! My! Poor little girls!’ But I would have you picture in your minds the hole in that red sock which the rock tore under the force of the blows these evil children inflicted on that woman, who gave suck to one of them, and taught her the word ‘mother,’ and knew for her the love only a mother can! … Sick, the defense says. Sinister, say I! Evil! Vile!
— Crown Prosecutor Baird, at the Edlin-Kent trial
AUGUST 29, 1956
“Please, Martha,” Mrs. Kent said, “keep your voice down. We don’t have to shout at one another!” Again she held the handkerchief with the delicate lace edging to her eyes.
Martha said, just as loud, “What, so old Mrs. Terrence won’t hear! Afraid she’ll blab?”
“It wouldn’t have done you any good, Martha, to have your diary read by the psychiatrists and the police.” Mrs. Kent’s eyes were bloodshot from weeping.
“That’s not why you destroyed it, and you know it. It was to save your neck, yours and Roddy’s!” She looked away, into the yellow light, while her mother blew her nose. She rather liked old Mrs. Terrence. When the matron worked as much as she could of a crossword puzzle, she passed it on to Martha to finish. Couldn’t figure out the simplest words, Mrs. Terrence couldn’t, but she was fun in her way.
Mrs. Kent said, “I take full blame Martha, for all of this. I should have loved you more. I did love you. I should have shown you how much I loved you.”
“You let Druid take full blame, not yourself. It’s Druid’s diary they’re always harping on! Well, I had a diary too, until you and Roddy stole it from me!”
“Martha, dear Martha, is that all you can say to me? Is that all you can think of? Isn’t there anything you can say about this — this — ” She began to cry again, holding her handkerchief to her face, bending her head.
Martha said, “The psychiatrists think I’m a liar. I told them about the diary.”
“I’ve tried to explain to you, Martha,” Mrs. Kent sobbed.
“And you lied about that night! An ulcer attack!”
“Darling, is there any way I can make you understand? It wouldn’t have helped you any if I had said otherwise.” Mrs. Kent made the handkerchief into a ball, clutching it in one hand, leaning forward with her face nearly pressed against the screen between herself and her daughter. “Do you think I would have withheld the truth if I thought it was going to hurt you, darling?”
“What about Druid?” Martha Kent said.
“Or Druid!” Mrs. Kent answered suddenly angry.
Martha Kent sat back in the straight wooden chair and smiled. “I know you hate Druid.”
“I don’t! Martha dear, listen to me — ”
But Mrs. Terrence was starting toward them now, the whip-snap correctness of her gait tap-tapping on the creaky wooden floor.
“It’s over for today,” Martha said to her mother.
“Can I bring you anything tomorrow?”
Martha looked across at her with an even expression to her face, “Yes, you can. Bring me Druid.”
“That’s all for today,” Mrs. Terrence said.
Helen Kent didn’t move. She sat with her hands holding her face, her shoulders shaking. Momentarily, after Martha stood, she looked at her mother in a way that seemed as though she were on the verge of wanting to reach out and touch the screen where her mother’s shoulder met its edge. But Mrs. Terrence waited, and there was the open door, leading off from the visitors’ room. Martha hesitated.
Then, to her mother she said, “I didn’t want it this way! Not for father or you! I never did!”
Mrs. Kent looked up at her, and her daughter bit her lip, then turned in a sudden motion and ran through the door. Mrs. Terrence had to skip to catch up with her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Final day of the Edlin-Kent trial
AUGUST 30, 1956
“Tour verdict must be unanimous,” the Judge told the jury. “At no time during this trial has it been denied that the accused did indeed commit the crime. The question that must be decided is whether or not they knew they were killing Mrs. Louisa Edlin. You have heard doctors testify that they were and are of sane mind, and did know the nature of their act, and you have heard doctors testify that they were not, and are’ not now of sane mind, and had, therefore, no appreciation of the reality of their murdering this woman.”
The Judge continued to review the evidence. He told of the girls’ untruths to Mrs. Tullett at Southwark Park, of Mary Drew Edlin’s signed confession of guilt, and of Martha Kent’s original false statement, followed by a second statement admitting guilt. He reviewed the defense’s claim that the girls were suffering from paranoia of an exalted type in a setting of folie a deux. He reexamined the Crown’s claim that the murder was premeditated, and that the motive was an intelligible one; that the girls were sane and the partners of an evil friendship. He instructed the jury to bear in mind that the crime of murder consists of the killing of a person by an unlawful act, meaning to cause the death of the person killed.
The Crown’s case was conducted by Mr. Thomas P. Baird. Mary Drew Edlin was represented by Mr. Conrad Reynolds, and Martha Kent by Mr. E. V. Curtis.
“There is no dispute about the fact of the murder,” Mr. Curtis said in his summary, “You must concern yourselves wholly with the evidence as to the mental health of these two girls. I am not going to review all of the evidence, but simply touch on pertinent points. These two girls met late last year here at Chillam. Their friendship was formed immediately, even though neither girl had ever had a close friend prior to this. Their friendship was as immediately intense as it had been instantaneous. One of the most important diary entries is the early one in January of this year, in which Mary Drew Edlin says, ‘Moly and I are one person, and the world is our puppet. Mother thinks we are too close, so the hell with mother.’ Their disastrous relationship is already in full swing. Later on, they were subjecting one another to torture and violence, combined with lovemaking as characters out of their novels. At the Kent home they roamed about in the night. They had plans to go abroad, to have a chateau in France, to sell their novels to Hollywood.
“The girls thought there was more behind an incident in Mr. Sawyer’s apartment at the Kent home. This was part of the backdrop to their lunacy, developing simultaneously in their minds. They were convinced that they could persuade Mrs. Kent to let Mary Drew Edlin stay with them in America, if they could simply raise the money for her passage. Only one thing, to their poor, unrational minds, stood in their way — Mary Drew Edlin’s mother. They thus set about quite calmly to plan the most brutal and clumsy killing.
“Dr. Mannerheim had the advantage of having interviewed Mary Drew Edlin before the tragedy. She has asked the court to realize that insanity is too complicated for oversimplification; that the court must appreciate the fact that lunatics do not always behave as raving candidates for the padded cell. Thus, while Dr. Evans claims he cannot see any delusional insanity involved here, can he, we must ask ourselves, honestly believe that a girl who writes of ‘polishing off mother’ in her diary, then does the murder without any qualms about being accused of it — and there are none recorded anywhere in her writing — can Dr. Evans honestly believe this is just a filthy-minded little girl bent on evil? Does he believe that Martha Kent, who called Mary Drew Edlin on the morning of the crime to suggest pushing Mrs. Edlin down the staircase, so they wouldn’t have to go all the w
ay to Southwark Park, is also just another adolescent delinquent?
“You have heard the evidence, heard the diary entries and the testimony of Drs. Mannerheim and Evans, and it is for you to simply search your mind and heart and ask yourself, could any girl do such a thing, in such a way, to her own or her best friend’s mother, for such an ill-planned venture as running off abroad together — never mind any other obstacles — could any girl do this and be in her right mind?
“I ask you to return a verdict of not guilty on the grounds of insanity!” Mr. Curtis ended his plea.
• • •
Mr. Conrad Reynolds, also speaking for the defense, then asked the jury this: “It has been contended here by the Crown that these girls were not sick. They cared only for one another. Both doctors for the defense and the Crown admit they practiced overt homosexuality. They wrote letters to each other daily, saw each other daily, telephoned each other daily, made love as characters from each other’s novels, wrote of visiting an imaginary man called ‘Horrible’ for the shocking purpose of watching one another perform intercourse with the alleged ugly fellow. Their school reported them as having a significant relationship. They wrote of a Palace of Torture. They spied on and lied about one parent’s relationship with a house guest. Now, just these facts alone, I should rather imagine, would be enough to make any parent want to send her daughter to a doctor. If you were to have a daughter, and to be aware just of these facts alone, would you think she needed punishment, or medical attention?”