A Mind to Kill

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘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.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The traffic was heavier than they anticipated but they still arrived almost an hour ahead of the appointment with the council and care officials. When they turned into the driveway and stopped for the gate to be opened after identifying themselves through the speaker grill, two men with cameras and another with a tape recorder ran from an unseen car parked opposite. There were momentarily blinding flashes and the man with the tape recorder said, ‘May I ask…’ before the gates opened and Perry accelerated through.

  ‘Bastards!’ exclaimed the solicitor. ‘Frightened the hell out of me!’

  ‘Weren’t you told of this, when you spoke to the house?’ Hall asked Johnson.

  ‘Annabelle said she’d been bothered but didn’t tell me there were ambushes outside the gate,’ said the family solicitor.

  Alerted by the gate telephone Annabelle Parkes was at the open door by the time they reached the square, creeper-clad mansion. The nanny was a plump, round-faced girl who wore her hair short and disdained any make-up. The impression, even for someone who could only have been in her twenties, was motherly, which Hall decided was an advantage. There was a firm, no-nonsense handshake but no smile. Coffee was already set out in the drawing room at the front of the house, overlooking the terraced lawns and the distant coppice which hid the gate. It was a room of heavy velvet drapes and brocaded furniture which Hall guessed to be Regency. It could, he supposed, have been Georgian in keeping with the period of the house. Some looked similar to the antiques his father had sold, trying to stave off the Lloyd’s bankruptcy. There were a lot of photographs, the majority of Jennifer with Lomax, with Emily completing the family in several. They were smiling and laughing in virtually all of them, apart from two posed studio portraits. The one of Jennifer reminded Hall of the picture that most of the newspapers had used. She was more than simply beautiful, he decided. The head-tilted confidence he’d earlier recognized made her intriguing, too. Meeting her in any other circumstances would have made him curious to discover just how intelligent she was.

  As she poured coffee Annabelle said, ‘I’ve kept Emily home from kindergarten. I didn’t know if they – if you – would want to see her. She’s upstairs in the nursery, playing. You said you wanted to talk before the others arrived? And I’ve packed clothes. Quite a lot, to give Mrs Lomax a choice. She takes a lot of trouble about how she dresses.’

  ‘Mrs Lomax is resisting Emily being taken into care,’ announced Johnson. ‘We can do that, certainly until after any trial. But it’s very necessary that we know if you’re prepared to remain here, looking after the child.’

  ‘That’s what I’m employed to do,’ said the girl, stiffly.

  ‘And are happy to continue doing so?’ pressed Perry.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘That’s good to know,’ said Hall. ‘I’m surprised this approach came from the council so quickly.’

  ‘I’m probably responsible,’ confessed the girl. ‘Ever since it happened we’ve been besieged by newspapers and television people: they even got over the perimeter wall and came up to the house through the tradesmen’s entrance when we wouldn’t let them through the main gate. I complained to the police: said I h
ad a child here that I wanted protecting…’

  Hall sighed, nodding. ‘Yes, you probably are. We were confronted by some of them at the gate.’

  ‘I wish I’d been given some indication,’ complained Johnson.

  ‘I’m sorry if it was the wrong thing to do.’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ said Perry.

  ‘In fact,’ reassured Hall, ‘it might even make things easier.’

  The girl went to a bureau near the window, returning with several envelopes. Handing them to Johnson, whose authority she already knew, Annabelle said, ‘They put these in the postbox at the gate, too: offering money for photographs and for interviews. I thought you’d want them. And there’s some other mail, as well. I’ve kept it all for you.’

  Johnson accepted the package, moving away from them to go through it.

  Hall checked his watch, deciding there was sufficient time. ‘Describe Mrs Lomax to me,’ he demanded, suddenly.

  Annabelle frowned. ‘I don’t…’ she started. Then, ‘Of course, I’m sorry. A wonderful woman. We got on very well together.’

  Perry had frowned, too. Then his face cleared and hurriedly he got out a pad and the silver pencil. ‘Did she and Mr Lomax ever fight?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘That’s the strangest part, about what’s happened. I’ve never known them argue, ever…’ She smiled for the first time. ‘Almost unnatural, we used to say.’

  ‘We?’ queried Hall.

  ‘There’s a housekeeper who also cooks and a daily lady and a gardener. And there’s another man who comes in to help the gardener…’ She gestured behind her. ‘There’s a lot of ground.’

  ‘Mr Lomax stayed in London during the week?’ coaxed Perry.

  ‘Rarely more than two nights. And when he was away he always telephoned. As I say, they were devoted to each other.’

  ‘Did Mrs Lomax ever talk to you about someone named Rebecca?’ asked Hall.