Trial of Passion

by William Deverell

  I return to Kimberley. “The proof resides with you, Miss Martin.”

  “I’m saying if you have an accusation, prove it.”

  My voice softens. “I’m not accusing you of lying. I’m saying you were amnesic for these events. An event occurred which triggered that amnesia.”

  She remains stubborn. “All I ask is that you prove it.”

  “May I have your help to do so?”

  She hesitates. “In what way?”

  “You trust Dr. Kropinski, don’t you?”

  “With all my heart.”

  I must take the chance. “Will you allow him to hypnotize you again, here in court?”

  Boldly, she says, “Yes. I want to know.”

  “Then why don’t we do that right now?”

  “Whoa,” says Patricia, rushing to her feet. “This isn’t . . . I think we should have the jury out.”

  “Hold everything,” says Wally, suddenly enjoying this. “You’re proposing to do what, Mr. Beauchamp?”

  “To restore the witness’s memory.”

  He looks at me dubiously. “You’re sure?”

  “My client wants the truth to be told.”

  “I’d like to see counsel in my chambers.”

  My body feels tight with the tension of my gamble as the court clerk leads us into chambers.

  “Might make some legal history here,” Wally says, pleased at the prospect. He waves us into chairs. “Bring in the court reporter,” he tells his clerk. “Let’s put this on record — it’s too important. Anyone like coffee?”

  “No, thank you,” says Patricia, surly, sensing that Wally’s scales might not be balanced on this issue. Gundar Sindelar loyally declines as well, while Augustina and I are almost fulsome in our expressions of gratitude for the coffee Wally pours from his Thermos.

  “We’re playing around with a young woman’s life if we do this,” Patricia complains.

  “Ah-ah, wait for the reporter.”

  When the clerk returns with the official reporter and her shorthand machine, Wally plumps onto his chair, sits back, and raises his feet onto his desk. “All right, Patricia, you were saying?”

  “It’s dangerous. No one knows what trauma this could cause Kimberley.”

  “She seems willing, “Wally says. “She’s obviously a strong woman.”

  “We can’t . . . I’d have to talk to Dr. Kropinski, I’m sure he’ll warn against it. There’s no precedent at all for a thing like this.”

  “Ah, but there is, my dear,” I say. “In these very courts. Regina versus Welch, an amnesic woman accused of murdering an abusive husband, as I recall. Famous case in its day. She was placed under hypnosis in court; the jury found for her in self-defence.”

  But Patricia holds firm. “You can’t put her through this in front of all those people.”

  “She seems used to audiences.” Wally has again lapsed into an adversarial role, arguing, not listening. “Thrives on them, in fact, that’s my impression. She consented in open court; how can you go against the complainant’s instructions?”

  “She blurted that out. I’m sure she’ll reconsider. Wally, I know she’s under cross, but she is entitled to some advice about an undertaking this serious.”

  “No, she can’t talk about the case to anyone: It’s one of the sacred rules of cross-examination. We don’t want a mistrial, do we? What do you say, Arthur, you’re being awfully quiet about this.”

  “I’m curious as to why anyone would not want the truth to be heard in open court.”

  “Excellent point. Seems to me, Patricia, Arthur’s taking a hell of a risk here, more than you. What if she doesn’t go under, just pretends to be in a state of hypnosis? Arthur could get screwed in the . . . it could boomerang badly on him.”

  Patricia must by now understand that hers is an argument she is not about to win. “There should be a trial run. In proper surroundings. Not some circus.”

  The proposed compromise, I sense, has Wally wavering. I finish my coffee and stand, anxious to terminate this session. “The defence will consent to this: Dr. Kropinski may be allowed to advise Kimberley as to the possible consequences of our experiment. They may not otherwise talk about the evidence. There is to be no trial run that could turn into a dress rehearsal.”

  “That’s white of you, Mr. Beauchamp,” says Patricia in a deep voice, mimicking Wally.

  Wally frowns. “White … that’s a rather …” He hesitates and turns a chalky shade himself. “Did I say something like that in court? Oh, dear. Madam reporter, would you consult your notes about that, and, ah, we’ll adjourn now. We’ll proceed on that basis, the one Arthur suggested. So ordered.” He is most flustered. “Now, when do we want to do this?”

  It is almost noon. “Let us all first try to enjoy a bit of lunch,” I say.

  But lunch isn’t greeted with much appetite, though it’s not the fault of the plump shrimp that stare at me mournfully from the tray brought up to my room. I am still too disoriented from the morning’s many swift turns — capricious gusts have blown this trial off its poorly plotted course.

  Augustina is by the window of my suite, picking at her salad, studying Jane Dix’s transcripts, reading voraciously by the noonday light. The sky is still busy with moving cloud, but they’ve shredded here and there, offering sneak peaks of blue, though more rain is forecast.

  Jonathan is elsewhere, alone, jogging the seawall — we plan to spend the entire weekend with him, testing the evidence he’s to give on Monday. Kimberley is with Dr. Kropinski, talking process — I have come away from a meeting with him much reinforced in my sense that he is utterly fair and sincere.

  Truth is a kind of important concept, isn’t it? Yes, as Margaret reminded me, truth does not blush. But shall Arthur Beauchamp? He will retire from the courts in either triumph or ignominy; if Kimberley’s truth differs from Jonathan’s, as recorded in those transcripts, I shall have pulled off the greatest blunder since Prometheus brought fire to earth and was condemned to satisfy the eternal appetite of a liver-gobbling vulture.

  Augustina finally looks up from the transcripts. “He’s lied to us before.”

  Too true. Sexual relations with Kimberley? “I did no such thing.” The lipstick on her body? “Sleepwalking, nightmares, a tab of acid in her B and B.” Did he tie her up? “Christ, no. What for?” The screams the housekeeper heard? “She must be imagining them.”

  “But this is different, isn’t it?” she says, rising, handing a transcript to me, Jonathan’s tale of his and Kimberley’s passion play. I absorb myself in it once again.

  . . . She was still being Joan of Arc, and I was her torturer. I know that’s how she understood it. We were laughing. It wasn’t something planned or talked about. We just slid into it as we were necking on the bed, the final scene. She had this gold crucifix around her neck; it was the cross Joan held as she burned.

  Why the lipstick, Jonathan?

  To portray the flames in which she burned. Psychodrama. Creative role-playing.

  This was after you first made love.

  Yes. We both climaxed.

  And you couldn’t get an erection after that?

  Not until . . .

  Until you tied her up.

  To the stake. She wanted to be face up at first, supine. And we . . . we made love again that way. With some, ah, cunnilingus, and — wow, this isn’t easy — she was so hot, Jane, incredibly ready for sex. She came again. I wasn’t quite up to it the second go-round, so to speak, but I guess I had a reasonable facsimile of an erection. Then she said, “Turn me over.”

  In the meantime, you were still play-acting?

  I’m telling you, Jane, she was getting a kick out of it. She prayed to God and then screamed as I painted the flames upon her — Christ, she’s a wonderful actor — and then she’d break into these low, sexy peals of laughter . . . why? At the absurdity of it all? At the sheer fun of it? Some reason. Jane, she was having the goddamnest time of her life. I was, too. Then something changed in her.


  In what way?

  God knows; I don’t. I went to the bathroom, put on another condom — because I felt . . . I was ready again. And when I got back to the bed, I remember I said something to her, and she didn’t respond. And I saw her eyes were closed, but she was smiling that amazing smile she has, and I made the assumption she was awake. And I kneeled between her legs and lifted her buttocks, and . . . well, uh, performed the sex act. Went into her.

  Do you now think she was asleep? Passed out?

  I now believe she was. I think I started to realize soon afterwards. Anyway, she started to scream and struggle.

  But not in play?

  As I told you, she’s a wonderful actor. I thought this was an Emmy performance. She was fighting me, trying to pull her legs and arms free, but she’d done that before in play, though not as vigorously, and I slipped out, and I still thought we were just fooling around, and I guess I tried to come into her again, and had trouble finding the right . . . um . . .

  Orifice.

  Yes. She must have thought I was trying to enter the, ah, wrong place. I wasn’t, honestly. My aim was impaired. But I guess I must have probed her there a little and, she, ah, she went absolutely berserk, totally unglued.

  What was she saying during this?

  She was screaming, pleading. “Please, don’t. Stop.” And she was crying. And she wasn’t laughing any more. And so I backed off, and I was a little worried now, because she suddenly had this wild, haggard expression. And I remember saying something to the effect, would she like to join me in a tub for two, and . . . then I went to the bathroom again, took off the safe, disposed of it, began filling the tub . . . I may have taken a whiz. Probably. Anyway, when I got back, no Kimberley. I ran through the house — no sign of her. I looked outside. She’d vanished. But the lights were on at the Hawthorne house. And that’s when I panicked. I bathed, I burned everything. I didn’t sleep that night.

  Why did you feel such guilt?

  I raped her, Jane. An unconscious woman cannot consent.

  What are you going to do about it? What I have to do. I can’t keep running from lie to lie. There’s no end to that road. . . .

  The stage has been set with new furniture: two padded armchairs purloined from the barristers’ lounge. They face each other, near the counsel tables. Kimberley Martin waits in the mezzanine to be called. The ground rules for our venture into the subconscious have been agreed upon in camera.

  As he mounts the dais, Wally seems to be in grieving, possibly for himself. “Members of the jury, regrettably it has been brought to my attention that I said a very foolish thing this morning. Now, when I remarked that it was white of Mr. Beauchamp to convenience a witness, I want to impress on everyone that I meant that word, ‘white,’ in the sense of being virtuous, pure, and of course it had nothing to do with skin colour, though I can see how that meaning might be taken. Mr. Beauchamp could be black, brown, or green for that matter, and it frankly wouldn’t make any difference to me.”

  Forewoman Jackson-Blyth looks skintily at the judge, unimpressed with these ill-prepared remarks. Augustina leans to me. “How deep a hole does he need to dig for himself?”

  Wally shrugs away the awkward episode and turns to matters at hand. He tells the jury Dr. Kropinski will be called by the defence as a witness. After some preliminary evidence, he and Kimberley will assume the chairs provided and the lights will be dimmed to near darkness. “And anyone who feels they may have an urge to whisper or cough will absent themselves immediately or face my full wrath. Mr. Beauchamp?”

  “I call Dr. Benjamin Kropinski.”

  The psychiatrist nods politely to me, bows with old-country courtesy to the judge, and takes the stand. I draw from him his considerable qualifications: former professor at the University of Bern, member of many learned societies, author of several papers on hypnosis therapy.

  I ask him if he has advised Kimberley about the process to be undertaken.

  “Yes. She is prepared to do this.”

  “It helps in that she is a good subject for hypnosis?”

  “Exactly so.”

  He testifies he has been treating Kimberley for six months, assisting her in dealing with a “recurring hysteria associated with dreams triggered by events blocked from memory.” He describes his therapeutic approach, summarizes his history of treatment, and tells of a session at his home one recent evening when Kimberley literally threw up and expelled a ghastly demon from her childhood.

  I spend a few minutes with the doctor edifying the jury as to the various sources of amnesia — the most common of which is my old friend, substance intoxication: “which may have played a significant role here.” But the core factor was “emotional trauma memory loss syndrome” — more simply, traumatic amnesia.

  “The mind does not wish to know. The victim blocks the pain, which is buried beneath memory’s surface.”

  “And do you hold an opinion as to whether Miss Martin is amnesic about events related to this trial?”

  “I hold that opinion.”

  “Please take one of these chairs, doctor.” I turn to SheriffWillit. “Be so kind as to lower the lights and escort Miss Martin in.”

  The lights slowly go down as Kimberley enters and cruises up the aisle, legs swishing beneath her tight vermilion sheathe: Diana the huntress, goddess of the moon, ghostlike in the growing gloom. An oblique peek in Jonathan’s direction, a tentative smile for me, and she claims her chair, crossing her legs, hitching down her skirt.

  Dr. Kropinski turns to me. “We shall proceed, yes?”

  “Please,” I say. The room is in near blackness now, but for the soft glow of lamps on Wally’s bench and the court reporter’s table.

  “Kimberley, you are aware fully what we are trying to do,” Dr. Kropinski begins.

  “Yes, I am,” she says in a soft, unwavering voice.

  “You are in a courtroom with many people.”

  “I understand that. I am only going to look at you.”

  “You will hear only me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are relaxed, comfortable?”

  “Sure. Under the circumstances.”

  After receiving a few more assurances of her preparedness, this gentle doctor of the mind commences a seductive, lulling mantra, a soft cloud of words that causes Kimberley’s body to go visibly slack and seems to make my own eyelids heavy. He tells his patient that at the count of ten she will fall asleep — yet a part of her will be awake, observant solely to his voice.

  “… Nine . . . ten.”

  Silence.

  “Kimberley?”

  “Yes.” The word floats from her lips.

  “You can open your eyes now.”

  They seem to slide languorously open; a peculiar softness is in them.

  “Where are we?”

  “I believe we are in a courtroom. “The sluggish voice of one just aroused from slumber.

  “Please only listen to my voice. Only talk to me.” “I am doing that.”

  “In this trial, we are talking about something that happened last year, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “After a dance.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let us go back to that time. Will you go there with me?”

  “All right.”

  “It is the night of November twenty-seventh. After the dance there is a party, and later you are at a house with some friends, yes?”.

  “Professor O’Donnell’s house.”

  “It is late at night, yes?”

  “I don’t know what time it is.”

  “Around three o’clock —”

  She interrupts. “Oh, my God, Remy will think I’m lying somewhere in an alley.” Her voice has abruptly altered in rhythm and tone, sprightly now, a slight slurring of consonants. “Gosh, I think I’m a little drunk. Woo, I don’t norm’lly drink this much.”

  “You and the others have been reading from a play —”

  Again she cuts him off, spreading he
r arms theatrically, lamenting: ” ‘If only I could hear the larks in the sunshine, the blessed, blessed church bells that send my angels’ voices floating on the wind.’ Shaw’s such an ol’ curmudgeon, but he can be poetic when he wants. What happened to my glass? Glass? It’s like drinking from a vase. I have to sit down. I’m spinning. Shouldn’t’ve done that toot, Remy would not approve, the ol’ sourpuss. He’ll be fast asleep now. I should call him. Where’s the phone? Not in here. There was one by Jonathan’s bed. I wonder if this is his favourite brown suit. I’m afraid to ask him where he got the tie — in a joke shop? His father’s a scream, no wonder he hid that picture under his socks. Choking a pheasant!”

  She is wandering aimlessly over the windswept moors, free-associating, clearly out of anyone’s control, including Dr. Kropinski’s. He seems a little confounded at having set free this talkative genie.

  “How come the inquisitor gets all the long speeches in this scene? Am I feeling ridiculous in this suit, or what? I better go up and change, get on my way. Hi, Remy, I spent all my money and had to walk home. That won’t do. I don’ wanna know the time.”

  Dr. Kropinski seems to have decided not to cork this gushing pour of words.

  “Charles, you’re so pathetic. All night sucking up to the inquisitor, grabbing the seat right beside him — you’re totally ignoring your date, you ass. I don’t think she likes me, thinks I’m some kinda prima donna. Oh, why don’t they just all go home? What’s going on with me anyway? Feeling so glazed over. Hot flashes. On fire. Too much firewater. Why did I do that coke, I never. . . Oh, God, Remy will have a fucking bird….”

  She seems to have utterly exposed herself to us, naked of mind, candid almost beyond belief. But where is her discursive patter taking us? Now she giggles.

  “What are you laughing at?”

  “Oh, back when we were dancing, he . . . he had a kind of hard on. I bumped into it, had to pretend I didn’t notice.”

  Is this good, bad, indifferent? Wally, craning down at her, seems to stiffen, too. I can almost feel the heat behind me from Jonathan’s embarrassment.