Hysteria: An Alexander Gregory Thriller (The Alexander Gregory Thrillers Book 2)

by LJ Ross

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, feeling horribly exposed. “I don’t normally—”

  “Share your bed? Yes, I think I can see why.”

  She put a hand on his chest, feeling the heavy pounding of his heart as it continued to race.

  “It must have been a bad one,” she said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Alex shook his head, feeling out of his depth and unsure how to proceed. Few people had ever witnessed his night terrors, and he took good care to keep it that way. He devoted his life to other people’s wellbeing, rarely his own, which seemed to be deferred with every new emergency that came along. At Southmoor, he saw the most extreme cases of mental torment, which tended to relegate his own troubles much further down the list of ‘necessary action’ when he compared them with the plight of those far more in need of urgent attention.

  “It’s okay to lean on somebody, once in a while,” she said.

  Alex looked across at her pale body silhouetted in the early morning light and wondered what that might be like. The only person he’d ever confided in was Bill Douglas and, even then, there were some things he’d withheld.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry you were so rudely awakened.”

  She smiled.

  “I’m often up early,” she said. “Some of the shoots start before dawn, so we catch the best light and miss the majority of the commuter crowds.”

  He leaned over to brush her lips with his own, then padded towards the bathroom. Before he could make it that far, he caught his own reflection in the mirror above the dressing table.

  Something clicked, like a latch falling neatly into place.

  He crossed the room swiftly, keying in the code to open the safe, where he kept the police dossier. Madeleine sat up in the bed and frowned at him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What I should have done days ago,” he muttered. “The truth has been staring me in the face, all along.”

  A moment later, he excused himself to make an urgent telephone call, but before he made it as far as the door, he spun around again and caught the pyjama bottoms Madeleine was ready to throw at him.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled, and her soft laughter followed him into the corridor outside.

  CHAPTER 28

  The sun had barely risen in the sky by the time Gregory made his way to the 7th Arrondissement and, when Agnés opened the door to him, she wore a look that told him she was severely unimpressed.

  “Is it customary to pay house calls at unsociable hours like this in England?”

  “You must be joking. Nobody pays house calls in England, after all the government cutbacks,” he muttered. “Is Camille awake?”

  “Luckily for you, she woke up only a few minutes ago,” she said, with another disapproving look in his direction. “That girl needs as much rest as possible, not to be harangued so early in the morning.”

  “Normally, I’d agree with you,” he said. “But this is important, Agnés. I think I may understand the reason for her memory loss.”

  “I thought it was the attack?”

  “Yes and no,” he replied. “How has she been this morning?”

  “She seems more subdued, today.”

  He nodded, for it was just as he’d anticipated.

  “Agnés, I’d like you to come and join me, please, as a witness.”

  She looked startled by his choice of words, but was happy to follow him into the living room, where Camille was seated on the sofa nibbling a croissant and watching the changing colours of the sky. “Good morning,” he said.

  There was a short delay before she turned around.

  “Oh, you’ve come back,” she said, brightening up a bit. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”

  Gregory stepped into the room and gestured towards an empty seat.

  “Do you mind if I—?”

  “Please, do sit down,” she said, politely. “You too, Agnés. Please don’t stand around on my account. I feel bad enough, having so many people running after me.”

  “Sorry to pay such an early visit,” he said. “Would you rather I came back later?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s nice to have some company,” she admitted, and then looked immediately apologetic. “Sorry, Agnés, it isn’t that I don’t enjoy your company, as well.”

  “Pas du tout,” the nurse replied.

  “Do you remember our chat yesterday?” he asked, and she looked between the pair of them in confusion. “Was that yesterday? I could have sworn it was the day before that you came to visit.”

  Agnés looked at Gregory, then back to Camille.

  “Doctor Gregory came yesterday, don’t you remember? You talked about—”

  He shook his head, and the nurse fell silent.

  “Do you remember why I’m here?”

  “To help me,” she replied. “Or, try to. Isn’t that what you said?”

  He smiled.

  “I’ll certainly do my best,” he murmured, and then prepared himself to take a risk. “Do you still want to see yourself, in the mirror?”

  She nodded.

  “I want to see what the damage is,” she replied, calmly. “I need to be able to cope with the stares when I walk down the street.”

  “I’ll take you for that walk later, if you like,” Gregory put in.

  “A walk? Oh, that would be nice. I feel so—so cooped up in here. It would be good to get out for some fresh air somewhere other than that veranda.”

  Gregory glanced back towards a tiny iron veranda off the kitchenette, which held a few planters containing various herbs, and nodded.

  “First, why don’t we take a look at that injury together. Agnés?”

  The nurse went off in search of the mirrors she’d locked away, and came back with a smallish, wooden-framed one that usually sat above the bathroom counter. Gregory took it from her and then walked over to where Camille was seated, preparing himself for the unexpected.

  “Ready?”

  She nodded, and he held out the mirror.

  * * *

  It didn’t happen straight away, and Gregory experienced a moment’s doubt.

  At first, she stared at her pale face with a degree of stoicism that was admirable. With Agnés’s help, they peeled back the bandage on her cheek, and she closed her eyes, not wanting to see the puckered stitches running like a train track along one side of her face until she was ready.

  When she did pluck up the courage to look, Gregory watched her closely for any shift in mood. And, finally, it came.

  While Agnés watched in a kind of awed horror, her patient’s face contorted from soft lines, to blind, murderous anger.

  “Get away from me,” she snarled suddenly, and hit out at the mirror, which would have flown from Gregory’s hand, if he hadn’t already been anticipating such a response.

  Quickly, he handed the mirror back to Agnés, who moved it out of sight.

  The woman was crying now, pacing back and forth across the wooden floor.

  “Camille?”

  “Don’t say that name!”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s a killer! A murderer!”

  * * *

  “Well, it seems you’ve solved the mystery, mon ami,” Durand said, cheerfully. “It would have been quite easy for Camille to leave the apartment while her night nurse snored, while maintaining the veneer of an alibi. I’m surprised we didn’t think of it, sooner.”

  “I’m not certain that’s what happened,” Gregory said. “I can’t see what possible reason she would have to kill Juliette.”

  “She’s obviously deranged,” the inspector replied. “What reason does she need to have, except madness?”

  That was sometimes true, Gregory thought, but he suspected not in the present case. He turned to address the others seated around the conference table at Police Headquarters.

  “Camille obviously believes herself to be a killer,” he commented. “It doesn’t follow that she’s right.” />
  “It’s enough to bring her in for formal questioning,” Segal remarked. “I’d say her admission’s as good as a confession.”

  “I have another theory I want to put forward,” Gregory said, before they could begin a witch-hunt.

  The Commissaire leaned forward.

  “Go ahead, Doctor.”

  “From the very beginning, we’ve struggled to make sense of the material facts. In the first place, why would an assailant choose to enter and exit a busy hotel, running the risk of being seen on multiple occasions? For an organised killer who made sure no DNA or other trace evidence was left behind to incriminate him, this seems like a remarkably risky approach to take.”

  He paused, ticking the next item off his fingers.

  “Then, there’s the matter of the missing weapon,” Gregory continued. “It’s true that perpetrators sometimes take their weapons away with them but, in the case of Juliette, her killer left the knife inside her body for us to find. It’s a small but important inconsistency, which is common to many first-time killers who panic at the enormity of what they’ve done.”

  “But this would be their second time, unless Camille—?” Bernard began to say.

  “I’m coming around to Camille, but let us imagine the person who tried to kill her was a rookie, but a smart rookie,” he added. “Somebody who knows how evidence works, and what the Technical and Scientific Team would be looking for.”

  They looked amongst themselves, unsure what to make of it.

  “You’re implying someone with police training could have killed Juliette?” Durand said, obviously put out.

  “Keep an open mind,” Gregory murmured. “Turning back to the absence of a weapon, I think it’s worth questioning why Camille Duquette had glass fragments in her wound.”

  “They were transplanted when her assailant smashed her head into the mirrored panel in the bedroom,” Segal said.

  “That’s all well and good, but what about the wounds on her torso and arms? They each contain tiny particles of glass, but those areas didn’t come into contact with any blunt force trauma. What if they came about from a shard of glass being used as a weapon?”

  “You’re saying the killer used some of the broken glass, rather than bringing his own knife? It seems a risky business,” Durand said.

  “Murder tends to be,” Gregory replied. “But, in this case, I don’t think it was planned at all.”

  The others in the room looked amongst themselves.

  “What do you mean, Doctor? To achieve the kind of forensically-clean crime scene we’ve been dealing with, there must have been a degree of planning before the attack.”

  “What other explanation could there be for the lack of DNA or other trace evidence being found at the crime scene in the Hôtel Violette?” he asked, rhetorically. “My friend, Professor Douglas, told me yesterday that, sometimes, the simplest answer is the correct one and, in this case, I believe he’s right. There were no alien DNA samples found at the crime scene because Camille was the only attacker in the room; or, rather, her dual personality was.”

  The others looked at him as though he’d gone off his merry rocker.

  “I’ve heard it all, now,” Segal muttered, with a long-suffering glance towards the Commissaire. “With respect, we have no time for games, Doctor. Now, you expect us to believe that Camille Duquette has a—a, what did you call it?”

  “Dual personality,” Gregory supplied. “Otherwise known as dissociative identity disorder, characterised by the presence of two or more distinct personality states, accompanied by an inability to recall details beyond what we’d attribute to ordinary forgetfulness. The dissociative amnesia is a facet of this wider disorder but can be diagnosed separately.”

  “And you believe Camille is one of these ‘personality states’?” Durand said. “What about the other one?”

  “The ‘primary’ identity is most likely Camille’s original identity, which we know she tried to shake off with Wendy Li’s help,” Gregory replied. “We won’t know the name until she tells us, or we find out through the usual lines of enquiry.”

  “How can you be sure it isn’t something else?” Segal wondered aloud.

  Gregory smiled tightly.

  “I can’t,” he said, with a smile. “The problem with dissociative identity disorder is that it’s comorbid; it can occur alongside other illnesses and some of the symptoms can appear identical to other syndromes, like post-traumatic stress. DID is a very rare condition, and much-maligned, so it isn’t something that I’d automatically suggest. However, in Camille’s case, it seems to match the patterns of forgetfulness and shifts in mood she experiences—”

  “You mentioned those symptoms being a by-product of her trauma,” the Commissaire put in. “What’s changed? If Camille herself hasn’t introduced another name for the second personality you seem to think exists, why should we be looking for one?”

  “It’s the only logical explanation,” Gregory replied, and thought of a much-beloved quote from Arthur Conan-Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes to illustrate his point. “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

  “We’ve already investigated the usual channels,” Durand agreed. “The Technical and Scientific Team have come back with nothing usable from Camille’s hotel room, which either means her attacker was extremely careful, as we first thought, or…”

  “There was no attacker at all,” Gregory finished for him.

  “You can’t imagine one ‘personality state’ attacked the other?” Bernard scoffed. “This is the stuff of fantasy, Commissaire, and a waste of police time.”

  Caron held up a finger for quiet, and his mouth snapped shut, which was an impressive feat whichever way you looked at it.

  “What about her injuries, Doctor? How do you suppose she was able to inflict those cuts herself?”

  “Consider the right arm,” he replied, and the four other people in the room shuffled their paperwork to find Camille’s hospital notes. “There were numerous smaller cuts to her left forearm, indicating she’d used it to defend herself from attack, but there were no lesions to the right forearm, as one might expect—and you can compare it with Juliette’s arms, both of which bore the signs of defensive action.”

  “We already talked about the reasons why there may be no markings on her right forearm,” Segal said. “The working theory was that Camille tried to grasp the weapon in her right palm, causing injury to herself.”

  “And yet, the wound to her palm also contained traces of silicon dioxide, commonly found in glass products,” Gregory argued. “Camille is right-handed, but rather than using her right hand to defend herself, my theory is that she used it to attack. However, this isn’t a simple case of self-harm, or attempted suicide. To properly understand DID, you need to think of the different personalities as completely different people, co-existing in the same body.”

  “Do they…would they know about each other?” Durand wondered aloud, trying to wrap his head around the concept. “Do they have conversations with each other?”

  Gregory shook his head.

  “There have been cases in the past where subjects have held conversations, switching between personalities,” he replied. “It’s…well, it’s frankly unnerving, but it’s fascinating. It is my belief that the woman’s primary identity, whoever she may be, was unaware of the secondary identity, Camille. It’s often the case that primary identities are more submissive in nature, more introverted, whereas the ‘new’ secondary and, sometimes, tertiary identities are more outgoing personalities. In this case, that would seem to tie in with my observations of Camille’s behaviour and demeanour, which oscillates between introvert and extrovert, with the full complement of speech and behavioural habits to suit both identities.”

  “But if the primary identity attacked Camille, the secondary, that seems backward,” Durand said, following the logical trail of breadcrumbs. “It would be more likely the other way around
.”

  “You’d think so,” Gregory agreed. “But, apparently, Camille did something to anger the primary identity; something so bad, she stepped outside her usual constraints and took it upon herself to attack. Seen from their internal perspective, it would have been terrifying for Camille; as though she was being attacked by a total stranger, or a woman she may only be aware of peripherally. Likewise, the primary identity may have traumatised herself in the process, perhaps believing that she’d killed someone, and the amnesia was a coping mechanism.”

  “I still don’t understand why Camille would claim to have killed someone,” Durand said. “In this scenario, it would have been the primary identity who was the aggressor, not Camille.”

  Gregory nodded.

  “After I finish here, and with your permission, I plan to have another, longer session with Camille and her other personality. I may be able to elicit a name and some other details, to try to understand what provoked the attack.”

  “I think I may be able to help you with that,” Durand replied, and all eyes turned to him. “The control room received a contact from one of the doctors at an abortion clinic near Barbès, yesterday afternoon, claiming to recognise the mystery woman we were calling ‘Sleeping Beauty’. They say she attended the clinic for a procedure a little under three weeks ago, which must coincide with the time she was discovered by Gabrielle Leroux.”

  Gregory stood up from his chair and walked over to the window to work off some nervous energy. It took a certain kind of conceptualisation to imagine a body hosting two distinct personalities, who may not like or even know about each other. It was not simply a case of one person displaying different characteristics on alternate days, as he’d first thought. That being the case, the way to think of it was to imagine the primary identity attempting to murder Camille.

  “Perhaps the primary identity was unaware that Camille had aborted the foetus, and was devastated when she found out. Seen from her perspective, finding out about the loss of her baby against her will would have been traumatic enough to cause a psychological break, effectively splitting the personalities that may only have been half-formed until then. This would explain the degree of frenzy, and anger, in respect of Camille’s injuries, as well as providing an explanation as to why there was no alien DNA found at the scene.”