‘ They do! They do! ’
‘She says you do,’ said Jennifer, dully, feeling a wash of exhaustion.
‘She’s talking to you now?’ persisted Perry.
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘In my head.’
‘You hear a voice?’
‘Oh, dear God!’ wailed Jennifer, desperately, realizing how it was all sounding to the two men. ‘Help me! Please help me!’
‘I will, Mrs Lomax. I truly will. But you must tell me what happened. What you can remember.’
‘I can remember everything.’ She had to concentrate; be rational with this rational, expressionless man.
‘Good. So tell me. From the very beginning. From the time you got up this morning.’
Jennifer didn’t speak immediately, then became horrifyingly aware that she was sitting with her head to one side as if trying to hear something being said to her. She straightened, abruptly, conscious that both men had noticed. As strongly and as positively as she was able she said, ‘Gerald wasn’t at home last night. He stayed here in London at the flat. But he called this morning to talk to me and to Emily. He always did when he didn’t come home. I drove Emily to playschool and then arranged tonight’s supper with our housekeeper; Gerald was coming home tonight. It was lamb. Welsh. Gerald liked lamb
…’ There was a sudden surge of emotion, choking her. She coughed, scrubbing a bandaged hand across her eyes. ‘He’s dead… Gerald’s dead
…’
Johnson looked wildly around the room, as if seeking help. Perry remained unmoving, one immaculate leg crossed over the other, notebook balanced on his knee. It was Perry who spoke. ‘Do you want a doctor?’
Jennifer shook her head, not replying.
‘You discussed dinner, with the housekeeper?’ encouraged Perry.
Jagged-voiced, Jennifer said, ‘Playschool ends at noon. I went to collect Emily. I usually do, unless I’m here in London, with Gerald. I was a little late. Emily had got a prize for learning her letters. I promised to take her to the zoo as a reward…’ She trailed away, her shoulders beginning to heave again.
‘Did you?’ pressed Perry, not wanting a break.
Jennifer shook her head but didn’t answer. She felt lost, falling into darkness, her stomach hollowed.
‘Why not?’
‘Jane told me to get a knife.’
‘And?’
‘To come to London.’
‘Do you remember doing that?’
‘Yes. But it wasn’t as if I was driving.’
‘What was it like?’
‘As if I was a passenger.’
‘Was Jane talking to you during the drive?’
‘No.’
‘What happened when you got to your husband’s office?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You said you could remember everything.’
‘I thought I could.’
‘Tell me as much as you can.’
‘We parked the car…’
‘… We?’ interrupted Perry.
‘Yes,’ repeated Jennifer, distantly. ‘We parked the car. I remember going into the building. Getting into the lift. Then I was covered in blood. Bleeding myself. And Gerald was dead.’
‘You don’t remember the killing?’
‘No.’ Just the blood, blood all over Gerald He was dead: wonderful, darling Gerald was dead.
‘Or doing it?’
It took longer this time for Jennifer to stop crying. She sobbed into the bandaged hand – hurting herself with the tug of the saline needle trying to bring her other hand up to her face – managing to mumble a protest only when she heard Johnson say to the other lawyer that he thought they should call someone. ‘I’m all right. I want to go on.’
‘You don’t remember doing it?’ repeated the criminal lawyer, relentlessly.
‘No.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘No.’
‘You were bleeding yourself,’ prompted Perry.
‘There were policemen. And ambulancemen. They put me on a stretcher and brought me here.’
‘ Very good! ’
Jennifer whimpered, suddenly jerking back as if pulling away from something.
‘What?’ demanded Perry.
‘She’s mocking me again.’
‘Again?’
‘She’s been doing it, ever since I got here.’
‘ Tell-tale tit, your tongue will split and all the little puppy dogs will get a little bit.’
‘When was the first time you heard Jane’s voice?’ asked the lawyer.
‘Today.’
‘Never, ever, before?’
‘No.’ She was mad! Had to be. This couldn’t be happening to any sane person. None of it. If she closed her eyes really tightly it would all go away. No, Jennifer corrected. Not a dream. A nightmare. Real. Horribly, terrifyingly real.
‘Are you under any medical care, Mrs Lomax? Before your admission here, I mean.’
‘No,’ said Jennifer, tightly, knowing the question had to be asked but resenting it.
‘I could check, obviously: will have to, in fact.’
‘I want you to,’ said Jennifer, hurriedly. ‘I want you to check with everybody you can to know that I have never in my life suffered any psychiatric illness and that Gerald and I were idyllically happy.’
‘I will, Mrs Lomax.’
‘Good!’ said Jennifer, in brief defiance. It slipped at once. ‘You think I’m mad, don’t you?’
‘No. And if I am going to represent you and brief counsel on your behalf I shall never lie to you,’ lied the lawyer.
‘Not mad but a liar, about hearing voices!’
‘I was setting out my position,’ avoided the man.
‘So what’s your answer to my question?’
‘I think you are suffering a mental illness, yes.’
‘ I’ve won! I’ve won! ’
‘I am not mentally deranged!’ Wouldn’t give in: couldn’t give in.
‘Will you agree to a psychiatric examination?’
‘I demand a psychiatric examination.’
Perry retracted his pencil point with the care with which he had exposed it and closed the notebook. As he did so, Jennifer saw he had apparently made several pages of notes.
The lawyer said, ‘I don’t want any statement made to the police: I’ll tell them that. You will be arraigned before a magistrate, initially for the formality of a remand, in custody. There will be no question of bail, so I won’t bother to apply for it. In the circumstances, I will ask for that remand to be in a prison hospital wing when you’re fit enough to leave here. Magistrates cannot try a case like this.’
‘ I want you to suffer the whole process! ’
‘I don’t give a damn what you want,’ said Jennifer. To Perry she explained, ‘Jane says she wants me to suffer everything.’
The lawyer nodded, showing no surprise. ‘You wish me to engage counsel?’
‘The best you can get.’
‘Is there anything else I can do?’
‘What’s happening to Emily?’ How could she have forgotten Emily until now!
Instead of replying, Perry looked sideways to the other solicitor. Johnson said, ‘She’s being well looked after by the nanny.’
‘I want to see her.’
‘At the moment that’s not possible. Maybe even not advisable,’ refused Perry.
‘When?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted the bald-headed man, maintaining the promise of honesty. ‘Maybe not for quite a long time.’
In the corridor outside John Bentley accepted with a philosophical shrug the lawyer’s refusal to allow a statement, sure he knew a way to get around it. Beside his superior, Malcolm Rodgers gestured to the policewomen re-entering the ward and said, ‘According to them all she does is talk to herself. Madder than a March hare.’
‘Or a bloody sight cleverer than one,’ challenged Bentley.
‘Meaning?’ queried Perry.
‘Voices in her head! Possessed by the first wife, seeking revenge! Come on! You ever seen a better performance for a plea of diminished responsibility?’ demanded Bentley
‘No,’ conceded the lawyer. ‘But why kill him in the first place?’
‘When I find the woman Lomax was screwing I’ll tell you,’ promised the detective. In the few hours since seeing Jennifer Lomax hunched beside the blood-soaked body of her husband Bentley had changed his mind about this being a case with no personal benefit. His intuition, which he usually followed, told him otherwise. It wasn’t intuition that convinced him Lomax had a mistress, though. That was good old hard-assed experience. All he had to do was shake the trees and he knew how to do that, too.