“But I understood you were preparing a diminished responsibility defence. Didn’t you meet her in the course of doing that?”
“No, she refused to see me. I did all my work from material her solicitor sent me.” He smiled ruefully.
“Which wasn’t much, I have to say. We would, quite literally, have been laughed out of court if we’d had to proceed, so I was quite relieved when the judge ruled her guilty plea admissible.”
“What arguments would you have used if you had been called?”
“We planned two different approaches.” Deedes considered for a moment.
“One, that the balance of her mind was temporarily disturbed as far as I recall it was the day after her birthday and she was deeply upset because instead of paying her attention the family teased her about being fat.” He raised his eyebrows in query and Roz nodded.
“In addition, I believe, she made a reference in her statement to not liking noise. We did manage to find a doctor who was prepared to give evidence that noise can cause such violent distress in some people that they may act out of character in trying to stop it. There was no psychiatric or medical evidence, however, to prove that Olive was of this type.” He tapped his forefingers together.
“Two, we were going to work backwards from the appalling savagery of the crime and invite the court to draw what we hoped to persuade them was an inescapable inference that Olive was a psychopath. We hadn’t a cat’s chance on the balance of her mind argument, but the psychopathy’ he made a see-saw motion with one hand ‘maybe. We found a professor of psychology who was prepared to stick his neck out after seeing the photographs of the bodies.”
“But did he ever talk to her?”
He shook his head.
“There wasn’t time and she wouldn’t have seen him anyway. She was quite determined to plead guilty. I assume Mr. Crew told you that she wrote to the Home Office demanding an independent psychiatric report to prove that she was competent to plead?” Roz nodded.
“After that there was really nothing we could do. It was an extraordinary business,” he mused.
“Most defendants fall over themselves to come up with excuses.”
“Mr. Crew seems convinced she’s a psychopath.”
“I think I’d agree with him.”
“Because of what she did to Amber and her mother? You don’t have any other evidence?”
“No. Isn’t that enough?”
“Then how do you explain that five psychiatrists have all diagnosed her normal?” Roz looked up.
“She’s had several sessions, as far as I can gather, in the prison.”
“Who told you this? Olive?” He looked sceptical.
“Yes, but I spoke to the Governor afterwards and she verified it.”
He shrugged.
“I wouldn’t place too much reliance on it.
You’d have to see the reports. It depends who wrote them and why they were testing her.”
“Still, it’s odd, don’t you think?”
“In what way?”
“You’d expect some measurable level of sociopathic behaviour over a period of time if she was a psychopath.”
“Not necessarily. Prison may be the sort of controlled environment that suits her. Or perhaps her particular psychopathy was directed against her family. Something brought it on that day and once rid of them, she settled down.” He shrugged again.
“Who knows? Psychiatry is hardly an exact science.” He was silent for a moment.
“In my experience, well adjusted people don’t hack their mothers and their sisters to death. You do know they were still alive when she set to with the axe?” He smiled grimly.
“She knew it, too. Don’t imagine she didn’t.”
Roz frowned.
“There is another explanation,” she said slowly, ‘but the trouble is, while it fits the facts, it’s too absurd to be credible.”
He waited.
“Well?” he asked at last.
“Olive didn’t do it.” She saw his amused disbelief and hurried on.
“I’m not saying I go along with it, I’m just saying that it fits the facts.”
“Your facts,” he pointed out gently.
“It seems to me you’re being a little selective in what you choose to believe.”
“Maybe.” Roz remembered her extremes of mood of the previous evening.
He watched her for a moment.
“She knew a great deal about the murders for someone who wasn’t responsible for them.”
“Do you think so?”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
“She doesn’t say anything about her mother trying to ward off the axe and the carving knife. But that must have been the most frightening part. Why didn’t she mention it?”
“Shame. Embarrassment. Traumatic amnesia. You’d be surprised how many murderers blot what they’ve done from their memories. Sometimes it’s years before they come to terms with their guilt. In any case, I doubt the struggle with her mother was as frightening for Olive as you suggest. Gwen Martin was a tiny woman, five feet at the most, I would think. Physically, Olive took after her father, so containing her mother would have been easy for her.” He saw the hesitation in Roz’s eyes.
“Let me put a question to you. Why would Olive confess to two murders she didn’t commit?”
“Because people do.”
“Not when they have their lawyers present, Miss Leigh. I accept that it happened, which is why new rules were introduced governing the taking of evidence, but Olive did not fall into the category of either forced confession or having her confession subsequently tampered with.
She had legal representation throughout. So I repeat, why would she confess to something she didn’t do?”
“To protect someone else?” She was relieved they weren’t in court. He was a bruising cross-examiner.
“Who?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“There was no one else except her father, and he was at work.
The police had him thoroughly checked and his alibi was unbreakable.”
“There was Olive’s lover.” He stared at her.
“She told me she’d had an abortion. Presumably, then, she must have had a lover.”
He found that very entertaining.
“Poor Olive.” He laughed.
“Well, I guess an abortion is as good a way as any of keeping her end up. Especially’ he laughed again ‘if everyone believes her. I shouldn’t be too gullible, if I were you.”
She smiled coldly.
“Perhaps it’s you who is being gullible by subscribing to the cheap male view that a woman like Olive could not attract a lover.”
Deedes studied her set face and wondered what was driving her.
“You’re right, Miss Leigh, it was cheap, and I apologise.”
He raised his hands briefly, then dropped them again.
“But this is the first I have heard about an abortion. Let’s just say it strikes me as a little unlikely. And somewhat convenient, perhaps?
It’s not something you can ever really check, is it, not without Olive’s permission. If laymen were allowed to browse through other people’s medical records some very delicate secrets might be exposed.”
Roz regretted her waspish remark. Deedes was a nicer man than Crew and hadn’t deserved it.
“Olive mentioned an abortion. I assumed the lover. But perhaps she was raped.
Babies can be conceived as easily in hate as in love.
He shrugged.
“Beware of being used, Miss Leigh. Olive Martin dominated the court the day she appeared in it. I had the impression then, and still have it, that it was we who were dancing to her tune not she to ours.”
Dawlington was a small eastern suburb of Southampton, once an isolated village, now swallowed up in the great urban expansion of the twentieth century. It maintained an identity of a sort by the busy trunk-roads that gave it tarmac boundaries but, even so, the place was easy to miss. Only a tired peeling shop sign, advertising Dawlington Newsagents, alerted Roz to the fact that she had left one suburb and entered another. She drew into the kerb before a left-hand turning and consulted her map.