“I don’t care about myself.” Miss Parish crushed out her cigarette rather savagely, and moved to the doorway. “Carl is in serious jeopardy, isn’t he?”
“It could be worse.”
“It may be worse than you think. I talked to several people at the courthouse. They’re raking up those other deaths in his family. He did a lot of talking, you know, at the time he was committed. Completely irrational talking. You don’t take what a disturbed person says at its face value. But a lot of men in law enforcement don’t understand that.”
“Did the sheriff tell you about Carl’s alleged confession?”
“He hinted around about it. I’m afraid he gives it a lot of weight. As if it proved anything.”
“You sound as if you’ve heard it all before.”
“Of course I have. When Carl was admitted six months ago he had himself convinced that he was the criminal of the century. He accused himself of killing both his parents.”
“His mother, too?”
“I think his guilt-feelings originated with her suicide. She drowned herself several years ago.”
“I knew that. But I don’t understand why he’d blame himself.”
“It’s a typical reaction in depressed patients to blame themselves for everything bad that happens. Particularly the death of people they love. Carl was devoted to his mother, deeply dependent on her. At the same time he was trying to break away and have a life of his own. She probably killed herself for reasons that had no connection with Carl. But he saw her death as a direct result of his disloyalty to her, what he thought of as disloyalty. He felt as though his efforts to cut the umbilical cord had actually killed her. From there it was only a step to thinking that he was a murderer.”
It was tempting doctrine, that Carl’s guilt was compounded of words and fantasies, the stuff of childhood nightmares. It promised to solve so many problems that I was suspicious of it.
“Would a theory like that stand up in court?”
“It isn’t theory, it’s fact. Whether or not it was accepted as fact would depend on the human element: the judge, the jury, the quality of the expert witnesses. But there’s no reason why it should ever come to court.” Her eyes were watchful, ready to be angry with me.
“I’d still like to get my hands on firm evidence that he didn’t do these crimes, that somebody else did. It’s the only certain way to prove that his confession was a phony.”
“But it definitely was. We know his mother was a suicide. His father died of natural causes, or possibly by accident. The story Carl told about that was pure fantasy, right out of the textbook.”
“I haven’t read the textbook.”
“He said that he broke into his father’s bathroom when the old man was in the tub, knocked him unconscious, and held him under water until he was dead.”
“Do you know for a fact that it didn’t happen that way?”
“Yes,” she said. “I do. I have the word of the best possible witness, Carl himself. He knows now that he had no direct connection with his father’s death. He told me that several weeks ago. He’s developed remarkable insight into his guilt-feelings, and his reasons for confessing something he didn’t do. He knows now that he wanted to punish himself for his father-killing fantasies. Every boy has the Oedipus fantasies, but they seldom come out so strongly, except in psychotic breakthrough.
“Carl had a breakthrough the morning he and his brother found their father in the bathtub. The night before, he’d had a serious argument with his father. Carl was very angry, murderously angry. When his father actually did die, he felt like a murderer. The guilt of his mother’s death came up from the unconscious and reinforced this new guilt. His mind invented a story to explain his terrible guilt-feelings, and somehow deal with them.”
“Carl told you all this?” It sounded very complicated and tenuous.
“We worked it out together,” she said softly and gravely. “I don’t mean to take credit to myself. Dr. Brockley directed the therapy. Carl simply happened to do his talking-out to me.”
Her face was warm and bright again, with the pride a woman can take in being a woman, exerting peaceful power. It was hard to hold on to my skepticism, which seemed almost like an insult to her calm assurance.
“How can you tell the difference between true confessions and fantasies?”
“That’s where training and experience come in. You get a feeling for unreality. It’s partly in the tone, and partly in the content. Often you can tell by the very enormity of the fantasy, the patient’s complete insistence on his guilt. You wouldn’t believe the crimes I’ve had confessed to me. I’ve talked to a Jack the Ripper, a man who claimed he shot Lincoln, several who killed Christ himself. All these people feel they’ve done evil – we all do in some degree – and unconsciously they want to punish themselves for the worst possible crimes. As the patient gets better, and he can face his actual problems, the need for punishment and the guilty fantasies disappear together. Carl’s faded out that way.”
“And you never make a mistake about these fantasies?”
“I don’t claim that. There’s no mistake about Carl’s. He got over them, and that’s proof positive that they were illusory.”
“I hope he got over them. This morning when I talked to him, he was still hung up on his father’s death. In fact, he wanted to hire me to prove that somebody else murdered his father. I guess that’s some improvement over thinking he did it himself.”
Miss Parish shook her head. She brushed past me and moved to the window, stood there with her thumbnail between her teeth. Her shadow on the blind was like an enlarged image of a worried child. I sensed the doubts and fears that had kept her single and turned her love toward the sick.
“He’s had a setback,” she said bitterly. “He should never have left the hospital so soon. He wasn’t ready to face these dreadful things.”
I laid my hand on one of her bowed shoulders. “Don’t let it get you down. He’s depending on people like you to help him out of it.” Whether or not he’s guilty, the words ran on unspoken in my head.
I looked out past the edge of the blind. The Mercury was still in the street. I could hear the squawk of its radio faintly through the glass.
“I’d do anything for Carl,” Miss Parish said close to my ear. “I suppose that’s no secret to you.”
I didn’t answer her. I was reluctant to encourage her intimacy. Miss Parish alternated between being too personal and too official. And Mildred was a long time coming down.
I went to the piano and picked out a one-finger tune. I quit when I recognized it: “Sentimental Journey.” I took the conch shell and set it to my ear. Its susurrus sounded less like the sea than the labored breathing of a tiring runner. No doubt I heard what I was listening for.
25
I SAW the reason for Mildred’s delay when she appeared finally. She’d brushed her hair shining, changed to a black jersey dress which molded her figure and challenged comparison with it, changed to heels which added three inches to her height. She stood in the doorway, holding out both her hands. Her smile was forced and brilliant: “I’m so glad to see you, Miss Parish. Forgive me for keeping you waiting. I know how precious your time must be, with all your nursing duties.”
“I’m not a nurse.” Miss Parish was upset. For a moment she looked quite ugly, with her black brows pulled down and her lower lip pushed out.
“I’m sorry, did I make a mistake? I thought Carl mentioned you as one of his nurses. He has mentioned you, you know.”
Miss Parish rose rather awkwardly to the occasion. I gathered that the two young women had crossed swords or needles before. “It doesn’t matter, dear. I know you’ve had a bad day.”