The Long Skeleton
Page 23
Now they looked at Dorian.
“Oh,” she said, “I read. That’s what you were thinking about, wasn’t it, Jerry?”
It seemed possible, Jerry said. If Elwell was right, and he had no doubt that Elwell had been right. “To be honest,” Jerry said, “I had a couple of other experts check the book. In some aspects, they said, very original. In all aspects, very sound. Where was I?”
“Possible,” Pam said. “About the clock.”
Oh—that Hunter, hypnotized, had been told that, at a certain time—or perhaps when he was next in the office—he would take the clock off the desk and throw it into the fireplace. Assuming, of course, that he had been a subject of Elwell’s hypnotic experiments. Assuming that Elwell didn’t mind having the clock broken.
“Why?” Dorian said. “Why would the professor arrange something that would end in—breaking something? It seems—wanton.”
They all, again, regarded Jerry North, who said, “Listen. All I know is what I’ve read in Jamey’s book. Of course—”
They waited.
As he understood it, Jerry said, there was considerable scientific uncertainty as to just how far a person could be persuaded to go under hypnosis. At one time, it was generally—almost universally—believed that a subject could not be swayed to do anything which he would, awake, consider wrong. But experimenters were no longer so sure of that; certainly were not sure within a certain zone.
It was conceivable—always assuming that Hunter had been a subject of experimentation (“Which would have to have been with his full consent; they’re still pretty sure of that.”)—it was conceivable that Professor Elwell had been exploring that particular zone. The average normal person does not, wantonly as Dorian had said, destroy the property of others, especially property of any value. As presumably the clock had been?
“I’d think so,” Bill told him.
Then, Elwell might have given Hunter the posthypnotic suggestion—instruction—that he destroy the clock, to see how far Hunter could be got to go.
“We could ask Hunter himself,” Bill said. “Or—would he know?”
That was difficult to answer; for that answer they needed somebody who really knew something about the subject. If Carl Hunter had been an active participant, rather than merely a passive subject, in the experiments—if he was himself something of an expert—he might recognize his destruction of the clock as a result of posthypnotic suggestion. He might recognize that, and still rationalize by contending that the clock was worthless, running slow. Or, it might be that the suggestion had included the explanation—that Elwell had himself, during Hunter’s hypnosis, offered the worthlessness of the clock as a means of breaking down, in advance, Hunter’s block against vandalism.
“Phew,” Jerry North said, and went to the sideboard and mixed himself a moderate drink.
“We’ll ask, probably,” Bill said. “After I read this damned book. At Elwell’s—did you meet a tall, pale girl, a girl with very large blue eyes, named Faith? Faith Oldham?”
“The poor child,” Pam said. “Yes.”
“Poor?”
“Who,” Pam said, “wants to be named Faith? It was revenge, really. Her mother’s named Hope, you know. Got her own back. She’s very nice, though—Faith, I mean. Not bitter or anything that I could see. Jamey was very fond of her. Treated her—well, as if she were his own daughter. Don’t tell me she—”
Bill was not, he pointed out, telling her anything. Faith Oldham could have got to Elwell’s office without going through the—call it the main house. So, conceivably, given a key, could almost anyone else. Faith and Carl Hunter were, at the least, good friends.
“She felt toward Jamey,” Pam said, “as if he were her father. I’m sure—” She stopped, considered. “No,” she said. “I’m really sure.” She looked at Jerry. “And,” she said, “we’ll have no loose talk of intuition, of either sex.”
“As a matter of fact,” Jerry said, “I feel the way Pam does. Without, of course, being able to prove it. You know about his own daughter—Elizabeth, her name was? She was killed in a car accident before we met Elwell. And—”
“Yes,” Bill said. “We know about her. You mean that, after that, Elwell in a sense adopted Faith Oldham? Emotionally, I mean?”
They didn’t know. It seemed possible.
The telephone rang. “Oh dear,” Dorian said, and went across the room to answer it. She said, “All right, sergeant,” and beckoned with the handpiece.
“Only,” Dorian told her husband, as he took the telephone from her, “remember that even detectives have to sleep sometime.”
He nodded. He said, “Yes, sergeant?” and then, for some time without saying anything further, listened.
“Right,” he said, finally. “The morning will do. Tell him, around nine-thirty. And I’ll meet him at the club. Have somebody check out the accident Elwell’s daughter got killed in—about six months ago. On the Merritt somewhere. And you might nudge Barney a little about the check out on Elwell’s records.” He paused. “Don’t I know he’d rather we did,” Bill said. “Good night, Mullins.”
He turned back. Dorian looked at him. “I remembered,” he told her. “Detectives have to sleep.”
“I think,” Pam said, “somebody’s hinting. We’ll—”
But they loitered with intent.
“Just that Elwell’s brother would rather wait until morning to tell us he knows nothing about this ‘shocking business,’” Bill said. “And—preliminary findings on the autopsy.” He paused, seemed to consider. “Probably won’t get us anywhere,” Bill said. “Except give us another thing to check on. Elwell wouldn’t have lived more than six months or a year. Even, the M.E. thinks, with an operation.”
Pam said, “Oh,” and there was shock in her voice. “Did—did he know?”
Bill shrugged. Whether Jameson Elwell had known how much his life drew in was something they, perhaps, would never know. They would try to find a doctor he might have gone to, who might have told him.
“But,” Bill said, “the M.E. says there needn’t have been any symptoms yet. So, unless he was in the habit of having regular checkups—and pretty thorough ones at that—” He ended with a shrug.
It was odd, Pam thought, that this somehow should make it worse, since Jamey was dead in any case—dead, it could be assumed, far more quickly, with a sudden flare of pain instead of pain endlessly smoldering. But—it did. Unfairness added to unfairness, in some fashion not altogether clear. Dear Jamey—
Jerry was closing the door behind him when Pam North said, “Wait a minute,” and turned back.
“Bill,” she said. “There was a tape recorder in the laboratory. Was there anything on the tape?”
“No,” Bill said. “There wasn’t anything on the tape, Pam. As Mullins said—we don’t get the easy ones.”
* “Organized medicine in the United States has taken more than a century to accept the use of hypnosis. At last, the American Medical Association has reported (in its September 1958 Journal) that hypnosis ‘has a recognized place’ in the medical armory, including surgery.”—Harper’s Magazine, November, 1958.
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