EQMM, May 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  * * * *

  "It was disgusting what she got up to. Absolutely disgusting."

  This was from a stout, well-turned, elderly woman whose gimlet eye told Helena that she missed little and approved of even less. Her husband, standing beside her on the doorstep, was a rabidly loyal lieutenant as he nodded and frowned fiercely at the Codman's flat opposite; they were both deeply suntanned and, Eisenmenger suspected, seasoned cruise-hands. Helena had the distinct impression that this was a scenario that both of them were used to and that both of them enjoyed. As soon as she had announced to them that they were making enquiries concerning the events that had transpired at the house of the Codmans, they had both been keen to tell all, even though they did not know precisely who their visitors were or why they were there.

  The husband decided to build on what his wife had said. “Obviously, he was a lunatic, but she was both no better than she ought to have been."

  Eisenmenger found his wonderment at the highways and byways of the English language to be distracting him from what was actually being said, and it was Helena who asked, “Why do you say that?"

  "Carrying on like that,” said the wife. She had pearl earrings and tightly permed hair.

  "You mean her affair? You knew about that?"

  "Affairs, you mean,” came from the husband contemptuously. “This wasn't the first. Everyone knew that she was a tart."

  Helena felt joy in her heart. “How many?"

  Apparently this was an equal opportunities household, for it was the distaff side who answered this. “Three, maybe four. That we knew about, anyway."

  "You wouldn't happen to know any names, would you?"

  Helena asked this of the space between them because she was subconsciously becoming used to the alternating points of attack from her informants; she was thus not surprised when the answer came from the husband. “As a matter of fact, we do."

  A knowing glance was exchanged between them before she added, “For a long time she was seeing that surgeon."

  "Mr. Bell,” he confirmed. He lowered his voice. “I saw him for my prostrate, that's how I knew who he was.” Eisenmenger noted the extra consonant, said nothing. Their informant continued, “He got divorced. I wondered at the time if it had anything to do with her.... “

  Eisenmenger, who had appeared distracted until now, suddenly asked, “Apart from their relationship with each other, what were they like? Did they get on with other people in the block?"

  "I suppose,” the woman offered grudgingly, as if reluctant to give them any credit for anything.

  Her husband chipped in, “Whenever I spoke to him, he seemed perfectly normal. We'd occasionally chat about sport or about the weather, that kind of thing; I never realised he wasn't right in the head.” He turned briefly to his wife, as if checking for accord, before offering, “It gives us the creeps when you think about what he did."

  It had given Helena the creeps too, as she and Eisenmenger had inspected the bedroom, preserved for the time being as it had appeared to the police when they had arrived in answer to David Codman's hysterical phone call. Eisenmenger, of course, had been fascinated and apparently not at all bothered by the implications of the stains and splatters of blood, examining them from all angles, frowning occasionally, saying nothing.

  "You can never tell what goes on between four walls,” she of the perm pronounced, which seemed at odds with the facts, since apparently everyone had known that Alice Codman was promiscuous.

  "And what was Mrs. Codman like?” Helena addressed this to the woman, perhaps hoping subconsciously to interrupt their pattern of repartee. If so, she was disappointed, for it was the husband who said at once, “Obvious, if you know what I mean. Not backward in coming forward."

  His wife forsook the use of euphemism. “I thought that she was a bit of a tart."

  And it was this leitmotif, and variations on it, that rang through all the conversations that they had that day concerning the Codmans. We thought that he was all right, but she was a bit of a flirt, bit of a tease. Or, as the Codmans’ immediate neighbour had it, Red hat, no knickers. He was a respiratory cripple, his lungs destroyed by years of cigarette smoking, now requiring home oxygen, so that their conversation in his living room was against a background of hissing, his words coming to them through a mask and above gasps and heaving breaths.

  "I told David, I did,” he said at the end of what appeared to be twenty minutes that had added nothing new to their sum of knowledge concerning David and Alice Codman. “I told him he had to stop the smoking, or else he'd end up like me."

  Helena, her heart plunged into pity for the state in which Mr. Walker now found himself, said, “He took your advice. He's given up."

  "I know. He told me. I wish I'd done what he did. Never thought of it, though."

  "What was that?"

  "He found himself a hypnotist. Got himself hypnotised. Worked a treat."

  At which Eisenmenger, until then taciturn and almost distracted for much of the day, glanced up, his face full of an interest that had been hitherto completely absent. “Did he?” he asked. “Did he really?"

  * * * *

  "That's complete, utter, unadulterated, one hundred and ten percent garbage."

  Eisenmenger was shaking his head; grinning broadly, but still shaking his head. “You must admit, it's an interesting idea."

  "Like attaching a rocket engine to your bike is an interesting idea; like the idea that the moon is made of Gorgonzola is fascinating."

  "You want a defence. I'm giving you one."

  They were back in her office. Eisenmenger couldn't be sure but he thought that there might be a few more files in it and he wondered if any ever left. Helena said, “I need a credible one."

  "No,” he countered. “You need any defence you can lay your hands on. This might be it."

  "That he was in a hypnotic trance?"

  "I think I'm right in saying that people have been acquitted after claiming that they were somnambulating while they committed criminal acts."

  "Very occasionally."

  "Maybe something similar is going on here."

  "But . . . “ Words, normally her constant companions, failed her for once. She tried again with no more success. “But... “

  "Let me look into it. The pathological evidence isn't going to help us on this one, is it?"

  She eventually acquiesced, if only to get him and his stupid ideas out of her office.

  Almost immediately, he began to discover curious things.

  * * * *

  David Codman had used a hypnotherapist by the name of Davina Muir, a fact he communicated to Eisenmenger readily enough. She operated from a flat in Southgate Street in Gloucester. Eisenmenger saw no reason to be coy about his motives for seeing her and she seemed quite happy to help.

  "I see all sorts. People who want to give up smoking, give up drinking, give up gambling. People who want to have more self-confidence, or to feel less stressed. People who want to lose weight, even those who want to put it on.” At his look of surprise, she explained, “Anorexics and bulimics."

  He said, “You remember David Codman?"

  "Of course I do. His name's been all over everywhere.” She sounded well spoken, he thought.

  "What was your impression of him?"

  "Stressed, but timid."

  "Repressed, then?"

  "Yes, I would say so."

  "Potentially violent?"

  "Not in a spontaneous way, no."

  "What about a calculated way?"

  She hesitated. “Perhaps.” Before he could count on this admission, she went on, “But then, so is everyone."

  "You think everyone would be capable of cutting someone's head off?"

  She had done her best with the furnishings, made things sparse but neat and tidy, but Eisenmenger could not ignore the fact that they were in a grotty flat in a none too salubrious part of Gloucester. He could not stop himself from questioning why a wealthy man like David Codman would come to such
a place; she must, he decided, be very, very good. Her reply came after much consideration. “No. Nearly everyone, but I would suggest there would be some—a minority—that would be constitutionally incapable of such an act."

  Her speech patterns suggested to him that she was more than a self-trained practitioner of complementary therapy. “But you think that David Codman is in that minority?"

  "How would I know?” This with a bitter smile.

  He let the matter drop. “Tell me about hypnotism."

  "Hypnotherapy,” she corrected him primly. “Hypnotism is what they do on stage."

  "Forgive me."

  "What do you want to know?"

  "What techniques do you use?"

  She indicated a couch in the corner. It was a standard examination couch, like ones in thousands of medical practices throughout the world. “The subject lies there and I induce a state of relaxation."

  "How?"

  She stood up and went to a stereo system; an expensive one, he noted. When she switched it on, the faint sounds of a blood flow, ebbing and flowing to the beat of a heart, could be heard. It was soothing and undoubtedly relaxing, except that after about twenty seconds, a horn sounded loudly from Southgate outside and broke the atmosphere. “That must be annoying,” he remarked.

  She turned the sound system down. “It completely sabotages the process,” she admitted. “Which is why the subject wears headphones and I use a microphone to talk to them."

  "You could move premises."

  "I don't think you realise how little money I make at this,” she responded bitterly.

  Fair enough.

  "So, having relaxed the client, what do you do then?"

  "That depends on what they've come to me for."

  "If, say, I want to give up smoking."

  "You must understand that you can't make someone do what they don't want to do, but that's not a problem, since they're here with me in this room; by definition, they want to give up."

  "But what if they want to kill their spouse?"

  She coloured but not through embarrassment. “What are you saying?” she hissed.

  "Supposing that they wanted to rid themselves of a troublesome wife, say?"

  She took in a whole load of air, held it for a long time, presumably to extract the maximum amount of oxygen from it, then, in less of a hiss, more of a snarl, said, “If they want to murder someone, they don't need me to hypnotise them."

  "Not even if they feel that they just need that extra little push? A spot of Dutch courage, if you like."

  "I do not help people to break the law, Dr. Eisenmenger."

  Eisenmenger smiled. He thought that he believed her, remembered that he had believed once that doctors went into medicine purely to help people. “That's a relief to hear."

  "Now, if that's all you've come here to say— “

  "So how do you stop someone smoking? Say, for instance, that I have a forty-a-day habit."

  He suspected for a moment that she was not going to cooperate anymore, but a few more deep breaths seemed to help the situation. “When they first come in here, they see cigarettes as a positive factor in their lives; they might know in the objective part of their minds that they cause dreadful diseases, that they make their clothes and their breath smell, that by dint of their addictiveness they take control away from them, but they choose to compartmentalise those thoughts. My therapy is designed to correct that imbalance and, by so doing, make it easy for them to say no."

  "Accentuate the positive?"

  She shrugged. “More to accentuate the negative, make them hate those little white sticks because of what they're really doing; they're not making the smoker better, stronger, more sexy; they're causing social and physical harm."

  "How do you do that?"

  "Usually by associating them with something that they hate, perhaps that they have a phobia about."

  "And in making them hate them, do you also make the client want to destroy them?"

  She answered without apparent guile. “Oh, yes. I tell them to stub them out and cut them up."

  Eisenmenger, who could hardly believe that she'd said this, was even more excited when, a few moments later, the object of David Codman's fear and hatred came up in conversation.

  Spiders.

  * * * *

  "This has gone far enough, John."

  He raised his hands in despair at Helena's ingratitude. “What's your problem?"

  "I can't instruct counsel to base the defence on this completely barking theory."

  "Why not?"

  "Because he'd refuse point-blank, and then probably tell me to find another barrister."

  "I don't think it's barking. I think it makes a sort of sense."

  "Only to someone who goes into trances at regular intervals because he's just been struck by some interesting aspect of that dismembered body he dissected last week, or who thinks that when I sit down in a Michelin-starred restaurant all I want to hear—and let's not forget the other diners within earshot either—is how fascinating you thought the injuries were on the poor schmuck who fell off the bridge into the path of the oncoming six-fifteen from Paddington."

  "That's a bit harsh."

  "Try living with yourself."

  He opened his mouth, started to point out that he already did, then had a better idea—silence, at least for a moment. “Well, at least get an expert opinion on it, as a hypothesis."

  "That it was all a ghastly mistake? That when he was desperately trying to lop his wife's head off with the shears—dead-heading her instead of the roses— he thought he was kicking his smoking habit? Duffing in a cigarette rather than his wife?"

  "A mistake triggered by the fact that she had recently acquired a small tattoo of a spider."

  "On the side of her neck."

  "What kind of therapy is it that makes you homicidal every time you see a spider? Do all this woman's patients end up on murder charges?"

  He was forced to admit that there were a few flaws in the theory. “I haven't quite figured out the whole story. There must be something else involved."

  "Well, perhaps when you have a whole story to tell, I'll listen."

  The conversation lapsed—on her side in irritation, on his in exasperation—until he suddenly said, “I say, that's rather good."

  "What is?"

  ” ‘Dead-heading her.’ “

  She managed not to assault him.

  * * * *

  But Helena quickly found that Eisenmenger's theory would not die easily, although it began to mutate quite quickly. To her consternation, it was she who provided the first lifeline. After her next visit to David, she remarked that he was not coping well in prison.

  "I'm not surprised. It's not an experience for the faint-hearted."

  "He looks as though he hasn't slept since he got in there."

  "He can ask for sleeping tablets if he's not a suicide risk."

  "He won't take them. Says that he doesn't believe in drugs."

  All sympathy evaporated inside Eisenmenger at once. He had no time for such views. Helena continued, “And he says that he tried earplugs, but they upset him."

  "How can earplugs upset anyone? What did he do? Try to swallow them?"

  "Something about the blood pulsing in his ears. He said that after a while, it was all he could hear. . . . “ She stopped speaking because Eisenmenger was silently crowing, making a face of exquisite but idiotic ecstasy. “What the hell's the matter with you?"

  "Go back to him. Ask him if he was wearing them on the night that he first noticed the tattoo. Ask him if that was the night she died. And while you're about it, ask him if he'd only recently taken to wearing them."

  "Why?"

  "I bet the answer to all three questions is yes. I'll bet my life on it."

  * * * *

  His life was safe, however.

  "He'd been having a lot of trouble sleeping since his little run-in with police over the assault, and he tried the earplugs for the first time
that night."

  "And was that the day that she acquired the tattoo?"

  "She actually got it the day before, but he didn't notice until that day. It's partially hidden by the hairline."

  The look on Eisenmenger's face was seraphic and Helena wanted to smooth it out with a club hammer. “Would you mind explaining why this is important?"

  He explained how Davina Muir induced hypnosis in her clients, the sounds of the womb, of blood ebbing and flowing. “Perhaps the earplugs had a similar effect and put him into a state of hypnosis and, in that state, he recalled everything he had been told about hating cigarettes."

  "You're still way ahead of me."

  "She works by transferring a hatred or a phobia of some object to cigarettes. She told me that David Codman can't stand spiders."

  At last she glimpsed what he was saying. She didn't believe it, but at least she saw it. “In a hypnotic trance, he killed her because of the tattoo?"

  "More than that. I think that his hatred of spiders, his feelings of aggression towards his wife, his desire to give up cigarettes all conspired. I think that in his head, he was destroying his habit for smoking, killing a spider, and getting his own back on a cuckolding wife."

  At least Helena didn't dismiss it at once; he could see that she still didn't believe it, but he had caught her attention. “I'm not sure... “

  "Get it checked out by an expert, a professor of psychology or something. See what they say."

  And so she did.

  * * * *

  The first trial ended in disarray when the jury were unable to agree on a verdict, the second similarly. The third resulted in David Codman's acquittal. There was a huge amount of publicity and some controversy but, as far as Helena was concerned, the most important thing was that she successfully defended her client. She had, she admitted later to Eisenmenger, been unsure of his innocence, a confession that made Eisenmenger sigh, at least inwardly.

  The case had turned on the evidence of a forensic psychologist whom Helena had dug up from America and who testified that the scenario outlined by the defence was not only plausible but, in his expert opinion, extremely probable. Indeed, he had published accounts of such cases that had occurred in the United States. The prosecution had countered with their own experts, who belittled this theory, and it had come down to whom the jury believed. On the third time asking, the jury believed David Codman, if only a ten to two majority.