Vicious Circle

by Douglas Clark

  “Psychopaths—for this is what such people are—are essentially people who seem completely unable to live on normal ordered terms with normal ordered society.”

  “Quite right,” said Whincap. “They are usually explosive personalities who either cannot or will not conform to existing standards of behaviour. They display tantrums or sulk and generally make life uncomfortable for other people.”

  “Thank you, doctor. Would you agree with me if I were to say that Mrs Elke Carlow fulfilled many of the criteria we have mentioned and as a consequence of her inadequacy in social relationships, could be regarded as having been a sufferer from mental illness?”

  “Oh come on,” said Rainford. “She wasn’t that bad.”

  “No?” asked Green. “You’ve all said she was stubborn, unpleasant, she sulked when she wouldn’t go to the Christmas party, she tried to commit suicide, she had a maniacal hatred of Kisiel and a mania about him having shopped her to the wartime authorities. And she presumed by wanting to foist herself on your daughter, and even sending a carpenter round there. If that wasn’t anti-social behaviour, what is? And for who else, other than a crank, would the doc make the arrangements he saw fit to introduce for keeping her medicine on an even keel?”

  “Put like that . . .”

  “I would agree with you, Mr Masters,” said Whincap quietly. “Elke Carlow was definitely a mental case. But before anybody asks why I didn’t do anything about it, I plead that it was sub-clinical. In other words, I don’t believe that her inadequacy was the sort of disability that warranted medical interference unless and until her friends and relatives actively complained that her life-style was affecting their lives adversely. She was, in my opinion, neither insane nor criminal, nor was she approaching either state.”

  “Thank you. Am I also right in assuming that such psychic stresses as she suffered may also have helped to produce a gradual mental disorder? I refer specifically to the fact that as a young woman she suddenly found her native Germany at war with her adopted country. That she was confined for some years away from husband, child and home, with all the grief and trauma such events cause.”

  “This has always been my view,” said Whincap, “and I suppose because of it I made allowances for behaviour which might have caused me to be a deal stricter with another patient.”

  Masters nodded his appreciation of this point. The C.C., however, asked impatiently: “Where is all this leading, Masters? Why discuss the dead woman’s mental illness when you’re supposed to be explaining the motive that drove her sister to kill her?”

  “Please bear with me, sir. I am reporting my thought processes concerning reasons and motives. As I said earlier, I am having to feel my way.”

  The C.C. grunted, which Masters took as permission to proceed.

  “As we have already discussed, the causes of mental disorder are various, but usually they are considered to be either inherited or acquired, or both. There may be some congenital nervous or mental defect which is peculiar to the family of the affected person.

  “We normally call this heredity. And the weakness shown by one member of a family may also show itself in other members of the same family by various nervous diseases allied to mental instability.”

  “Quite right,” said Whincap. “Sometimes it’s epilepsy or hysteria . . .”

  “Wait a minute,” growled Rainford. “Are you suggesting that my missus has inherited some mental instability? Because if you are, I’d like to tell you you’re wrong.”

  “No, no, Theo,” said Whincap. “Nothing like that at all. It’s a terribly complicated business and usually springs from the marriage of two people with like neurotic tendencies. The offspring of such marriages sometimes show characteristics which are natural enough in the parents but which are apt to be more exaggerated in the children. Your wife—Margarethe—had a perfectly normal and delightful father, as you well know. There was nothing neurotic about him, so she is, herself, perfectly normal and well adjusted. And the same goes for Marian. You are her father and, as far as I can tell, you are not neurotic either. So don’t take what Masters is saying as a slight on your missus.”

  “Thank you, doctor.” Masters turned to Rainford. “My point is, Theo, that Mimi Hillger inherited some of the nature of her sister. She controlled it much better. Where Elke Carlow was irritable, jealous, wayward, unreasonable and so on, Mimi Hillger was a gentler, more controlled person. But—and this is my point—in spite of her gentleness she was already predisposed by birth to mental disorder of some degree.

  “Now, in persons so predisposed, other factors can trigger off a breakdown. Doctors call them exciting factors and they may cause sudden trouble or be slow in building up to the breaking point. Like her sister, Mimi Hillger has suffered great stresses in her life. She lived in Prussia which, as you know, was cut off behind the iron curtain. She suffered privation not only during the war but for many years afterwards. And then—after she was widowed—she got the almost unheard of chance to be let out of Eastern Europe and to come to Britain with all its freedoms of thought and action and so on.

  “The prospect, so long awaited, must have been of heaven. But when she arrived, what did she find? An overbearing, unreasonable elder sister who had not availed herself of our freedoms and who seemed hell-bent on ensuring that neither would Mimi. Even family relationships were soured. Mimi couldn’t come to the Christmas party because of Elke. Mimi couldn’t visit Helewou because Marian and Adam wouldn’t have Elke . . . and so on and so forth. You will know better than I do what the atmosphere was like in that house. But what I submit is, that mild-mannered Mimi reached her breaking point. The mind she had kept such careful control of for so many years finally rebelled. The contumacious sister was robbing her of the looked-for life. She gave in. Her sister would have to go. The means of getting rid of her were to hand. She used her knowledge of herbal remedies and the cunning invoked by her mental instability to plan the death. Once it was accomplished, and after a further little flurry of cunning when she rang Dean, her mind settled back to gentleness in preparation for the quiet life to come.”

  There was a moment or two of silence, then the C.C. said: “But if she is normal now, won’t that invalidate her defence? The general principle is that if an accused person suffers from a delusion but is not insane in other matters, he or she is held responsible for the offence.”

  “I did not intend to imply that she is normal now, sir. Merely that she is quiescent. In order to establish a defence on the ground of insanity it must be proved that at the time of committing the act the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason as not to know the nature and quality of that act. I shall report that in my opinion this was so. Of course, I am not an authority, but there is nothing to stop me claiming, quite truthfully, that it was a knowledge of her inherited predisposition to mental illness that led me to suspect Frau Hillger of, and consequently to charge with, murder.”

  “With such support from you,” said Rainford, “the defence would walk it on a plea of insanity.”

  “I hope so. And that is why I would prefer to tear up the confession and give her counsel a fighting chance of pulling it off.”

  “What’s the difference?” demanded Whincap. “She’ll still be locked up.”

  “Not in quite the same way, doctor. I can assure you that Broadmoor is, on the whole, a more pleasant residence than the Scrubs.”

  “And she could be let out quite quickly,” said Rainford, “if she shows she really is quiescent and responds well to any treatment she is given.”

  “Tear up the confession,” said Harrington. “Doctor Whincap, Mr Bennett, I’d like you two to do what you can in your individual professional fields to help her and ease her through what has to come. I don’t want the stress to cause her to go permanently over the top.”

  “After Masters’ magnanimity, it’s the least we can do,” said Bennett. “I’ll arrange the defence.”

  Harrington got to his feet.

 
; “Well, that’s that. Thank you, Masters, Green and you sergeants. A good job. Now I must rush away.”

  As they left the C.C.’s office, Rainford said: “I want to thank you, too. For myself and Margarethe.”

  “Think nothing of it,” said Green. “But don’t tell your missus everything George said. Just tell her Mimi confessed but Bob Bennett has told her to withdraw the confession. It’ll be easier that way.”

  Rainford nodded.

  “We’ve got wives, too, you know,” went on Green. “But I don’t think I’ll be buying mine any more lilies of the valley.”

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