Jennifer sighed and for a moment Hall thought she was going to argue. Instead she shrugged, turning back to Annabelle, pulling Emily on to her lap in the chair as she did so. The conversation with Annabelle was stilted and self-conscious, Emily’s presence a bar to any proper answer to Jennifer’s litany of questions, ambiguously phrased again because of Emily.
Both were relieved when the child broke in, refusing to be ignored. Plucking at the bandage protruding from Jennifer’s left sleeve and then feeling the dressing on her hand Emily said in sudden alarm, ‘Did you have an accident?’
‘Yes,’ said Jennifer.
‘Is that why you’re here?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then you’re coming home?’
Jennifer hesitated. ‘When I’m quite better.’
‘When will Daddy come home?’
Jennifer had to swallow, very hard. ‘I don’t know. He might have to be away for a long time.’
‘Why?’
‘Because.’
Mason remained tensed forward, oblivious to everything but the woman. Hall was just as intent, a doubt growing within him. Jennifer Lomax was entirely normal, a loving mother hugging a child from whom she’d been separated. So the hunched-forward man beside him had to be wrong. Jennifer Lomax had to be a clever enough woman – and they knew she was clever – to defeat hypnosis and fool an experienced psychiatrist she hadn’t faked a voice in her head. I’ve got a Paper that’s going to turn psychiatry on its head, worldwide, he remembered. Did Julian Mason want to believe it, to achieve some sort of academic notoriety?
‘I love you, Mummy,’ Emily was saying.
‘I love you too, my darling.’
‘I want you to come home.’
‘I will, as soon as I can.’ Jennifer had to cough, to clear her throat.
‘I brought you a present,’ announced Emily, proudly, slithering from Jennifer’s lap to scurry across the room. Unasked, Annabelle offered the card. Emily returned with it behind her back until she reached the chair. With a conjuror’s panache the child produced it and announced, ‘I know M, for Mummy!’
Hall had a fleeting, sideways image of the letter and of a stick figure with crossed-eyes and spikey, sun-ray hair before Jennifer yelled, ‘NO!’
Emily started back, crying out in immediate terror, as Jane roared, ‘ Brat! Filthy little brat. Kill little brats.’ Jennifer grabbed out, getting one hand around Emily’s throat but not managing to link it with the other because of the dressing and because Emily tripped and actually fell backwards to get away from her mother. Jennifer started to rise from the chair, bellowing, strangling hands outstretched towards the cowering child but Annabelle got to her first, scooping her up and turning at the same time. Jennifer clenched her clawed hands into fists and began pummelling the nanny, trying to force her to the floor.
‘ I want her! Give her back! ’
Hall was aware of Mason moving and of Lloyd bursting through the door, followed by the policewomen, but was unable to move himself, paralysed by what was happening. Lloyd got between Jennifer and the staggering nanny, taking the blows. Blood burst almost at once from his nose but he managed to grab one of her arms. It off-balanced Jennifer, who stumbled, giving the police sergeant time to grab the other arm. The constable wrapped her own arms around Jennifer’s body, half lifting her from the floor. The bull-like bellowing continued and as soon as her feet came back on to the ground Jennifer began hauling the three clinging to her around the room, rocking to dislodge them. The side table overturned, spewing its contents, and the bed slewed across the room, scattering chairs.
Hall moved at last, seizing Annabelle, still shielding the child, and bustled them out of the room into the waiting arms of a white-faced Geoffrey Johnson. Hall turned back into the room but remained in front of the door, barring it. He at once realized that Jennifer was about to throw off the police sergeant so he grabbed that arm as well, conscious that the wounds had opened and that both Jennifer’s arms were sticky with blood.
‘Hold her! Just keep her steady!’ demanded Mason, dancing around the struggling group to get in front of the woman.
With four people holding her Jennifer came briefly to a breathless pause. At once the psychiatrist was before her, hands out to hold her head. Jennifer reared away, trying to bite him, but missed.
‘Eleven to one, one to eleven, eleven to one,’ Mason chanted. ‘Back and forth, back and forth, eleven to one, one to eleven.’
Jennifer was bulging eyed, nostrils flared, breath rasping into her. There was one desperate heave, which almost dislodged them, but then the panting eased and the sightless eyes receded.
‘Can you hear me, Jennifer?’ asked Mason, monotone.
‘Yes.’
‘Who was it who did that?’
‘Jane. I tried to stop her, I said “No”, but she came too quickly. She was waiting.’
‘ Always waiting. Always here.’
They were all shocked, Mason less than the others. Annabelle wasn’t with them in the ward sister’s office, because the trembling, breath-caught Emily refused to let go her hand from beside the bed that had been made available and Lloyd was delayed, re-stitching the burst open wounds before sedating Jennifer.
‘I’ve had to tell the hospital management: we can’t risk the danger to other patients,’ announced Lloyd, when he finally entered. His white coat was blood splattered and he had cotton wool plugs in both nostrils. His nose was beginning to swell.
‘There won’t be any danger,’ declared Mason.
‘You can’t still maintain that she’s sane, after that,’ demanded Hall. He was totally confused about the psychiatrist’s professional opinion: at that moment he felt confused about everything.
‘I’m prepared to argue it. And I’m prepared to bet others will be, too.’
‘How much damage has been done to Emily?’
Mason made an uncertain gesture. ‘Kids are resilient but that was pretty bad.’
‘Pretty bad!’ exclaimed Hall. ‘It was bloody terrifying! She tried to strangle her own daughter: would have done, if she hadn’t been stopped.’
‘I’ve already asked for a child psychiatrist,’ said Mason.
‘And a paediatrician, too,’ added Lloyd. He spoke adenoidally because of the plugs.
‘It was a mistake as far as Emily was concerned, letting her come to the hospital,’ admitted Mason.
‘One that won’t be repeated,’ insisted Hall. ‘I think it was a mistake for all of us.’
‘Not for me it wasn’t,’ said Mason, honestly, and Hall thought again of the man’s remark of having a sensational psychiatric Paper.
Chapter Fifteen
Jeremy Hall hadn’t expected the gauntlet of cameramen through whom he had to pass for the hearing and did so unsure if their jostled presence was defiance or attempted intimidation. He didn’t like the way they kept shouting, ‘Here, Jeremy… this way, Jeremy,’ as if he knew them. He walked staring straight ahead, refusing to look in any direction. Humphrey Perry was in the corridor, with Johnson. Both men looked isolated and uncomfortable, like stowaways stranded on a desert island. The newspaper group had at least doubled from that of the hospital forecourt that morning. There was a lot of noise and some laughter, a clublike camaraderie.
Perry said, ‘I’ve heard what happened with the child. It sounds awful.’
‘It was worse than awful.’
‘Answering a lot of uncertainty, though.’
‘Not according to Mason it hasn’t.’
The concentration from further along the corridor was obvious. The laughter had seemed to increase at Hall’s arrival. Perry said, ‘You’ve thrown a bomb in the beehive here. And we couldn’t have got a worse judge than Jarvis. He’ll know whose chambers you’re from.’
‘Can’t be helped.’
‘I wish it could.’
‘My tutors used to talk about the impartial objectivity of the law,’ remembered Hall.
‘Academics with no idea of the real world,’ dismissed Perry, matching the cynicism. ‘We’ve drawn a short straw, which is a problem.’ The case was getting out of hand – out of his protective hands – and he was worried.