I turned to look at her. She was smiling pleasantly, but she had captured the attention of a white-coated attendant who stood watching her now, alert to any situation that might develop. None developed. The lady only wanted to be kinged. The man sitting across the board from her moved a checker on top of the one she indicated. The guard relaxed, stifling a yawn.
“You were about to say—” Sarah said.
“I was about to say... Sarah, you realize, don’t you, that you’re suggesting a conspiracy?”
“Suggesting? No, Matthew. Stating it. Baldly and as an absolute fact. I loved my father only as a proper daughter should. I never lusted for him, and I never thought of him as anything but a faithful, generous, decent, hardworking man. Faithful, yes. To my mother and to me. No cuties on the side, Matthew. Generous when he was alive, and even more generous in death. The six hundred and fifty thousand was a gesture, Matthew, one of the nicest gestures anyone could make. He knew I would come into a fortune when my mother died. The additional money — I thought of it as that, additional money, spending money, play money, whatever — was his way of telling me he thought I was a woman responsible enough to handle such a huge sum. Did I feel cheated? I felt rewarded, Matthew! Six hundred and fifty thousand dollars? I was twenty-four years old, and he was trusting me with all that money! With almost a billion more to come when my mother died! How could I have felt anything but intense gratitude for an act of such generosity and faith? I wept for days after he died. He was the most wonderful man I’ve ever known.”
She sighed heavily.
“If I’m crazy,” she said, “then I believe everything that is contrary to what I actually know to be the truth about my father. I believe he was carrying on with another woman. I believe that I could easily have taken her place and suggested this to him. I believe that he was cheating me sexually while he was alive, and that he cheated me monetarily after he was dead — all for this phantom woman. I believe that I tried to commit suicide when I couldn’t find her. I believe all these absolute lies.”
She sighed again.
“Matthew,” she said, “there is a conspiracy.”
“Why?”
“I told you. My mother hates me. Besides, she wanted all of it. All the money. And now she’s got it.”
I nodded. Not in agreement; I was far from agreeing with her completely. The order appointing Alice Whittaker as guardian had specified that she was required to post bond in the amount of $650,000. This meant that $650,000 of her own money was at forfeit. So I could not easily accept Sarah’s flat accusation. I nodded only to indicate that I understood what she was telling me.
“They say I made an obscene suggestion to my father,” she said. “You’ll probably find that in the fake records, Matthew, the suggestion I’m supposed to have made to my father. Worse than Becky wanting to bite her husband’s cock. Far worse than that. Look at me,” she said.
I looked at her.
“I’m a virgin,” she said.
I kept looking at her.
“Twenty-four years old,” she said, “and a virgin. As pure as the driven snow, Matthew. A snow-white virgin.”
Her eyes refused to leave my face.
“I’d have cut out my tongue before saying anything like that to my father. Cut out my tongue first. And drowned myself later.”
Dr. Silas Pearson was indeed blind in one eye, and that eye was covered with a black patch. He was, I supposed, in his mid-fifties, a lanky, Lincolnesque man wearing a pale blue summer-weight suit. He greeted me warmly and asked me to make myself comfortable. He offered me coffee or iced tea. I accepted the iced tea. His office was in Administration and Reception. Through the large, unbarred corner windows, I could see patients and visitors strolling about the lawn. Sarah had been taken back to North Three. She had blown me a kiss as Jake led her away.
“So you’ve been talking to Sarah, have you?” Pearson said. His voice was pitched very low, its effect soothing. I imagined him in conference with patients. I imagined him with Sarah, his soothing voice probing the depths of her illness — if it existed.
“Yes,” I said, “I’ve been talking to her.”
“And to others, I understand.”
Had Helsinger called him? Ritter? Sarah’s mother?
Was there a conspiracy?
“Yes, I have.”
“And what do you think?” he said.
The soothing voice. Brown eyes studying me, long fingers toying with a gold chain that hung across his vest. Was he one of the psychiatrists who hypnotized Sarah?
“Dr. Pearson,” I said, “in my several conversations with Sarah, I’ve seen nothing but an intelligent—”
“Yes, she’s very intelligent,” Pearson said.
“—imaginative—”
“Indeed.”
“—lucid—”
“Quite.”
“—reasoning—”
“Oh yes.”
“—aware—”
“Enormously so.”
“—alert—”
“Always alert,” he agreed.
“—sensitive—”
“Even shy and vulnerable at times.”
“In short, a young woman — I must be frank with you — who exhibits none of the symptoms Dr. Helsinger led me to believe were indicative of paranoid schizophrenia.”
Pearson smiled.
“I see,” he said. “But you are, of course, a lawyer. Not a doctor.”
“That’s true. Still...”
“They can sometimes fool even qualified professionals,” Pearson said. “It doesn’t surprise me — your reaction, I mean. They can be quite charming when they choose to be. The charm, in fact, can be part of the delusional system.”
“I see no evidence that Sarah is deluding herself about anything.”
Pearson smiled again.
“She calls me Dr. Cyclops, did she tell you that?”
“Yes. But that would hardly seem—”
“Which, in the mind of someone who was not schizophrenic, would be an apt association. The slant-rhyme with Silas, the obvious patch over one eye. Very good. Sarah, however, is schizophrenic, albeit — as you say — quite intelligent. And imaginative. Only an intelligent and imaginative person could have constructed a delusional system as elaborate as hers.”
“She seems to feel the system was devised for her,” I said.
“The whole world against little Sarah, right? Everyone persecuting poor little Sarah. And you don’t find that odd, Mr. Hope?”
“According to Sarah—”
“You cannot accept anything Sarah believes as having any basis in reality, Mr. Hope.”
“Dr. Pearson, with all due respect for your professional experience, Sarah is too well aware—”
“Of anything and everything that serves her delusional system,” Pearson interrupted.
“The same thing might be said of any so-called sane woman. That she is aware of anything and everything that serves her well-being.”
“I mentioned nothing about well-being,” Pearson said. “Sarah’s awareness does not, in fact, serve her well-being. On the contrary, it serves only her severe illness. Her awareness, as you will have it, her powers of reasoning, her application of knowledge, her intelligence, her imagination, her alertness, are all being channeled toward supporting a systematized belief that she is being wrongly persecuted, deceived, cheated—”
“Yes, Dr. Helsinger told me all that.”
“Supported by the further belief that this very system she herself has constructed was devised for her by others — against her will, against her powers to resist. That, Mr. Hope, might easily be a classic definition of paranoid schizophrenia.”