Adam Cornford. Qualifications. First classes, research fellowship at Trinity, membership of the Royal College of Physicians, psychiatric training. Few groups had ever had more academic skills than his family and Margaret’s and their Cambridge relatives. Like a number of them, like Margaret herself, he looked abnormally young for his age. He was actually forty-six, within months of Margaret’s age. His hair was fair, he was good-looking in a fashion at the same time boyish, affable and dominating. His voice, as with Austin Davidson, was light and clear.
From the beginning, he spoke unassumingly, without any affectation, but also like a man who hadn’t considered the possibility of being outfaced. Yes, he had been asked to examine Miss Ross. He ought to explain that he hadn’t been able to make as complete a psychiatric examination as he would have wished. At their first meeting, she wouldn’t communicate. We’ll come to that later, said Benskin. She did talk to you at later meetings?
To some extent, said Adam Cornford. Then he went on, stitch-and-thread through the questions, Cornford easy but conscientious, Benskin as clever, trying to smudge the qualifications down. Miss Ross was in intelligence well above the average of the population. She was not in any recognised sense psychotic. She had some marked schizoid tendencies, but not to a psychotic extent. A great many people had schizoid tendencies, including a high proportion of the most able and dutiful citizens. Those tendencies were often correlated with obsessive cleanliness and hand washing, as with Miss Ross. It was important not to be confused (Cornford threw in the aside) by professional jargon: it was useful to psychiatrists, but could mislead others. Schizophrenia was an extreme condition, which Miss Ross was nowhere near, and she was no more likely to be afflicted by it than many young women of her age.
“Nevertheless, Doctor Cornford, you would say her personality is disturbed?”
“Yes, I should say that.”
“You would say that she has a personality defect?”
“I’ve never been entirely happy about the term.”
“But, in the sense we often use it in cases such as this, it applies to her?”
“I think I can say yes.”
“She has in fact an abnormality of mind?”
“Again, in the sense the law uses that expression, I should say yes.”
All of a sudden there was a quiet-toned legal argument. Cornford had been called as a witness to the mental state of Cora Ross: he said that he could do it “in any sort of depth” only if he could discuss her relation with Miss Pateman. By permission of her lawyers, he had been able to conduct professional interviews with Kitty Pateman: who, so Cornford said, had been much more forthcoming than her partner and had given him most of the knowledge he had acquired. Wilson (this had, it was clear, been prearranged) told the judge that he welcomed Dr Cornford giving any results of his examination of Miss Pateman. The judge asked Bosanquet if he wished to raise an objection. For some moments, Bosanquet hesitated: he wasn’t spontaneous, he was hedging on protocol, it was, I thought, his first tactical mistake during the trial.
“I should like to give the defence every opportunity to establish the prisoners’ states of mind, Mr Recorder,” said the judge.
“The position is very tangled, my lord.”
“Do you really have a serious objection?”
“Perhaps I needn’t sustain it against your lordship.” Politely, not quite graciously, Bosanquet gave an acceptant smile.
Cornford had listened, he said, to both of them about their relationship. It was intense. Probably the most important relationship in either of their lives. That was certainly so with Miss Ross. She had said, in a later interview, when she was putting up less resistance, that it was all she lived for.
Benskin: I have to put this question, Doctor Cornford. This was an abnormal relationship?
Cornford, harmoniously: I shouldn’t choose to call it so myself.