Cornford: I should say that.
Benskin: And that really does mean an abnormality of mind, doesn’t it?
Cornford: In the legal sense, I should say yes, without question.
Benskin: Also she couldn’t control that part of her personality?
Cornford: I should say that too.
Benskin: That is, while planning and performing those criminal actions, she had far less responsibility for them than a normal person would have?
Cornford: I’m a little worried about the words “normal person”.
Benskin: Like most of the people you meet, not as patients, doctor, but in everyday life. Compared with them, her responsibility was impaired? Very much impaired?
Cornford: Yes, I can say that.
Wilson asked permission to put the same questions about Miss Pateman. After Cornford had given an identical reply, Benskin finished by saying: “I should like you to give a clinical opinion. How well, in your judgment, would Miss Ross’ mental state respond to treatment?”
For once Cornford hesitated: but he wasn’t hesitating because — although it was true — this was a long-prepared question by the defence.
He said: “I can’t be as certain as I should like.”
“You told us, you found her difficult to examine?”
“Quite unusually.”
“And the first time, she wouldn’t co-operate at all?”
“No. “
“What happened?”
“She told me she had nothing to say.”
“In what terms?”
“Pretty violent ones.”
If one had heard her outburst in court, one could imagine the scene. Cornford’s handsome face was wearing a faint, uncomfortable smile. He was upset as a doctor: he had his share of professional vanity: and perhaps, of physical vanity too.
Later meetings had been easier, but it had been hard throughout to get her to participate.
“What sort of indication is that? About her mental state being treatable?”
“Usually it is a bad sign. When a patient hasn’t enough insight to co-operate, then the prognosis is bad.”
Benskin thanked him and sat down. Wilson did not ask similar questions about Kitty Pateman. Cornford might have said that Kitty Pateman had more insight, and, though the whole tone of his evidence had been in her favour, at least as much as Cora’s, that final word could have done her harm.
Bosanquet must have seen the chance to divide the two. But he didn’t take it. His duty was to get them both. It was more than his duty: it was, as I knew by now, what he believed to be right. Further, as he began to cross-examine Cornford, I gained the impression that beneath the stubborn phlegm Bosanquet was irritated. Cornford had the knack, just as Davidson and the older generation of their families had, of provoking a specific kind of irritation. They were clever, they were privileged, to outsiders it seemed that they had found life too easy: they were too sure of their own enlightenment. Bosanquet hadn’t found life at all easy: despite his name, his family was poor, he had been to a North Country grammar school. He wasn’t sure of his own enlightenment or anyone else’s, after living in the criminal courts for thirty years. His first questions were, as usual, paced out and calm but — I thought my ear was not deceiving me — his voice was just perceptibly less bland.
Bosanquet: Doctor Cornford, you have been telling us about the gap between fantasy and action, haven’t you?
Cornford: Yes, a little.
Bosanquet: We all have fantasies, you were saying, weren’t you, of violent actions. That is, we all have fantasies of putting someone we dislike out of the way?
Cornford: I can’t be certain that we all do. But I should have thought that it was a common experience.
Bosanquet: Granted. But not many actually do put someone they dislike out of the way?
Cornford: Of course not.
Bosanquet: As you were saying, the gap between fantasy and action is not often crossed?
Cornford: Precisely.
Bosanquet: And you suggest, when it is crossed, people are driven by forces out of their control, that is, they are not responsible?
Cornford: That is rather further than I intended to go.
Bosanquet: Or, at any rate, their responsibility is diminished?
Cornford: In many cases, not necessarily all, yes, their responsibility is diminished.
Bosanquet: I don’t think we have heard you make exceptions before. What exceptions would you make?
Cornford: I don’t want to go into the nature of responsibility in general. That’s too wide to be profitable.
Bosanquet: But you are prepared to talk about responsibility in particular cases? Such as the present one?
Cornford: Yes, I am.
Bosanquet: This case is, even to those of us who have had more experience of such crimes than we care to remember, a singularly horrible one of sadistic killing. You will agree with that?
Cornford: I am afraid so.
Bosanquet: And you have stated your opinion that the two women who performed it were acting with diminished responsibility?
Cornford: Yes. I have said that.
Bosanquet: And you would say exactly the same of any similar case of sadistic killing?
Cornford: I can only talk as a psychiatrist of this particular case about which I have been asked to express a professional opinion.
Bosanquet: But you would be likely to give the same opinion in any comparable case? Of killing just for the sake of killing?
Cornford: I can’t answer that question without knowing the psychiatric background of such a case.
Bosanquet: (sternly) I have to ask you as an honest and responsible man. In any such case, where a person or persons had been living in a morbid fantasy world, and then carried out those fantasies in action, you would be likely to say that that was an example of diminished responsibility?
Cornford: (after a pause) I should be likely to say that.
Bosanquet: That is really your professional position?
Cornford: That is going too far. It might, in a good many cases, be my professional position.
Bosanquet: Thank you, Doctor Cornford. I should like to suggest to you that this is a curiously circular position. You are saying that, when people commit certain terrible crimes, they wouldn’t do this unless there was no gap between fantasy and action: and that therefore they ipso facto are acting with diminished responsibility. That is, the very fact of their committing the crimes implies that they are not responsible. Isn’t that what you are saying?
Cornford: It is not so simple.
Bosanquet: Isn’t it precisely as simple? Committing the crime is proof, according to your position, that they are not responsible. How else are we to understand you?
Cornford: I’m not prepared to generalise. In certain cases, where I can explore the psychological background, I may be convinced that committing the crime is, in fact, a sign of lack of responsibility.