from her and without any preliminary comments began to talk her back into her childhood. After only a slight hesitancy she began to answer him, describing scenes from her early schooldays; they could all plainly hear the change in the quality of her voice as it rose and thinned girlishly. Tim stood up and, creeping forward, dropped on one knee before the woman with his camera raised. Walton ignored him. “Now, my dear, we are going back to the time before you were born. Tell me what you see.”
There was a long silence. “Back, farther back into the time you were little Sarah Fairly. Before, long before. You were on this earth before. Sarah. Tell me who you were.”
“Betsy.” The word came out slowly, puzzled, half hesitating, and Jo heard a sharp intake of breath from the people around her. She gripped the notepad on her knee and watched the woman’s face intently.
“Betsy who?” Walton did not take his eyes from her face.
“Dunno. Just Betsy…”
“You were lucky this evening.” Walton looked from Jo to Tim and back with a grin. “Here, let me offer you a drink.”
The others had gone, leaving Tim packing his cameras and Jo still sitting on her wooden chair, lost in thought. “Three subjects who all produced more or less convincing past lives. That’s not bad.”
Jo looked up sharply. “More or less convincing? Are you saying you don’t believe in this yourself?”
She saw Tim frown but Walton merely shrugged. He had poured three glasses of Scotch and he handed her one. “I am saying, as would any colleague, Miss Clifford, that the hypnosis is genuine. The response of the subject is genuine, in that it is not prompted by me, but where the personalities come from I have no idea. It is the people who come to these sessions who like to think they are reincarnated souls.” His eyes twinkled roguishly.
Tim set his camera case on a chair and picked up his own glass. “It really is most intriguing. That Betsy woman. A respectable middle-aged housewife of unqualified boringness and she produces all those glorious words out of the gutter! I can’t help wondering if that was merely her repressed self trying to get out.” He chortled.
Walton nodded. “I find myself wondering that frequently. But there are occasions-and these are the ones of course that you as reporters should witness-when the character comes out with stuff which they could in no way have prepared, consciously or unconsciously. I have had people speaking languages they have never learned or revealing historical detail that is unimpeachable.” He shook his head. “Very, very interesting.”
Jo had stood up at last. She went to stand by the bookcase, still frowning slightly.
Walton watched her.
“Did you know, Miss Clifford, that you are potentially a good hypnotic subject yourself?”
She swung round. “Me? Oh, no. After all, none of your tests worked on me.”
“No. Because you fought them. Did it not cross your mind that the fact that you had to resist so strenuously might mean something? I was watching you carefully and I suspect you were probably one of the most susceptible people here tonight.”
Jo stared at him. She felt suddenly cold in spite of the warmth of the room. “I don’t think so. Someone tried to hypnotize me once, at the university. It didn’t work.”
She looked into her glass, suddenly silent, aware that Walton was still watching her closely.
He shook his head. “You surprise me. Perhaps the person wasn’t an experienced hypnotist. Although, of course, if you resisted as you did today, no one could-”
“Oh, but I didn’t resist them. I wanted it to happen.” She remembered suddenly the excitement and awe she had felt on her way to Professor Cohen’s rooms, the abandon with which she had thrown herself into answering all his questions before the session started, the calm relaxation as she lay back on his couch watching Sam standing in the corner fighting with his notepad while outside the snow had started to fall…
She frowned. How strange that the details of that afternoon had slipped her mind until this moment. She could picture Sam now-he had been wearing a brown turtleneck sweater under a deplorably baggy sports jacket. When they had been introduced she had liked him at once. His calm relaxed manner had counteracted Cohen’s stiff academic formality, putting her at ease. She had trusted Sam.
So why now did she have this sudden image of his tense face, his eyes wide with horror, peering at her out of the darkness, and with it the memory of pain…
She shrugged off a little shiver, sipping from her glass as she glanced back at Walton. “It was about fifteen years ago now-I’ve probably forgotten most of what happened.”
He nodded slowly without taking his eyes from her face. Then he turned away. “Well, it might be interesting to try again,” he said thoughtfully. “Would you like to?”
“No!” She answered more sharply than she intended. “At least, not yet. Perhaps when my research is a bit further advanced…” Warning bells were ringing in her mind; Sam’s face was there again before her eyes, and with it she heard Nick’s voice: “There is something you don’t know, something you don’t remember…”
Shakily she put down her glass, aware of Tim’s puzzled eyes upon her. Furiously she tried to get a grip on herself as she realized suddenly that Bill Walton was addressing her while he straightened some papers on his desk.
“And were you pleased overall with what you saw this evening, Miss Clifford?”
She swallowed hard. “It was fascinating. Very interesting.”
“But I suspect that you are going to debunk the reincarnation theory in your articles? My wife is a great fan of yours and she tells me your style of journalism can be quite sharp.”
Jo grimaced. “She’s right. If she told you that it’s very brave of you to be so open with me.”
“Why not? I’ve nothing to hide. As I told you, the hypnotism is real. The responses are real. I do not seek to explain them. Perhaps you will be able to do that.”
He grinned.
Jo found herself smiling back. “I doubt it,” she said as she picked up her bag, “but I daresay I’ll give it a try.”
“Come on, Jo. There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”
Tim put a double Scotch on the table in front of her and sat himself down in the chair facing her.
Jo summoned up a tired smile. “I’m exhausted, Tim, that’s all. This’ll put me right.” She picked up her glass. “Thanks for arranging everything this evening.”
“But Walton worried you, didn’t he, and not just because you thought he was a fake.”
She shook her head slowly. “He wasn’t a fake. At least, I don’t think so. A telepath perhaps-I don’t know-” She was silent for a minute. “Yes, he did worry me, Tim. The stupid thing is, I don’t know why. But it’s something deep inside me. Something I can’t put my finger on, floating at the edge of my mind. Every minute I think I’m going to remember what it is, but I can’t quite catch it.” She took a sip from her glass and grinned suddenly, her face animated. “Makes me sound pretty neurotic, doesn’t it? No, Tim, I’m okay. I think I’ve been letting Nick get to me more than I realize, with his fearsome warnings. He’s a bit paranoid about hypnosis. He told me once that he has this fear of losing consciousness-even on the edge of ordinary sleep. I think he thinks hypnosis is the same-like an anesthetic.”
“And it is true he’s been on to his brother about you?” Tim asked gently after a pause.
She drew a ring on the table with her finger in some spilled beer. “I could kill Judy.” She looked up at him again and gave a rueful grimace. “I wouldn’t be surprised if what she said was true. Nick told me he’d been in touch with Sam.”
“You knew Sam well, of course.”
She nodded. “He became a friend after-” She hesitated. “After they tried to hypnotize me, he and his boss, in Edinburgh, that first time. But we were never lovers or anything. The
Tim raised an eyebrow. “And
“Oh, yes. After last night it has. Finished. Caput. Finis. Bye-bye Nicholas.” She bit her lip hard.
Reaching over, Tim touched her hand lightly. “Poor Jo. Have another drink.” He stood up and picked up her
