If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him…

Casey nodded. “It was very gratifying. We started discussing the teaching schedule for the fall term, and I spoke right up and said that I didn’t want to teach the Transcendentalist poets anymore. I wanted the James Joyce/D. H. Lawrence course. And I said that I wanted to add Virginia Woolf to the course for a feminist perspective on sexuality.”

“Good for you! How did they take it?”

Phyllis Casey laughed. “First, there was a charged silence in the room, as if everyone were thinking furiously at once, and then Dr. McClure started to wheeze, which means that he’d heard the rumors. And Johnson just nodded, and went on to the next item on the agenda. I couldn’t believe it, Margaret! After all these years of being well-spoken and polite, during which time they ran roughshod over me, and gave me the courses nobody else wanted, now suddenly I let it be known that I’m a lesbian, and they treat me like a conquering Visigoth. It was wonderful.”

Margaret MacPherson nodded happily. “My children are shocked into absolute silence. We should have thought of this years ago!”

“And the best part of it is, they just take your word for it!”

“Well,” said Margaret reasonably, “it’s not the sort of thing you can check up on, is it?”

Casey said, “Do you think I ought to buy some leather outfits, anyway? Just in case?”

9

ELEANOR ROYDEN’S EYES glittered at the unexpected novelty in an otherwise boring day of confinement. “So,” she said, sitting down at the conference table. “I get to spend an hour or so with you. This will be a nice change from Still Life with Bars. I hope you’re better than daytime television. I can’t say much for the decor, though.” She glanced appraisingly around the small, bare interview room. “Why does the criminal justice system have to paint everything beige? Maybe you ought to analyze them. I’d say it’s a symptom of repression-don’t they strike you as being rather anal-retentive-but then, you’re the expert.” She looked at him with an expression of sparkling expectation.

Exactly like the hostess at a cocktail party, thought the psychologist pityingly. I wonder if she has any notion of reality left?

“Well, enough about them,” said Eleanor, seeing that her opening gambit was not a success. “Let’s talk about you. You’re a psychologist! How fascinating! Have you done anybody famous?”

“Famous?” echoed the young man in his best Freudian manner.

“Well, perhaps notorious is the better word. You’re an expert witness in criminal psychology, so you must lead a pretty interesting life. Have you met Jeffrey Dahmer? James Earl Ray? A Menendez brother?”

Eric Stanfield’s face was impassive. He had been warned that Mrs. Royden was somewhat eccentric, and he had resolved not to be provoked by her behavior.

“Now listen to that,” Eleanor went on, without waiting for his reply. “I haven’t mentioned a single woman in that list of notorious murderers. Do you think women aren’t as well suited to spectacular crimes, or do we just not get enough press? In your professional opinion.”

Stanfield blinked at this conversational U-turn. “Now, Eleanor,” he said in his courteous monotone, “I’m here to talk about you. As you know, your attorney has asked me to evaluate your condition so that I can testify at your trial.”

Eleanor Royden looked appraisingly at the bespectacled young man in the polyester-blend navy jacket. He gazed back, absently fingering his yellow paisley tie. He blinked first. Eleanor sighed and gave up. Another anal- retentive, just like everyone else she had been dealing with for lo, these many weeks. “I’m going to have to do a lot of background for you, Skippy,” she told the psychologist.

He stiffened. “Mrs. Royden, my name is Dr. Eric Stanfield. I hold degrees from-”

“Right, Skippy. And you probably still have your Smurf cocoa mug. Give it a rest. I need to make you understand what you’re dealing with here. Now, I’ll bet you studied the battered-woman syndrome in grad school, but, frankly, what we’re talking about in my case is much more sophisticated than that. You are taking notes, aren’t you?”

Despite his resolution to remain impervious, Eric Stanfield glared at the madwoman in the orange prison fatigues. He took out his Cross pen and began to scribble on a yellow legal pad. “You were a battered wife, Mrs. Royden?” he said, attempting to regain control of the interview.

“Jeb didn’t beat me up, no,” Eleanor replied. “I told you, my case is more subtle than that of the drunken bully who uses his wife for a punching bag because he’s a loser. Jeb Royden was not a loser. He was probably the most successful lawyer in southwest Virginia. If he could have kept his pants zipped, he might have run for attorney general.” She snickered. “Hey! Maybe he would have run for president if I hadn’t conducted my little exit poll in his bedroom.” She pantomimed the firing of a pistol.

“Your husband was unfaithful.”

“Show me one that isn’t,” snapped Eleanor. “Are you married, Skippy? Or do you still watch Winona Ryder movies and drool?”

“Mrs. Royden, your husband is dead. It is your mental health that we need to focus on.”

“He is the key to my mental health! You know what doctors tell you about allergies? Remove the offending substance from your life. It works with mental-health problems, too!” She laughed.

“Tell me what you mean.” It was all Stanfield could manage in the way of a response.

Eleanor spent ten minutes pacing the room and summarizing her marriage in an ironic invective that could have played at the local comedy club without a rewrite. Stanfield would have laughed if he hadn’t kept reminding himself that he was in the presence of a multiple murderer. This articulate, outspoken woman had killed two people in cold blood, and she didn’t seem the least bit remorseful for her crime. His notes were observations of her behavior, rather than a summary of her complaints. Uses punch lines when relating anecdotes.

“I didn’t kill him because he was unfaithful,” said Eleanor. “Write that down. I killed him because he made a blood sport out of our divorce. And I killed the Bitch-she gave a whole new meaning for the term golden retriever!-she was certainly determined to retrieve Jeb’s gold, let me tell you. Anyhow, she had to go with him, because she enjoyed the process. My husband set out to destroy me, and she cheered him on.”

“When you say that she-the second Mrs. Royden-had to go with him, do you mean that you had to fatally shoot her as well?” Stanfield thought it was time he injected some plain speaking into her narrative.

“That’s right,” said Eleanor cheerfully. “I blew the slut to kingdom come. Maybe it will deter other gold-digging home wreckers, but I doubt it. Not until more wives… go ballistic.”

“Did you attempt to counter your husband’s legal maneuvers through the court system?” He had to speak loudly, because she was laughing at her own pun.

Eleanor stopped laughing, and made a face at him. “You really don’t get it, do you?” she said. “Take Jeb to court? That would have been like trying to fight a tiger with a toothpick. Jeb was a golf buddy to all the judges in the district, and every lawyer in town was his pal. Besides which, they all truly believed that he was right to dump me, and that I ought to go away quietly with no settlement, and get a job in a hash house. His last threat was that he’d convince the world that I was crazy, and have me locked up in a mental institution. The more I protested, the more evidence he had of my derangement, as he called it. I had no alternative. A bullet was the only thing that Jeb couldn’t bribe or bully into being on his side.”

“I see what you mean,” Eric Stanfield said, nodding.

“I don’t think you do,” said Eleanor. “You are supposed to think how tragic it is for a woman to be driven to the point of believing that she could only solve her problems with a pistol. That’s the state of desperation I had reached on the night Jeb died. I was a victim of emotional abuse and psychological brutality. You do see that, don’t you?”

Bill MacPherson had never before interviewed a prospective client while wearing madras Bermuda shorts and