‘We’re not here for evaluation,’ Larry said. He found the man unnerving.
‘Apologies. I’m not conducting an analysis of you. No doubt you’re both subjected to vigorous checks of your physical and mental status by the police doctor.’
‘We are,’ Isaac said. ‘We’re concerned that for the last twelve years you have given Gilbert Lawrence a clean bill of health, when the man lived an unusual life and, as we now know, his dead wife was upstairs in the house.’
‘How a person lives does not decree whether he or she is mentally impaired. We had realised that he was eccentric, but our tests are not there to deal with what we would believe to be unusual. Our requirement was to ascertain whether the man was capable of signing his last will and testament, that is all.’
‘Are you saying that living in that house as a recluse does not indicate a person with severe mental issues?’ Isaac said, not sure if Wilde was on the defensive and trying to justify his position or whether he genuinely believed what he was saying.
‘We conducted standard tests in writing and via phone.’
‘No video?’ Larry said.
‘At the request of his solicitor, it was only audio.’
‘And how did the man sound?’
‘He sounded like a man of advanced years. He was coherent if a little slow in his responses. Apart from that, he was found to be in control of his faculties. And let me make this clear. If the man’s last will and testament is to be contested, it is up to those contesting it to prove that he did not have the required mental capacity or did not properly understand and approve the content of the will.’
‘Will you stand up in court and defend your position?’ Isaac said.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Cook, we are a reputable organisation. There is no need for us to defend what we have stated. The standard tests were conducted, the results were appropriate. As far as we are concerned, the man was sane.’
‘Even with his wife upstairs in her bed for thirty years.’
‘Even then, although we did not know of that. A murderer, a rapist, those who commit outrageous and disturbing abuses against other people or commit terrorist acts could all be sane. It may be that others will say they are not, but the tests are specific in so far as Mr Lawrence was concerned. His wife in her bed will no doubt sway the general public, but in law it will have little bearing. If others wish to dispute the will the man signed, then they can, but the law is not on their side in this matter. I realise that is not what people would expect, but the onus of proving mental incapacity is on those disputing.’
Wilde, no doubt, had a list of clients impressed by the letters after his name. To be associated with a disputed will, with him having to argue in a court of law that a man who he had declared sane had in fact been living with the skeletal remains of his wife, was not going to be well regarded in the media.
Isaac could only imagine the headlines in the press: ‘Billionaire sane even though his dead wife was propped up in their bed,’ says a prominent psychoanalyst. Other media outlets might not be so kind, running quizzes on how to determine your sanity: ‘Do you have your dead wife upstairs? If you do, then you’re sane’; ‘If she’s in the kitchen making you tea, then suspect borderline mad’. Facebook could well have a field day, with the amateur pundits providing comedy.
‘Mr Wilde,’ Larry said, ‘are you seriously expecting us or anybody else to believe that your tests, as detailed as they may have been and even if they were in line with agreed procedures, were not impacted by his dead wife being upstairs? And before you answer, remember that not only did he put her in the bed, he had previously buried her for some months and stripped her carcass, cutting chunks off her body, before putting her in with flesh-eating beetles. Can we be expected to believe that the man was sane, can any court of law, can you?’
‘I hold by what I said,’ Wilde said. He sat down, a dejected look on his face. ‘I know what you’re saying. There are some who still regard what we do as charlatanism, an opportunity for the criminally insane to get off serving a sentence in a normal prison, to be confined to a mental institution with three meals a day and daytime television, even after they’ve murdered or committed other ghastly crimes.’
‘We intend to contact two other psychoanalysts,’ Isaac said. ‘One in America, the other in Australia. Will they answer the same as you?’
‘They will.’
‘Any gain to yourself?’ Larry said.
‘We were paid for our services, that is all.’
‘A lot of money?’
‘Yes, but that’s to be expected. Any legal challenges to the man’s inheritance were expected to be rigorous. Anything other than total diligence on our part would have left us open.’
‘And Leonard Dundas?’ Isaac said.
‘I have no idea what Dundas’s arrangements were. All I know is that Gilbert Lawrence understood what he was signing and that he had the mental faculties to do so. Regardless of how your investigations turn out, we acted correctly.’
‘And if he murdered his wife?’
‘Did he?’
‘We have no proof, but if he did?’
‘The tests were conducted according to accepted criteria.’
***
A father and son meeting after so many years should under normal circumstances be a cause for celebration, Ralph Lawrence realised, although he could not see it that way. He had never been paternal, no more than the mother of the boy had been maternal. It had always been agreed between Ralph and the then Mrs Lawrence that no child should result from
