“Then go across to Mrs. Ferens and borrow two hot water bottles,” retorted the doctor, “and hurry up about it.”
2
“Well, that’s Hannah Barrow’s life story,” said Macdonald.
He and Raymond Ferens were sitting in the office at Gramarye. The casement windows were open wide now, and the warmth and sensuous fragrance of midsummer floated in, merging with blue cigarette smoke to make the cold bare little room seem alive and lived in.
“Poor little wretch,” said Ferens softly.
Macdonald nodded. “Yes. I shan’t forget that story in a hurry. I wonder if it’s possible that the memory of her mother’s death was blotted out by the hideous shock of witnessing it. I believe it does happen in some cases. The memory is suppressed, clamped down, as though a scar grows over damaged tissue and hides it.”
“Of course it happens,” said Ferens. “It’s that sort of memory, shut down in the subconscious, that can wreak havoc in people’s lives. But I thought you weren’t interested in psychology?”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t interested. I said I refused to be obsessed by it. I still do,” said Macdonald, “but I did believe that when Hannah was telling me about it, her mind went back to that horror which some circumstance had routed out, and she was no longer Nurse Barrow of Gramarye, but a Bristol slum child. It was that word she used—in pity and horror. ‘Poor besom.’ It’s an old word and an ugly one. It’s certainly not a word the respectable Hannah Barrow would have used.”
Ferens nodded. “You’re probably right. It was the telling of it which broke her up. That uncontrolled weeping was quite characteristic of the whole case.” He broke off and looked out of the window, and the silence which followed in the room was broken by a thrush, singing its heart out on the top of a beech tree.
“I suppose you realise you’ve got a complete explanation of the Warden’s death?” asked Ferens abruptly.
Macdonald nodded. “Yes. The psychologist’s explanation. That’s what I meant when I said I refused to be obsessed by it. But if you would like to put forward your own idea of what may have happened, I shall give full consideration to it.”
“It’s the story of the missing brandy bottle which clinches it, to my mind,” said Ferens slowly. “Let us trace the case history. A slum child in a dockland district, undernourished, ill-treated: the father drank, and eventually killed the mother with a poker. The child was taken to an orphanage. They probably looked after her, according to the lights of fifty years ago, and they would certainly not have let her talk that memory out of her system. It was, as you say, clamped down. I gather from what you say that the job she was put to was in what would pass for a respectable household. The mistress of it beat the girl and ill-treated her and half starved her, but I gather there was no mention of alcoholism. Orphanages may make mistakes in the characters of employers, but they’re careful not to send into houses where drunkenness occurs.”
“Perfectly true,” said Macdonald. “The mistress of the house was a teetotaller.”
“Very well. Hannah tripped up her tormentor on the stairs and the woman broke her neck. Result, a prison sentence. Then a period in an institution. Rehabilitation, as we say nowadays. Then Gramarye, and over twenty years of drudgery, and up-lift which brought contentment of a sort. Hannah was now respected. She was Nurse Barrow. Life went according to pattern. She was taught to do the same thing in the same way, day after day, year after year. She was educable to that point—she could do just those things the Warden had trained her to do, and I think she was probably happy doing them. Do you agree to all that?”
“Yes. To all of it,” said Macdonald.
“Very well. Note that since the day the child had seen her drunken father kill her mother, she had never experienced drunken violence again—until she saw Sister Monica drunk. Saw it, smelled the cause of it—and it turned her brain. She remembered the last time. After that she wasn’t responsible for her own actions any more. Her father hit her mother. Hannah repaid that hit.”
Ferens broke off and lighted a cigarette. Then he went on: “As you know, I’m not a psychiatrist. It’s quite probable that, despite your scepticism, you know more about the subject than I do. You get trained psychiatrists on to all crimes of violence. I know you won’t be biased by anything I say, but I’d suggest you get a psychiatrist on to this job.”
“That’s inevitable,” said Macdonald, “and I’ll lay a bet the first thing Hannah will tell them is just how she killed Sister Monica. I thought she was going to tell me just before she began screaming, but she told me how her father killed her mother instead. So the confession is deferred until another occasion. How is she, by the way?”
“She’s all right. Fast asleep. She’ll sleep the clock round. I saw to that. She’s as tough as they make them, physically.”
“I noticed that her pulse went on ticking over quite strongly even after her crise de nerfs,” said Macdonald. “She won’t die of her brain storm.”
Ferens sat very still. Then he said: “Do you think she did it?”
Macdonald replied: “Do I think that Hannah Barrow killed Monica Emily Torrington? I’ve been very careful not to ask you that question, Dr. Ferens. I asked you to state what you thought the possibilities were in the light of your own experience of psychological processes. You replied, very reasonably, with a statement which covered the case history. I agreed as to all that. You then made two assumptions which are, to my mind, unproven. It’s my job to examine them. Until I’ve examined them, I am not going to answer your question, or put the same question to you.”
Ferens still sat in his place, and the thrush still sang
