Murder Is Suggested (11 page)

It occurred to Pam that they were in danger of riding their respective hobbyhorses in different directions. This might, momentarily, take Faith Oldham's mind off Hunter; it appeared that, momentarily, it had. But it did not, on the other hand, get them any place.

“Faith,” Pam said. “You wouldn't be so worried—I don't think you would—about Mr. Hunter if you didn't think he—well, that he might have had some reason to kill Jamey.”

The girl leaned forward. She seemed about to stand up. The blue eyes changed, seemed somehow to intensify.

“If you think that—” she said, and her voice changed too. It was deeper, more vibrant.

“Wait a minute,” Pam said. “Wait a minute. You came here to—talk about this. Because, you said, you were—what did you say?—so alone. So, I suppose, because you wanted help. Isn't that right?”

“I don't know,” the girl said. “You and Mr. North seemed—like people who would understand. And once Jamey said something about your having had experience in things like this. And then I thought I could find out—”

“I know,” Pam said. “How things were going. As concerning Mr. Hunter. Well—I've told you what I know about that. And I'm ready to help—anyway, to talk about it. But we can't if you won't.”

“I'm sorry,” Faith said. “No, I don't know any reason Carl could have had—any motive. And, I know he wouldn't do a thing like that anyway. And—I know that that isn't good enough. Is it?”

“No,” Pam said. “Faith—did you know that Jamey—wasn't well? That, actually, he didn't have much longer to live?”

The girl looked at her. The full blue eyes seemed, to Pam, to narrow a little. She said, “Why?”

“You did, didn't you?” Pam said, taking a chance.

Faith hesitated.

“I didn't—know,” she said. “I was, from things he said—not definite things but—as if he were resigned—yes, I was afraid of it. But—why?”

“Oh,” Pam said. “I—wondered if you knew. In a way, it makes what's happened—well, easier to accept, doesn't it? You were fond—very fond—of Jamey. I know that. Even Jerry and I, although we only knew him a few months—”

It wasn't, Pam thought, particularly good. But it was as far as she wanted to go. Unless the girl herself—

“That really isn't why you brought it up, is it?” Faith said. She was much steadier now; that, at any rate, had been gained. “What you meant was—Jamey didn't have any real reason to live. It was going to be—painful?”

“I think so,” Pam said.

“That he could—have arranged for somebody to make it—quicker? Easier? By—using hypnotism?”

“I don't think it's possible,” Pam said. “I think that all of the authorities think it isn't—
Faith!
”

The girl had dropped her face in her hands. Her body shook. She said, “I'm afraid. I'm
afraid
.”

And, Pam North was startled; obscurely upset. The night's theory had become, with morning, only a theory of the night, grotesquely contorted, as are the thoughts of night. At breakfast, only a few hours before, she and Jerry had agreed on that, and been somewhat amused at themselves. And Jerry had, again, explained to both of them that all the authorities Jameson Elwell, who was himself one, cited agreed that there was no proof a person in hypnosis would not reject, out of hand, instruction to perpetrate any serious crime. And here the girl—

“There's no reason to be afraid,” Pam said. “Not of that, anyway. At least I—”

Now the girl changed again; she was a changeable girl.

“They don't really know,” she said. “Oh, for years all the authorities were pretty much agreed that a person couldn't be made to commit any crime. Let alone to kill. But lately—well, they're not so sure. I've been helping—had been helping Jamey with research. Getting quotations and things like that. From—” She named names Pam North had never heard—Wells, Rowland, Estabrooks. A good many now thought merely that certain things were unproved, not that they were impossible.

“Take this man Salter,”
*
Faith Oldham said, and Pam shook her head slowly, being unable to take something she had never heard of. “He's very certain a good subject could be made to do—anything. And Professor Estabrooks,
†
although he doesn't go as far, says that while he doesn't claim that
all
good subjects would commit crimes, it seems ‘highly probable' that many would.”

“Oh,” Pam North said. Faith was looking at her with very wide—clearly, Pam thought, very frightened—eyes. And Pam, if not precisely frightened, was definitely uneasy. It proved, she thought briefly, the folly of shooting arrows into the air, not knowing where they might come down. “Well,” Pam North said. The girl waited.

“Even if he could he wouldn't,” Pam said. “Jamey, I mean.” And waited, with growing uneasiness, for an echo—for corroboration from a person who clearly knew a good deal about this mysterious matter—of her own grotesque theory of the night.

And—it did not come.

“Of course he wouldn't have,” Faith said. “Anybody who knew him would know that. Only—they wouldn't have known him. All those people—your friend Captain Weigand and—I don't know—lawyers and people on a jury and—he would just be a name and Carl would—would be another and nobody would
really
know.”

“I—” Pam said.

“I know,” Faith said. “You think I'm frightened because—because I think Carl was hypnotized and made to kill Jamey. I
don't.
I don't and I never will, because Jamey wouldn't do a thing like that to anybody and Carl wouldn't—I don't care what they say—if everybody in the world said—”

Then, again, she buried her face in her hands. Pam started to get up from the chair, to go to her, and Faith's hands went down and she shook her head.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm all right. It's—not that I'm afraid about what
has
happened. That's all right—about Carl it's all right. I'm afraid of what
can
happen. Because—they'll think of this, won't they? Even people who don't know anything about hypnotism—think it's something that used to go on on the stage, and a man with glittering eyes swinging a watch back and forth—” There was contempt in the young voice; the contempt of young knowledge for ancient myth. “—even they'll think of this. Because now even doctors are beginning to understand it, and magazines to print articles about it.”

“I imagine,” Pam said, “that they'll—well, try everything else first. Because, you take a jury—”

She paused, considering.

“Jurys like things simple,” Pam said. “Nobody gives them a thing that's hard to believe if there's any other way.”

(Bill must have told me that, sometime, Pam North thought.)

“But this isn't hard to—” Faith said, and did not finish.

“Not for you,” Pam said. “You obviously know lots about it. Helping in Jamey's experiments and everything—working with him. I wonder—how does it feel to be hypnotized?”

“How?” Faith said. “Oh—Jamey never hypnotized me, Mrs. North. Not because I wasn't willing. I just wasn't one of those who can be hypnotized. Maybe I'm not bright enough.” She almost smiled; a watery almost-smile. “There's probably some correlation between intelligence and susceptibility,” she said. “Anyway, the feeble-minded can't be hypnotized, or almost never can. Oh—he could get me to relax and feel sleepy. And then he'd say, ‘Your eyelids are locked tightly together. You cannot open them.' And—I'd open them. Every time. So—”

She stopped talking and stood up. She looked at her watch and said she must go now.

She said, “Mrs. North. It was good of you to let me talk. I—I guess I just needed to talk to somebody. And—I know there's no way you can help us but—”

Pam stood too.

“Only,” Faith Oldham said. “I don't know how to ask this. Probably I shouldn't. But—almost the worst thing is not knowing. What they—what they're thinking, planning to do. I don't ask you to—I know Captain Weigand's a friend. I know you can't—”

She found it hard to say, obviously. And there was no clear answer, obviously.

“Bill's fair,” Pam said. “Without me—without anybody. And—he doesn't jump at things, Faith. All the same, I'll be as much a—a friend at court as I can.”

It wasn't much. But the girl nodded her head slowly, acceptingly. And the large blue eyes did not, now, seem quite so strained, so frightened.

*
Andrew Salter
(What Is Hypnosis?
Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, Inc., 1955): “Put bluntly, through hypnosis it is possible to force persons to commit crimes. Those who speak of the necessity for hypnotic suggestion to fit in with a subject's ‘moral code' should revise their concepts.… My comments advocating the possibility of the hypnotic production of crimes have aroused the opposition of pollyannas who know nothing about the matter.”

†
G. H. Estabrooks
(Hypnotism.
E. P. Dutton & Company, 1943). The passage to which Faith apparently refers is: “The reader must bear in mind that we do not claim
all
good hypnotic subjects would commit a criminal act as the result of hypnotism. Far from it. We only assert that, from the evidence we have, it seems highly probable that many subjects would do so if urged on by a good operator.” (P. 167.)

7

Pam was late; she was looked at from under raised eyebrows, by Jerry and Bill Weigand. Their expressions chided. The expression on the wide face of Sergeant Mullins was, Pam thought briefly, more one of apprehension.

They had acquired a sofa and a chair—which Mullins slightly overflowed—in a corner of the Algonquin lobby. As she approached, Pam saw Jerry's hand go out to a little bell on a table, and heard the bell tinkle. So that was being taken care of. A waiter looked at the bell, at Mrs. North, and said, “With House of Lords,” and went away. Which was pleasant if, perhaps, and viewed in a certain light, an incident to give pause.

“Martini got in the elevator,” Pam said, and sat down on the sofa between Bill Weigand and Jerry. “Did you tell him, Jerry?”

“Wait,” Jerry said. “If you mean Raul, he says five minutes. So we'll have time for a couple. If you mean Bill, partly. And what do you mean, ‘in the elevator'?”

“Jerry,” Pam said. “You know the elevator! Martini got in it, somehow. I never know how, when you're looking right at her, she disappears and turns up places. And the new boy is afraid of cats and did something wrong and we stuck. And Teeney yowled, because it turns out she doesn't like elevators. I suppose she thinks the bottom's falling out.”

Mullins closed his eyes. He took a firm grip on an old-fashioned glass and raised the glass steadily to his lips.

“Probably,” Jerry said. “Sometimes I feel the same—
stuck?”

“Oh,” Pam said, “not seriously. He's an ailurophobe and you know how Teeney feels about them. Incidentally, I do think they ought to have asked us first, don't you? Because with one of those on the elevator—”

“Stuck?” Jerry said. “Stuck?”

“Only a few minutes,” Pam said. “Then I ran it back up myself—he just stood in a corner and said, ‘No.
No!'
—and put Teeney in, but by then I had a run and—none of this is important, really. Faith Oldham can't be hypnotized. So I guess it's false pretenses, Bill. But very nice all the same. Thank you.” The last was to the waiter, for a martini with the glass dewed with chill. “Now—where are we?”

“That, Pam, is quite a question,” Bill Weigand said. “Jerry told me about the theory you two ran up. But—you say she can't be hypnotized?”

“She says not,” Pam said. “And—I don't think she's lying. But on the other hand, she herself rather changed our horses. She's afraid—”

Pam told them what Faith Oldham was afraid of. It was, she pointed out, very much the same thing. “Only, the other side out.”

Sergeant Mullins took a still firmer grip on his old-fashioned glass. He spoke slowly, heavily.

“Listen, Mrs. North,” he said. “There ain't—there isn't any such thing as hypnotism. It's all a con game.” He looked at Weigand, at Jerry North, and there was a kind of entreaty in his eyes. “Everybody knows that,” he said. “It's a trick. Like sawing a woman in two.”
*
His expression now was one of deep anxiety. “You know that, Loot,” he said, and it was indicative of his perturbation that he did not correct himself.

Bill looked at Jerry North. Both shook their heads. “I'm sorry, sergeant,” Bill Weigand said.

“Listen, Loot,” Mullins said. He did not go on. He put his old-fashioned glass down on the table. Like a man in a dream, then, he reached out and tapped the little, tinkling bell.

Bill Weigand looked at Jerry, who shrugged.

“That's all,” he said. “I've told you Pam's theory. And my alternative. This—this other side of it doesn't change anything, really.”

“Except people,” Pam said. “They might think that that—”

“It is hard to believe,” Bill said. “I'll give Mullins that.”

Mullins remained in reverie. A waiter came; Mullins merely pointed at his almost empty glass.

“All Elwell says,” Jerry said, “is that a good many tests suggest that a good subject can be prevailed upon to do almost anything. And none of them is conclusive in proving murder isn't included. And—there's one other thing. There are a good many tricks a good operator can play on his subjects. One of them is to wipe out all memory of ever having been hypnotized. Another is to plant in their minds the belief they can't be. So, Miss Oldham can be telling what she thinks to be the truth about herself but—”

“Jerry,” Pam said. “You never told me that.”