The Man Who Turned Into Himself (14 page)

Obediently doing what was expected of me, I raised my glass and offered them my deepest and sincerest good wishes for their future together.

But inside I was screaming.

They drove by the house to drop me off. Emma was spending the night with Harold. She said she would collect Charlie from his friend's house on her way back in the morning.

I don't know how I had got through supper without betraying my feelings. Fortunately they put down the deadness in my voice and face to tiredness. And anyway they were too wrapped up in each other to pay me much attention. No wonder she could afford to kiss me now. She did it again when I got out of the car. Kissed me like a friend, an uncle, a member of the family you run into at weddings but otherwise never think about.

Almost the worst part was how I'd deceived myself into thinking that there was something between us. Had I become so totally out of touch with reality? Could I trust my judgment about anything any more?

That night, exhausted though I was, I didn't go to sleep for many hours. I wandered from room to room with a compulsive restlessness. I drank but didn't get drunk. At least I didn't feel that I was getting drunk, just blurring the stark fact of my humiliation.

I thought of them in Harold's bed. A kaleidoscope of pumping, lusting images of erotically charged flesh swirled through my imagination. As the night wore on I became convinced that they both must have known of my feelings towards Emma. It isn't possible to hide something like that, and I was foolish to have thought I could.

There was no other explanation of their behaviour — 
meeting me at the airport and sitting me down at Chez Arnaud before I even had time to be five minutes alone with her. They meant to present me with a
fait accompli
to forestall the embarrassment of any declaration on my part, which they must have sensed was drawing near. I could hear them now, laughing. 'Did you see his face? I thought he was going to burst!'

Or, even worse, pitying. 'Poor Rick, let's hope he isn't too hurt. But it was best to get it over with.'

And so I went on, prowling endlessly from room to room, a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, the whole house ablaze with lights.

I don't know when or where I fell asleep, but suddenly I became aware that I was dreaming. Somebody was trying to tell me something, but I couldn't understand what. A bunch of papers were put into my hand. I knew that they carried the same information I had been straining to hear, but I couldn't read the print. The harder I tried, the blanker the paper became.

'I'm dreaming,' I told myself. 'I'm angry and frustrated because I'm trying to understand something, and I can't.' I threw the papers down, refusing to be made a fool of.

Then I saw where I was.

I was in Richard A. Hamilton's luxurious drawing room. It was night and the man who had just been speaking to me was stocky, with an expressionless face and eyes that were set too close together. He made me think of a bouncer at the door of some low dive, but I knew that in fact he was a private detective. I don't know how I knew that, but I did.

With a terrible finality I also knew that something he had said had just signed Anne's and Harold's death warrants. I looked down.

The blank white sheets of paper on the carpet were no longer blank. They were covered now with closely printed paragraphs. Without reading them I knew that they gave dates and places, times and telephone numbers, credit card bills and plane reservations. He had done a thorough job, this stocky little man.

There were also, I could see now, photographs, their edges pointing out between the printed pages. I didn't want to look at them, because I had already seen them. I knew what was in them. Those pitilessly literal images of Harold and Anne danced with my nightmare imaginings of Harold and Emma. My hands flew to my face, uselessly covering my eyes against what was already seared into my brain.

The stocky man was saying something. I had to silence the gasping noises coming from my throat to hear him.

'It's up to you. You just have to say the word, Mr Hamilton.'

'I'm sorry?' I mumbled. 'What did you say?'

'Anything you want taking care of, Mr Hamilton. I mean
anything.
A private arrangement between you and me.'

I understood what he was offering, and shook my head. 'No,' I said. 'I'll take care of it myself. Just tell me how much I owe you.'

He shrugged as though to take a life, two lives, or not take them was all the same to him. He named a figure and I crossed to a table where my cheque-book lay open. I took out a pen, filled in the cheque, and signed it Richard A. Hamilton.

'Thank you, Mr Hamilton,' he said as I handed it to him. 'And remember, if you change your mind, the offer's good.'

He left me alone in the middle of the room and saw himself out. I waited until I heard the front door close, then I went into my study.

I knew exactly what I was going to do. I knew where I had hidden the key to open the drawer in which was kept the gun that I had bought ten days earlier. I loaded it exactly as I had been shown, and slipped it into my pocket.

As though in a dream, I left the apartment and took the lift to the garage.

As though in a dream?

I knew exactly where I was going. I drove calmly, carefully, totally in control. The awful finality of what lay ahead caused me no concern.

After all, it was only a dream.

All I had to do was play the role set out for me. Events carried me forward without effort. I did not know the building that I parked outside, yet I knew that the address had been provided by the stocky man.

I did not know why I took the elevator to the seventh floor, or how I knew to turn left and follow the corridor until I reached apartment 7b.

It was only as I stood outside it that I remembered a key I had been given by the stocky man. I took it from my pocket and slipped it silently into the lock. It fitted perfectly. In my other hand I had the gun.

The living room was empty, but there was a glow of light from the bedroom. And voices.

They looked up at me from where they lay, naked, astounded, their faces full of fear.

I did not pull the trigger. The double explosion was just another thing that happened in the dream. It must have come from somewhere else. A car backfiring outside. A window banging in the night.

Can dreams contain noises like that?

Surely not.

And now I sit in prison awaiting trial. I am writing this for you, Dr Todd. Emma.

I want you to believe that I am sane. I have told my lawyers that I will not contemplate any plea that attempts to use insanity as an excuse for what I have done. That is a final and unalterable decision.

It's true I had a breakdown for which you treated me. It's also true that I had a relapse after learning of my wife's affair with my best friend. My symptoms were exactly as I have described them in this document: the irrational conviction that I came from another parallel reality and that I was only temporarily inhabiting the mind and body of Richard A. Hamilton.

But I accept now that this was a delusion. There is no such thing as a parallel universe or alternative reality.

Yes, the idea exists on a theoretical level, but it has no meaning for our daily lives, our real lives. I am Richard A. Hamilton and I live in this world. Jack Kennedy died in 1963, when I was a child. Marilyn is also dead. There has been much speculation that the two events were not unconnected. I don't know about that. It doesn't concern me. I'm only trying to show you that I know what world I'm living in.

Lyndon Johnson became president after Jack Kennedy. Bobby was never president because he was murdered by someone called Sirhan Sirhan. Then there was Nixon and, after Watergate, Gerald Ford. Then Jimmy Carter, Ronald 
Reagan, and George Bush. Lloyd Bentsen was Mike Dukakis's running mate in '88.

You see, we live in the same world. You're a psychiatrist and I'm in real estate. I'm going to ask if I can get this document translated into braille, because I'd rather you read it yourself than have anybody read it to you.

I guess — this is embarrassing and a little silly, but I'm going to say it anyway — I guess I am a little in love with you, Emma. But then I would be, wouldn't I? Isn't it called 'transference'? You became very important to me during my recovery from my breakdown.

Above all I don't want you to feel guilty for not having prevented what happened. There was nothing you could have done that might have stopped me killing Anne and Harold. The hurt and anger went too deep. Such things are primaeval. Reason and science have no power over them.

So forgive me, Emma, for being one of your failures. You got rid of my delusions and restored me to sanity.

Unfortunately I turned out to be more dangerous sane than crazy. But now I'm ready to pay the price.

It's all there is left.

FROM THE DESK OF EMMA J. TODD, M.D.

Mr Kenneth J. Schiff

Bronstein, Schiff & Hartman

Attorneys at Law

Dear Mr Schiff,

You will by now have read your client's account, written at my request, of his 'experiences' leading up to the double murder with which he stands charged. I would like to add this note of comment.

I first interviewed Mr Hamilton (hereafter 'the patient') at the Beatrice Davenport Memorial Hospital, where he had been admitted following an automobile accident. Although not seriously injured physically, he was manifesting symptoms of severe and persistent delusion — namely the disappearance of an imaginary child.

On that occasion I formed no opinion as to whether this delusion was organic or otherwise in origin. Before I could interview him further, he had absconded from the hospital and been taken into police custody. Although released into the care of his wife, he was later admitted to the Dodge-Kesselring Psychiatric Clinic and placed under the supervision of my colleague, Dr Roger Killanin.

Four days after his admission, Dr Killanin invited me to interview him once again at the clinic. At Dr Killanin's suggestion, I informed the patient that I had personally tak
en the initiative in asking to see him. This was because the patient was exhibiting an irrational hostility towards both Dr Killanin and the clinic, which was making treatment difficult.

I found the patient lucid, although agitated, and manifesting elements of delusional paranoia. My reasons for suggesting hypnosis were twofold:

First, I felt that the further use of drugs could only be deleterious to the patient's stability and willingness to cooperate.

Second, in view of the detailed nature of the patient's delusions, I suspected some form of cryptomnesia, the origins of which were more likely to be uncovered by hypnosis than by other means.

The patient proved to be an excellent hypnotic subject. Using a standard induction technique, I was able to induce a medium deep trance without difficulty. Over the following three weeks, I conducted a total of seven sessions with the patient, inducing on each occasion a slightly deeper trance. At the end of this time, it was clear to me that the delusional phase of the patient's illness was currently inactive. However, I remained concerned that I had uncovered no causal factor for the specific nature of the delusion. None the less, it was decided to allow the patient to return home.

Several weeks later, I received a call from him at my private office. He asked to come and see me. You have read the patient's account of that interview and the ensuing session of hypnosis. At the end of the session he thanked me for my help and left. Although I suggested at least one follow-up consultation, the patient did not consider this necessary and declined to cooperate.

It was some three months after this that the patient committed the double murder of his wife and her lover. You inform me that the patient had been aware of the affair for some time, and had apparently hoped that it would run its course. You say he had bugged the motel room where they were meeting; then, when they had changed venue and also 
begun taking trips away together, he had hired a private detective agency to detail their movements.

These acts, in and of themselves and without reference to their surrounding circumstances, do not necessarily indicate a paranoid state of mind. In this particular case, the patient's acts would seem, to some extent, justified and therefore rational. We must be careful about the strategy we attempt to use in his defence.

The precise circumstances leading up to his final violent act are, you say, not known. It is clear, however, that the patient made no attempt to conceal his crime or evade arrest, and was still on the scene with the murder weapon in his hand when the police arrived.

On the first occasion I interviewed him in prison; he was sullen and uncommunicative, exhibiting marked suicidal tendencies. When I asked him whether the murders had been committed by 'Rick' or 'Richard', he once again said that 'Rick' did not exist and never had existed. When I reminded him of his earlier conviction to the contrary, he insisted that he had been cured of this delusion since our last hypnosis session.

He stated emphatically that he wished to take full responsibility for what he had done, adding that his only regret was that the crime had not been committed in a state where capital punishment was practised.

I told him that if he did not want my help in establishing a defence against a charge of murder, then he was not obliged to accept it. However, I informed him that there was something he could do for me which would be valuable in my work in general, not just with reference to himself. I told him that I would like him to write an account — from the perspective of his currently normalised condition — of the experience of being two persons in one.

After brief consideration, he agreed. Five days later, the document you have read was completed.

As you will see, the patient begins his narrative in the 'parallel' reality, in which his wife supposedly dies in a car accident, and ends it in this reality, in which he kills her. It does not require special training to recognise here the mechanism of guilt and denial at work on an unconscious level. Nor is it difficult to see in the figure of the child, as in the whole idyllic picture of the 'other' marriage, the elements of wish-fulfilment fantasy.

You will also have observed the dual role which I myself play in this narrative. I do not propose here to analyse this duality beyond noting that it is consistent with the common phenomenon of transference between patient and physician.

I believe that it would be possible to construct a defence to the charge of first degree murder on the grounds of the patient's mental condition. However, the question of whether or not he is fit to stand trial is more difficult to establish, and I will give you my opinion on that after my next visit to him.

Yours sincerely,

Emma J. Todd, M.D.