These Honored Dead (A Lincoln and Speed Mystery #1) - Jonathan F. Putnam Page 0,89
depraved. But stone-sober sane.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure, Speed, until you’ve heard the whole circumstance,” said Lincoln. “Wait for the testimony tomorrow and then you can come to a conclusion.”
“There’s nothing more to be heard,” I said. “Nothing could change my mind. The man deserves to die. And the sooner, the better.”
“I’ve never heard of insanity used as a defense in a murder case,” Martha said. “Has anyone ever actually won acquittal on that basis?”
“More often than you might think,” Lincoln said. “Do you remember reading of the case of the out-of-work house painter who shot at President Jackson a few years ago? Tried to shoot him in the portico of the Capitol building, in Washington, only both of his guns misfired?”
“Oh—wasn’t the King involved somehow?” said Martha.
“That’s right,” Lincoln said. “The evidence at the trial showed the accused, a fellow named Richard Lawrence, believed himself to be the King of England. Lawrence believed President Jackson was preventing him from receiving the riches to which he was entitled. It took the jury all of five minutes to acquit him by reason of insanity. And that was for trying to kill the President of the United States.”
“But he was a man who went around mad all the time, from the sound of it,” Martha said. “That’s obviously not Dr. Patterson’s case.”
Lincoln nodded. “Very perceptive,” he said. “The testimony tomorrow will be that Patterson’s been suffering from transitory fits of insanity. Maybe you should be reading the law after all, Miss Speed. Just because your brother couldn’t endure the intellectual rigor doesn’t mean there’s not hope for you.”
Martha gave Lincoln a pleased smile. I scowled; I was in no mood for Lincoln’s humor.
Lincoln picked up a half-eaten apple from among the clutter on the table in front of him and contemplated it. He took a large bite and chewed loudly.
“Let me see if this one convinces you,” he said. “There was a bizarre case in England recently. A sober, industrious tradesman was sitting calmly at home, reading his Bible, when a female neighbor came in to ask for a little milk. He looked wildly at her, instantly seized a knife and attacked her, and then attacked his own wife and daughter. His aim appeared to be to decapitate each of them, as he tried cutting the napes of their necks.” Martha gasped in horror, and Lincoln gave a perverse grin.
“Anyway,” Lincoln continued, “the man was subdued before he could inflict a fatal wound on any of them, and a doctor came at once and concluded he was in the midst of an epileptic fit. His complexion was a dusky red, his eyes starting from their sockets, and he was continually extending his jaws as if trying to yawn. The doctor tied him down and depleted him, both bloodletting and purging, and within three days he was back to normal. Had no memory of the acts he’d committed. Indeed, shocked to hear what had happened. He wasn’t charged with a crime, for how could he be? How could it be said he had intended harm? As far as I know, he lives peacefully in Sussex to this day, if you want to go for a visit.”
“Oh dear,” said Martha, with a shudder.
“But that doesn’t remotely describe Patterson,” I objected.
“Or consider Hamlet,” Lincoln said, taking another bite from his apple. “He acts rationally in contriving a scene by the players to test his uncle’s guilt but irrationally in ordering Ophelia to the nunnery. When he kills Claudius at the play’s end, is it an act of sanity or insanity? ‘Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane / Drink of this potion. Is thy union here?’”
“But Hamlet’s a fictitious character,” said Martha.
“In many respects,” Lincoln responded, “he’s more fully realized than the men you’ll encounter on the street tomorrow.”
“It’s an odd coincidence,” she said. “Dr. Patterson himself mentioned Hamlet and King Lear at dinner on my first night here when he was talking about Major Richmond’s condition.”
“That’s no coincidence,” Lincoln returned. “I’ve talked to any number of modern medical men who swear the Bard provides the entire taxonomy of mental alienation and its proper treatment. It goes far beyond Hamlet’s fits and Lear’s melancholy. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth show the dangers of mania. Malvolio is imprisoned in Twelfth Night for being a lunatic. Stephano confronts Caliban’s madness in The Tempest with methods material and psychological. And so on.”
“You’ve certainly thought a great deal about diseases of the mind,” said Martha.