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‘But you do not think that reincarnation is one of those things?’

‘No, I personally do not.’

‘Thank you. That is all.’

Brice Mack, rising, bowed his head to Scott Velie and approached the witness.

‘Just a few more questions, Dr Perez, if you don’t mind. I believe you were prevented from amplifying on your answers to several of Mr Velie’s questions. Specifically, the one concerning hypnosis as a means of inducing a subject to perform feats beyond his normal capabilities. In your opinion, does this suggestion, in any way, apply to, or explain, the behaviour of Ivy Templeton as reported in the entries on January 18 and February 20, 1967?’

‘No, of course not. I was going to say that the nature and conditions of a hypnotic trance and a somnambulistic form of hysteria are entirely different. Under hypnosis a subject is entirely under the control and is responsive to the examiner who is conducting the experiment. In a hypnotic trance a subject will make an overwhelming effort to obey all commands given by the examiner and even display physical dexterities that go beyond a subject’s skill during the wakened state, but only on command of the examiner. In the somnambulistic state, however, a subject is under no such influence and is either recapitulating or expressing behaviour of an earlier, deeply repressed traumatic experience. In each case, the conditions are entirely different.’

Brice Mack accepted his explanation soberly, then steered the witness towards the issue of reincarnation.

‘Although you expressed a disbelief in reincarnation, Dr Perez, to your knowledge, are there scientists who do believe in reincarnation?’

‘Yes, I suppose there are.’

‘Do you suppose there are qualified doctors, psychiatrists, who believe in reincarnation?’

‘Yes, there probably are some.’

‘And is it possible, notwithstanding your opinion, that they are right and you are wrong?’

Dr Perez shrugged.

‘I guess that’s a possibility.’

Mack sent a sweeping glance along the jury box before turning back to the notebook.

‘Oh, yes … Dr Perez, you previously testified that it was possible that the coldness of a window during a blizzard might be sufficient to hurt a person’s hand and might aceount for the kind of behaviour described by Dr Vassar. I now ask you, in your opinion, is that likely?’

‘No, the reaction of the child, the quick, reflexive drawing back from the glass pane, indicates that the magnitude of the painful experience was greater than ice could produce. This, plus her word-stream babbling of “hothothothot,” suggests to me conclusively that it was a fire situation.’

‘Thank you, Dr Perez. That is all.’

As the witness started to rise, Velie swivelled about in his chair and his head jerked around.

‘Just a second, Dr Perez, you’re not through yet.’

Perez turned a languid look on Velie as he sat back down.

‘Was Dr Vassar a hypnotist?’ he loudly asked from a seated position.

The crude manner in which the question was put seemed momentarily to fluster the witness. A droll and sceptical smile came to his lips.

‘Dr Vassar was a psychiatrist. She was adept in the use of hypnosis as a therapeutic tool, as are most psychiatrists today, including myself.’

‘I see,’ Velie said. ‘Then she was a hypnotist. Thank you.’

The objection from Brice Mack came in a swift, businesslike way.

‘I move that Mr Velie’s remark “Then she was a hypnotist” be stricken from the record, Your Honour, since he’s characterizing the answer of the witness. It is no more true that a person who’s adept in hypnosis is a hypnotist than a man who’s adept with a hammer is a carpenter.’

‘Objection sustained.’

There was a momentary impasse during which Dr Perez remained seated, not knowing whether he was to leave the stand or not.

Assuming his most weary expression, Judge Langley asked both attorneys if they were finally finished with the witness.

‘For the time being, Your Honour,’ Velie said. ‘I’ll probably want to ask him more questions later, however.’

Judge Langley instructed Dr Perez to keep himself available for possible recall and excused him. As the psychiatrist hurriedly escaped the courtroom, Judge Langley turned to Brice Mack and told him to call his next witness.

All eyes in the courtroom shifted expectantly to the door. However, Mary Lou Sides did not appear through the door but rose instead from a seat in the middle of the courtroom and walked down the aisle to the witness stand, causing a light flurry of nervous giggles among the spectators who had been taken unawares.

Janice stared at the big, heavyset, seemingly shy girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, as she raised her right hand and was sworn in by the bailiff. Looking at the straight cornsilk hair and the well-scrubbed, smiling face flushed with health, Janice was reminded of the Swiss milkmaid on the Baker’s Chocolate boxes. Shifting her gaze to Hoover, she discovered that he, too, was staring at the girl and was smiling and that Mary Lou Sides returned his smile as she sat, which meant that they were probably acquainted.

The jury, reporters, spectators, and members of the court were not kept wondering long about the purpose of Mary Lou Sides’ presence on the witness stand, for Brice Mack, after eliciting from the soft-spoken girl her name, age (she was thirty-one), and home address, which was in an outer suburb of Pittsburgh, launched immediately into the crux of her testimony.

‘On the morning of August 4, 1964, Miss Sides, were you involved in a car accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it true that the car you were driving collided with a car being driven by Sylvia Flora Hoover?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Were you alone in your car?’

‘No, I was with my girlfriend.’

‘And was Mrs Hoover alone in her car?’

‘No.’ Here the witness’ voice faltered slightly, and her eyes seemed to cloud. ‘Her daughter was in the car with her.’

‘What was the name of Mrs Hoover’s daughter?’

‘Audrey Rose.’

‘Will you tell the jury, Miss Sides, to the best of your recollection, just what happened as you observed it on the morning of August 4,1964, at about eight thirty?’

‘Yes.’ Miss Sides took a second to compose her thoughts, to place them back and fix her mind on that moment more than ten years before.

‘I was driving on the Turnpike, on my way to work, travelling east. I was with a friend. We both worked for the Forsythe Insurance Company, whose main office building was about twenty miles outside Pittsburgh, and were due in the office at nine o’clock.’ She paused a moment. ‘It was a hot morning, but the sky was dark. It was going to storm, and I hoped I’d get to work before it started to rain. I always hate driving in the rain.’ The courtroom tensed as her voice, calm and expressionless till now, began to change pitch as she started reliving the next episodes.

‘About five miles from work the storm broke. It was terrible. Hailstones as big as eggs. I thought they were going to break my windows. I could hardly see through the windshield and was thinking of pulling off to the side, when this car … this car…’ Her voice broke perceptibly. Press and jury strained forward in anticipation. ‘This car came skidding past me on my left … a big sedan, skidding and twisting in the road, and I tried to stop, but I couldn’t and … I started skidding too, and I could see we were going to crash into each other…’ Her voice broke again. ‘I tried to control the car, but I couldn’t, the wheel just twisted around in my hands … and then we hit each other … we crashed…’ A sob escaped her throat. ‘We crashed…’ Overcome by tears, she paused.

‘Are you able to go on, Miss Sides?’

‘Yes, I am.’

The words came out in a rush now, punctuated with anguished cries and tears.

‘We crashed and both cars went into the guardrail, but at the time I couldn’t see what I’d hit or what stopped my car from going over the cliff because of the hailstorm, but it was a guardrail, and that stopped us, but it didn’t stop the other car. It went over the guardrail and down this steep embankment.’ She paused here to control herself. ‘I don’t know how long I remained in the car, but my girlfriend was unconscious, and I felt wet stuff on my face, which turned out to be blood, because I’d hit my head against the windshield, since I didn’t have a safety belt on, and neither did my girlfriend, but she was unconscious.’ She paused, her eyes widening. ‘And then, all of a sudden, the storm ended, and the sun came out very bright. I remember getting out of the car and seeing the road lined with cars that had stopped, and people standing at the edge of the road, looking down the embankment at the other car, which was upside down. It was smoking, and one of the back wheels was still turning, and then I saw … I saw the face of a girl … a little girl … looking out of the window inside the car … and screaming…’

The witness broke down here and sobbed openly as she tried to go on.

‘Men were trying to climb down the steep embankment to rescue her, but it was hard at this point because it was too steep. Some other men drove down the road about a quarter of a mile to a place where it wasn’t so steep, and I could see them coming far in the distance. But they never got there, because just then … there was an explosion … not loud … like a puff … and all at once the car was swallowed up in flames… It was just horrible. I could still see the little girl screaming and screaming and beating her hands against the window … I could see her through the flames as the car was melting all around the window … the paint of the car melting and pouring down over the window…’

Janice’s heart was pounding. Her body was trembling.

‘… as she screamed and screamed and tried to get out of the car and kept…’

The paint of the car melting and pouring..,

‘… beating her hands against the window…’

Melting! The melting! The crowning and melting ceremonies, the woman had said …

‘.. which was slowly being covered over by the melting paint…’

Dear God in heaven!

Janice’s eyes darted to the wall clock. Four twenty. It was happening! It was happening! Now! Her eyes shot across at Hoover.

He was standing.

The two guards standing nervously behind him.

His face was wet, florid.

His eyes were ablaze—

- seeming to search a distance beyond the sobbing girl on the stand, beyond the memory of that distant horror freshly revived, to a time and place where future sounds were struggling to be heard, where winds whipped cold and children laughed and sheets of snow, pouring white on black”, came melting down in a hiss of flame …

*

Watching from her window, Mother Veronica Joseph felt the acrid taste of fear rising in her throat. As it did every year on this day.

Pagan, unchristian, she thought anxiously, watching the rapt and intense faces of one hundred and twenty-seven virgins observing their sacrificial effigy - a labour of weeks - succumb to the all-consuming flames. Homage to Moloch, pagan god of fire. Heathen gambols on consecrated soil. Why did she permit it? Each year she vowed to eliminate it from the school programme, and each year she hesitated doing so. Why?

The flames were gathering force now - licking and hissing against the snowman’s lower extremities - eroding his strength, vanquishing his pride, devouring his crowned glory. Creation. Adulation. Destruction. A primitive rite. Unthinkable.

And yet somewhere in Mount Carmel’s Christian past, it had started. With the Franciscan Brothers, the old custodian, Calitri, had once told her. In the time when Mount Carmel was a school for boys. Before the conversion. In the days when her own name was not Veronica Joseph, but Adele Fiore. Yes, it was the brothers. They had put flame to the very first effigy -the first of what would become a yearly tradition at Mount Carmel - a yearly event so rooted in the minds of each succeeding class as to become a fixed and immutable part of the school, like the very ivy that cloaked its stained and ancient walls…

Ivy? Was that the Templeton girl? She was much too close to the fire …

Yes, the brothers. Respectable, honourable men, who doubtless were ignorant of what they had started, were responsible for the desecration that assaulted her vision and her senses.

Observing the leaping flames eating away at the mammoth snowman, Mother Veronica Joseph felt a small consolation in the thought that it would soon be over; that soon the effigy would come toppling down in a steaming, hissing mountain of blackened snow and the tradition would be done for another year. Yes, Mother Veronica Joseph vowed, this would be the final year. The haulage and cleaning charges alone were enough reason to bring the tradition to an end…

The nun’s eyes suddenly sharpened.

What was that child doing? Moving slowly towards the fire? Were all so fascinated by the flames they didn’t see her?

Yes, fire fascinates. She had not understood its power until this moment. Fire! Man’s age-old enemy! Satan’s pillow! The licking flames, like demon eyes, beckoning, beguiling—

Now she’s down on all fours! Moving ahead! Does no one see her?

‘Stop!’ shouted the nun, with a stuttering heart, but knew her voice was swallowed by the silences of the thick-skinned chancellery. Her fists beat at the leaded panes; she tried to budge the ancient windows but the rusted hinges held.

Dear God, dear Mary, the child was nearly into the flames, and still nobody noticed! Were they dreaming? Were they all mesmerized by the flickering flames? Seduced by the warmly inviting tongues of Satan’s fiery embrace?

‘Stop! Stop her!’ screamed the nun, seizing a chalice and smashing the diamond-shaped panes of glass, inviting plumes of frigid air to batter her face and send her veil billowing behind her.

Dear Mary, Mother of God … she’s into the flames!

THE CHILD!’ shrieked the nun in the teeth of the blasting wind.‘THE CHILD! STOP HER! STOP HER!’

Dear Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death…

They arrived at the hospital outside Darien in the uncertain grey of twilight. It was bitter cold, and it seemed to both of them that there would be snow, but they did not discuss it.