Evil Friendship (15 page)

W
EERDALE
, A
UG. 29.
— Again there was a stampede of people, mostly women, for the front seats when the Court doors opened shortly before nine o’clock this morning, on the fifth day of the Edlin-Kent trial.

Many women jumped over the backs of the seats in the front row of the upstairs gallery, and craned over the railing, when the girls were brought into the dock.

Mary Drew Edlin and Martha Kent are charged with murdering Louisa Edlin, mother of Mary Drew, on June 8.

Thus far, both psychiatrists, Dr. Rose Mannerheim for the defense and Dr. John Evans for the Crown, have said practically the opposite of each other, in their considered opinions as to whether or not the Edlin and Kent girls are diseased in mind.

The following excerpts from their testimony on questions pertinent to this case illustrate the remarkable contrast in medical opinion heard throughout the course of this sensational murder trial.

On the question of sanity

Dr. Evans: “I do not consider either girl insane. This crime had an intelligible motive. Furthermore, it was carefully planned and premeditated. It is my opinion that the Edlin and Kent girls want to be thought insane, in order to regain liberty at an earlier date than if they were convicted.

Dr. Mannerheim: “I have interviewed both girls and thoroughly familiarized myself with this case. On a date before this murder, I interviewed Mary Drew Edlin. It is my considered opinion that they are mutually insane, certifiable under the Mental Defectives Act.”

On their interviews with the girls

Dr. Evans: “When I asked Mary Drew Edlin if she knew what she had done, she replied, ‘Oh, don’t be such a fool!’ … Martha Kent told me, when I asked her the same question, ‘Someone should examine your head!’ Mary Drew Edlin told me further that she was ‘raving,’ and that ‘madness is so much more imaginative than sanity’! … Martha Kent told me that my taste in neckties was ‘shocking,’ and that I ought to have plastic surgery done to give me a chin.”
(At this point in the proceedings, a woman in the gallery shouted, “Hooray!”)

Dr. Mannerheim: “All that Mary Drew Edlin was concerned over was when she would be reunited with Martha Kent. She seemed unable to comprehend the fact that in all probability, this would never be. She spoke time and time again of ‘When I see Moly again,’ or ‘I can’t wait to tell Moly about …’ until I asked her point-blank: Do you really believe you and Martha will see each other again? She was quite cocksure. She offered to bet me thirty pounds that she certainly would.

“The Kent girl asked me to tell Mary Drew Edlin that L.L. missed her. L.L. was a softer side, in their games. As they progressed with their murder plans, they seemed to omit L.L. and Rob from their discussions. Raynor and Gretchen, their dark sides, took over. Martha Kent was very sad throughout the interview, but apparently only because she was not with the Edlin girl. She asked me if I would get her a photograph of Mary Drew. When I asked Martha Kent if she was sorry that she had helped murder Mrs. Edlin, she answered, ‘There wasn’t any choice.’ I asked again, ‘Are you sorry?’ She said, ‘If you mean, would I do it again, yes I would.’ ”

On their homosexuality

Dr. Evans: “There is no doubt in my mind that these girls have engaged in some sort of physical relationship. This is not necessarily uncommon between members of the same sex in adolescense. It seemed to me more of a pretense at imitating love between members of the opposite sex; that is, imitating the real thing. In my opinion, homosexuals do not imagine themselves as members of the opposite sex during sexual activity. I believe the homosexual aspect of this case is greatly overstressed.”

Dr. Mannerheim: “I believe they are overt homosexuals. I believe they are deluded into imagining that they are not. Nowhere in the diary, nor in the correspondence, do they mention loving one another
as
one another; only as Raynor and Gretchen, or Rob and L.L. I believe that by taking the male role — either one of them — and acting out their lovemaking as male-female, they were able to delude themselves into believing there was nothing wrong with what they were doing, just as they deluded themselves into believing they were ‘special,’ ‘above the law,’ geniuses who would sell their novels to Hollywood, and all the rest. I believe that eventually, as Rob and L.L., they might have realized their feeling for one another in a less deluded light. There is evidence of that when the Edlin girl records in her diary, ‘
We both have trouble pretending Rob and L.L. It’s so real sometimes.’
But Raynor and Gretchen won out, as did insanity win out over sanity ultimately.”

On the diary

Dr. Evans: “Any two highly imaginative girls might write as they did in their correspondence, and in Mary Drew Edlin’s diary. The callous sound to ‘polishing off Mother’ is not out of character with the current, almost universal interest in violence among today’s adolescent. Her recording that both are ‘mad as March hares’ is no indication of insanity, rather of a quite perverse adolescent mind rambling on in a typical juvenile outpouring.”

Dr. Mannerheim: “I believe it would be very nearly impossible for anyone to read Mary Drew Edlin’s diary and the correspondence without feeling the gradual slipping away from reality, the rising tension and exaltation. Evil becomes more and more paramount, even before their plans to ‘polish off’ Mrs. Edlin. They have their Palace of Torture, their Horrible, their Druid’s egg, their violence at Trumpet Head, and ultimately their decision to kill, their experiences in blackmailing and stealing. Both girls suffer very obviously from a form of insanity known as
folie simultanée,
that is, simultaneous insanity. There is also a systematized delusional insanity coupled, in paranoia, in this exalted type, with a state of exaltation and a sense of grandeur. The paranoiac can carry out the most detailed scheme, act like the most normal sort, murder with complete ease, and feel wholly elated, exalted and right.”

Here Crown Prosecutor Baird questioned Dr. Mannerheim about the meaning of
folie simultanée:

“It is a variety of
folie à deux.”

Mr. Baird: “Such as was mentioned in the American case, the Loeb-Leopold case, of two American youths who killed a small boy?”

Dr. Mannerheim: “Yes. And they were found insane.”

Mr. Baird: “In that case, I believe, one of the youths was described as being the stronger; that is, the leader. Who would you say was the leader in this case?”

Dr. Mannerheim: “That is why I make the distinction. In simultaneous insanity, as is implied, there was a simultaneous appearance of delusions by reciprocal influence. Both the Edlin girl and the Kent girl reacted upon one another, with neither one leading the other, but both hand-in-hand.”

Mr. Baird: “If these two girls had never met, could it be possible that they would have never become, as
you
consider them, insane?”

Dr. Mannerheim: “Completely possible.”

The jury is expected to return a verdict sometime tomorrow afternoon.

A
UGUST 29, 1956

Mary Drew Edlin sat behind the visitors’ screen, picking at her nails while she talked to Tony. The matron, Mrs. Terrence, waited at the opposite end of the room, her hands folded behind her back, her feet spread apart. The woman was so stick-thin and straight that she looked like a giant letter Y, turned upside down.

Tony was telling about his exams, how miserably he’d fared. Well, had he expected any different? D was his average; always had been.

Mary Drew interrupted him to say, “Father’s rather peeved with me, isn’t he?”

Her father had only been to visit twice; both times he had behaved more as though
he
should be the one receiving visitors here in the damned jail, and she, Mary Drew, calling on him. He could barely manage conversation, and he fidgeted with his hands like a nervous old maid. Not Tony — Tony acted as though he were sitting across from her in the living room at home, rambling on about this and that, the way he always did when he came home from college.

“Father is in deep shock,” Tony said, “but he’s not peeved, Mary Drew.”

“Thanks for bringing me the note paper, Tony. I want to write, to help while away my time here. They turn the damned lights off at nine in the evening, though.”

“Anything else you need,” Tony said, “just tell me.”

It was a pity, Mary Drew thought, that she was just beginning to like her half-brother. He might make a good doctor one day. When everything was settled, she’d make a concentrated effort to be friendly with him.

She said, “Tony?”

“What?”

“Wasn’t that a lot of foolishness about defective stock! You remember what Dr. Mannerheim said, about Mother’s having me and Belinda by her second husband, and you by her first. They think I’m as crazy as Belinda.”

“Don’t think about it, Mary Drew,” Tony answered.

“I bet it made Father angry, all right!”

“Just forget it. Forget everything they say in there, Mary Drew.”

“Oh, it’s not worrying me.” She cupped her hand to her mouth and guffawed. “When they read my diary that way, I
do
sound really crazy!”

“We don’t have much more time together now,” Tony said. “Is there anything else you want?”

“Tony?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry about using your sock that way.”

It had seemed like a wonderful joke at the time, slipping the rock in one of Tony’s old red wool socks, but he now was acting awfully nice about everything …

He said, “All right, Mary Drew.”

“Do you think I was horrible?”

“It’ll be all right,” Tony said. He jerked his arm up to see his watch, then slid his cuff back over its face. “Time,” he said.

“Mrs. Terrence hasn’t said anything yet.”

“She will, no doubt, in an instant. Anything else?”

“I suppose not. Tomorrow, I suppose, I’ll know what’s to become of Moly and me. I really can’t wait to see Moly. I don’t get much of a glimpse of her in court. They’d better return our novels too, or there ‘11 be a row.”

Mrs. Terrence was walking toward Mary Drew now, in that soldier-straight, marching step of hers. “Here she comes,” Mary Drew said. “Back to the dungeon, it is.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mary Drew.” Tony stood up. He held a straw hat in his hand, and the collar of his white shirt, under the light summer-weight suit, was curling from the heat. “One thing more,” she said to him. “It’s quite comfortable where I am, weather-wise. There’s a wonderful fan just outside in the corridor. I get most of the benefit from it.”

Mrs. Terrence said, “That’s all for today,” to Tony.

“Thank you,” Tony answered, with that slight half-bow of his. Then he said a preposterous thing to Mary Drew:” Will you be all right?”

Mary Drew giggled
“You’re
the stickler for manners, Tony.”

She waved and followed Mrs. Terrence through the door of the visitors’ room, down the corridor toward the cells.

When Mrs. Terrence waited for her to come alongside, she said, “I have my paper now, so I’ll be busy writing.”

“You have a very nice brother,” said Mrs. Terrence as they went along.

“He’s only a half-brother. He was by Mother’s first,” she chuckled, “Mother’s by Daddy have lost their marbles.”

“Well, he’s very nice,” Mrs. Terrence said. “Mother thought so too.”

Mrs. Terrence stopped at the first cell, held the door back while Mary Drew entered. “Dinner will come in about an hour,” said Mrs. Terrence.

“I’m glad I have my paper now,” Mary Drew answered, walking across to the cot, tossing the opened package there. “I have a special assignment to begin on immediately.”

Mrs. Terrence nodded. “You keep busy,” she said, turning the key in the lock.

Mary Drew Edlin sat frowning, trying to compose in her mind the letter she would write to Moly. Tomorrow, in court, she would slip it to her.

A
UGUST 29, 1956

“Please, Martha,” Mrs. Kent said, “keep your voice down. We don’t have to shout at one another!” Again she held the handkerchief with the delicate lace edging to her eyes.

Martha said, just as loud, “What, so old Mrs. Terrence won’t hear! Afraid she’ll blab?”

“It wouldn’t have done you any good, Martha, to have your diary read by the psychiatrists and the police.” Mrs. Kent’s eyes were bloodshot from weeping.

“That’s not why you destroyed it, and you know it. It was to save
your
neck, yours and Roddy’s!” She looked away, into the yellow light, while her mother blew her nose. She rather liked old Mrs. Terrence. When the matron worked as much as she could of a crossword puzzle, she passed it on to Martha to finish. Couldn’t figure out the simplest words, Mrs. Terrence couldn’t, but she was fun in her way.

Mrs. Kent said, “I take full blame Martha, for all of this. I should have loved you more. I
did
love you. I should have shown you how much I loved you.”

“You let Druid take full blame, not yourself. It’s Druid’s diary they’re always harping on! Well, I had a diary too, until you and Roddy stole it from me!”

“Martha,
dear
Martha, is that all you can say to me? Is that all you can think of? Isn’t there anything you can say about this — this — ” She began to cry again, holding her handkerchief to her face, bending her head.

Martha said, “The psychiatrists think I’m a liar. I told them about the diary.”

“I’ve
tried
to explain to you, Martha,” Mrs. Kent sobbed.

“And you lied about that night! An ulcer attack!”

“Darling, is there any way I can make you understand? It wouldn’t have helped you any if I had said otherwise.” Mrs. Kent made the handkerchief into a ball, clutching it in one hand, leaning forward with her face nearly pressed against the screen between herself and her daughter. “Do you think I would have withheld the truth if I thought it was going to hurt you, darling?”

“What about Druid?” Martha Kent said.

“Or
Druid!”
Mrs. Kent answered suddenly angry.

Martha Kent sat back in the straight wooden chair and smiled. “I know you hate Druid.”

“I don’t! Martha
dear,
listen to me — ”

But Mrs. Terrence was starting toward them now, the whip-snap correctness of her gait tap-tapping on the creaky wooden floor.

“It’s over for today,” Martha said to her mother.

“Can I bring you anything tomorrow?”

Martha looked across at her with an even expression to her face, “Yes, you can. Bring me Druid.”

“That’s all for today,” Mrs. Terrence said.

Helen Kent didn’t move. She sat with her hands holding her face, her shoulders shaking. Momentarily, after Martha stood, she looked at her mother in a way that seemed as though she were on the verge of wanting to reach out and touch the screen where her mother’s shoulder met its edge. But Mrs. Terrence waited, and there was the open door, leading off from the visitors’ room. Martha hesitated.

Then, to her mother she said, “I didn’t want it this way! Not for father or you! I never did!”

Mrs. Kent looked up at her, and her daughter bit her lip, then turned in a sudden motion and ran through the door. Mrs. Terrence had to skip to catch up with her.