Free April Fool by William Deverell

before.”
    Mr. Pomeroy was looking fairly bored, but now lightens. “Have any friends seen you playing dress-up?”
    â€œI can probably locate some.”
    â€œHow are you fixed for funds?”
    The lawyer is one who goes direct to the heart of things. Faloon tells him some allies are raising working capital. Freddy Jacoby in particular, who has got fat off the Owl over the years, with his fifty to eighty per cent lion’s share.
    â€œMultiple personality is the old term, these days it’s dissociative identity disorder.” Pomeroy swings his briefcase up, pulls out papers that look like psychological studies. “Okay, assuming you have this disorder, I think it’s important that you understand it. Important if you’re to be cured.”
    The fixer doesn’t wink, but might as well have. What he’s really saying is, I hope you’re a fast learner, because, it turns out, another psychiatrist is coming to see him this afternoon, Dr. Endicott Sloan. What Pomeroy wants, though he’s too ethical to say it outright, is for the Owl to read these case studies, learn the symptoms, get into the role.
    Faloon tells him of his brief ordeal with Dr. Dare, who walked out breaking a gut.
    â€œI’ll deal with Dr. Dare.”
    â€œLet me ask you, Mr. Pomeroy, in the remote possibility this is going to work, where does it get me in the end?”
    â€œThe ding ward instead of the big house. You’re in a deep hole, Nick, especially since you’ve already been convicted of oneattack on a woman. I watched some of that in court, by the way. The jury was lapping it up, she did an artful job on you.”
    That’s where Faloon saw him, the Adeline Angella fiasco, lawyers would wander in and watch Beauchamp in action. He wants to ask Pomeroy what’s the story on the Topeka condo developer who was out till 2 a.m., and are there other suspects, but the counsellor is off on this insanity sidetrack.
    â€œA reasonable scenario–you’ll correct me if I’m wrong–goes like this: You’re at that outdoors café having a coffee. Word comes down about the murder, you go into a panic state, you lose your real identity. The stress causes you to retreat into the role of Gertrude Heeredam. Again.”
    â€œAgain?”
    â€œLike the night before.”
    Faloon feels a chill. “I am carefully listening to this. Is our theory that the victim was snuffed by Gertrude Heeredam, and that’s going to make Nick Faloon not guilty?”
    â€œYou have a better idea?”
    â€œAren’t you going to ask if I did it?”
    â€œI don’t want to ask.”
    â€œI am anxious you should know. I am as innocent as an angel, Mr. Pomeroy, at least the murder part.”
    â€œOkay, then you had better explain how your sperm managed to find its way into her vagina.”
    Faloon goes into shock.
    â€œYou see, Nick, the Crown particulars have the semen coming up DNA-positive for you.”
    Faloon can’t find words, his mouth opens and shuts like a hooked, landed fish. He feels woozy. “That’s not…Mr. Pomeroy, there’s got to be a mistake! Or someone else has got the same DNA!”
    â€œDo you have an identical twin, Nick?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen the chance of coincidence is roughly on a par with your winning this year’s Miss Universe Pageant. Let’s get backto Dr. Sloan. He’ll conclude it’s not important you don’t know Dutch, and that you’re probably fragmented into different women, as in this first case study…”
    Distantly, Faloon hears the clanging of a cell door closing.
    Â 
    Fear concentrates the mind, and Faloon is absorbing his lessons, getting ready for Dr. Sloan. He’s even starting to think he may be sharing, as the text says, “two or more distinct identities that recurrently take control of the patient’s behaviour.”
    This insanity bit might be his only