One of the themes in A Trial of One and also Final Paradox is madness and lucidity. Where does the mind go and what brings it back?

During my twenty-eight years of law practice—much of it for elderly clients, this became a question of burning interest to me. And so, this theme is central to the trilogy. Certainly, a lawyer has to be alert to these questions of mental capacity, because—woe-betide the one who acts upon instructions from an incompetent person.

In Final Paradox, Harry’s elderly client, Norma Dinnick, inexplicably teeters between madness and lucidity. But with Norma, we always wonder if her madness isn’t just a little too convenient.

We first meet Norma Dinnick in the very first chapter of Final Paradox, the second in The Osgoode Trilogy:

Final Paradox

            On Harry’s last visit, Norma Dinnick wore a flaming red wig and served sherry in crystal glasses. Almost eighty-seven, she chatted brightly about the stock market and the roses in her garden. Hearing loss seemed to be her only trouble.

Today, arriving at her apartment house, he prepared himself for another loud, but lively hour of banter. Smiling, he rapped sharply and waited.

          “Go away! My mind is filled with holes,” she cried out from behind the door.

He frowned. “It’s me, Harry Jenkins, your lawyer. You asked me to come.”

          Straining to listen, he heard the awkward shuffle of slippers on the bare floor. Her tiny whimpers made him think of a frightened, caged animal. The door handle rattled and metal scraped on metal until the door creaked open. Just above the knob, suspicious eyes peered out.

          “Who are you?” she demanded.

          “For Heavens’ sake, Norma, it’s me, Harry.”

          “Where’s your beard, then?”

          “What? I’ve never had a beard!” Without thinking, Harry rubbed his chin and pushed back the strands of his thinning hair from his forehead.    

 “Are you the plumber? Show me your card.”

Sighing, Harry took his business card from his suit pocket. “It’s me, Harry Jenkins, your lawyer.”

How sad!  he thought. Norma was once his shrewdest client. In his mind, he could picture her running her finger along documents to check every word.

“We have an appointment about your will,” he reminded her. Now she stood before him in a faded green housedress stitched up at the shoulder with black thread.

 “Well, come in then.” She backed away from the door giving him just enough room to enter.

          Harry stood speechless in the apartment. A naked bulb swayed gently from a broken fixture and cast shifting shadows across the once elegant living room. He saw the outlines of furniture draped with dingy bed sheets. For some odd reason, all the lamps had lost their shades and, in the dining room, the buffet was stacked with piles of old newspapers.

Once seated, Norma seemed to forget him.

          “Norma? What on earth’s happened?” he asked.

She occupied herself with picking fussily at the arm of the settee, as if to remove creatures visible only to her.

          Sitting beside her, he asked gently, “Are you all right?”

She tilted her tiny face upward to the light and gazed out the window. “I think it’s safe to talk now,” she whispered.

“Safe? Is someone listening?”

Pointing at the ceiling, she said crossly, “You should have come in the back way. Now they’ve seen you, they’ll be quiet.”

As far as he knew, Norma only had one remaining tenant, a shy and silent man named Grieves. Last year, her investments did so well, she decided to close the other five suites, not needing the income or the worry.

“And they’ve not paid one cent of rent!”

Harry dutifully made a note. “You mean Mr. Grieves?” he asked.

Norma shook her head. “No. The ones directly above me.”

“But that apartment is empty.”

“And furthermore, they listen on my phone.”

Sadly, Harry shook his head. Only months ago, Norma’s blue eyes had sparkled with lively intelligence, accompanied by her knowing laugh. Now, glassy-eyed, she rocked back and forth beside him.

“How do they listen in?” he asked. Although paranoid delusions of the elderly held little humor, Harry struggled to suppress a smile. He knew a lucid mind could inexplicably drift without notice into madness.

She seemed lost, focusing on the flickering shadows at the window.

“How many tenants are in the building?” he asked with little hope his client’s problem could be solved by a Landlord and Tenant court application.

She shook her head fiercely. “Just the ones above me!”

“Have you seen them?”

“No! But I hear them every night, carousing like drunken sailors.” Again, her fingers chased the invisible creatures running amok on the arm of the settee. When she glanced up at him, he saw a glimmer of the old intelligence in her eyes. 

“Do you think Archie’s causing all the trouble?” she asked. “I think he’s trying to drive me mad, so I can’t change my will.”

Harry did not want to worry her, but he said, “Actually, Archie called to tell me not to come today. He claimed you didn’t want a new will and you didn’t have the capacity to make one.”

Her eyes flashed in anger. “Of course! That greedy lout will suck me dry. He even wants the shares my Arthur left me.”

“What shares, Norma?” He couldn’t recall any shares in Arthur’s estate.

“George Pappas-that dangerous animal-is after them too!”

“Who is he?” Although the name was unfamiliar, he dutifully jotted it down.

It seems Norma has hidden some very valuable shares and has forgotten just where they are. Or has she? Throughout Final Paradox, everyone is trying to find them and in A Trial of One, the mad Dr. Robert Hawke, whom you first met in the bath yesterday, turns to Harry Jenkins for help. At lunch in A Trial of One, Hawke paints a vibrant description for Harry of the drift between madness and lucidity—likening it to the onset of color blindness.

A Trial of One

“You do not suffer from color-blindness, Harry?”

Harry frowned. Hawke’s conversational sallies were becoming tiresome. “No, Dr. Hawke, I do not,” he answered stiffly.

Hawke spoke softly and lyrically. “Then, you enjoy the full spectrum of color?” Harry nodded impatiently. “Can you imagine red without green, or yellow without a lovely blue to enhance it?”

“Dr. Hawke…” Harry shifted uncomfortably on the banquette.

“Imagine, my friend, becoming at least partially color-blind. You can see the cardinal’s red feathers, but the leaves of the trees have become an abysmal gray. The ocean is blue, but the sun is a dull disc. Cruel reminders of the riot of color once enjoyed.” Hawke paused thoughtfully.

Harry was almost seduced by the imagery, but he said impatiently, “Where is this leading, Dr. Hawke?” He made a show of checking his watch. Not another picture of the cruel effects of Alzheimer’s, he hoped.

Tracing the heavy design of one of his rings, Hawke continued. “I like to think, sir, that being struck color-blind, or being deprived of any other sense or ability, is not so different from becoming mad. When insanity descends—as with color-blindness—one day, the world looks quite normal. The next, it has lost its usual vibrancy, because all contrast and beauty is gone. And unless you are entirely mad, you will be tortured by the faint remembrance that both greens and reds exist—blues and yellows, too. With the dimming of this world, the eye turns inward to be confronted by those nightmarish devils of which we have spoken. Imagine, Harry, the horror of traveling back and forth between lucidity and madness. Always the divided soul!

Hawke peered intently at Harry, but then lowered his eyes and played with a sugar cube. “It is so very sad, Harry, to be deprived of any dimensions in this riot of life, when you lust for the full array of vibrant color.” Again, the doctor’s knee pressed his. “For some, the hunger is always there, longing to be satisfied.”

Harry had no idea what to say. Deep within, he struggled with a growing distaste for the pudgy man, whose intense blue eyes subjected him to keen scrutiny. But he knew better than to antagonize him. The man exhibited such a strange intellect and heightened sensibility, completely unlike the thug Pappas, who killed on a whim. ###

Tomorrow, I'll bring you more of Harry Jenkins, Norma Dinnick and Dr. Robert Hawke.

Please visit my website at www.theosgoodetrilogy.com where in the next few days, I'll be running a contest in conjunction with another website www.writersinthesky.com