"Because it's not a term you can use loosely when you're talking about alcoholics. What I guess I should say is—it's not a term you should use unambiguously. It had to be 'Yes—and no,' with a lot of half-way stages in between. There is such a thing as alcoholic insanity, you know—a clear-cut psychosis with very definite symptoms. You can get alcoholic softening of the brain, which is something else again, because it's physical as well as mental and it's usually fatal. You can be just a periodic drinker—not a hopeless alcoholic at all, although you'll be headed that way—and have the D.T.'s occasionally. Or you can be a very heavy, constant drinker and never have the D.T.'s.
"It all depends on how alcohol affects you. Just a little alcohol, for instance, could give Edgar Allan Poe the D.T.'s. And when a man has the D.T.'s, he's a psychotic, if only temporarily. Or behaves like one in all respects. And just constant, heavy drinking can make a man behave so erratically at times you could practically call him a psycho. And when a man is dead drunk, under any circumstances, would you say his behavior was merely neurotic?
"The thing you've got to remember about heavy drinking—periodic or otherwise—is that one of the things it most often does is bring about memory lapses. Very serious memory lapses—prolonged blackout periods. And that especially applies to the Lost Week-End kind of drinker."
"So Willard had a memory lapse and couldn't remember whether he shot her or not. Is that what you're trying to say?"
Fenton shook his head. "Nothing of the sort. You're forgetting about the alibi, apparently."
"Sorry I interrupted."
"Think nothing of it. But I'd be very grateful if you'd listen carefully. I'm just giving you a few simple facts about alcoholism."
"Not as a warning, I hope. I hardly ever touch the stuff."
"I'll just bet. I might have gone for that idea—that he couldn't remember if he'd shot or not, if we hadn't got all this new information about him just in the last hour. He's had memory lapses going back ten or twelve years. He's been in the Bellevue alcoholic ward seven times. And he just happened to be there on the morning of the murder. He was picked up the night before in a bar on West Eighth Street, after a brawl that was a little on the special side. He was roaring drunk and he blackened the eye of one of his drinking companions and knocked the other down, almost giving him a concussion.
"They were good friends of his, so they covered up for him. No police charge was lodged against him. But he was carted off to Bellevue and he remained there for two days. I don't believe in murder by thought control, do you?"