"Well, nature does imitate art; Oscar Wilde was quite right."
"I told Emanuel it was plain envy. Dr. Barrister is very good-looking."
"He sounds more suspicious by the minute; I just about decided, the other night, that he must have done it."
"I know. I"ve been searching madly for suspects myself and one of the problems is that we aren"t exactly seething with suspects. Apart from you and me, and Emanuel, who are innocent by definition, so to speak, we have only the elevator man, Dr. Barrister or his patients or nurse, the patients on either side of Janet Harrison or the homicidal maniac. Not very encouraging. Actually, this whole thing is horrible for Dr. Barrister, though he"s been quite nice about it. Police questioning him, and a policeman in the hall outside his office-his patients may not care for that-and then being dragged in by me to look at a body. The fact is, if he were going to murder someone he"d want to murder her as far from himself as possible."
"We"ve left out one other possible suspect: someone Janet Harrison met here by arrangement. He canceled the patients, saw that everyone had left, enticed her into the office and killed her."
"Kate, you"re a genius! That"s exactly how it must have happened."
"No doubt. All we"ve got to do is find this man, if he exists."
It was, however, with this probably nonexistent man in mind, that Kate tracked Emanuel down in his office some time later. She had, of course, determined that he was free, and, knocking first, had gone in and shut the door behind her.
"Emanuel, I am sorry, or have I said that already? I keep thinking of all this as like Greek drama; that from the moment of that collision off the Merritt Parkway, we have been heading for this crisis. I suppose there is some comfort in thinking, however literarily, that fate concerns itself with our destinies."
"I"ve thought much the same thing myself; you weren"t sure you wanted to be a college teacher, and I had all sorts of ambivalences about psychiatry. Yet here we are, you as a teacher having sent me, a psychiatrist, one of your students as a patient. It seems to have a pattern, yet of course it can"t. If we could just show that it hasn"t a pattern, or that we"re seeing the pattern the wrong way, we"d be clear of all this."
"Emanuel! I think you"ve just said something very important and profound."
"Have I? It doesn"t seem to make any sense at all."
"Well, never mind; I"m sure the reason for its profundity will occur to me later. What I want now is to have you sit down at your desk and tell me everything you know about Janet Harrison. Perhaps what you say will remind me of something I know, and have forgotten. I"m convinced of one thing: if we find the murderer, always supposing he isn"t a homicidal maniac casually in off the streets, we will find him through some knowledge we get about that girl. Will you try to be helpful?"
Rather to Kate"s surprise he didn"t flatly refuse, he merely shrugged, and continued to gaze out of the window onto a courtyard in which there was almost certainly nothing to see. Kate, with a certain studied carelessness, sat down on the couch. One of the chairs would have been more comfortable, but not to sit on the couch was to avoid it.
"What can I tell you? The tape recording of an a.n.a.lysis, for example, would be meaningless, in any important sense, to someone not trained to interpret. It"s not full of clues like a Sherlock Holmes detective story, at least not the sort of clues that would be any use to a policeman. She didn"t tell me one day that she would probably be murdered, and that if she were, such-and-such a person would probably have done it. Believe me, had she said something definite of that sort, I would not hesitate to reveal it, certainly not from any misguided sense of idealism. The other vital thing to remember is that, to the a.n.a.lyst, it is unimportant whether something actually happened, or whether the occurrence was merely a fantasy on the part of the patient. To the a.n.a.lyst, there is no essential difference; to the policeman there is, of course, all the difference in the world."
"I should think it would matter very much to a patient whether something had really happened or not. I should think that would be the whole point."
"Exactly. But you would be wrong. And I can"t explain all this simply, without grossly falsifying it, and by making it too simple, making it false. But if you want, I"ll give you, reluctantly, an example. When Freud began on his treatment of patients, he was astonished to discover how many women in Vienna had had, as children, s.e.xual relations with their fathers. It appeared for a time that at least a handful of Viennese fathers had been s.e.xual maniacs. Then Freud realized that none of these s.e.xual experiences had ever taken place, that they had been fantasies. But his important realization came with the understanding that, for the purposes of the patients" psychological development (though not of course for the purposes of s.e.xual morality in Vienna) it did not matter at all whether the incidents had taken place actually or not. The fantasy had an immense importance of its own. Kate, have you ever tried to explain Ulysses to a self-satisfied person whose idea of a great novelist was Lloyd Douglas?"
"All right, all right, I see your point, really I do. But let me go on being a nuisance, will you? I never knew, for example, why she thought she needed an a.n.a.lyst. What did she say the first time she came to see you?"
"The beginning is always rather routine. I ask, of course, what the trouble is. Her answer was not unusual. She slept badly, had a work problem, was unable to read for more than a short period, and had difficulty, as she put it in regrettable social-worker jargon, in relating to people. Her use of that term was the most significant thing she said that day; it indicated how the problem was intellectualized, to what degree emotion had unconsciously been withdrawn from it. Most of this policemen could discover; the rest they would find useless to their purpose. I asked her to tell me something about herself; that"s routine also. The facts are usually not important, but the omissions may be greatly so. She was the only child of strict, compulsive parents, both now dead. They were quite old when she was born-if you want the details I can look them up. She neglected to mention at that time any love affairs, even of the most casual nature, though it emerged later that she had had one love affair in which she was deeply involved. Occasionally a.s.sociations would bring her to this, break through her resistance, but she always immediately moved away from the subject. We had just begun to touch on some real material when this happened."
"Emanuel, don"t you see how important that is? By the way, had she-was she a virgin?" He turned to her with surprise, at the question, at Kate"s asking it. Kate shrugged. "Possibly my salacious mind, but I have an odd feeling it may be important."
"I don"t know the answer, as a fact, for certain. If you want my professional guess, I would say that the love affair had been consummated. But it"s a guess."
"Do patients in the beginning talk mostly about the past or present?"
"About the present; the past of course comes in, more and more as you continue. I had a hunch-though do try not to overestimate its importance-that there was something in the present she was not mentioning, something connected, though perhaps only in the sense of the same guilt, with the love affair. Ah, I particularly admire you when you get that gleam in your eye like a hawk about to dive. Do you think she was a key figure in a drug ring?"
"You can laugh later; one other question. You mentioned the other evening that she had become angry, that transference had begun. What is transference when it"s at home, as Molly Bloom would say?"
"I loathe simplified explanations of psychiatry. Let"s say merely that the anger inherent in some situation becomes directed at the a.n.a.lyst, who becomes the object of those emotions."
"Don"t you see, Emanuel? That"s good enough. Put together two things you"ve casually told me. One, possibly connected with her past, which she was hiding. Two, emotion had begun to be generated in her relationship with you. Conclusion: she might have told you, or might have revealed to your sensitive professional ear something which someone didn"t want anyone to know. Perhaps there was someone to whom she talked-she thought casually-about her a.n.a.lysis-people do talk somewhat about their a.n.a.lyses; I know, I"ve heard them-and whoever that person was knew she had to die. It was easy enough to discover from her the routine around here, and he came in and killed her, leaving you with the body. Q.E.D."
"Kate, Kate, I have never heard such drastic oversimplification."
"Nonsense, Emanuel. What you lack, what all psychiatrists lack, if you"ll forgive my saying so, is a firm grip on the obvious. Well, I won"t keep you. But promise me, at any rate, that you"ll answer any idiotic questions that I want to ask."
"I promise to cooperate in your gallant attempt to save me from disaster. But you know, my dear, speaking of the obvious, the police have quite a case."
"They don"t know you; that"s the advantage I have over them. They don"t know the sort you are."
"Or the sort Nicola is?"
"No," Kate said. "Not that either. It"ll come out all right; you"ll see."
She felt, nonetheless, as she stood indecisively in the hall, like a knight who has set off to slay the dragon but has neglected to ask in what part of the world the dragon may be found. It was all very well to decide upon action, but what action, after all, was she to take? As was her habit, she extracted notebook and pen and began to make a list: see Janet Harrison"s room, and talk to people who knew her in dormitory; find out about ten and twelve o"clock patients; find out who person in picture Janet Harrison had was (lists always had a devastating effect on Kate"s syntax).
"I"m sorry to intrude. Is Mrs. Bauer in?" Kate, who had been writing with the notebook balanced against her purse, dropped notebook, pen, and purse. The man stooped with her to help her retrieve the articles, and as they straightened up Kate became aware of that peculiar quality of masculine beauty to which no woman can help reacting, however superficially. It did not really attract Kate, yet she felt herself become somehow more girlish in its presence. She remembered once having met at a dinner party a beautiful, modest young Swedish man. He had perfect manners, there was not anything even suggestive of flirtation in his manner, yet Kate had been horrified to notice that every woman in the room seemed aware of him; her horror had turned to amus.e.m.e.nt as later, when he had spoken to her, she had found herself simpering.
This man was not that young; his hair was flecked with gray at the temples. "You"re Dr. Barrister, aren"t you?" Kate said. With difficulty she kept herself from adding, "our favorite suspect." "I"m Kate Fansler, a friend of Mrs. Bauer"s; I"ll call her."
As Kate walked to the back of the apartment for Nicola, she realized how great, in fact, was the connection between appearance and reality. Considered in the abstract, good looks seemed sinister; yet, in the presence of good looks, Kate found them innocent. It was, of course, no accident that in Western literature, certainly in Western folklore, beauty and innocence were usually joined.
The three of them ended by standing, on this patientless day, in the living room. Not that Nicola had asked them to sit down; it was not so much that Nicola ignored the social amenities-she seemed never to have known that they existed.
"I stopped in to see how you were bearing up," Dr. Barrister said to Nicola. "I know there"s nothing I can do, but I find it difficult to resist the impulse to be neighborly, even in New York where neighbors are not supposed to know one another."
"Aren"t you from New York?" Kate asked, to say something.
"Are any New Yorkers?" he asked.
"I am," said Nicola, "and my father before me. His father, however, came from Cincinnati. Where are you from?"
"One of those highbrow critics has discovered, I understand, a new sort of novel about the young man from the provinces. I was a young man from the provinces. But you haven"t told me how it"s all going."
"Emanuel has had to call off the patients for today. We hope in a day or two he can get back to having patients."
"I hope so too. Do let me know, won"t you, if there"s anything I can do? I"m full of good will, but rather lacking in ideas."
"I know," Nicola said. "For a death in the family or illness, one sends flowers or food. In this case I suppose all you can do is to keep telling everyone that Emanuel and I didn"t do it. Kate is full of ideas and is going to find the murderer." Dr. Barrister looked at Kate with interest.
"Where I"m going," said Kate, "is home."
"I"m going east," Dr. Barrister said. "Can I drop you anywhere?"
"That"s very kind of you," Kate said, "but I"m going west."
It was as Kate was sitting in the taxi going home that she thought of Jerry.
Six.
IT was true, of course, that Kate still had the weekend, before Monday should again bring the need to teach her cla.s.ses. But some preparation for those cla.s.ses was necessary, particularly since, in the last two days, she had got completely out of touch with the academic world, as though she had been absent for a year. One had, after all, a commitment to one"s profession, in spite of any murders, however demanding of investigation.
And what, when she came right down to it, was she to investigate? Something, certainly, could be gleaned by a little recondite questioning around the dormitory where Janet Harrison had lived; examination of the university records might reveal some clue of interest. All that Kate could, without undue interference with her professional duties, undertake. But the police had more or less covered the ground, and what seemed now most fruitful of examination was the other suspects whom the police seemed inclined to treat with little more than superficial interest: the patients before and after Janet Harrison, both men; the elevator man; and any stray men who might, hopefully, turn up and turn out to have known Janet Harrison, however slightly.
It seemed to Kate that, the question of time apart, what was clearly needed was a male investigator, preferably unattached and footloose, able to appear either the worldly young college graduate, possessed of that patina which only the more elegant colleges provide, or the young workingman, who has labored by day and who, in the proper clothes, can hang around discussing ball clubs and whatever else workingmen discuss, without appearing to be slumming. The description fit Jerry to a fare-thee-well, and indicated, once again, the occasional benefits of a large family.
Not that Jerry was in any way related to Kate; not, that is, as yet. But he would one day soon be a nephew by marriage. Kate did not remember his exact age, but he was old enough to vote and young enough to believe that life still held infinite possibilities. "No young man ever thinks he shall die." Hazlitt had certainly described Jerry.
Kate, coming from a large family, had also been an only child, a unique combination of benefits. Her parents, in the normal course of events-in the normal course, that is, of a sophisticated, well-to-do, New York City life (with summers in Nantucket)-had produced three sons in the first eight years of their marriage. They had departed from convention, or perhaps from what Kate had come to think of as a planned economy, only far enough to find themselves, when the youngest of their sons was fourteen, with an infant daughter. They had provided Kate with a nurse, and subsequently, a governess, loved her to distraction, indulged her recklessly, and stood by hopelessly as she turned her back on society and became, not only an "intellectual," but a Ph.D. This was blamed, somewhat unfairly, on the fact that she had been named Kate, because all her mother remembered of college English was that this had been Shakespeare"s favorite female name. The brothers had all pursued more respected and orderly careers. Sarah Fansler, the daughter of the oldest brother, was engaged to Jerry.
Jerry, of course, was moderately unsuitable. Had he been magnificently unsuitable, say a garage mechanic, the engagement would probably at any cost have been stopped. But to have absolutely put the family foot down on Jerry would have been to have turned one"s back-the family was very given to bodily metaphors, usually mixed-on the American dream. Jerry"s father was dead; his mother managed a small gift shop in New Jersey, and had, by devotion and hard work, sent her son through college; she would also help to send Jerry through law school beginning next fall. Jerry had won scholarships, had worked summers and after school, had helped in the gift shop, and had an air of understanding the world and conjuring it into releasing its gifts. Jerry, just finished with his six months in the Army, was driving a truck for a frozen-foods distributor until the fall. Kate thought he might be willing to do something a bit more adventurous for an equal amount of money.
A call to Jerry at his mother"s home in Jersey found him just returned from work, and quite willing (rather to Kate"s surprise) to drive in that very evening and talk to her; it appeared that a friend"s car was available. Kate managed to suggest that he keep his destination, and the phone call, secret, without sounding, she hoped, as conspiratorial as she felt. It was odd, she realized, that she should be prepared to trust in this way a young man she had met only a few times at those family celebrations of the engagement she had consented to attend. They had been attracted to each other by the amused air of detachment which, alone of those present, they had both radiated. What are we doing here? they seemed, smilingly, to ask each other. Kate was there because she admitted some, though not many, family obligations, and Jerry was there because Sarah was very pretty and very proper. Kate had always thought her rather dull, but Jerry was, perhaps, just smart enough in the ways of the world to prefer a dull, conventional, though pretty, wife.
When he arrived, Kate offered him a beer and plunged right into the matter at hand: "I"m going to offer you a job," she said. "The same pay as you"re getting now. Can you take a leave, and go back when you want to?"
"Probably. But I get time and a half on this job for working extra hours." He was relaxed, prepared to be enlightened and, Kate suspected, entertained.
"I"ll pay you only the regular amount. This job will be much more interesting, and require more of your talents. But if you succeed, I"ll give you a bonus at the end."
"What"s the job?"
"Before I tell you that, I want a solemn promise of secrecy. No one is to be told about this-not your family, or your friends; not by the slightest hint are they to know what you"re involved in. Not even Sarah is to suspect."
"Agreed. Like Hamlet"s friends, I won"t even indicate that I might tell if I would. I swear on the sword. Very good play, I thought," he added, before Kate could control her look of surprise. "I promise not to murmur a word to Sarah." It seemed to Kate that his willingness to keep things from Sarah did not bode well for their marriage, but she was past having scruples about any good fortune that came her way.
"Very well, then. I want you to help me solve a murder. No, I have not taken leave of my senses, nor have I developed paranoia or megalomania. Have you read anything about this girl who was murdered on the psychoa.n.a.lyst"s couch? You could scarcely have helped it, I suppose. They think the psychoa.n.a.lyst did it; he"s a very good friend of mine, and I want to prove that he didn"t do it, nor did his wife, who is the suspect they"re holding in abeyance. But I"m convinced the only way to prove Emanuel didn"t do it is to find out who did. A young man like you can talk naturally to a lot of people, can ask questions I can"t ask. Also, by the end of spring term the work at college reaches monumental proportions. Get the picture?"
"What about the police?"
"The police are very conscientious, in their unimaginative way. Perhaps I"m prejudiced; probably I am. But they have such a nice suspect, they are so certain that no one else could have done it, that their searches in other directions are bound to be somewhat lacking in vigor, or so it seems to me. However, if we find a nice fat clue leading to someone else, I imagine they can be persuaded to follow it up."
"Have you a favorite suspect?"
"Unfortunately, no. We"re not only lacking in suspects; we"re delightfully free of information of any kind."
"Perhaps the girl was drugged. Then anyone could have put her on the couch and murdered her, having got rid of the a.n.a.lyst first."
"You sound very promising. As a matter of fact, though, we do have some information about the murder, if not about other suspects or the girl. She wasn"t drugged. If you want the job, I"ll tell you all about it. It won"t take long."
It took, however, longer than Kate would have thought. She told Jerry the whole thing from the beginning, starting with her recommendation of the girl to Emanuel. He listened closely, and asked a number of intelligent questions. Kate realized that she was offering him adventure with the pay of security, and it might well warp his whole view of life. The younger generation, so all the journalists said-and it was generally true enough to be frightening-opted always for security, for the sure job, the sure pension, the sure way of life. They might have liked adventure, but they didn"t want to pay the price for it; better to read Kon-Tiki in an air-conditioned study in Westchester. Jerry was getting adventure, and a salary check determined by a union. It might not be the best training for a young man, but when you came right down to it, finding bodies on the couch was not the best training for a psychoa.n.a.lyst either.
In any case, there was nothing for Jerry to do until Monday. He promised to come for orders then, late afternoon, by which time he hoped to have disentangled himself from frozen food, and thought up a plausible story, should one be required. Jerry"s departure was speeded by a telephone. The call was from Reed. No, he had no other news, but he did have a copy of the picture. Two copies? Yes, she could have two copies. He would bring them up tonight, if that was all right. How about a movie to get their minds off things? Danny Kaye? Heartlessly, Kate agreed.
After the movie, Reed and Kate went out for a meal. Kate took from her purse the picture of the young man. She had looked at the face so steadily that it seemed almost as though the picture might be induced to speak. "The question is," Kate said, "is this the young man of the love affair?" She told Reed about her conversation with Emanuel. "How old would you say this young man is?" Kate asked.
"Perhaps thirty, perhaps twenty-five. He looks very young; at the same time he looks like someone who looks young for his age, if you follow me."
"I follow you. He keeps reminding me of someone."
"Probably of himself; you keep staring at the picture."
"No doubt you are right." Kate put the young man firmly away.
"A conscientious young detective trotted all over the dormitory with that picture," Reed said. "He is a very attractive young man, and the girls and women were delighted to chat with him about anything. They would gladly have said they saw this young man of the picture every day of their lives, to make the detective happy, but the truth was no one had ever laid eyes on him. One older woman thought she recognized him, but it turned out she was thinking of Cary Grant in his younger days. If that young man, or his picture, has ever been around that dormitory, he managed to avoid being seen by anyone, including, incidentally, the service people, who were also questioned. Kate, you realize he is probably a perfectly ordinary young man who jilted her, or, to be less cynical, got himself killed in a war or an accident, leaving her forever bereft."
"He"s not as good-looking as Cary Grant. He doesn"t look movie-actorish at all."
"Kate, you"re beginning to worry me. Are you ... does this man, this Emanuel Bauer mean so much to you?"
"Reed, if I can"t make you understand this, how are the police ever to understand Emanuel? He"s the last married man in the world likely to become involved with a woman, let alone a patient. But even if all that were possible, which I don"t for a minute grant, don"t you see that his office, his couch-these are the setting of his profession? Can"t you see that no genuine psychoa.n.a.lyst with Emanuel"s training would be overcome by maniacal pa.s.sion in his office hours? Even admitting (which I do not) that he might commit any crime as a man, he could not commit one as a psychiatrist."
"Have psychiatrists so much more integrity than other people?"
"No, of course not. Many psychiatrists I know of are the sc.u.m of the earth. They discuss their patients at parties. They grow rich, and brag about the fees they charge; they are paid $150 for their signature on a piece of paper releasing a patient from some inst.i.tution. The signature means that the patient will be under their care, but they sign and are paid, and hear no more of it. Even one signature a day is a nice yearly income. There are psychiatrists who entertain doctors, so that the doctors will refer patients to them. All charged up to the expense account, of course. But Emanuel, and others like him, love their work; and if you want my recipe for integrity, find the man who loves his work and loves the cause he serves by doing it. How"s that for pomposity?"
"What is the cause? Helping people?"
"Oddly enough, no. I don"t think so-not for Emanuel at any rate. He is interested in discovering something about the workings of the human mind. If you were to ask him, he would probably say that a.n.a.lysis is most important for research, that therapy is more or less a by-product. What would the D.A."s office make of that?"
"Kate, forgive me, but you were lovers; that came out in the testimony of the wife, though she did not in any sense offer it. I think the detectives were looking around generally for motives."
"Then Nicola should have murdered me, or I should have murdered Nicola. Except that we all understand it was a long, long time ago, and never were any embers colder."
"Where did you and Emanuel meet, back in the days when the embers weren"t so cold?"
"I had an apartment back in those days, too. Are you trying to make me out a scarlet woman? Reed, why do I keep forgetting you"re a policeman?"
"Because I"m not a policeman. At the moment, I"m the lawyer for the prosecution. Did Emanuel have an office in those days?"
"He shared a little office with another a.n.a.lyst."
"Did you ever meet him there?"
"Yes, I guess so, once or twice."
"Were you ever-together-on the couch?"
"Reed, I"ve underestimated you. You"ll make an excellent, quite diabolic prosecutor, able not only to elicit half-guessed-at facts, but able also to distort them and avoid the truth. On the witness stand, of course, I wouldn"t be able to explain. The truth, nonetheless, is that Emanuel had just begun in those days. He was doing therapy, so he didn"t use the couch, which happened to be part of the furniture-for future use, perhaps. And I was never there in office hours."
"Kate, my dear, I"m trying to show you what you"re up against, plunging into this thing without any idea of what you"re getting into. I know, fools rush in where angels fear to tread; but I"ve never discovered what, if anything, the fools accomplished. No, I"m not calling you a fool. I"m trying to say that you"ve set out, gallantly, G.o.d knows, to save Emanuel, and you may end up only muddying the waters and ruining yourself. And if there is no longer anything between you, as they say in the worst sort of magazines, why are you doing it? From a disinterested love of truth?"