In the Last Analysis

by Amanda Cross

  “She was killed,” he continued, “with a long, thin carving knife from the Bauer kitchen, one of a set that hangs in a wooden holder on the wall. The Bauers do not deny their ownership of the knife, which is just as well, since it bears both their fingerprints.” Involuntarily, Kate gasped. Reed paused to look at her. “I can see,” he said wryly, “that your ability to differentiate between sorts of evidence is not very developed. That’s the chief evidence on their side. Since every tot today knows about fingerprints, the chances are that, using the knife as a weapon, they would have had the brains to remove them. Of course, a trained psychiatrist of admitted brilliance might have been smart enough to figure that the police would figure that way. Don’t interrupt. Dr. and Mrs. Bauer say their prints got on the knife the previous night when they had a small argument about how to carve a silver-tip roast, and both gave it a try. Being sensible people, they don’t submerge knives in water, but wipe off the blade with a damp cloth and then a dry one. The prints, if anything, are evidence in their favor, since they have been partially obliterated, as they might have been if someone had held the knife with gloves. This, however, is inconclusive.

  “Now we come to the more damning part. She was stabbed while she was lying down, according to the medical evidence, by someone who leaned over the end of the couch and over her head, and thrust the knife upward between her ribs. This seems, incidentally, to have been done by someone with a fairly developed knowledge of anatomy, id est, a doctor, but here again we are on shaky ground. This particular upward thrust of the knife from behind (though not with the victim lying down) was commonly taught to all resistance units during World War II in France and elsewhere. The important question is, Who could have got the girl to lie down, Who could have got behind her, Who could have finally stabbed her without at any point inspiring any resistance whatever? You can see that the police are saying to themselves: ‘Where does a psychoanalyst sit? In a chair behind the head of a patient.’ Detective: ‘Why does the psychoanalyst sit there, Dr. Bauer?’ Dr. Bauer: ‘So that the patient cannot see the doctor.’ Detective: ‘Why shouldn’t the patient see the doctor?’ Dr. Bauer: ‘That’s a very interesting question; there are many possible explanations, such as helping the patient to maintain the anonymity of the doctor, thus increasing the possibilities for transference; but the real reason seems to be that Freud invented the position because he could not bear to have the patients looking at him all day long.’ Detective: ‘Do all your patients lie on the couch?’ Dr. Bauer: ‘Only those in analysis; patients in therapy sit in a chair on the other side of the desk.’ Detective: ‘Do you sit behind them?’ Dr. Bauer: ‘No.’ Shrug of detective’s shoulders not reported here.”

  “Reed, do you mean the police are basing their whole case on the fact that no one else could have got behind her while she was lying on the couch?”

  “Not quite, but it is a sticky point, all the same. If Dr. Bauer wasn’t there, why was she lying down on the couch in the first place? And, assuming for the moment that she wandered into the room and lay down when there was no one there—and Dr. Bauer has assured the detective that no patient would do any such thing, they wait until they are summoned into the office by the analyst—would she continue to lie there if someone other than the analyst walked in, sat down behind her, and then leaned over her with a knife?”

  “Supposedly she didn’t see the knife when he leaned over?”

  “Even so. And if the analyst wasn’t there, why did she lie down on the couch? Why do women lie down on couches? All right, you needn’t answer that.”

  “Wait a minute, Reed. Perhaps she wanted to take a nap.”

  “Come off it, Kate.”

  “All right, but suppose she was in love with one of the patients before or after her—we don’t really know anything about them—and she, or one of them, let’s say one of them, got rid of Emanuel so that he and the girl could make love on the couch. After all, the ten o’clock patient would simply stay, and the twelve o’clock patient did come rather early …”

  “Those two cancellations were made during the ten o’clock patient’s hour, so he could hardly have made them himself.”

  “Exactly. He got someone else to do it. It gave him an alibi, and since he was there at the time himself, he could make sure that the calls came through, or at least that some calls came through.”

  “Then why cancel for the twelve o’clock patient, and not cancel the twelve o’clock patient as well? All right, perhaps he didn’t know his phone number. But then why try to get rid of Dr. Bauer, when you will have the twelve o’clock patient walking in on you anyway?”

  “To lovers an hour alone together is an eternity,” said Kate in sepulchral tones. “Besides, he really didn’t want to make love; he wanted to murder her.”

  “I’ll say this, you have an answer for everything. Might I point out, however, that you have created this whole plot out of thin air? There isn’t the smallest evidence for anything you’ve said, though the police will, I’m sure, try to collect the evidence wherever possible.”

  “If only I were as sure of that as you are. There isn’t a shred of evidence against Emanuel either.”

  “Kate, my dear, I admire your loyalty to Emanuel, but do exercise your extraordinary ability to face the facts: the girl was murdered in Emanuel’s office, with Emanuel’s knife, in a position that would have given Emanuel every opportunity to commit the crime. He can provide no alibi; while the phone calls canceling the patients were undoubtedly made, he as well as anyone else could have paid someone to make them. The murder was done when no one else was in the apartment, but who except Emanuel and his wife knew that no one else would be in the apartment? Despite your delightful flights of fancy, we don’t know that the girl knew a single other person connected with that office. In fact, one of the strangest things about this case is how little they seem able to find out about that girl.”

  “Was she a virgin?”

  “No idea; she never had a child, at any rate.”

  “Reed! Do you mean to tell me that when they do one of these autopsies they can’t tell whether or not a girl’s a virgin? I thought that was one of the first things they reported on.”

  “It is remarkable, the old wives’ tales that continue to be believed by otherwise quite intelligent people. The point of this tale, I suppose, is to keep girls good. How did you suppose one could tell? If you are thinking of what the Elizabethans alluded to so feelingly as ‘maidenhead,’ I am sad to report that the number of modern girls who survive their athletic girlhoods with that intact is tiny enough to make your grandmother blush. Otherwise, what evidence did you suppose there was? If semen is present, we know a woman has had sexual relations; if she is bruised or torn, we suspect rape, or attempted rape. Nothing like this, of course, was in evidence here. But, as to whether or not she was a virgin, you would do better asking the people who knew her, if you can find them.”

  “I cannot remember when I have been so shocked. The world as I knew it is fast passing away.”

  “Your friend Emanuel can probably tell you if she has had sexual relations, that is, if you can get him to tell you anything.”

  “Since the police, completely ignoring Emanuel’s character, are convinced he did it, what do they suppose was his motive?”

  “The police are not so interested in motive; good sound circumstantial evidence is much more their cup of tea. They pay it due attention, of course, and if one of those two patients turns out to inherit a million dollars under Janet Harrison’s will, they’ll prick up their ears. But a doctor who has become entangled with a beautiful patient and decided in a rash moment to get rid of her is motive enough for them.”

  “But they have no evidence that he was ‘entangled’ with her; that’s probably why they haven’t arrested him yet. Whereas I have loads of evidence that he couldn’t have become entangled with her, couldn’t have murdered her, and certainly not on his couch.”

  “All right, I want to hear it all. First, let me give
you the rest. The thrust of the knife which killed her was delivered with a good deal of strength, but not with more than a strongish woman might have mustered—you for instance, or Mrs. Bauer. Let me finish. The body was not moved after being stabbed, but I’ve already told you that. No signs of a struggle. No fingerprints, other than those one would expect. The rest is a lot of technical jargon, including photographs of a particularly sickening nature. We come now to the only real point of interest.

  “The murderer—we assume it was the murderer—went through her purse, presumably after she was dead. He was wearing rubber gloves, which leave their own peculiar sort of print, in this case on the gold-colored clasp of her pocketbook. The supposition is that if he found something, he took it out. The girl was not very well known to those who lived near her in the Graduate Women’s Dormitory at the university, but one of them, questioned by the police, had noticed that Janet Harrison always carried a notebook in her purse; no notebook was found there. Also, she appeared to have no photographs in her purse or wallet, though almost every woman does carry photographs of someone or other. That is all conjecture. But there was a picture which the murderer apparently missed. In her wallet she had a New York driver’s license, not the new card sort, but the old paper kind which folded, and folded inside it was a small picture of a young man. The police are of course going to try to discover who he was; I’ll get a copy of it shortly and let you see it, just in case it rings a bell. The important point is that she had carefully concealed the picture. Why?”

  “It sounds as though she thought someone might go through her pocketbook, and she didn’t want the picture found. Some people, of course, are naturally secretive.”

  “Apparently Miss Harrison was unnaturally secretive. Nobody seems to have known her very well. There is some information from the university, but it’s pretty thin. Oddly enough, her room in the Graduate Women’s Hall was robbed the night before her death, though whether this is a coincidence or not we may never know. Someone apparently had a key, rifled through everything, and departed with a 35-millimeter camera worth about seventy dollars. A brand new Royal portable typewriter, worth more, was left, whether because it was too conspicuous to carry out, or the robber was collecting only cameras, it is impossible to determine. All her drawers, and her desk, were thoroughly rifled, but apparently nothing else was taken. It was reported to the local precinct, but, though they conscientiously made out a report, this sort of thing is pretty hopeless. By the time she had been murdered, the room had been straightened out, so any evidence that may have been left is gone.

  “The information on Janet Harrison is surprisingly meager, though we haven’t traced her back home yet; the police in North Dakota, where she turns out, surprisingly enough, to come from, are finding what they can. All the university can tell us is that she is thirty years of age …”

  “Really?” Kate said. “She didn’t look it.”

  “Apparently not. She’s a U.S. citizen, and went to college at some place called Collins. The university noticed that the ‘person to notify in case of emergency’ section was not filled out, and the omission apparently went unnoticed in the rush of registration. That’s about it, I think,” Reed finished up, “except for one little matter I’ve saved, with my well-known flair for the dramatic, till the end: Nicola Bauer wasn’t at her analyst’s the morning of the murder. She called up at the last minute to cancel the appointment. The police have just managed to reach her analyst. She claims to have spent the morning wandering in the park, not around the reservoir, but near something she calls the old castle. People do, of course, spend a remarkable amount of innocent time wandering about, but that both of the Bauers should have ambled separately around Central Park while someone was being murdered in their apartment is difficult for the Deputy Inspector wholly to believe. With all the good will in the world, I can’t help seeing his point.”

  Reed got up, and very kindly poured Kate another drink. “Just keep in mind, please, Kate, that they may have done it. I don’t say they did; I don’t say I shan’t sympathize with your conviction that they didn’t; I’ll help you any way I can. But, please, as a favor to me, keep in the back of your mind an awareness of the possibility that they may be guilty. Janet Harrison was a very beautiful girl.”

  Five

  KATE had met Emanuel at a time when they had both gone stale, when the world seemed to each flat and unprofitable, if not out of joint. They happened, in fact, to meet at that identical point in their lives when each was committed to a career, but had not yet admitted the commitment. Their meeting had been the one romantic (in the movie sense) moment in both their lives, and though Kate may have been what Emanuel was later to call “projecting,” it seemed to her even then that they both realized they had met dramatically, because destined to meet, that they were further destined never to marry, never wholly to part.

  They had crashed into each other, literally, on an exit road from the Merritt Parkway. Kate, as she was soon to point out to him, was exiting in the proper fashion, as anyone might be expected to do. Emanuel, quite on the contrary, was backing up the exit road toward the parkway from which he had just mistakenly emerged. It was dusk; Kate’s mind was on the directions she had to follow, Emanuel’s, still seething, was apparently not functioning at all. It was a very pretty crash.

  They ended up, after a certain amount of expostulation which soon turned to laughter, driving to a restaurant in Emanuel’s car, from which they telephoned for aid for Kate’s car. They both forgot that they were expected elsewhere, Emanuel because, as Nicola was later to say, forgetting was his favorite sport, and Kate deliberately because she did not want her hosts to come for her. She had not “fallen in love” with Emanuel; she would never be “in love” with him. But she wanted to stay with him that evening.

  Walking now to Emanuel’s home, with Reed’s warning of the night before still ringing in her ears, Kate thought how difficult it would be (might turn out to be) to explain their relationship to a policeman. She was walking from Riverside Drive to Fifth Avenue in the hope that the exercise and air might clear her head, and it occurred to her that even this act might seem, to certain people, inexplicable. Suppose someone were murdered now in her apartment; what sort of alibi would it be, the simple statement that she had decided to walk halfway across the city? True, Emanuel and Nicola, whose alibis were similar to this, had not had a destination, but had been seized with an unaccountable desire to wander; true, it was difficult to get into her apartment and it was impossible to think of anyone capable of being murdered there. The fact still remained that she and the Bauers lived their lives in a way for which nothing in a policeman’s training prepared him.

  The support which she and Emanuel had found in each other in the year following their meeting grew from a relationship for which the English language itself lacked a defining word. Not a friendship, because they were man and woman, not a love affair, because theirs was far more a meeting of minds than of passions, their relationship (an inexact and lifeless term) had given each a vantage point from which to view his life, had given them for a time the gift of laughter and intense discussion whose confidence would be held forever inviolable. They had been lovers for a time—they had no one but themselves to consider—yet this had been far from central to their mutual need. After that first year, they would no more have considered making love than of opening a mink ranch together, yet were there more than a handful of people in the world who could have understood this?

  When she reached Nicola’s room, Kate, physically exhausted and proportionately less perturbed, found that Nicola’s thoughts had been running along the same lines. She had been thinking, that is, not about Emanuel and Kate, but of how few people there were who understood morality apart from convention.

  “We have spent this morning and the greater part of yesterday with the police,” Nicola said, “being questioned separately, and a bit together, and though they are not actually offensive, as a Berlitz teacher will not actually speak
English in teaching you French, they indicate in a thousand little ways that we are both liars, or at least one of us is, and if we would just break down and admit it we would be saving the state and them endless amounts of trouble. Of course, Emanuel has gone stubborn, and won’t tell them anything about Janet Harrison. He claims he’s not just being noble, guarding the secrets of the confessional and all that; he simply doesn’t see what good it would do, for it would probably just get us in deeper. Don’t you know anything devastating about her, from that college of yours? Why, by the way, aren’t you there? It’s Friday, isn’t it?” Nicola’s ability to remember the details of everyone’s schedule (“I called because I knew you’d just have gotten in from walking the dog,” she had said once to an astonished and recent acquaintance) was one of the most notable things about her.

  “I got someone else to take my classes,” Kate said. “I didn’t feel up to it.” She was, in fact, extremely guilty about this, remembering someone’s definition of the professional as the man who could perform even when he didn’t feel like it.