In the Last Analysis

by Amanda Cross

  Fifteen

  KATE rushed away from the lecture room, leaving behind her the students who had come up to ask questions, and ignoring, outside her office, the students gathered there. She put in a call to Reed.

  “I’ve found a Miss Dribble—you know, the one who talked to Jackie-wackie when there was soap in the fountain. She says he looks like Cary Grant. Is it all right to talk now?”

  “My dear girl, if we are being overheard, I hope the eavesdropper understands you better than I. Shall we risk a little more clarity? Who dribbled?”

  “That’s her name. Dribble. Anne Dribble. Remember, you said she would hold the key to the whole thing?”

  “I don’t remember ever mentioning anyone of that name in my life. Is she someone who knew Janet Harrison? If so, she will go down in history, though it’s a pity to immortalize a name like that.”

  “She knew Janet Harrison slightly; she used to live in the dorm—Dribble, I mean. Jackie Miller remembered that she, still Dribble, was the one who had told her, Jackie, that she had seen her, Janet, with a man. Apparently someone dribbled at breakfast, which reminded Jackie—there are advantages to having a verb for a name—who it was who had spoken to her of seeing Janet with a man; and she, Jackie, told her, Miss Lindsay; and she, Miss Lindsay, called me, Kate. I called her, Miss Dribble, and she said she thought she would recognize the man again, but if I wanted a quick description he looked like Cary Grant, good-looking and suave. You have twenty minutes; rewrite that into an acceptable English sentence.”

  “Kate, I know we need suspects, but do you really think Cary Grant is likely to have killed her? I could, of course, call Hollywood …”

  “Reed—which of our suspects looks like Cary Grant?”

  “You forget, I haven’t seen any of our suspects.”

  “You mentioned yourself that the young man in the picture looked like Cary Grant.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes. And Barrister still does, in a general sort of way. I mean, he’s older, but so is Cary Grant.”

  “And so am I. Getting older by the minute. What do you want me to do, offer Barrister a part in pictures?”

  “Got it in one. I want some pictures. I want to show them to Miss Dribble, and if she recognizes Barrister, we’ve got proof, actual proof, that Barrister knew her. Of course, it may be Sparks or Horan. Emanuel looks nothing like Cary Grant.”

  “Believe it or not, I begin to get your drift. Look, I’ll suggest to them at Homicide that Barrister looks like Cary Grant. I’ll probably be recommended for the vacation I so badly need. Have you got Miss Dribble’s address?”

  Kate gave it to him. “And, Kate,” Reed went on, “don’t mention Miss Dribble or her address to anyone else, there’s a good girl.”

  “Reed! You do think there may be something in it.”

  “I’ll call you at home this evening. Go home and stay there. I mean it; that’s an order. Don’t go dashing off following clues. Promise?”

  “Is it all right with you if I hold my office hours and meet my afternoon class?”

  “Go home the minute the class is over. Stay home. Neither walk nor run to the nearest exit. Sit. You’ll hear from me.” And with this Kate had to be content.

  Following the afternoon class, Kate returned to her office to find the phone ringing. It was Emanuel.

  “Kate, can I see you for a few minutes?” he asked.

  “Has anything happened?”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about. Where can we meet for a cup of coffee?”

  “How about Schrafft’s? It’s a good place for convincing oneself that life goes on.”

  “Very well, then, Schrafft’s in twenty minutes.”

  But both of them got there in fifteen. The place was quiet, except for a few ladies noisily consuming their afternoon calories at the counter.

  “Kate,” Emanuel said, “I’m beginning to worry.”

  “Don’t begin now. If they’d had enough evidence, they’d have pulled you in as a material witness. I think it’s going to be all right, if we just hold on a little longer.”

  “Where did you learn to talk like that? You sound like one of those authentic precinct novels. It’s not me I’m worried about; it’s you. I had to go down to see them again today, both Nicola and I did, but it was you they wanted to talk about. In the old days,” he added, as the waitress approached, “you used to eat ice cream covered with gooey fudge and nuts. Do you want that now?”

  “Just coffee.” Emanuel gave the order to the waitress. “Look, Emanuel, I’ll tell you this, but I’m not supposed to know it, and you’re not supposed to know it, so don’t mention it to the police or Nicola. They’ve got an anonymous letter accusing me. I’m supposed to have murdered her because I’m in love with you and jealous of Nicola. The police have to follow it up. After all, if it turned out in the end I’d done it, they’d look pretty silly if they hadn’t followed up a lead like that. And to give them their due, I’m not a bad suspect, as I think I pointed out before.”

  “This has happened because you tried to help me.”

  “This has happened because I sent you the girl who was murdered. Emanuel, I’ve been wondering, why did she come to me for the name of a psychiatrist? I can’t help feeling that there’s something important about the fact that she did.”

  “I’ve been over and over that fact in my mind. But after all, she had to ask someone. You’d be surprised at the abandon with which most people pick a psychiatrist—never bothering to discover if he’s properly qualified, a doctor, or anything else. To ask an intelligent, educated person for the name of a psychiatrist is not the worst way to go about finding one.”

  “But you’re thinking that if you’d never backed onto the Merritt Parkway none of this would have happened.”

  “That’s nonsense. The one thing a psychiatrist knows is that things don’t ‘happen.’ ”

  “Oh, yes, I’d forgotten. If you break your leg it means you wanted to, deep down.”

  “What’s worrying me, Kate, is that the detective’s questions about you disturbed me, and I talked a lot more than I’ve talked up to now. I’ve been rather reticent about my patients, but I wasn’t reticent about you. I tried to explain our relationship. I told them, if they wanted a psychiatrist’s opinion, you were incapable of murder, and incapable of stealing pieces on Henry James. I realize now, somewhat too late, that they have probably mistaken my vehemence for personal passion, and will now decide that we planned it together.”

  “And if we are seen here, they will be certain we are now plotting further.”

  Emanuel looked horrified. “I hadn’t thought of that. I only wanted to …”

  “It was a joke, Emanuel. When I first heard they were accusing me, I was terrified, with the feeling of panic a small child has when he’s lost his parents in a crowd. But I don’t feel that way anymore. I didn’t do it, and the evidence that I did is nonsense. Actually, I think we may be getting near the end of this horror. I have that feeling of events closing in. But I don’t want to say any more yet, in case it doesn’t work out.”

  “Kate. Don’t get into trouble.”

  “At least you’ll know that if I do, my inner psyche willed it. That’s another joke. Try to smile.”

  “Nicola’s beginning to feel the strain. For a while her natural exuberance kept her afloat, but now she’s beginning to sink. And my patients are starting to wonder. If I didn’t do it, it seems odd that they can’t find the person who did. I feel frightened, genuinely frightened, in a small-boy way. Why can’t they look elsewhere? Why do they keep walking round and round us?”

  “The police have you, or you and Nicola, or you and me, and that’s the case they’re trying to prove. To them, the fact that it happened on your couch is a nice, simple, unassailable fact. You can’t expect them to look around for evidence that they’re wrong. But if we put the evidence right under their noses, they’ll have to look at it. That’s what I’m trying to do, in my wild and woolly way. In
stead of worrying, why don’t you try to think of something Janet Harrison said?”

  “Freud was interested in puns.”

  “Was he? I’ve always agreed with the estimation of them as the lowest form of wit. I remember once, when I was a child, saying ‘I’m thirsty,’ and some odious friend of my father’s said, ‘I’m Joe.’ Or isn’t that a pun?”

  “Janet Harrison had, twice, a disturbing dream about a man who was a lawyer.”

  “A lawyer. The one thing we don’t have in this case is a lawyer. Didn’t she have any other dreams? Perhaps the lawyer who made her will …”

  “You see, the censor works even when you dream. It won’t present a thought too disturbing, perhaps because you might wake, or because the unconscious won’t let it through.”

  “Oh, yes, Brooks Brothers, and the awful suit. Sorry, go on.”

  “We pun in our dreams, as well as when we’re awake. Sometimes in several languages.”

  “Sounds like Joyce.”

  “Very like Joyce. He understood all about it. I’m wondering if Janet Harrison didn’t pun in her dream, not in another language, but in the same language, an ocean away. What is a lawyer, in England?”

  “They’ve got two kinds—solicitors and … Emanuel! Barrister again!”

  “I wondered. Of course, she may just have seen his name outside his door across the hall from me. As evidence, it’s worth nothing to a policeman and very little to a psychiatrist, at least by itself. He may just have looked like her father, or someone else; dreams are very involved, and there isn’t often a one-to-one relation …”

  “I think she knew him, I’m sure she did, and before too long I’ll prove it. Emanuel, I love you. I hope no policeman can hear me.”

  “You realize, of course, that Messenger’s name is also capable of lots of …”

  “What did she feel about the lawyer, in her dream?”

  “I’ve looked up my notes: fear, mainly. Fear, and hate.”

  “Not love?”

  “That’s very hard to distinguish from hate in a dream, and frequently in life. But speaking of patients’ dreams, I’d better get back to the next set.”

  “She never mentioned Cary Grant, did she?”

  “No. Kate, you will be careful, won’t you?”

  “Psychiatrists are so illogical. They tell you nothing happens by accident, and then they tell you to be careful. No, don’t drive me home. It will make you late, and God knows what it would suggest to a lurking detective, if any.”

  It was Kate’s day for walking in on ringing phones. The one in her apartment had the angry sound of a phone that has been ringing for a long time.

  “Miss Kate Fansler, please.”

  “Speaking.”

  “Chicago calling. One moment, please. Go ahead, please. Here is your party.”

  “Well, I’ve seen him,” Jerry said, “and I’m afraid we’ve wasted your money; my time isn’t worth much. My impression, for what it’s worth, is that he didn’t do it. His impression, for what it’s worth, is that Barrister didn’t do it. Our conversation was full of literary allusions—your influence, he seemed to think—perhaps they are right about E.S.P. Who said ‘greetings where no kindness is’?”

  “Wordsworth.”

  “Kate, you should have gone on one of those quiz shows.”

  “Nope. They wanted me to split with the director, and I refused.”

  “Do you want me to tell you what he said? It’s your money.”

  “No, don’t tell me—write it down. Get down every bit of it you can remember. Somewhere, somehow, there’s one little straw of a fact that is going to break the back of this case, and it may be in that interview of yours. All right, I admit it’s unlikely; but, as you said, it’s my money and your time isn’t worth much. Write it all down.”

  “On little pieces of hotel stationery?”

  “Jerry, you must not allow yourself to get discouraged. What did you expect, that Messenger would lock the door and tell you with a glint in his eye that he’d killed Janet Harrison long distance by means of a secret ray gun he’d just developed? We’re going to find the answer to this case, but I think the answer will first appear on the horizon as a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. Get the interview written down—rent a typewriter, find a public stenographer, scribble it out on hotel stationery and then get it copied—I don’t care. But come home on the first plane you can get out of Chicago. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Barrister had known Janet Harrison—of this Kate was now convinced. That he had the office across from Emanuel’s might be the wildest of coincidences, but it could not be coincidence that he had once known the man to whom Janet Harrison had left her money; it could not be coincidence that he was seen in a restaurant (and Kate was certain he had been) with Janet Harrison; it could not be a coincidence that Janet Harrison had punned so cleverly in her dreams—though she would hate to have to convince Reed, let alone a court of law, of this last one.

  Had they met in New York? There was, of course, no evidence at all of this, but the chances were certainly that they had. Probably Barrister had mentioned Messenger, never knowing that Janet Harrison would indulge in the quixotic gesture of making out a will in his favor. Kate didn’t remember now where Barrister had come from, but she was fairly certain it was not Michigan—and, of a sudden, something began to root about at the base of Kate’s mind. A small disturbing noise it made, like the sound of a mouse behind the wainscoting.

  Whatever it was, it evaded her. But wait—if Janet Harrison had met Barrister in New York, she must have met him very soon after his arrival, for the picture she carried was of a younger man. Perhaps it was the only picture Barrister had—perhaps she had stolen it. But why had she hidden it so carefully inside her driver’s license? Well, say she had stolen it. I must not, Kate thought, starting going round and round again. Let’s stick to the one thing I’ve established—well, established at any rate to my own satisfaction: Barrister knew Janet Harrison. Of course, they would have to confront the Dribble girl with him, but she, Kate, had no doubts of the result of this.

  Kate began to make herself supper, wondering when Reed would call. No doubt he would point out that, as a detective, Kate made an excellent literary critic. Although Reed had always been too polite to say so, at least in so many words, Kate knew he thought of literary critics as operating in a rarefied atmosphere far removed from earthly facts. Highbrow critics, he would probably say … again Kate was aware of the mouse behind the wainscoting. That same mental disturbance she had just felt when she had thought of … what? Of where Barrister had come from.

  What had he said then, that day in Nicola’s apartment? “Aren’t you from New York?” Kate had asked him. And he had answered that, as some highbrow critic had said, he was a young man from the provinces. Some highbrow critic who had talked about a certain kind of novel. Well, that highbrow critic had a name: Trilling. But did Barrister know it? Did Barrister read the Partisan Review, or a collection of essays called The Opposing Self? It was not impossible—yet his tone of voice had been that of one who scorns these matters. Where had he heard Trilling’s phrase for a certain kind of novel?

  He had heard it from her, Kate Fansler, by way of Kate’s student, Janet Harrison. Not a doubt in the world. Again, it was not the kind of evidence of which any policeman could be persuaded to take official notice, but to Kate it was unquestionable. Janet Harrison had listened to that phrase used by Kate, had been struck with it, and had repeated it to Barrister. That meant not only that Barrister had known Janet Harrison, but that he had known her (it seemed likely) when she had still been taking a course of Kate’s. So Barrister was a young man from the provinces, was he? Well, one thing that marked the young man from the provinces, in literature at least, had been that he, or someone he had been associated with, had always come to what an English friend of Kate’s called a “sticky end.” A young man from the provinces indeed!

  When Reed called, Kate was ready for him.


  “I’ve got quite a bit to report,” Reed said. “I’ll be up to see you in a few hours. Is that too late?”

  “No. But, Reed, you might as well be prepared—I’m convinced of one thing anyway. And you needn’t laugh uproariously. Barrister knew Janet Harrison.”

  “I’m not laughing,” Reed said. “That’s one of the things I’m coming to tell you. He’s just admitted it.”

  Sixteen

  “IT’S a funny thing about the unconscious mind,” Kate said to Reed some hours later. “There was no real reason for Barrister to use that phrase about the young man from the provinces when talking to me—I’m certain he had no idea why it came into his head. But he met me, realized who I was, knew about me because Janet Harrison had told him about me, knew he must not on any account reveal that he knew about me, and his unconscious came up with the young man from the provinces.”

  “Observant chap, Freud. He made a number of suggestions about word tests for suspected criminals—did you know? It’s more or less the principle a lie detector works on, or is supposed to work on: the criminal’s blood pressure increases when he’s faced with a disturbing idea. In Freud’s test, he blocks at the disturbing question, or associates in a telling way. Anyhow, Barrister, like a good patient on the couch, decided this afternoon to talk to the point. It’s amazing how frightened innocent people can get when faced with investigation.”

  “Are liars innocent—I mean people who lie about important things that entangle other people in meshes of untruth?”

  “The truth’s a slippery thing. Perhaps that’s why only literary people understand it.”

  “That’s what Emanuel would call a provocative remark.”

  “And he’d be right. I apologize. Except, of course, that the remark is true. You’d figured out Barrister had known her before we did. And your discovery of Miss Dribble convinced me to urge them to put on the pressure sooner than they might have. It was Miss Dribble (since I did not yet know about the young man from the provinces) who encouraged me to go along for the interview, even though I had no official right to do any such thing.”