In the Last Analysis Read online

  “The couple were decent people. They went on caring for her, but finally the financial burden became too great, and the man of the couple made a trip to Chicago. He managed to find that Barrister had gone to New York, and by going to the library and consulting a New York phone book, found his address. The man wrote to Barrister, and received back a letter of apology which explained that Barrister had been in financial difficulties, but was now all right. With the letter was enclosed a check for all the money due for the past months, and for the month to come. The monthly checks never stopped after that, until the old lady’s death. But during those checkless months which had elapsed, the old lady had had a birthday, for which Michael Barrister had always sent her a letter and a present. The present was always the same: a small china dog, to add to her collection of china dogs. When the checks didn’t come and the birthday was skipped, the old lady refused ever to hear Barrister’s name again. She had called him Mickey, which no one else had done, but now she refused to refer to him, or to take anything from him again. The couple with whom she lived had to pretend to be supporting her, while taking Barrister’s money, without which, of course, they couldn’t get on. They didn’t communicate with him anymore, and the old lady never received another china dog.”

  “Touching story,” Reed said. “Who was the old lady?”

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t have left that out. She had lived with Barrister’s grandparents, and had cared for him when he was a boy. In the grandparents’ will, all they had was left to their grandson, with a note added saying they were certain he would always care for the old lady. He always did.

  “We return now to Nicola’s conversation. She reported it to me word by word—in the event of all court stenographers being wiped out in a plague, together with all recording machines, I think Nicola would do nicely—but I will give you only the substance. Barrister has read Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Otherwise, he has read nothing by D. H. Lawrence, whom he seemed, by the way, inclined to confuse with T. E. Lawrence, and gave it as his opinion, furthermore, that modern literature was off on the wrong track. It might be all very fine for professors and critics, but if a man read a book, what he wanted was a good story, not a lot of symbolism and slices of life.

  “What Nicola discovered about Barrister’s office had, I imagine, already been discovered by the police. He has a waiting room, several examining rooms, and an office. Women, in varying stages of readiness, are treated in the examining rooms and talked to in the office. Barrister moves from one room to the other, as does the nurse. If he is not in one, it is assumed he is in another. The ladies often have to wait quite a while, and are used to it—a fact, incidentally, which can be confirmed by anyone who has ever consulted a successful gynecologist. In other words, as you have already told me, Barrister did not have an alibi, though that good defense lawyer to whom you are always referring could make a great deal out of the fact that he was certainly having office hours at the time of the murder. Probably all the women who were there that day will have to be questioned closely, though not, thank God, by me.

  “I now added to this information something Nicola had suggested the day after the murder, and something Jerry had discovered in an interlude with the nurse which I would, on the whole, rather ignore: that Barrister specialized in women unable to conceive, in women suffering from various ‘female’ problems, and in women wretched in their change of life. Incidentally, I called up my doctor, a conservative type on the staff of a teaching hospital, who was finally induced to tell me—all doctors, I’ve discovered, dislike the suggestion that medicine is ever badly practiced—that while many doctors treat women in menopause with weekly injections of hormones, he personally feels that too little is known about the effects of hormones and that they ought to be used only in cases of extreme need. Women, however, like the effects and are given hormones by many doctors. Do you want a drink?”

  “Go on,” Reed said.

  “I’m now going to tell you a story, a story suggested to me by all these facts. Once upon a time there was a young doctor named Michael Barrister. He had passed his boards, and served his year of residency. He liked to camp and hike, particularly in what we seem to be calling the wilds of Canada, where you sleep out, or rent a room from a forester, or stay in an occasional hostel. Mike, if we call him that, went camping and met, in the wilds of Canada, a girl named Janet Harrison. They fell in love …”

  “But her father was the mightiest man in the whole kingdom, and his but a poor woodsman.”

  “If you interrupt, Mommy isn’t going to finish the story, and you’ll have to go right to sleep. After a time the girl had to go home and so, pledging eternal love, they parted. Michael Barrister then met another man, a man who resembled him closely. They went off together on a hike. Mike spoke freely to the man, as one does with strangers; he told him a great deal about himself, but he did not tell him about the girl. One night the stranger killed Mike, and buried his body in the wilds of Canada.”

  “Kate, for the love of heaven …”

  “Perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps it was only after Mike died in an accident that the stranger saw the situation he was in—perhaps he thought he would not be too readily believed—in any event, the idea came to him to take over Mike’s identity.

  “It was an enormous risk; a million things might have gone wrong, but none of them did. Or none of them seemed to. The bit about the old lady was a problem, but that seemed to resolve itself. The difficulty, of course, was that friends of Mike’s would show up, but he could snub them—so that they would think that Mike had changed. It seemed as though the angels were on his side. The body was never discovered. When he got letters, he answered them. The real Mike had a first-rate record, and the stranger had no difficulty setting up a practice. The malpractice suit was certainly a storm, but he weathered it.

  “And then came the first huge problem: Janet Harrison. Her actual arrival was delayed many years. She had gone to nursing school, with the plan of joining Mike eventually in New York, and her letters spoke of this often. He wrote back trying, without harshness, to let the affair die down. He took longer and longer to answer her letters. When her father died, she had to go home. But eventually, despite the delay, Janet Harrison, Nemesis, came to New York. She had never stopped loving him, and did not, or could not, believe that he had stopped loving her.

  “He could not very well refuse to see her. He considered this, but she might talk, and it seemed better on the whole to know what she was up to. She soon discovered, of course, that he wasn’t Mike. With a close-enough resemblance, it is remarkably easy, I imagine, to fool people. It does not occur to people that you are not who you say you are—simply that you have changed. But it is quite another matter to fool a woman who has loved a man and been to bed with him. She was a secretive type—that was a break for him—but she was determined to prove this Michael Barrister an imposter, and to avenge the murder of the man she had loved. She knew she was in danger—and she made a will, leaving her money to the man her Mike had admired, to the man who seemed like Mike. Unfortunately, if she collected any evidence, she didn’t place it with the lawyer who made her will. She kept it in her room, or perhaps in a notebook she carried around with her. That is why he had to rob her room, even at tremendous risk, and go through her pocketbook after he killed her.

  “She used to stand across the street and watch his office. She wanted to unnerve him, and undoubtedly she succeeded. But eventually she needed an excuse for the daily visits she wanted, and the presence of Emanuel gave it to her. Once, perhaps twice, she saw me emerge after a visit to Emanuel and Nicola. If she went to me, would I suggest Emanuel? She came to me, and I did. Had I not suggested him—well, why should we worry about what might have happened?

  “She took no one in her confidence, partly because she wasn’t the confiding sort, any more than Mike was, partly because who would have believed her? Even though she is murdered, you are having trouble believing me now. One can imagine how the police would
have treated a story like that.

  “Dr. Michael Barrister knew he would have to act, certainly once she had started going to a psychoanalyst. On the couch she might say something, might even be believed. In any case, as long as she lived, she was a terrible threat. But he did not want to kill her. He was sure to be in the center of it; the closeness of his office to Emanuel’s promised that. No matter where she was killed, the fact that she was in analysis would emerge, and he might be questioned. Perhaps, therefore, he could induce her to love him, could even marry her. He resembled remarkably the man she had loved. He knew women. He knew that they liked to be overpowered, and directed. He began to try to win her love. He must have thought for a time that he was succeeding. She allowed him to make love to her, yet something told him that she, too, was playing a game. She was trying to weaken his defenses.

  “He knew the workings of Emanuel’s home. Observation, talks with Nicola, glances through the court windows, told him all he needed. He had the rubber gloves of a surgeon. The telephone calls were child’s play. He knew that Emanuel, given freedom, would gallop off to the park. If by some perverse chance Emanuel had not gone, Barrister was in no way committed; he could, at any moment, turn back. But Emanuel left, and Janet Harrison came to keep her appointment in an empty office. Barrister appeared. He probably told her some story of Emanuel’s being called off, and led her to the couch, where, perhaps making love to her, he got her to lie down. Perhaps he pushed her back before he drove the knife home. No blood got on him, but if it had, he had only to climb in the court window of his office and wash himself. Of course, he took chances. He had to.

  “But by killing her in Emanuel’s office, he took as few as possible. He would have been involved no matter where she was killed; that is, his existence would have come to the attention of the police as a neighbor of her analyst’s. He certainly could not kill her in his apartment—he never took her there. She lived in a woman’s dormitory, a place in which people continually come and go. He killed her with Emanuel’s knife on Emanuel’s couch. This not only made Emanuel suspect, but rendered suspect anything Emanuel might say about what the girl had revealed in analysis. The girl had told him of me and Emanuel and Nicola—he knew we were friends, and he certainly picked up a lot of our past history from Nicola. Later, he sent the anonymous letter accusing me. Again he had a daring plan; he took enormous risks, and he won, or seemed to win. If he hadn’t overlooked the picture, if Janet Harrison hadn’t made the will, he would have got away with it.”

  “And if you, my dear Kate, hadn’t obviously become a teacher because you were a novelist manquée … Talk about good stories! You ought to publish this one.”

  “You don’t believe it.”

  “It isn’t a matter of whether I believe it or not. Let’s say I not only believe it; let’s say it’s true. You said the police might laugh at Janet Harrison. That’s nothing to the way they’ll howl at this. You haven’t one shred of proof, Kate, not one—not even the whisper of one. The old lady? Mike was in financial difficulties, and his love affair put the old lady out of his mind. A novel by D. H. Lawrence? I can see myself explaining that to Homicide. An association in a dream related in the course of analysis to the chief suspect? The fact that the man he roomed with for one year didn’t think the Mike he knew was likely to commit a murder? Murders are all too often committed by unlikely people—isn’t it always the most unlikely person who turns out to have done it in books?”

  “All right, Reed, I admit I haven’t good evidence. But it’s a true story, all the same, and it isn’t just that I’ve become enamored of my invention. I knew you’d laugh. But don’t you see that there must be proof somewhere? If the police with all their resources looked, they’d find it. Maybe somewhere there is still something with the real Mike’s fingerprints—okay, so that’s unlikely. Maybe Mike’s body could be found. If the police really tried, they could find evidence. Reed, you’ve got to make them try. It would take Jerry and me years …”

  “I should say so, digging up half of Canada.”

  “But if the police will only look, they’ll find something. They might find who this man was, before he became Michael Barrister. Perhaps he was in jail somewhere. You could get his fingerprints …”

  “Kate. All you’ve got is a fairy tale, beginning ‘Once upon a time.’ Find me evidence, one uncontrovertible piece of evidence that this man isn’t Michael Barrister, and maybe we can get an investigation under way. We could hire private detectives, if necessary. All you’ve got now is a theory.”

  “What sort of evidence do you want? The real Mike wouldn’t have forgotten that scene in The Rainbow. Am I supposed to find that the real Mike had a strawberry mark on his shoulder, like the long-lost sons from overseas in late Victorian novels? What would you accept as evidence? Tell me that. What?”

  “Kate, dear, there can’t be any evidence, don’t you see? We can get Barrister’s fingerprints, but I promise you they’re not on record—he’d have known something as basic as that. Suppose we face Messenger with him—all Messenger can say is: He resembles Mike, but Mike has changed. Suppose you even discover that back in his medical school days Mike had a beautiful singing voice, that this Dr. Barrister is a monotone. Voices, I’m certain, can go. Though if you could discover that to be true, it would certainly be better than what you’ve got.”

  “I see,” Kate said. “I’ve given you the motive and the means, but it’s not enough.”

  “It’s not, my dear. And I honor you too much to pretend respect for a theory that’s a castle in the air. You’ve been worrying too much, and you’re under strain. If I told the D.A. a story like this, I’d probably lose my job.”

  “In other words, Barrister has committed the perfect crime. Two perfect crimes.”

  “Kate, find some way I can help you. I want to. But life isn’t fiction.”

  “You’re wrong, Reed. Life isn’t evidence.”

  “You admit you’ve made up this entire story. Kate, when I was in college, taking freshman English, the professor gave us a paragraph, and we were all to write a story beginning with that paragraph. We were a class of twenty-five, and there were no two stories remotely alike. I’m sure, if you took a little time, you could make up another story, with Sparks or Horan as murderer. Why not try it, just to prove my point?”

  “You forget, Reed, I’ve lots of evidence, though not the sort you find acceptable. The same sort of evidence proved to me that Barrister had known Janet Harrison. It so happens that Barrister got frightened and admitted it. But if he hadn’t, I’d be sitting here now still trying unsuccessfully to convince you that those two had known each other.”

  “Perhaps you can face him with this story, and get him to admit it.”

  “Perhaps I will. An assistant D.A., I will tell him, knows about this tale, so why don’t you kill me and prove to him that I was right?”

  “Stop talking foolish. Where’s that picture of the ‘real Mike,’ as we are now calling him? Get it, will you?”

  Kate handed it to him. “One gets the feeling sometimes that it could speak. But I’d better not say that, I’ll simply confirm you in your conviction that I’m round the bend. What did you want the picture for?”

  “Ears. They don’t show very well, do they? A good deal of work has been done to identify people by their ears. Too bad Real Mike didn’t get his picture taken in profile. Then we could get a picture of Barrister’s ear.”

  “Will you look into that, Reed? And please don’t give me up as incurably demented. Perhaps I am just weaving fancies …”

  “I know that conciliatory tone. It means you’re about to do something I don’t approve of. Listen, Kate, let’s think about it. If we can come up with one piece of evidence that isn’t literary, psychological, or impressionistic, maybe we can interest the police. I’d rather go after a hormone dispenser, anyway, than a psychiatrist. Shall we go to a movie?”

  “No. You may either go home, or you may drive me to the airport.”


  “Airport! Are you going to Bangor, Michigan?”

  “Chicago. Now, don’t start sputtering. I’ve been promising myself a visit to Chicago for a long time. They’ve got Picasso’s Man with the Blue Guitar there and I have suddenly developed an uncontrollable desire to see it. While I’m gone you might read Wallace Stevens’s poems inspired by the painting. He deals very effectively with the difference between reality and things-as-they-are. Excuse me while I pack a bag.”

  Eighteen

  “COME into my office,” Messenger said.

  “Do you always work on Saturday?”

  “If I can. I find it quieter than other days.”

  “And I have come to destroy the quiet.”

  “Only to postpone it. How can I help?”

  Sitting across from Messenger, Kate confirmed for herself Jerry’s impression. Messenger was lovable; there was no other word for this homely, gentle, intelligent man. “I’m going to tell you a story,” Kate said. “I’ve told it once already; I’m becoming quite a storyteller. The first time it was received, if not with screams of hilarity, at least with grunts of disbelief. I’m not going to ask you to believe it. Just listen. Tonight you can tell your wife, ‘I didn’t get anything done this morning; some madwoman appeared and insisted on telling me some idiotic sort of fairy tale.’ It’ll make a nice anecdote for your wife.”

  “Go on,” Messenger said.

  Kate told him the story, just as she had told it to Reed. Messenger listened, smoking his pipe, disappearing at times behind a cloud of smoke. He emptied the pipe when she had finished.

  “You know,” he said, “when I went up to Mike in New York, he didn’t at first know who I was. Natural enough, I guess; I’m not someone you’d expect to meet in New York. I noticed he’d got very elegant and didn’t want to bother with me. There are those who are always ready to think they’re being snubbed, and those who don’t think anyone will ever snub them. I belong to the first class. Mike told me I’d changed. Well, I thought at the time, It’s all in the eyes of the beholder; he’s changed. But you know, I hadn’t changed. There’s one thing about having a face that could stop a clock—it doesn’t seem to vary with the years. But I wear glasses now, which I didn’t used to do, so it seemed logical enough that it was that.”