Part 10 (1/2)

”Is that what you think will happen, Reed?”

”No. I believe you, and I believe your judgment of him. But, Kate, where else are we going to look? The police don't think it's likely that a homicidal maniac was at work, and I agree with them. Of course, Messenger's a possibility, but an awfully farfetched one.”

”Why can't they arrest Barrister as well as Emanuel? Barrister had the motive. I know it's not the world's greatest motive, but, speaking of smart lawyers ...”

”The motive without the evidence isn't enough. Anyway, not a motive like that. Well, at least things are breaking. At least we've got the detectives started on Sparks and Horan, and something may come from there. What, by the way, has happened to your Jerry?”

”I sent him out to see Messenger.”

”Kate, I really think, after what I said ...”

”I know-rave on. If Jerry comes up with any startling facts, I promise to tell you. But judging from his report over the phone, Messenger is another innocent babe. You know, Reed, it would be a h.e.l.l of a blow to psychiatry if they arrested Emanuel. I mean, he's not a fly-by-night crank, or someone who had just taken up psychiatry. He's a member of, and therefore backed by, the most austere inst.i.tute of psychiatry in the country. Even I, who argue with Emanuel constantly, cannot believe that they would admit as a member, after the extended a.n.a.lysis they require, a man who could murder a patient on a couch. And I'm sure they didn't. Even if he weren't convicted, his arrest would be a h.e.l.l of a blow. Perhaps there's someone around who loathes psychiatry, and he's going to murder patients at regular, widely s.p.a.ced intervals, in order to discredit the profession. Maybe you'd better ask all the suspects what they think about psychiatry.”

”I'll make a note of it. Now I must go and get some sleep. I've got a trial coming up tomorrow-grand jury, question of p.o.r.nography. Perhaps we ought to blow ourselves up, all of us, and start again, after the earth has cooled a few hundred years, and try to make a better job of it.”

With which happy thought, Kate went to bed.

In the morning Jerry, looking downcast, arrived with his report. He sat angrily flipping the pages of a magazine while Kate read his notes. Jerry had reported his conversation with Messenger in the form of dialogue; this was followed by an exact, unflattering description of the doctor and completed by an account of Jerry's impressions. He might not have felt there was much substance in the report, but he had taken care with its form. Kate congratulated him on his neatness, but he sneered.

”You were literary,” she said.

”Weren't we, though? Do you recognize that thing from Lawrence he was gabbing on about?”

”Oh, yes, I think so. It must have made quite an impression on Barrister. It's from the beginning of The Rainbow-n.o.body ever did children better than Lawrence, which is probably because he didn't have any. I take it Messenger was a man you would have felt inclined to trust.”

”Yes, he was, if that's worth anything. I'm sure it isn't. In fact, if you want to know, he reminded me of you.”

”Of me? Do my ears stick out?”

Jerry flushed. ”I didn't mean physically. The impression I have of him was like the impression I have of you. Don't ask me what I mean-it's just that, both of you might be dishonest, but you'd know you were doing it.”

”That's a nice compliment, Jerry.”

”Is it? It's probably pure, unadulterated c.r.a.p. What do I do now?”

”He didn't give the impression that he was being dishonest and knowing it?”

”No, he didn't. I'd swear he was honest. Yet people will swear that confident men are honest.”

”I think,” Kate said, ”that we'll a.s.sume he's honest. At least until we have any reason to doubt it. There has to be a constant in every equation-up to now we've had only variables. I think we'll put Messenger in as the constant, and then see what X turns out to equal. Jerry, would you mind awfully much just hanging around? I think I may send you to Michigan. The trouble is, if you want to know, we have been approaching this whole problem with fettered imaginations.”

She began to pace up and down the room. Jerry groaned.

Seventeen.

IT had been Thursday morning when Kate had spoken to Jerry. It was now Friday evening. Kate had that day again asked someone to take her lectures. She faced Reed, who sat on her couch, his legs stretched out before him.

”I don't know if I can tell you what happened, properly, from the beginning,” she said, ”but I can tell you where I began yesterday morning. I began with an idle joke, from one doctor to another, months ago. I began with a dated photograph. I began with one of the great modern novels, and a scene in it, indelibly impressed on the mind of a man because it recalled to him a vital moment of his childhood. I began with a punning a.s.sociation in a dream, an a.s.sociation not of love or infatuation, but hate or fear. I began also with an old lady, and the wilds of Canada.

”I had decided to believe Messenger-you read Jerry's report just now. Messenger said Barrister wasn't capable of murder, and while that statement might be doubted, I decided not, for the moment, to doubt it.

”There were a few other facts whirling around also. A suit for malpractice. Sparks, who never forgets a face. Nicola, and her willingness to tell a sympathetic listener, or even an unsympathetic one, almost anything he may want to know about her life. A window cleaner, who turned out never to exist, but who suggested to me the ease with which anyone, with access to the court outside Emanuel's office and kitchen, could study those rooms. My visits to see Emanuel and Nicola, in the good old days before the crime. A question put to me, *Professor Fansler, do you know a good psychiatrist?'

”These were all whirling around, as I say, but suddenly on Thursday morning they seemed to fall into place. I then did, or caused to be done, three things.

”The first involved Nicola. I called her up, and urged her to get herself, as subtly as possible, into a conversation with Barrister. This wasn't hard for Nicola. She simply appeared at his office door after his patients had departed, reminded him that he had said he was eager to do what he could to help, and announced that what she needed was someone to talk to. When I was a kid, we used to play a game I thought rather silly. One person would be given, on a slip of paper, a ridiculous phrase, such as *My father plays piano with his toes.' The point was to tell a story to your opponent, who, of course, had not seen the slip of paper, and to work your ridiculous sentence into it. Naturally, what you did was to tell a story full of outrageous statements, since your opponent had three challenges to discover which was the one on the slip of paper. Of course, the opponent almost never got it, because all the statements you made were as outrageous as *My father plays piano with his toes.' This, in effect, was what Nicola had to do. I wanted to know Barrister's opinion of D. H. Lawrence, particularly of The Rainbow, and particularly of one incident in The Rainbow. Nicola had reread the appropriate section of the novel-fortunately, it came in the first seventy-five pages. She had to introduce this, however, along with lots of other literary discussion, so that it would not stand out from the surrounding material.

”Nicola did it beautifully.

”The second thing I *did' was done by Nicola also. She fluttered, in her delightful way, around Barrister's office, and managed to discover, partly by asking him, but mostly by telling him-you miss a lot by not knowing Nicola's style-a bit of his routine.

”The third thing cost money. I sent Jerry out to a little town called Bangor, Michigan. He's on his way back now, but I spoke to him on the phone last night. Jerry had quite a time. He was looking for an old lady, but she was dead. Fortunately, it's a small town, and he managed to find the people the old lady had lived with before she died. They weren't related to her; she paid them for her room and meals, and for her care. This arrangement had been made by Michael Barrister, who, of course, comes from Bangor, Michigan.

”It was Michael Barrister who supported the old lady; it was not a great amount of money he paid to the couple in whose house she lived, and as she grew older, and needed more care, he increased the amount. When she died, Michael Barrister made a quite suitable gift of money to the people who had cared for her over the years, and had given her, I suppose, the kind of affection that can't be bought.

”All this was straightforward enough, but I was after something else, and Jerry, with his boyish charm, managed to get it. He asked if the checks had ever stopped. After this build-up, you may perhaps not be overcome with astonishment to hear that they had. Barrister had sent a check every month, all through college, medical school, his interns.h.i.+p, and his residency. Then they stopped.

”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 a.s.sumed 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sed 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 ident.i.ty.

”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.