by Amanda Cross
“You mean the whole story doesn’t strike you as utterly fantastic?”
“Well, you know, it doesn’t. The man I met in New York wasn’t a beer drinker. I don’t mean he told me that; we didn’t have a drink, but he didn’t look like a beer drinker. Mike didn’t like hard liquor, just beer and wine with meals. Still, tastes change. I’m afraid your Reed Amhearst would say we ought to go into business together as writers of science fiction. Maybe we should.”
“It’s a deal. You do the science, I’ll do the fiction. Reed would say I’m magnificently qualified. What I want now, Mr. Collaborator, is one fact. Like a strawberry mark on Mike’s shoulder. Mike wasn’t nearsighted, was he, or deaf in one ear?”
“I know what you want. I knew at that moment in your fairy tale when Mike met the stranger. But Mike wasn’t nearsighted, or deaf, or a monotone, or an opera singer. The only thing I can think of is that Mike could wiggle his ears, you know, without moving any other part of his head. But that wouldn’t do as evidence either. Besides, I’m told anyone can learn to do it, if he practices long enough. I have a lovely picture of your Dr. Barrister sitting at home, night after night, learning to wiggle his ears. You see, I’m rambling on, not being any use at all.”
“I told you a crazy story, yet you didn’t ring for the authorities and say, ‘Get this woman out of here.’ Believe me, that matters more than you know. Mike must have liked you enormously. Janet Harrison knew it; that’s why she left you her money. You know, there’s a nice crass motive I can hold out. If we can prove this tale, or get the police to prove it for us, you’ve got a much better claim to that money she left you.”
“Unfortunately, that will make my testimony all the more suspect. The trouble, you see, is that I knew Mike only a year, and we weren’t exactly Damon and Pythias. I don’t remember when he told me that bit about the Lawrence novel—probably I asked him about his family because he never mentioned having any. For the most part, he didn’t talk about himself. We discussed medicine, the advantages of different specialties—that sort of thing. Wait a minute, what about teeth?”
“I thought of teeth. I’m a reader of detective stories. The dentist in Bangor who looked after Mike’s teeth died long ago; Jerry couldn’t find any trace of his records. Probably the dentist who took over the practice from Mike’s dentist kept only the records that were active, and even he’s gone. It happens that I changed dentists about five years ago when the family dentist retired, and I called the dentist I go to now—you have no idea what a nuisance I’ve been making of myself—only to discover that all he has is the record of the work he’s done on my teeth. The dentist who retired sold his practice, but the dentist who bought it hasn’t kept records going back to the year one. The only dental record of me is of the work that’s been done in the past five years, and that isn’t much. Most of my fillings date back to my adolescence. You don’t happen to know, for instance, that Mike had all his wisdom teeth extracted. If we could prove that, and this Dr. Barrister turns out to have four very present wisdom teeth …”
Messenger shook his head. “At the time, of course, I wasn’t looking for anything. Being a resident is a very wearying and demanding business; often we weren’t home at the same time. I don’t even remember if Mike snored; I don’t know if I ever knew. As a matter of fact, I haven’t got a very good memory for personal things. My wife complains about this from time to time. I’m always complimenting her on hats she’s had three years. I remember looking at my wife one day, and thinking, You’re gray. But I hadn’t noticed it happening. I’m sorry. You’ve come all this way and …”
“I could have telephoned. I wanted to come. There’s a plane back this afternoon. I’ll even have time to go to the museum.”
“Why not come home to lunch with me? I’d like you to meet Anne. She’s the most sensible, down-to-earth human being in the world. Maybe she’ll think of something.”
Kate was glad to accept the invitation. They were a nice family. After lunch, Kate and the two Messengers sat in the backyard, as the Messengers called it, and Kate told her story once again. Anne was not, like Kate and Messenger, a dreamer. Her reaction was more like Reed’s. Yet as Kate was leaving, Anne said: “I’ll be honest, Kate; I think this story was just logical enough for you to believe it at first, and since nothing you knew absolutely contradicted it, you allowed yourself to become convinced. I don’t believe your story really happened. But it’s not impossible that it happened, and if Dan knows something that can prove it, we’ve got to dig that something out. I’m more systematic than he is about everything except genes. I’ll try to help him remember, in a systematic way. But please don’t hope too much.”
And Kate went to see the Man with the Blue Guitar.
She was home by ten o’clock. The trip from Kennedy Airport had taken almost as long as the flight from Chicago, longer if she counted her wait for luggage, but even so, she was glad she’d gone. Reed called at ten-thirty.
“I know I met you at a political club,” he said, “but I didn’t know you were planning to emulate a political candidate. Do you think you might stay put now, say, for twenty-four hours? Did you get anything? Well, hope springs eternal. I, though I have not been winging through the wild blue yonder, have not been idle. I have consulted Ear Expert. Ear Expert said picture we have is insufficient. Still, he’ll try. We have set a detective, posing as a street photographer, to get a picture of the ears of Dr. Michael Barrister. It also occurred to me that there was probably a picture of your Mike in his college yearbook—possibly with ears. Or there may be a picture of Mike among the old lady’s belongings, if we can find them. Ears don’t change, I was fascinated to hear. Even a boyhood picture might do. Not that it’s evidence, of course. The other side gets its own ear expert, who says ‘inconclusive.’ That’s the trouble with expert evidence—you can usually get plenty for both sides. But I’m trying. What was Messenger like?”
“I wish I’d met him years ago and persuaded him to marry me.”
“Oh, Lord, you are in a bad way. Shall I come and cheer you up? I can tell you about my lovely time with the grand jury. They decided the books we had gone to such great trouble to capture weren’t pornographic. I don’t know what the world’s coming to, as my mother used to say.”
“Thanks, Reed. I’m taking a grain and a half of Seconal and going to bed. Sorry about the trial.”
“Never mind. I’m thinking of giving up law and writing pornography.”
The ringing phone seemed to pull Kate up from depths far, far down in the ocean of oblivion. Frantically she fought her way to the surface. It was midnight.
“Yes,” she said.
“Dan Messenger. I’ve woken you. But I thought you’d want me to. We’ve got it. You can thank Anne. Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Anne told you she was systematic. She made lists, categories; we kept going over them. She started, in her logical way, with scars, though of course our present Barrister would have seen them too. I mean, if Mike had had his appendix out, this guy would go and get his appendix out. Always supposing he wanted to be that thorough. No bells went off when she mentioned scars, I’m ashamed to say, so we went on to other categories. Allergies, habits, times we’d gone out together. Are you still there?”
“God, yes!”
“Then she hit on one that seemed ridiculous; the category of clothes. One could hardly say this guy wasn’t Mike because he didn’t still have the old tweed jacket Mike cherished. Not that Mike did. I mean, I don’t remember any tweed jacket. I said I didn’t remember his clothes at all. We wore white almost all the time, including shoes. And then, you know, it came to me. Shoes. White shoes. I had only one pair—there wasn’t any money in those days, and I’d got huge holes in the sole. It was raining, and the hole in the shoe worked like a pump. My feet were soaked, and so were my only pair of white shoes, and I asked Mike, who was off duty, if I could borrow his. Our feet looked about the same size, and even if Mike’s didn’t fit to
o well, at least they were dry. He told me I could borrow them, but that I’d find them a little hard to walk with. I asked him why. ‘Because I wear a lift on one heel,” he said; ‘you probably haven’t noticed it, most people don’t. It’s only five-eighths of an inch, but to a man with legs the same length, it will feel as though you’re walking with one foot on the curb.’ Well, I tried them on—they were too small, in addition, and I didn’t wear them. Still there? Grunt once in a while, will you? It’s disconcerting with no sound at the other end, like talking into a stage phone. That’s better.
“I haven’t had much to do with orthopedics since medical school, but I think if a man once wore a lift, he would go on wearing it. Still, you’ll have to check that. The great point is, Mike did have a scar, though I never saw it. But if he had an operation we can find a record of it; there’s no problem about that. You’re going to have to check on all of this, though, with an orthopedist, and the police.
“Mike didn’t tell me about his scar at that time. I might have remembered it more readily if he had. Some months later Mike went back to the hospital when I knew he was off duty, and naturally I asked why. We didn’t hang around if we didn’t have to. He told me he wanted to watch a spinal fusion. He couldn’t stay the whole time; it’s a very long operation, sometimes eight hours. I think as an operation it’s so recent, comparatively speaking, because they didn’t have the proper anesthetic until recently. I asked him about the operation when he came back, and he said it wasn’t as neat a job as his. ‘My scar’s like a pencil line,’ he said. He told me he’d had a slipped disk, and they’d done the spinal fusion. The operation was successful enough, but when it was over he still had this terrible lower back pain. It was an old general practitioner in Bangor, he said, who cured it. I don’t mean the operation hadn’t been necessary—there was pressure on the nerve, the muscles in one leg were atrophying—but it was the old guy who cured the pain. He found out Mike’s legs weren’t the same length. There was seesaw motion in the pelvis. Mike had a lift put on his shoe, and that was it. So it’s over to you, lady. I don’t know how you’re going to get your Dr. Michael Barrister undressed, but when you do, remember, the scar isn’t that screamingly visible. I’ve found out this much for you: it runs up and down, over the lower vertebrae, for three to four inches. At some point, it loops out. That’s where they fold the skin back. You might start by noticing if our friend wears a lift on his shoe.
“But remember this—even if your story is true, the murderer may have noticed. He may have tried on Mike’s shoes. He may have looked the body over very carefully for scars, and found this one. If he wears a lift on one shoe—and though I’ve racked my brain, I can’t remember which—and if he’s got a scar, your story may still be true, but we’ll never, never prove it.”
When Messenger, roundly thanked, had rung off, Kate called Emanuel. He was not, it turned out, asleep. Never a good sleeper, he was now an insomniac.
“Emanuel. This is Kate. I want you to call up an orthopedist. Well, all right then, the first thing in the morning. I want to know if a man who wears a lift on his shoe because his legs are of uneven length would ever decide to do without the lift. And I want to know if the scar from a spinal fusion could ever disappear. No, I don’t want your opinion. I know you’re a doctor. Ask an orthopedist. And he better be sure enough to swear in court. Sleep well.”
Nineteen
SUNDAY night, or, more accurately, Monday morning at two A.M., there was a gathering at Kate’s house—whether it was a celebration or a wake depended upon a guest who was not yet there. Emanuel, Nicola, Jerry, and Kate were waiting for Reed. Kate had flirted momentarily with the thought of inviting Sparks and Horan, but Emanuel’s unwillingness to meet his patients socially argued against the idea, even if it had had anything else to recommend it.
Reed had worked like a yeoman since early Sunday morning. Emanuel had apparently aroused his orthopedist from sleep, and instead of asking him questions, had simply persuaded him to call Kate himself. Kate had in turn reported the conversation to Reed. “You know how doctors are,” she had said. “This one was just a shade this side of irritable, but I gather that for Emanuel’s sake he didn’t like to refuse to talk to me altogether. He probably thought I was writing a novel, and he answered my questions in the most long-winded, technical way possible. But then doctors are always indulging in either incoherence or oversimplification—if you want my opinion, I don’t think they even understand each other. However, I did manage to gather one or two things.”
“I don’t suppose,” Reed had answered, “you would care to tell me why you were interrogating an innocent orthopedist at such an ungodly hour Sunday morning?”
“I will tell you in time, and there is no such thing as an innocent orthopedist. They are all as rich as Rockefeller and as arrogant as swans. I know at least two, and am therefore able intelligently to generalize. Anyway, his information, much diluted, is this: Once someone has had a spinal fusion, he is marked for life as a man who has had a spinal fusion. That may sound a little obvious, but it was important to establish it. It’s a long operation—which I knew already—and sometimes involves two surgeons, one who works on the spine and disc, and one who works on the nerves. It is unlikely in the extreme that anyone who had been cured of a back pain by the use of a shoe lift would ever abandon its use. I know that’s not a sequitur, at least not yet, but just listen. What is a spinal fusion? Sorry, I forgot you laymen have such difficulty following a medical man. People get herniated, or get slipped discs—yes, I know they’re getting them all the time, even dachshunds get them. In other words, a piece of cartilage between two vertebrae slips out of place so that it is pressing on the nerves in the spinal column. In severe cases, there will be a numbness in one leg. The commonest way of dealing with a disc which continues thusly to slip is to remove it, and fuse the surrounding vertebrae together. The fusion is done by taking bone from another part of the body—nobody else’s bone will do, except an identical twin’s—grinding it up (all right, I’m almost finished; no, I did not call you up on Sunday morning solely to deliver a disgusting medical lecture), and placing it between the vertebrae to be fused. The vertebrae thus eventually grow together into one solid piece, and the patient is left with a scar over the fused vertebrae. Are you with me?
“Here, my long-suffering Reed, is the point. Mike Barrister—my Mike, you know, not the one now in the office across from Emanuel—had a spinal fusion; also, he wore a lift on one of his shoes because his legs were of unequal length. No, of course he wasn’t a freak. It’s immensely common. But unless there is an extreme difference in leg lengths (that’s rather hard to say) the person usually will compensate for it by an odd sort of rolling walk. However, once there is an injury to the back, the constant movement of the pelvis, because of the uneven length of the legs, causes acute discomfort.”
“Kate,” Reed had said, “are you trying to tell me, in your own way, which I must say has become exceedingly long-winded and full of unnecessary details, that Janet Harrison’s Mike had an operation? When?”
“That, my pet, is what you, please, are going to find out. He probably had it in Detroit, which is, isn’t it? the biggest city in Michigan; but that’s just a guess. The lift on the shoe you will have to take Messenger’s word for. Of course, if you’re going to continue to be stubborn, I can call hospitals myself …”
“All right, I’ll call the hospitals. Then what?”
“Then, my boy, we’ve got to get Dr. Michael Barrister undressed. I would hate to tell you some of the schemes that have been rushing through my fevered brain. I don’t suppose you could get a search warrant.”
“A search warrant is to examine premises, not persons, and I’ll let you in on a horrible secret. You’d be surprised how few search warrants are ever issued. The head of the narcotics division testified the other day in court, and he admitted quite calmly that in thirty years his men had never obtained a search warrant. Citizens are, unhappily, but fortunately
for the police, remarkably unaware of their rights. The police have a number of tricks for getting where they want, of which plain bullying is the chief.”
“If I could only get in there when he was taking a shower.”
“Kate, I’m not even going to listen to you for one more minute unless you promise, your solemn word-of-honor-hope-to-die, that you will not attempt to undress Barrister, see him undressed, lead him into any situation where he is likely to get undressed, or in any way involve …”
“Will you help, if I promise?”
“I won’t even continue this conversation until you promise. I want your word. All right. Now let me call hospitals. They will tell me none of their clerks works on Sundays. No one works on Sundays, except you and your friends. I will then threaten and cajole. But we may have to wait, even so. I don’t know to what degree the New York Police Department is willing to flex its muscles. Now, stop evolving schemes. I’ll call if and when I get any news. And remember your promise.”
Kate had had to wait until the afternoon, when Reed called again. “Well,” he had said then, “I will not tell you what I have been through. I’ll save the details till we are old and gray, and our brains have room only for memories. We have established the operation. Now, if I follow you correctly, you want to discover if Emanuel’s neighbor, Dr. Michael Barrister, has had an operation for a spinal fusion and if he wears a lift on the heel of one of his shoes.”
“You follow me perfectly.”
“Good. Now here’s a bargain; take it or leave it. I understand your feeling for Emanuel, the importance of this case to psychiatry’s popular reputation, etcetera, etcetera, but I still don’t like what this case is doing to you. You are giving up your work in the library, cutting classes, spending money like a drunken sailor, taking sleeping pills, flying all over the United States in a most abandoned manner, getting long-winded, and leading young men astray. All this has got to stop. Therefore my bargain. I will tonight discover for you, provided Dr. Michael Barrister spends tonight at home, whether or not he has the scar from an operation, whether or not there is a lift on all his right shoes, or all his left shoes. If there is no scar, and no lift, I think the police will be very interested. We have, after all, established the operation. In other words, I’ll admit this is your piece of evidence, and we’ll look at Barrister much more closely, as a man with opportunity, means, and motive. But, here’s your side of the bargain. If Dr. Michael Barrister has a scar over any of his lower vertebrae, whether or not he has lifts on his shoes—for we haven’t got any decent evidence that your Mike had lifts on his shoes (don’t argue with me, I haven’t finished)—if Dr. Michael Barrister has such a scar, then you agree to ignore this case, stop hiring Jerry, go back to your work. In short, you promise generally to return to your wonted ways. Is it a bargain? Never mind how I intend to undress Barrister; we’ll discuss that after I’ve done it. Is it a bargain?”