by Amanda Cross
And Kate had promised that it was.
Inviting Jerry and the Bauers to wait for Reed had been her own idea. They had discussed the case from every angle, up to and including what Kate now called her venture into “once upon a time.” She told them of her bargain. She told them Reed would be late. And as the night wore on, she fed them coffee, which they drank, and sandwiches, which they did not eat. After a while, they could think of nothing more to say, and they fell silent. So silent that they heard the elevator and Reed’s steps. Kate was at the door almost before Reed’s hand was off the bell.
For the first time Reed met Emanuel, Nicola, and Jerry. He shook the hand of each, and asked for a cup of coffee.
“I take it,” he said, “that you all know what I was up to tonight. There are many ways the police use to break into an apartment. For example, they disconnect the lights in a house. The tenants rush out into the hall to see what the trouble is, and the police slip in through the open door. Once the police are inside, very few people will forcibly evict them. That scheme occurred to me, but I abandoned it for various reasons: Barrister lives in a new and elegant house on First Avenue; throwing the switch there would not be easy; more important, we wanted him undressed. That meant waiting until he had gone to bed, in which state he was unlikely to notice that the lights were out. We might simply have woken him and said we were inspecting a gas leak, but in that case it might be difficult to get him out of his bathrobe and pajamas. Therefore, I hit on the scheme of waiting till he had gone to bed, ringing the bell until he opened the door, and then demanding that he accompany us to headquarters for questioning. It was undoubtedly an odd hour to question someone, and we were prepared for indignation, but, of course, nothing ventured, nothing gained. So, a little after midnight, we went to call on Dr. Michael Barrister.”
“Who is ‘we’?” Jerry asked.
“ ‘We’ is your humble servant and a uniformed policeman. Uniforms are very useful for convincing people that one is, in fact, the police. Also, they generate a certain atmosphere of emergency which I was eager to have generated. The policeman who came with me did so as a favor. If I succeeded in my errand, as I told him, he would come in for a good deal of commendation; he might even be promoted. If I failed, I promised to see that none of the onus rested on him. I wanted him there, atmosphere apart, to have a witness as yet unconnected with this case. I was afraid that my connection with certain aspects of it”—he glanced at Kate—“should I be called upon to testify, might, in certain hands, be capable of misinterpretation.
“We succeeded in rousing Dr. Barrister from bed. He was, as I feared, wearing pajamas. He had, in addition, thrown on a bathrobe. Had he slept in the nude, and opened the door that way, we would simply have engaged him in conversation, one in front, one in back. As it was, we had to ask him to dress and come down with us to ‘Headquarters.’ There is, actually, no such place as ‘Headquarters,’ but I wanted to be both as ominous and as vague as possible. After much shouting and threatening, and references to important men who were, I gather, the husbands of his patients, he consented to get dressed. He said he wanted to call a lawyer, and I told him he would be allowed one call from ‘Headquarters,’ according to regulations, may the blessed saints forgive me! Finally, he agreed to get dressed, but protested anew when the policeman followed him into the bedroom. I explained that this, too, was regulations, to be certain that he did not telephone or injure himself, or conceal a weapon, or hide anything. He flung into the bedroom, purple with rage, closely followed by the policeman, who had been carefully instructed by me. I had originally thought of telling the policeman to examine Barrister’s shoes, but I abandoned the idea. We were going to succeed or fail in this outrageous enterprise depending on the scar, and it seemed as well to concentrate on that.
“The policeman followed his instructions well. Barrister flung off his bathrobe and pajamas, and as he bent over slightly to pull on his underpants, the policeman stepped up for a good look. His instructions, had he any doubt of what he saw, were to trip, falling on Barrister, to examine Barrister’s back more closely, and then apologize. This might have been necessary had Barrister turned out to be an exceedingly hairy man; when skin is covered with hair, it is difficult to determine if it is scarred or not. But Barrister wasn’t hairy.
“Needless to say, I waited for Barrister and the policeman as I suppose expectant fathers wait for doctors. The two of them came out of the room together, and the three of us went downtown. Eventually we aroused the D.A., who said it was time someone dug up some blasphemous evidence in this unprintable case.”
Kate and Emanuel had risen to their feet. Nicola simply stared. It was Jerry who spoke.
“There wasn’t any scar,” he said.
“What have I been telling you?” Reed said. “No scar. He was examined again downtown. No sign of any spinal fusion. But the policeman put it best. ‘Neatest bit of back I ever saw in my life.’ he said. ‘Not a mark on it.’ ”
Epilogue
SIX weeks later Kate sailed for Europe. There was no one to see her off, at her own request. She disliked bon voyage parties, preferring rather to lean on the deck rail waiting for Manhattan to slip away. She had a cabin to herself, second class, ample work to do, and the prospect of a pleasant and productive summer.
The evening newspapers, six weeks before, given the story by Reed (who liked to keep reporters on his side), had blazoned forth the headlines: “New Suspect in Case of Girl on Couch.” The Times, picking up the news late, had put it more decorously. Emanuel and his patients settled back to the analysis of unconscious motives. The Psychiatric Institute made no comment—it never did—but Kate felt certain she could hear its collective sigh of relief echoing in the night.
Jerry had returned to driving a truck, and to Sarah, who was becoming somewhat restive with the lack of attention. He had refused a bonus. Kate had pointed out that it was part of their original agreement, verbal but no less binding for that, but Jerry, adamant, had taken only his salary. Kate put the amount of the bonus in a bank, intending to allow it to collect interest until it should be withdrawn as a wedding present.
As the ship came abreast of Brooklyn, a view which Kate found productive of nothing but thoughts concerning human decadence, she went below. She walked through one of the lounges and was astonished to discover Reed, sitting in a chair, looking as though he had grown there. She stared at him.
“I,” Reed said, “am going to Europe.”
“Well,” Kate said, “I’m relieved to hear you know it. I thought perhaps you imagined yourself in the lobby of the Plaza. Are you on vacation?”
“Vacation and leave. I decided to come at the last minute, and have to share a cabin with two young men who make up in vigor what they lack in virtue, but at least I am here. Protection.”
“Who are you protecting?”
“Whom. For an English teacher, you do have more trouble with your pronouns. I wanted to protect you, so to speak, in the quarantine period, to be sure the fever was gone.”
“What fever?”
“Detective fever. I’ve known a few people with cases like yours. They invariably sail for Europe and trip over a body on their way to the shower. It was simply no good expecting myself to sit in New York, imagining you following clues and dropping literary allusions.”
Kate fell into the chair beside him. Reed smiled, and then raised his arm to beckon a passing steward.
“Two brandies, please.”