In the Last Analysis Read Online Free PDF Page A

for lunch, or go downtown, and don’t come home in the early afternoon at all. But yesterday, thank God—I suppose, thank God—I came home early. As I walked into the house, the twelve o’clock patient …”
    “Did you recognize him?”
    “No, of course not; I’d never seen him before. I mean, the man I later learned was the twelve o’clock patient stuck his head out the hall door and asked if the doctor was meeting his patients. It was twenty-five of one, and the doctor hadn’t come to call him in. Well, you know, Kate, that was extremely odd. Emanuel has never in his life stood up a patient. I knew he had had an eleven o’clock patient (Janet Harrison), and he never tries to dash out in the ten minutes between patients. I wondered what could have happened to him. Could he be in his office, feeling, for some reason, unable to meet a patient? I dialed his office phone from the telephone in the kitchen, and after three rings, the service answered, so I knew he wasn’t there, or wasn’t answering, and then I became worried. Meanwhile, I’d coaxed the patient back into the waitingroom. Of course, I was having all sorts of fantasies about his having had a heart attack in the office, or having been unable to get rid of the eleven o’clock patient—one does have the oddest fantasies at these times—Pandora was in the kitchen with the boys getting lunch, and I went and knocked on the office door. I knew the patient in the waiting room was aware of what I was doing, though he couldn’t see me, but I had to do something, and naturally, no one answered the knock, so I opened the door a bit and stuck my head in. She was right there on the couch, which is near the door; I couldn’t possibly miss seeing her. At first I thought, She’s fallen asleep, but then I saw the knife sticking out of her chest. And Emanuel nowhere to be found. I did have the presence of mind to close the office door and tell the patient he’d better go. He was curious, and clearly reluctant to leave a scene which he sensed was fraught with drama, but I ushered him out. I was extremely calm, as one often is right after a shock.”
    “And then you sent for the police?”
    “No. Actually I never thought of the police, not then.”
    “What
did
you do?”
    “I rushed into the office across the hall and got the doctor. He was very nice and came right away, even though he had an office full of patients. His name is Barrister, Michael Barrister. He told me she was dead.”

Three
    “D INNER seems to be served,” said Emanuel, coming into the bedroom. “Hello, Kate. Pandora has set a place for you. How that woman carries on like this, I don’t know, but she has never had any use for the police.”
    “You carry on fairly well yourself,” Kate said.
    “Today, after all, was still a bit of the old life for me. The patients didn’t know yet, at least not till the last one at six o’clock. He had an evening paper.”
    “Do the papers mention it?” Nicola asked.
    “Mention it! I’m afraid at the moment we
are
the news. Psychiatry, couches, female patients, male doctors, knives—one can scarcely blame them. Let’s say good night to the boys and have some dinner.”
    But it was not until dinner was over, and they were in the living room, that they talked again of the murder. Kate had half expected Emanuel to disappear, but he seemed towant to talk. Usually some inner need to “get something done,” to “make use of time,” either drove him from social occasions, or subjected him, if he remained, to the pressure of a mounting inner tension. Yet tonight, with a real problem looming, as it were, in the external world, Emanuel seemed, almost with thankfulness, to have relaxed in the contemplation of something beyond his control. The very externality of the murder gave him a kind of relief. Kate, recognizing this, knew the police would mistake his calm for some symptom, some indication of guilt, when in fact, if they only knew, it was the