Free In the Last Analysis by Amanda Cross Page B

any idiotic questions that I want to ask.”
    “I promise to cooperate in your gallant attempt to save me from disaster. But you know, my dear, speaking of the obvious, the police have quite a case.”
    “They don’t know you; that’s the advantage I have over them. They don’t know the sort you are.”
    “Or the sort Nicola is?”
    “No,” Kate said. “Not that either. It’ll come out all right; you’ll see.”
    She felt, nonetheless, as she stood indecisively in the hall, like a knight who has set off to slay the dragon but has neglected to ask in what part of the world the dragon may be found. It was all very well to decide upon action, but what action, after all, was she to take? As was her habit, she extracted notebook and pen and began to make a list: see Janet Harrison’s room, and talk to people who knew her in dormitory; find out about ten and twelve o’clock patients; find out who person in picture Janet Harrison had was (lists always had a devastating effect on Kate’s syntax).
    “I’m sorry to intrude. Is Mrs. Bauer in?” Kate, who had been writing with the notebook balanced against her purse, dropped notebook, pen, and purse. The man stooped with her to help her retrieve the articles, and as they straightened up Kate became aware of that peculiar quality of masculine beauty to which no woman can help reacting, however superficially. It did not really attract Kate, yet she felt herself become somehow more girlish in its presence. She remembered once having met at a dinner party abeautiful, modest young Swedish man. He had perfect manners, there was not anything even suggestive of flirtation in his manner, yet Kate had been horrified to notice that every woman in the room seemed aware of him; her horror had turned to amusement as later, when he had spoken to her, she had found herself simpering.
    This man was not that young; his hair was flecked with gray at the temples. “You’re Dr. Barrister, aren’t you?” Kate said. With difficulty she kept herself from adding, “our favorite suspect.” “I’m Kate Fansler, a friend of Mrs. Bauer’s; I’ll call her.”
    As Kate walked to the back of the apartment for Nicola, she realized how great, in fact, was the connection between appearance and reality. Considered in the abstract, good looks seemed sinister; yet, in the presence of good looks, Kate found them innocent. It was, of course, no accident that in Western literature, certainly in Western folklore, beauty and innocence were usually joined.
    The three of them ended by standing, on this patientless day, in the living room. Not that Nicola had asked them to sit down; it was not so much that Nicola ignored the social amenities—she seemed never to have known that they existed.
    “I stopped in to see how you were bearing up,” Dr. Barrister said to Nicola. “I know there’s nothing I can do, but I find it difficult to resist the impulse to be neighborly, even in New York where neighbors are not supposed to know one another.”
    “Aren’t you from New York?” Kate asked, to say something.
    “Are any New Yorkers?” he asked.
    “I am,” said Nicola, “and my father before me.
His
father, however, came from Cincinnati. Where are you from?”
    “One of those highbrow critics has discovered, I understand, a new sort of novel about the young man from the provinces. I was a young man from the provinces. But you haven’t told me how it’s all going.”
    “Emanuel has had to call off the patients for today. We hope in a day or two he can get back to having patients.”
    “I hope so too. Do let me know, won’t you, if there’s anything I can do? I’m full of good will, but rather lacking in ideas.”
    “I know,” Nicola said. “For a death in the family or illness, one sends flowers or food. In this case I suppose all you can do is to keep telling everyone that Emanuel and I didn’t do it. Kate is full of ideas and is going to find the murderer.” Dr. Barrister looked at Kate