In the Last Analysis Read Free Page B

murderer had been seen. Yet in fact she doubted it. And if he or she had been seen, he or she had probably looked like a quite ordinary tenant, or visitor, or patient, and was therefore quite unmemorable, in fact invisible.
    Kate found Nicola stretched out on her bed in the back of the apartment. Kate had walked in unnoticed by anyone except the policeman in the hall, a fact which depressed her still further, though whether she was upset by the ease of her intrusion or the presence of the policeman she could not have said. Nicola was usually to be found in the back. The Bauer living room, visible from the foyer through which the patients passed, was not used during the day or the early hours of the evening when Emanuel had patients. Great care, in fact, as all Nicola’s friends knew, was taken to make sure that the patients saw no one inEmanuel’s household. And even the boys had become expert at dodging back and forth between the bedroom part of the apartment and the kitchen without meeting a patient.
    “Is Emanuel working?” Kate asked.
    “Yes. They’ve let him have the office again, though of course it will be in the papers, and whether the patients will come back, or what they will think if they do, I can’t imagine. I suppose actually it will bring up all sorts of fascinating material, if they care to talk about it; but it is
not
the best thing for transference during an analysis, at least not for
positive
transference, to have one’s analyst’s office the scene of a murder, with the analyst himself as the chief suspect. I mean, patients may have fantasies about being attacked on an analyst’s couch—I’m sure most of them do—but it is best
not
to have someone actually stabbed there.”
    Nothing, Kate noticed thankfully, nothing could stop the flow of Nicola’s talk. Except when she talked about her children (and the only way to keep from being boring on that subject, Kate believed, was to avoid it), Nicola was never dull, partly because her talk came from a joy in life that was more than egocentricity, and partly because she not only talked, she listened, listened and cared. Kate often thought that Emanuel had married Nicki largely because her language, flowing over him in waves, catching up every imaginable, every unprofound subject, buoyed him up despite the heaviness of his own mind. For the only thing which drove Emanuel eagerly to talk was an abstract idea, and, oddly, this anomaly suited them. Like most male followers of Freud, like Freud himself, if it came to that, Emanual needed and sought the company of intellectual women but avoided any contractual alliance with them.
    “And, of course,” Nicki went on, “patients shouldn’t know
anything
about their analyst, personally, and even if the police do their best—as they have promised—the papers are bound to print that he has a wife and two children, let alone is suspected of stabbing a patient on the couch, and I can’t imagine how we shall ever recover from this, even if Emanuel isn’t sent to jail, though they could doubtless use a brilliant psychoanalyst in jail, but if Emanuel had wanted to study the criminal mind he would have gone in for that in the first place. Perhaps if he
had
, he could figure out who did it. I keep telling him it
must
have been one of his patients, and he keeps saying, ‘Let’s not discuss it, Nicola,’ and I’m not supposed to talk to anyone really, except perhaps Mother, who wants to rally round, but insists on looking so
brave
. Emanuel has said I can talk to you because you know how to keep your mouth shut, and you’ll be a good outlet. For me, I mean.”
    “Let me get you some sherry,” Kate said.
    “Now, don’t start being sensible, or I shall scream. Pandora is being sensible with the boys; of course I am too, but I just want someone who will sit down with me and
wail.”
    “I am not being sensible, merely selfish. I could use a drink myself. In the kitchen? All right, stay there, I’ll get it;