In the Last Analysis by Amanda Cross Read Free Book Online Page B

sinner in hell. All right, all right, don’t argue with me yet; I’ll give you the facts, and then you can tell me what a lovely soul he has, and who the real criminal is, if any.”
    “Reed! Is there a chance she could have done it herself?”
    “Not a chance, really, though I’ll admit a good defense lawyer might make something of the idea in court, just to confuse the minds of the jury. People who thrust a knife deep into their innards don’t thrust upward, and certainly don’t do it on their backs; they throw themselves on the blade, like Dido. If they do thrust a knife into themselves, they bare that portion of their body—don’t ask me why, they always do, or so it says in the textbook—and, a less debatable point, they inevitably leave fingerprints on the knife.”
    “Perhaps she was wearing gloves.”
    “Then she removed them after death.”
    “Maybe someone else removed them.”
    “Kate, dear, I think I had better make you a drink; possibly you should take it with several tranquilizers. They are said, together with alcohol, to have a stultifying effect on one’s reactions. Shall we stick for the moment to the facts?” Kate, fetching herself the drink and a cigarette, but not the tranquilizers, nodded obediently. “Good. She was killed between ten of eleven, when the ten o’clock patient left, and twelve thirty-five, when she was discovered by Mrs. Bauer, and the discovery noted, more or less, by Dr. Michael Barrister, Pandora Jackson, and Frederick Sparks, the twelve o’clock patient. The Medical Examiner won’t estimate the death any closer than that—they never estimate closer than within two hours—but he has said, strictly unofficially, which means he won’t testify to it in court, that she was probably killed almost an hour before she was found. There was no external bleeding, because the hilt of the knife, where it joins the blade, pressed her clothing into the wound, preventing the escape of any blood. This is unfortunate, since a bloodstained criminal, with bloodstained clothes, is that much easier to find.” Reed’s voice was colorless and totally without emotion, like the voice of a stenographer reading back from notes. Kate was grateful to him.
    “She was killed,” he continued, “with a long, thin carving knife from the Bauer kitchen, one of a set that hangs in a wooden holder on the wall. The Bauers do not deny their ownership of the knife, which is just as well, since it bears both their fingerprints.” Involuntarily, Kate gasped. Reed paused to look at her. “I can see,” he said wryly, “that your ability to differentiate between sorts of evidence is not very developed. That’s the chief evidence on their side. Since every tot today knows about fingerprints, the chancesare that, using the knife as a weapon, they would have had the brains to remove them. Of course, a trained psychiatrist of admitted brilliance might have been smart enough to figure that the police would figure that way. Don’t interrupt. Dr. and Mrs. Bauer say their prints got on the knife the previous night when they had a small argument about how to carve a silver-tip roast, and both gave it a try. Being sensible people, they don’t submerge knives in water, but wipe off the blade with a damp cloth and then a dry one. The prints, if anything, are evidence in their favor, since they have been partially obliterated, as they might have been if someone had held the knife with gloves. This, however, is inconclusive.
    “Now we come to the more damning part. She was stabbed while she was lying down, according to the medical evidence, by someone who leaned over the end of the couch and over her head, and thrust the knife upward between her ribs. This seems, incidentally, to have been done by someone with a fairly developed knowledge of anatomy,
id est
, a doctor, but here again we are on shaky ground. This particular upward thrust of the knife from behind (though not with the victim lying down) was commonly