Who Killed Mr. Garland's Mistress? by Richard; Forrest

on him. Unsaid were the sharp cutting comments she’d planned. After the call she’d gone to Oliver’s house.
    Her confessional was not a vaulted cavernous cathedral, but a book-lined study where orange pekoe tea was served while she sat in a pleasant-smelling leather chair. Outside the day was a colorless drizzle, while the lamp on Oliver’s desk cast a warm glow over them. After Will’s call she had retreated there to tell Oliver of the Springfield trip and the episode in the car.
    â€œYou’re not going to tell Rob?” Oliver asked.
    â€œNo,” she replied. “He’d consider it a retaliatory act on my part and righteously forgive me. It wasn’t that, at least I don’t think it was.”
    â€œI’m glad you’re going away. Hopefully, by the time you return, Helen will have disappeared to wherever such people go. She won’t persist indefinitely, you know.”
    â€œWhat’s happening to me, Oliver? My whole life has always been orderly, now everything is turned upside down—I don’t even feel like me anymore.”
    â€œI read an article last week about mental illness in the various professions. Contrary to my past beliefs, English teachers were not at the top of the list. The highest rate of suicide and mental breakdown in our society is among our psychiatrists. Not because sicker people go into that profession, but because in every doctor’s life there’s one particular patient, one group of patients, who transcend the therapeutic situation and become a part of the therapist.”
    â€œTransference.”
    â€œYes. A necessary ingredient for therapy, and fraught with danger if one is not careful. Look what’s happening to you, for days you’ve immersed yourself in another person’s illness … assuming part of that illness yourself.”
    â€œI’ve never met her.”
    â€œThere’s a little of the demonic Helen in all of us—the ancients would say that you’ve released a vase of evil. That’s what Helen is, you know. An amoral person who will, at any cost, satisfy herself.”
    â€œYou’re beginning to sound like Will.”
    â€œNot quite so perverted, I hope. He’s seen so many of those people that he’s begun to think the whole world is populated with them.”
    â€œIf there is an incarnate evil we would all have the seeds—there’d be that potential in all of us.”
    â€œIn that respect I agree with Haversham. Most of us have been able to control and temper it.”
    â€œI can’t believe that, Oliver. I listen when Will says it, but not from you.”
    â€œLook what men do in war.”
    â€œThat’s mass insanity.”
    â€œWe must enjoy it, we do it so often.”
    â€œThen we’re all insane.”
    â€œThat’s a contradiction in terms. Let’s say that all of us bear the potential of psychosis … we have to consciously fight against succumbing.”
    She laughed, “Even you and I?”
    â€œEveryone.”
    After dinner Rob and Tavie sat at a small table on the hotel’s open porch. A benign ocean breeze intertwined with the soft ballads of the guitarist. The small brandy snifters reflected the gas lamps on the porch railings as inconspicuous waiters walked efficiently between the tables. Contentment fused into the setting and Tavie felt that she had never experienced a more perfect evening.
    Something Oliver had said gnawed at her and she put her hand on Rob’s. “Rob, while you were in the service—you never hurt anyone.”
    â€œNo. Remember, I was too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam. What kind of question is that?”
    â€œBut you would have?”
    â€œI don’t know. At the time I was young. Running around the countryside shooting blanks at fake enemies seemed an extension of children’s games. A kid’s game that got boring. I think a lot of us wondered what