The Interpretation of Murder

Part 5
Chapter Twenty-one

Littlemore worked the lock while I stood behind him. It must have been about two in the morning. My job was to keep a lookout, but I could see nothing in the blackness. Nor could I hear anything over the mechanical roar that drowned out all other sound. I found myself looking instead at the canopy of stars above us.

He had it open in less than a minute. The elevator car was unexpectedly large. Littlemore pulled the door to, and we were enclosed in the dimly lit cabin. Two gas flames threw enough light to allow Littlemore to work the operating lever. With a lurch, the detective and I began our slow descent to the caisson.

'You sure you're okay?' Littlemore asked me. One of the two blue flames was reflected in his eyes — and the other in mine, I suppose. Nothing else was visible. The booming engines above us kept up a deep steady beat, as if we were making our way down the aortic artery of a gigantic bloodstream. 'It's not too late. We could still turn back.'

'You're right,' I said. 'Let's go back.'

The elevator jerked to a halt. 'You mean it?' Littlemore asked.

'No. I was joking. Come on, take us down.'

'Thanks,' he said.

He reminded me of someone, Littlemore, but I couldn't think whom. Then I remembered: when I was a child, my parents took us to the country every summer — not Aunt Mamie's 'cottage' in Newport, but a real cottage of our own near Springfield, with no running water. I loved that little house. I had a best friend there, Tommy Nolan, who lived year-round on a nearby farm. Tommy and I used to walk for miles and miles along the wooden fences that separated the farms from one another. I hadn't thought of Tommy for a long time.

'What do you think the mayor will do to you when he finds out?' I asked.

'Fire me,' said Littlemore. 'You feel that in your ears? Pinch your nose and blow out. That's how you clear. My dad taught me.'

I had a different trick. Among the many useless skills I possess is the knack for controlling by will the inner ear muscles that open the eustachian tubes. The pace of the elevator was agonizingly slow. We were barely moving at all. 'How long to get down?' I asked.

'Five minutes, the guy told me,' said the detective. 'Dad could stay underwater better than two minutes.'

'Sounds like you got on with him.'

'My dad? Still do. Best man I know.'

'How about your mother?'

'Best woman,' said Littlemore. 'I'd do anything for her. Boy, I used to think if I could only find a girl like Mom, I'd marry her in a heartbeat.'

'Funny you should say that.'

'Until I met Betty,' Littlemore said. 'She was Miss Riverford's maid. First time I ever saw her was — what, three days ago? — and right away I'm crazy about her. Crazy crazy. She's nothing like Mom. Italian. Kind of hot-tempered, I guess. She gave me a whack last night I can still feel.'

'She hit you?'

'Yeah. Thought I was messing around,' said the detective. 'Three days, and already I can't mess around. Can you top that?'

'Maybe. Miss Acton hit me with a steaming teapot yesterday.'

'Ouch,' said Littlemore. 'I saw the saucer on her floor.'

A whistling noise commenced inside the car, as the elevator displaced air in the shaft. The booming of the engines on the surface was now more distant — a dull throbbing, more sensible than audible.

'I had a girl patient a long time ago,' I said. 'She told me — she told me — she wanted to have sex with her father.'

'What?'

'You heard me,' I said.

'That's disgusting.'

'Isn't it?'

'That's about the most disgusting thing I ever heard,' said the detective.

'Well, I — '

'Katie bar the door.'

'All right.' My voice came out much louder than I intended; the echo rang interminably in the elevator cabin. 'Sorry,' I said.

'No problem. It was my fault,' Littlemore replied, although it wasn't.

It would have been inconceivable for my father to snap like that. He never revealed what he felt. My father lived by a simple principle: never willingly show pain. For a long time I thought pain must have been the only thing he felt — because if there had been anything else, I reasoned, he could have expressed it without violating his principle. Only later did I understand. All feeling is painful, one way or another. The most exquisite joy is a sting to the heart, and love — love is a crisis of the soul. Therefore, given his principles, my father couldn't show any of his feelings. Not only couldn't he show what he felt, he couldn't show that he felt.

My mother hated his uncommunicative nature — she says it killed him in the end — but it was, oddly enough, the thing about him I admired most. On the night he took his own life, his comportment at dinner was no different from what it had ever been. I too dissemble, every day of my life, reenacting by half my father's principle, although I don't play the half of him half so well as he. Long ago I made up my mind: I would speak what I feel, but never in any other way display emotion. That's what I mean by half. Truth to tell, I don't really believe in expressing one's feelings other than through language. All other kinds of expression are forms of acting. They're all show. They are all seeming.

Hamlet says something similar. It's practically the first thing he says in the play. His mother has asked him why he still seems so downcast by his father's death. 'Seems, madam?' he replies. 'I know not "seems."' He then deprecates all outward expressions of grief: the 'inky cloak' and 'customary suits of solemn black,' the 'fruitful river in the eye.' These displays, he says, 'indeed seem, for they are actions that a man might play — '

'My God!' I said in the dark. 'My God. I've got it.'

'Me too!' Littlemore exclaimed, just as eagerly. 'I know how he killed Elizabeth Riverford, even though he was out of town. Banwell, I mean. She was with him. Nobody else knew. The mayor didn't know. Banwell kills her wherever they were — okay? — then he brings her body back to her apartment, ties her up, and makes it look like the murder happened there. I can't believe I didn't get it before. Is that what you were thinking?'

'No.'

'No? What was yours, Doc?'

'Never mind,' I said. 'Just something I've been thinking about for a long time.'

'What was it?'

Inexplicably, I decided to try to tell him. 'You've heard of "To be, or not to be"?'

'As in "that is the question"?'

'Yes.'

'Shakespeare. Everybody knows that,' said Littlemore. 'What's it mean? I always wanted to know.'

'That's what I just figured out.'

'Life or death, right? He's going to kill himself or something?'

'That's what everyone has always thought,' I said. 'But that's not it — at all.'

It had come to me in a single instant: whole, allilluminating, like the sun breaking out after a storm. Just then, however, the elevator reached the end of its descent, jolting to a halt. There was an air lock we had to negotiate. Littlemore knelt down to turn the pressure cocks, which were near the floor. Powerful jets of air poured in through them. The smell was peculiar: dry and musty at the same time. The air pressure became unbearable. My head began to pound. My eyes felt as though they were pressing into my brain. The detective was apparently suffering the same symptoms; he blew furiously from his nose, which he was simultaneously squeezing shut. I was afraid he was going to burst an eardrum. But he managed eventually, as I did, to become acclimated to the pressure. We opened the door to the caisson.

Nora Acton rose from her bed at two-thirty that morning, unmolested but unable to sleep. Through her window, she could see the policeman patrolling the sidewalk. There were three in all tonight: one in front, one in back, and one stationed on the roof, who came on when night fell.

By candlelight, Nora composed a short letter, set down in her neat hand on a piece of white stationery. This she sealed in a little envelope, which she addressed and stamped. Then she stole downstairs and slipped the envelope through the front door mail slot, whence it dropped into the box outside. The mail came twice a day. The postman would pick up her letter before seven that morning; it would be delivered well before noon.

I had no idea how enormous it would be. Blue gas flames dotted the caisson's walls, casting webs of flickering light and shadow into the rafters above and the puddled floor below. From the elevator, we climbed down a steep ramp. Littlemore had a hard time of it, grimacing every time he had to put weight on his right leg. We were at the hub of a half dozen wooden plank walkways, leading out in all directions. Room after room could be seen in the distance.

'How long we got, Doc?' asked Littlemore.

'Twenty minutes,' I said. 'After that, we have to decompress on the way up.'

'Okay. It's Window Five we want. The numbers should be on them. Let's split up.'

The detective set off, limping badly, in one direction, I in another. At first all was silence, an eerie and cavernous silence, punctuated only by echoing drips of water and Littlemore's uneven receding footfalls. Then I became conscious of a deep bass rumble, like the growl of some enormous beast. It was coming, I think, from the river itself: the sound of deep water.

The caisson was strangely empty. I had expected machines, drills — signs of work and excavation. Instead there was only the occasional crowbar and broken shovel, lying abandoned among scattered boulders and pools of dark water. I passed into a large chamber, but it must have been an internal one, for I saw none of the debris chutes Littlemore called windows. A plank broke under my shoe as I stepped on it. The crunch was followed by what sounded like scurrying. Could there be mice down here, a hundred feet below the earths surface?

The scurrying ceased so abruptly I wasn't sure if it had been real or in my head. I passed through to another chamber, as empty as the last. My walkway came to an end. I had now to step through puddles of water on the muddy ground, each splash amplified by echoes. In the next room, a series of three large steel plates a couple of feet up from the floor lined the farthest wall; I had found the windows. An array of chains, pull cords of some kind, hung beside and between them. The first had the number seven etched on it. The next had a six. As I bent to look at the last, a hand seized my shoulder.

'We found it, Doc,' said the detective.

'Christ, Littlemore,' I said.

He unlatched the plate numbered five and pulled up on its handle. It rose like a curtain, disappearing into the wooden wall above it. Inside was a coffin-sized space, two feet high and six feet wide, iron-clad on every side, littered with stones, rags, and rubble. The far wall of the compartment was clearly an outer hatch, giving out onto the river: one of the pull chains would doubtless open it 'There's nothing here,' I said.

'Not supposed to be,' answered Littlemore. With considerable difficulty, he sat down and began taking off his shoes. 'Okay, soon as I'm inside, you close the window and flush it. You give me one minute, Doc, exactly one minute, then — '

'Wait — you're not going in the water?'

'I sure am,' he said, rolling up his trouser legs. 'Her body's right outside the outer hatch. Got to be. I'm going to pull her back in. Then you'll pop me out, and we'll be home free.'

'With your leg?'

'I'm okay.'

'You can barely walk,' I said. Swimming by itself would have been painful for him, given the condition of his leg — I feared a hairline fracture — but wrestling with debris or a dead body underwater, a hundred feet down, was out of the question. A strong current would carry him off.

'Only way,' said Littlemore.

'No, it's not,' I said. 'I'm going.'

'Not on your life,' said the detective. He hunkered down to squeeze himself into the compartment, but he couldn't bend his right leg. He turned around and tried, vainly, to shimmy into the compartment backward. He looked at me helplessly.

'Oh, get out of there,' I said. 'You're the one who knows how to work this contraption anyway.'

Thus, astonishingly, a minute later, the person squeezed inside the window was myself, stripped to the waist, shoes and socks off too. I examined the compartment as closely as I could, knowing that in a moment I would be immersed in cold water. An iron handle stuck out from the ceiling. To this I held on tightly. Rubber tubes protruded from the walls. I told myself I would venture into the water for the shortest possible time. After sixty seconds, Littlemore would reopen the window from the inside. I strongly suspected I would find no corpse to haul back in. Littlemore's theory now seemed totally implausible. The window's plates were much too heavy and strong. I didn't see how a girl's body could possibly obstruct its operation.

Littlemore called out a final check. From behind me the inner hatch fell shut with a clang. The blackness was so total it was disorienting. Somehow I had managed not to realize I would be in the dark. The rumble from the river outside was much louder now, echoing inside my cell. I heard a thump on the wall, Littlemore s signal that he was about to open — or try to open — the outer hatch.

That instant, I felt a hideous misgiving: we should have tested the window first. We knew there was something wrong with it. What if Littlemore couldn't open the window again after I was turned out into the water? I banged my fist against the wall to make Littlemore stop. But either he didn't hear or he interpreted my signal as an affirmative response to his. For there came next a grating of chains and a sudden shock of impossibly cold water. The entire compartment inverted, and I was churned out, irresistibly, into the depths of the river.

Outside the wrought-iron fence enclosing Gramercy Park, a tall, dark-haired man stood in the shadows. It was three in the morning. The park was empty, sporadically illuminated by gas lamps scattered within it. Most of the surrounding houses were dark, although in one of them — the home of the Players Club — lights were shining and music playing. Calvary Church was black and silent, its steeple a mass of rising darkness.

The dark-haired man observed the police officer patrolling in front of the Actons' house. In the small circle of light thrown by a streetlamp, Carl Jung saw this officer converse with another policeman, who after several minutes walked away, turning a corner at an alley apparently leading to the back of the house. Jung considered his options. After several minutes, he turned around and, frustrated, returned to the Hotel Manhattan.

Littlemore had a sudden horrible thought. He had been told Window Five wasn't working right. A picture came to him of Younger underwater, pounding desperately on the hull of the caisson, eyes bulging, while he, Littlemore, stood within, jerking helplessly at the chains. What was he thinking not to have gone himself?

After exactly one minute, Littlemore manipulated the pulleys in rapid succession, righting the window and closing the outer hatch. The mechanism worked perfectly. He threw open the inner hatch. Gallons of water gushed out. This he expected. He did not, however, expect what he found inside the compartment: namely, nothing.

'Oh, no,' said Littlemore. 'Oh, no.'

He slammed the window shut, opened the outer hatch, counted off ten seconds, and then reversed the process. He flung open the window. More water: no Younger. In a mad rush, Littlemore did it all again, but now with a difference. He prayed. With all his heart and might, he prayed that he would find the doctor inside the window. 'Please, God,' he begged. 'Let him be there. Forget everything else. Just let him be there.'

For the third time, Littlemore threw open the steel plate of Window Five, soaking his shoes and trouser bottoms as he did so. The compartment was now well washed. Its four metal walls were glistening. But it remained quite empty.

The detective read his watch: two and a quarter minutes had passed. His father's record had been just that — two minutes, fifteen seconds — but his father was floating, without exertion, in a warm and placid pond. Dr Younger could never have survived so long. Littlemore knew this but could not accept it. Numbly, mechanically, he went through the motions a fourth time and a fifth, all to the same effect. He sank to his knees, staring into the empty metal compartment. He didn't notice the pain in his leg. He did notice, but never moved, when the million-ton frame of the caisson suffered a powerful concussion far above him. The concussion was followed by a scraping — a protracted metallic scraping — equally far above his head. It was as if the roof of the caisson had been struck by the bottom of a passing submarine.

When this sound ceased, however, he became aware of another. A faint sound. A tapping. Littlemore looked around; he could not identify the source. He crept to his left on hands and knees, holding his breath, not daring to hope. The taps were coming from behind the steel plate of Window Six. From his knees, Littlemore worked the pulleys, unlocked the plate, and pushed it open. Another windowful of water poured out, directly into the kneeling detective's face, and out of the window tumbled a large black trunk, which knocked him flat on his back. This was followed by Stratham Youngers head, a rubber hose in his mouth.

The incoming water did not entirely stop; it kept streaming in from the window as from an overflowing bathtub. Littlemore, with the trunk on his stomach, looked speechlessly up at the doctor. Younger spat out the hose.

'Br-breathing tubes,' said the doctor, so cold he could not control his shaking. 'Inside the w-windows.'

'But why didn't you come back through number five?'

'C-c-couldn't,' said Younger, his teeth chattering. 'Outer hatch w-wouldn't open far enough. S-s-six was open.'

Extricating himself from the trunk, Littlemore said, 'You found it, Doc! You found it! Will you look at this!' The detective was wiping the mud from the trunk. 'It's just like the one we found in Leon's room!'

'Open it,' said Younger, his head still poking out of Window Six.

Littlemore was about to respond that the trunk's hasps were padlocked when another tremendous shudder ran through the caisson, followed once more by the loud metallic scraping overhead.

'What was that?' asked Younger.

'I don't know,' said Littlemore, 'but it's the second time. Come on. Let's get going.'

'Slight problem,' said Younger, who had not budged from the window, from which water was still streaming out. 'My foot is stuck.'

The outer hatch of Window Six had slammed shut like a bear trap on Younger s ankle. That was why water continued to stream in through the bottom of the window: the outer hatch remained ajar, and Younger's foot was protruding out into the river. With his free leg, Younger pushed at the hatch as hard as he could, but it was unmovable.

'No sweat,' said Littlemore, limping over to the pull chains on the wall. 'I'll open it for you. Give me one second.'

'Look out,' replied Younger. 'We're going to get a ton of water.'

'I'll shut it again the second you get your foot in. Ready? Here goes. Uh-oh.' Littlemore was tugging vainly on the chain. It wouldn't budge. 'Maybe you can't open the outer hatch unless you close the inner hatch first. Get your head back in there.'

Younger complied unhappily. He drew his head back into Window Six and clamped his jaw around the breathing tube, preparing himself for another deluge. But now Littlemore couldn't close the inner hatch. He pulled on the handle with all his might, but the plate would not come down. Perhaps, Younger suggested, the inner hatch was inoperable when the outer hatch was still open.

'But they're both open,' said Littlemore.

'So they're both inoperable.'

'Great,' said the detective. Littlemore attempted to wrench Younger's ankle out. He tried yanking it out directly, and he tried twisting it out. This produced no effect except to cause the doctor several stabs of intense pain.

'Littlemore.'

'What?'

'Why are the lights going out?'

An entire bank of blue gas flames, on the other side of the chamber, had diminished from torch strength to flickering match lights. Then they went out completely. 'Someone's turning off the gas,' said the detective, having slid out of the window.

Once more, a vicious, ugly noise of metal abrading wood came from overhead. This time, the scraping terminated in a distant clang, which was followed by a new sound. Littlemore and Younger both looked up at the dimly lit rafters; they heard what sounded like the thundering approach of a subway train. Then they saw it: a column of water, perhaps a foot in diameter, falling gracefully down from the ceding. When it hit the ground, it make a colossal smash, exploding up in all directions. The East River was pouring into the caisson.

'Holy Toledo,' said Littlemore.

'Great God,' added Younger.

The East River was not only pouring into their chamber. From a half dozen apertures spread throughout the caisson, similar cataracts were crashing down. The roar was deafening.

What had happened was this: the work in the Manhattan Bridge caisson had come to an end. That was the reason Younger had seen no machinery or tools. The plan had always been to flood the caisson after work within it was completed. A short time ago, however, Mr George Banwell had abruptly decided to hasten that event. He woke up two of his engineers with late-night orders. Following these orders, the engineers went to the Canal Street site and started up long-idle engines.

These engines operated what was essentially a sprinkler system built into the caisson's twenty-foot-thick roof. Because of the dynamiting to be done in the caisson, its designers were concerned about fire. Their precaution proved justified: the caisson had in fact caught fire once and was saved only by flooding its internal chambers. Three tiers of cut iron plate had to be opened to let water in; this was what caused the three separate scraping noises.

The flood was already shin deep and rising steadily. Younger strained harder to tear his foot free but could not. 'This is unpleasant,' he said. 'You don't have a knife, do you?'

Littlemore scrambled for his pocket knife and eagerly handed it over. Younger cast a disapproving eye at the three- inch blade.

'This won't do it.'

'Do what?' shouted the detective. They could hardly hear each other over the din of the flood.

'Thought I might cut it off,' yelled Younger.

'Cut what off?' The water was now at his knees and rising ever more quickly.

'My foot,' said the doctor. Still looking at Littlemore's knife, he added, 'I guess I could kill myself. Better than drowning.'

'Give me that,' said the detective, snatching the pocket knife out of Younger s hand. The rising water was now only inches from the bottom of the window. 'The breathing tube. Use it.'

'Oh, right. Good thinking,' said Younger, putting the hose back in his mouth. Immediately he took it out again: 'Wouldn't you know it? They've shut off the air.'

Littlemore grabbed another of the hoses and tested it himself. The results of his test were no different.

'Well, Detective,' said Younger, propping himself up, 'I think it would be a good time for you to — '

'Shut up,' Littlemore replied. 'Don't even say it. I'm not going anywhere.'

'Don't be a fool. Take that trunk and get back on the elevator.'

'I'm not going anywhere,' Littlemore repeated.

Younger reached out and grabbed Littlemore by the shirt, drew him in close, and whispered fiercely into his ear. 'Nora. I left her. I didn't believe her, and I left her. Now they're going to lock her up. Do you hear me? They're going to put her away — either that or Banwell will kill her.'

'Doc — '

'Don't call me Doc,' said Younger. 'You have to save her. Listen to me. I can die. You didn't make me come down here; I wanted to see proof. You're the only one who believes her now. You have to make it out. You have to. Save her. And tell her — oh, never mind. Just get out!'

Younger pushed Littlemore away so hard the detective staggered back and fell into the water. He stood. The rising water had edged up over the bottom of the window. Littlemore gave the doctor a long look, then turned, and strode away, as best he could, past the cataract and through the thigh-high water. He disappeared.

'You forgot the trunk!' Younger shouted after him, but the detective didn't seem to hear him. The flooding was more than halfway up the window now. With great effort, Younger was able to hold his head an inch or two above the water. Then Littlemore reappeared. In his arms he held a five-foot length of lead pipe and a boulder.

'Littlemore!' shouted Younger. 'Go back!'

'Ever hear of Archiemeeds?' said the detective. 'Leverage.'

He splashed over to Younger and set the boulder down in the window, which was now full almost to the brim. Plunging his head into the ever-gathering water, Littlemore wedged one end of his pipe under the outer hatch, next to Younger's trapped ankle, and positioned the rest of the pipe over the boulder, lever-style. With both hands, he pushed down on the free end of the pipe. Unfortunately, the only effect was to pop the boulder out from under the pipe. 'Damn,' said Littlemore, emerging from the water.

Younger's eyes were still above water, but his mouth was not. Neither was his nose. He raised an eyebrow at Littlemore.

'Oh, boy,' said the detective. He took a breath and plunged in again. He repositioned his boulder and pipe in the same way and gave the pipe a downward tug. This time the boulder stayed in place, but still the outer hatch did not move. Littlemore sprang up out of the water as high as he could and came down with all his weight on the lever. But the lead pipe was badly corroded, and the force of Littlemore's weight upon it broke it clean in two. The moment before the pipe snapped, however, the window's outer hatch inched upward — just enough to free Younger s foot.

Both men came out of the water at the same time, but Littlemore was gulping air and thrashing about wildly while Younger barely stirred the water. He took a single lung- filling breath and said, 'That was melodramatic, wasn't it?'

'You're welcome,' replied Littlemore, straightening himself.

'How's that leg?' the doctor inquired.

'Fine. How's your foot?'

'Fine,' said Younger. 'What do you say we blow this hellhole?'

Dragging the trunk behind them while fighting through columns of crashing water, they made their way back to the central chamber. The steep ramp to the elevator was already half submerged. Water gushed down from the top of the elevator as well, spilling down the ramp and making a curtain around the car. Yet behind that curtain, the elevator cabin itself appeared dry.

Between the two of them, Littlemore and Younger contrived to push and pull the trunk up the ramp, heave it into the elevator, and tumble in themselves. Breathing hard, Younger shut the iron door. Things were suddenly still. The inundation of the caisson was a muffled roar outside. Within the car, the blue gas jets remained alight. Littlemore said, 'I'm taking us up.'

He thrust the operating stick into the ascent position — and nothing happened. He tried it again. Nothing.

'What a surprise,' said Littlemore.

Younger climbed up on top of the trunk and knocked on the ceiling. 'The whole shaft is flooded,' he said.

'Look,' said the detective, pointing up to where the doctor was standing, 'there's a hatch in the ceiling.'

It was true: in the center of the elevator's ceiling was a pair of large hinged panels.

'And there's what opens it,' said Younger, indicating a thick chain on a wall, with a red wooden handle dangling from its end. He leapt down off the trunk and took hold of that handle. 'We're going up, Detective — a little faster than we came down.'

'Don't!' Littlemore shouted. 'Are you crazy? You know how much all the water on top of us must weigh? The only way we won't drown is if we're crushed to death first.'

'No. This is a pressurized cabin,' said Younger. 'Superpressurized. The second I open this hatch, you and I will go up that shaft of water like a geyser.'

'You're putting me on,' said Littlemore.

'And listen to me. You have to exhale all the way up. I suggest you yell. I mean it. If you hold your breath even for a few seconds, your lungs will literally pop like balloons.'

'What if we get caught in the elevator cables?'

'Then we drown,' said Younger.

'Nice plan.'

'I'm open to alternatives.'

A glass aperture in the elevator door allowed Littlemore to look out into the caisson. It was almost entirely dark now. Water was pouring down everywhere. The detective swallowed. 'What about the trunk?'

'We take it with us.' The trunk had two leather grips. Each man took hold of one. 'Don't forget to yell, Littlemore. Ready?'

'I guess.'

'One, two — three! Younger pulled the red handle. The ceiling panels opened at once, and two men, yelling for their lives, with a large black trunk in tow, shot up through an elevator shaft full of water as if fired from a cannon.