The Interpretation of Murder

Chapter Twenty-two

The generous foyer of the Banwells' penthouse apartment in the Balmoral had a tiled marble floor, milky white with silver veins, in the center of which a rich, dark green inlay formed an interlocking GB. This GB supplied Mr George Banwell with inordinate satisfaction every time he saw it; he liked having his initials on everything he owned. Clara Banwell detested it. Once she dared to introduce into the foyer an expensive Oriental carpet, explaining to her husband that the marble was so highly polished their guests were in danger of slipping on it. The next day, the foyer was bare. Clara never saw her carpet again, nor had it ever been referred to since, either by herself or her husband.

At ten on Friday morning, a butler in this foyer received the Banwells' mail. One envelope bore Nora Acton's pretty curvilinear hand. The addressee was Mrs Clara Banwell. Unfortunately for Nora, George Banwell was still at home. Fortunately, it was the habit of Parker, the butler, to offer Mrs Banwell her mail first, and he did so that Friday morning. Unfortunately, Clara still had Nora's letter in her hand when Banwell entered the bedroom.

Clara, her back to the door, felt her husband's presence behind her. She turned to greet him, holding Nora's letter behind her back. 'George,' she said. 'You're still here.'

Banwell took in every inch of his wife. 'Use that on someone else,' he replied.

'That?'

'That innocent expression. I remember it from when you were on stage.'

'I thought you liked the way I looked on stage,' said Clara.

'I like it all right. But I know what it means.' George Banwell approached his wife, put his arms around her, and tore the letter out of her hands.

'Don't,' said Clara. 'George, it will only anger you.'

Reading another's mail provides one with the taste of violating two persons at once, the sender and the recipient. When Banwell saw that his wife's letter was from Nora, this taste became sweeter. The moment lost its sweetness, however, as he began taking in the letter's contents.

'She knows nothing,' said Clara.

Banwell kept reading, his features hardening.

'No one would believe her anyway, George.'

George Banwell held the letter out for his wife.

'Why?' Clara asked quietly, taking it.

'Why what?'

'Why does she hate you so?'

Dawn was breaking when Littlemore and I finally got back to the police car the detective had waiting for us a few blocks south of the Manhattan Bridge. The two of us had shot up through the elevator shaft and into the air a good ten feet before falling back into the water. We hadn't made it all the way up. We had to hang from the elevator cables, freezing and exhausted, until the water rose high enough to pull ourselves onto the pier. From there, we loaded the trunk in a rowboat — the same boat in which we had traveled to the pier the night before. Luckily, Littlemore's car was waiting at a dock about two blocks south; I don't think either of us could have rowed further. I had a feeling Littlemore had broken some rules in getting us the police car, but that was his business.

I told the detective that we had to telephone the Actons; not a moment could be lost. I had a terrible foreboding that something had happened there in the night. The detective drove us, soaking, to the station. I waited in the car while Littlemore limped in. He returned after a few minutes: all was quiet at the Acton house. Nora was fine.

From the police station, we went to Littlemore's apartment on Mulberry Street. There we put on dry clothes — the detective lent me an ill-fitting suit — and drank about a gallon of hot coffee each. We drove to the morgue. I suggested smashing the top of the locked trunk with a pickax, but Littlemore was determined to proceed by the book from this point forward. He sent a boy running for the locksmiths, and we waited, our hair still wet, pacing impatiently. Or rather I paced, having cleaned and bandaged my ankle. Littlemore sat on an operating table, resting his bad leg. The trunk lay at his feet. We were alone. Littlemore had hoped to find the coroner, whom I had met yesterday, but that gentleman was not in.

I ought to have left Littlemore. I should have checked in with Dr Freud and my other guests at the hotel. Today, Friday, was our last full day in New York. We would all leave for Worcester tomorrow evening. But I wanted to see the trunk opened. If the Riverford girl were inside, surely that would prove Banwell was her murderer, and Littlemore could finally arrest him.

'Say, Doc,' Littlemore called out, 'can you tell from a cadaver whether somebody was strangled to death?' The detective led me to the morgue's cold room. He found and uncovered the partially embalmed body of Miss Elsie Sigel. Littlemore had already told me what he knew of her.

'This girl wasn't strangled,' I said.

'That means Chong Sing is lying. How can you tell?'

'No edema in the neck,' I replied. 'And look at this little bone here; it's intact. Normally it breaks if someone is strangled to death. No evidence of any tracheal or esophageal trauma. Very unlikely. But it does look like asphyxiation.'

'What's the difference?'

'She died from lack of oxygen. But not from strangulation.'

Littlemore grimaced. 'You mean somebody locks her up in the trunk while she's still alive, and then she suffocates?'

'Looks like it,' I said. 'Strange. See her fingernails?'

'They look normal to me, Doc.'

'That's what's strange. They're smooth at the tips, undamaged.'

Littlemore got it at once. 'She never struggled,' he said. 'She never tried to get out.'

We looked at each other.

'Chloroform,' said the detective.

At that moment, there came a knock at the outer laboratory door. The locksmiths, Samuel and Isaac Friedlander, had arrived. With an instrument resembling oversized garden shears, they cut through the two padlocks on the hasps of the trunk. Littlemore had them sign an affidavit attesting to their actions and instructed them to wait so that they could further witness the contents. Taking a deep breath, he opened the lid.

There was no smell. A confused, densely packed assortment of waterlogged clothes, studded with jewelry, was all I saw at first. Then Littlemore pointed to a black matted mass of hair. 'There she is,' he said. 'This isn't going to be pretty.'

Donning a pair of gloves, Littlemore grasped the hair, lifted it up — and his hand came clean away with a fistful of sopping, tangled hair.

'He's cut her up,' said one of the Friedlanders.

'Cut her to pieces,' said the other.

'Geez,' said Littlemore, gritting his teeth and throwing the mass of hair onto the table. Then he snatched it back up. 'Wait a minute. This is a wig.'

The detective began emptying the contents of the trunk, one item after another, recording each object in an inventory and placing them into bags or other containers. In addition to the wig, there were several pairs of high-heeled shoes, a considerable collection of lingerie, a half dozen evening gowns, a trove of jewelry and toiletries, a mink stole, a lightweight lady's coat — but no lady.

'What the heck?' asked Littlemore, scratching his head. 'Where's the girl? There must have been another trunk. Doc, you must have missed the other trunk.'

I offered the detective my thoughts on that hypothesis.

Littlemore accompanied me into the savagely bright street. I asked the detective what he would do next. His plan, he said, was to scour the trunk and everything in it for some link to Banwell or to the murdered girl. Perhaps the Riverford family in Chicago could identify some of the girl's belongings. 'If I can put Elizabeth Riverford's name on just one of those necklaces, I got him,' said the detective. 'I mean, who but Banwell could have put her things in a trunk under the Manhattan Bridge the day after she was murdered? And why would he do it if he wasn't the murderer?'

'Why would he do it if he was the murderer?' I asked.

'Why would he do it if he wasn't?'

'This is a fruitful conversation,' I remarked.

'Okay, I don't know why.' The detective lit a cigarette. 'You know, there's a lot about this case I don't get. For a while I thought the killer was Harry Thaw.'

'The Harry Thaw?'

'Yup. I was all set for the biggest score any detective ever made. Then it turns out Thaw is locked up on a funny farm upstate.'

'I wouldn't call him locked up, exactly.' I explained what I knew from Jelliffe: that Thaw's conditions of confinement were lax at best. Littlemore wanted to know the source of my information. I told him that Jelliffe was one of Thaw's principal psychiatric consultants and that, from what I could tell, the Thaw family seemed to be paying off the entire hospital staff.

The detective stared. 'That name — Jelliffe. I know it from somewhere. He doesn't live in the Balmoral, by any chance?'

'He does. I dined at his home two nights ago.'

'Son of a bitch,' said Littlemore.

'I think that's the first time I've ever heard you swear, Detective.'

'I think that's the first time I ever did. So long, Doc.' Moving as quickly as he was able, he limped back into the building, thanking me again over his shoulder as he disappeared.

I realized I had no money. My wallet was in a pair of trousers hanging on a clothesline outside Littlemore's kitchen window. I found a nickel in the detective's pocket. It was a good thing I woke up when my train pulled into the Grand Central subway station; I don't know where I might have ended up otherwise.

At a two-story house on Fortieth Street, just off Broadway, Detective Littlemore banged the gaudy knocker furiously. In a moment the door was opened by a girl the detective had never seen before. 'Where's Susie?' he demanded.

The girl, through a cigarette that never left her mouth, would say only that Mrs Merrill was out. Hearing female voices down the hall, Littlemore made his way to the parlor. There were half a dozen girls in the richly mirrored room, in various states of undress, black and scarlet being the favored hues of such clothing as they had on. In the center was the one Littlemore was looking for. 'Hello, Greta,' he said.

She blinked at him, otherwise making no reply. She looked decidedly less dreamy than she had the other day.

'He was here last weekend, wasn't he?' the detective demanded.

Greta still made no answer.

'You know who I'm talking about,' said Littlemore. 'Harry.'

'We know a lot of Harrys,' said one. 'Harry Thaw,' said the detective.

Greta sniffed. Only then did Littlemore realize she had been crying. She was trying to hold it in, but she broke down and hid her face in a handkerchief. The other girls gathered around her at once, uttering words of sympathy. 'You're the one, aren't you, Greta?' said Littlemore. 'You're the one he whipped. Did he do it again last Sunday?' He put the question to all the girls: 'Did Thaw hurt her? Is that what happened?'

'Oh, leave her alone,' said the girl with the cigarette in her mouth.

In addition to the handkerchief, Greta was clutching a pink cloth with little pink strings dangling from one end. It was a bib. The detective realized that the noise of an infant's crying, so piercing on his last visit, was absent today. 'What happened to the baby?' he asked.

Greta froze.

Littlemore took a chance. 'What happened to your baby, Greta?'

'Why couldn't I keep her?' Greta burst out, directing her words to no one in particular. She recommenced sobbing. The others did their best to comfort her, but she was inconsolable. 'She never hurt anybody.'

'Someone took her baby away?' asked Littlemore.

Greta buried her face again. One of the other girls spoke up: 'Susie did it. Real mean, I call it. She got a family in Hell's Kitchen to take her. She won't even tell Greta who they are.'

'She's docking Greta for it too,' added another. 'Three dollars a week. It ain't fair.'

'And I'll bet you Susie's only paying them a dollar fifty,' commented the smoker shrewdly.

'I don't care about the money,' said Greta. 'I just want Fannie. I want her back.'

'Maybe I could get her back,' said Littlemore.

'You could?' said Greta hopefully.

'I could try.'

'I'll do anything you want,' said Greta imploringly. 'Anything.'

Littlemore considered the prospect of prying information from a woman whose baby had just been taken from her. 'No charge,' he said, putting his hat on. 'Tell Susie I'll be back.'

He got as far as the front door when he heard Greta's voice behind him. 'He was here,' she said. 'He came in around one in the morning.'

'Thaw?' said Littlemore. 'Last Sunday?'

Greta nodded. 'You can ask all the girls. He looked kind of crazy. He asked for me. I always was his favorite. I told Susie I didn't want to, but she didn't care. She starts in on him for all the money he owes her for us keeping quiet, but he just laughs out loud and — '

'What money for keeping quiet?'

'The money so the rest of us wouldn't testify at the trial and tell them about all the things he did to us. Susie got hundreds. She told him it was for us, but she kept it all. We never saw a penny. But his mother stopped paying after he got sent away. That's why Susie was so mad. She told him he would have to pay double and up front before he could have me. She made him promise to be nice. But he wasn't.' The faraway look came back to Greta, as if she were describing events that happened to someone else. 'After he gets me undressed, he pulls the sheets off the bed and says he's going to tie me up, like he used to. I told him to get away or else. He says, "Or else what?" and he's laughing like crazy. Then he says, "Don't you know I'm insane? I can do anything I want. What are they going to do, lock me up?" That's when Susie comes in. She was listening the whole time, I guess.'

'No, she wasn't,' piped up one of the other girls, the group having assembled in the hall. ' I was listening. I told Susie what he was up to. So Susie marches right in. He was always scared to death of her. Course she wouldn't of done nothing if Thaw had paid up front, like she wanted him to. But you should of seen him run out of there, the little rat.'

'He came into my room,' said another girl, 'wailing and waving his arms like a little boy. Then Susie comes in and chases him out again.'

The girl with the cigarette had the end of the story: 'She chased him all over the house. You know where she caught him? Behind the icebox. Chewing his fingernails off. Susie pulls him up by the ear, drags him down the hall, and throws him out on the street, like the sack of garbage he is. That's why she went to jail, you know. Becker came around a couple of days later.'

'Becker?' asked Littlemore.

'Yeah, Becker' was the reply. 'Nothing happens without Becker gets his fingers in it.'

'Will you testify that Thaw was here last Sunday?' Littlemore asked.

None of them answered until Greta said, 'I will, if you find my Fannie.'

Again Littlemore was about to leave, when the smoker asked, 'Want to know where he went after he left?'

'How would you know?' returned the detective.

'I heard his friend tell the driver. From the upstairs window.'

'What friend?'

'The one he come in with.'

'I thought he was alone,' said Littlemore.

'Huh-uh,' she replied. 'Fat man. Thought he was the Lord's gift. Ready enough with his money, though, I'll give him that. Dr Smith, he called himself.'

'Dr Smith,' repeated the detective, feeling that he had heard that name recently. 'Where'd they go?'

'Gramercy Park. I heard him tell the driver loud and clear.'

'Son of a bitch,' said Littlemore.

It was past ten when I arrived at the hotel. Handing over my key, the clerk looked down his nose at Littlemore's threadbare jacket, which left a conspicuous gap between the ends of its sleeves and the beginnings of my hands. There had been a letter for me, I was told, but Dr Brill received it on my behalf. The clerk gestured toward a corner of the lobby; there was Brill, sitting with Rose and Ferenczi.

'Good Lord, Younger,' said Brill when I greeted them. 'You look terrible. What have you been doing all night?'

'Just trying to keep my head above water, really,' I said.

'Abraham,' Rose chided her husband, 'he is simply wearing another man's suit.'

'Rose is here,' Brill said to me, 'to tell everyone what a coward I am.'

'No,' replied Rose firmly, 'I am here to tell Dr Freud that he and Abraham must go forward with the publication of Dr Freud's book. The cowards are the ones leaving you those dreadful messages. Abraham has told me all about it, Dr Younger, and we are not going to be intimidated. Imagine burning a book in this country. Don't they know we have freedom of the press?'

'They got into our apartment, Rosie,' said Brill. 'They buried it in ash.'

'And you want to go hide in a mouse hole?' she answered.

'I told you,' Brill said to me, raising his eyebrows helplessly.

'Well, I don't. And I won't have you hiding behind my skirts either, as if I'm the one you're protecting. Dr Younger, you must help me. Tell Dr Freud it will be an insult to me if concern over my safety should in any way delay his book. This is America. What did those young men die for at Gettysburg?'

'To ensure that all slavery would be wage slavery?' asked Brill.

'Be quiet' was Rose's reply. 'Abraham has poured his heart into that book. It has given meaning to his life. We are not rich, but we have two things in this country that are worth more than anything else: dignity and freedom. What is left if we give in to such people?'

'Now she is running for office,' commented Brill, causing Rose to mount an assault on his shoulder with her handbag. 'But you see why I married her.'

'I am serious,' Rose continued, rearranging her hat. 'Freud's book must be published. I am not leaving this hotel until I tell him so myself.'

I commended Rose's bravery, whereupon Brill rebuked me, declaring that the greatest risk I had ever taken with my own safety was dancing all night with overeager debutantes. I said he was probably right and asked after Freud. Apparently he had not come down at all this morning. According to Ferenczi, who had knocked at his door, he was 'undigested.' Moreover, Ferenczi added in a whisper, there had been a tremendous row between Freud and Jung last night.

'There's going to be a worse one when Freud sees what Hall sent Younger this morning,' said Brill, handing me the letter he had procured from the clerk.

'You have not actually opened my correspondence, Brill?' I asked.

'Isn't he awful?' said Rose, referring to her husband. 'He did it without telling us. I would never have let him.'

'It was from Hall, for God's sake,' Brill protested. 'Younger had vanished. If Hall intends to cancel Freud's lectures, don't you think we ought to know?'

'Impossible,' I declared.

'Virtually certain,' Brill replied. 'See for yourself.'

The envelope was oversized. Inside was a folded-up piece of vellum. When I straightened it out, I was looking at a foil-page, seven-column article in newspaper type under the banner headline, 'AMERICA FACING ITS MOST TRAGIC MOMENT ' — DR CARL JUNG. Below was a full-length photograph of a dignified, bespectacled Jung, referred to as 'the famous Swiss psychiatrist.' The odd thing was that the paper was too thick and of too high a quality for newsprint. More puzzlingly, the date shown at the top was Sunday, September 5, two days hence.

'It is the galley proof of an article that will appear in this Sunday's Times,' said Brill. 'Read Hall's note.'

Suppressing my irritation, I followed this instruction. Hall's letter read as follows:

My Dear Younger,

I received the enclosed today from the family that has offered the University so handsome a donation. I am told it is a page from the New York Times, forthcoming Sunday. You will see what it says. The family was kind enough to give me advance notice so that I might take action now, rather than after the taint of scandal has become inevitable. Please assure Dr Freud I have no wish to cancel his lectures, to which I have looked forward so keenly, but surely it would not serve his interests, or ours, if his presence here drew a certain kind of attention. Naturally I myself give no credence to innuendo, but I am obliged to consider what others may think. It is my fervent hope that this supposed newspaper article is not genuine and that our vigentennial will proceed unclouded and undisrupted.

Yours, etc. etc.

The letter, to my dismay, confirmed Brill's view: Hall was on the verge of canceling Freud's lectures. Who was orchestrating this campaign against him? And what did Jung have to do with it?

'Frankly,' said Brill, snatching the newspaper article out of my hands, 'I don't know who comes off worse from this idiotic story, Freud or Jung. Listen to this. Where is it? Ah, yes: "American girls like the way European men make love. "That's our Jung speaking. Can you believe it? "They prefer us because they sense we are a little dangerous." All he can talk about is how much American girls want him. "It is natural for women to want to be afraid when they love. The American woman wants to be mastered and possessed in the archaic European way. Your American man only wants to be the obedient son of his mother-wife." This is "America's tragedy." He's gone completely off his chain.'

'But that isn't an attack on Freud,' I said.

'They have someone else pronouncing on Freud.'

'Who?' I asked.

'An anonymous source,' said Brill, 'identified only as a doctor who speaks for the "reputable" American medical community. Listen to what he says:

'I knew Dr Sigmund Freud of Vienna very well some years ago. Vienna is not a moral city. Quite the contrary. Homosexuality, for example, is there considered the sign of an ingenious temperament. Working side by side with Freud in the laboratory all through one winter, I learned that he enjoyed Viennese life — enjoyed it thoroughly. He felt no compunction about cohabitation, or even about fathering children out of wedlock. He was not a man who lived on a particularly high plane. His scientific theory, if that is what it should be called, is the result of this saturnalian environment and the peculiar life he led there.'

'My God,' I said.

'It is purely personal attack,' Ferenczi commented. 'Will American paper publish such things?'

'There's your freedom of the press,' said Brill, who received a withering glance from his wife. 'They've won. Hall will cancel. What can we do?' 'Does Freud know?' I asked. 'Yes. Ferenczi told him,' said Brill. 'I gave highlights of newspaper article,' explained Ferenczi, 'through door. He is not so upset. He says he has heard worse.'

'But Hall hasn't,' I observed. Freud had endured calumny a long time. He expected it; he was to a degree inured to it. Hall, however, had as perfect a horror of scandal as any other New Englander of old Puritan stock. To have Freud proclaimed a libertine in the New York Times the day before the inauguration of Clark's celebrations would be too much for him. Aloud, I said, 'Does Freud have any idea who in New York knew him in Vienna?'

'There is no one,' Brill cried. 'He says he never worked with any Americans.'

'What?' I said. 'Why, that's our chance. Maybe the whole article is a fake. Brill, call your friend at the Times. If they are really planning to publish this, tell them it's libel. They can't publish an outright lie.'

'And they are going to take my word for it?' he answered.

Before I could reply, I noticed that Ferenczi and Rose had fixed their glance slightly behind me. I turned around to find a pair of blue eyes looking up at me. It was Nora Acton.