The Interpretation of Murder

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, all- illuminating, 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. 'Super- pressurized. 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.

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.

Chapter Twenty-three

I think my heart actually stopped for several seconds.

Every feature of Nora Acton's person – the loose strands of hair dancing about her cheek, the imploring blue eyes, her slender arms, the white-gloved hands, the diminishing shape from her chest to her waist – all conspired against me.

Seeing Nora in the hotel lobby, I suspected I required treatment more than she. On the one hand, I doubted I would ever feel this way about anyone else; on the other, I was disgusted. In the caisson, when death loomed close at hand, I could think only of Nora. Seeing her now in the flesh, once again I could not get out of my mind the secret of her repugnant longings.

I must have stood staring a good deal longer than politeness permitted. Rose Brill came to my rescue, saying, 'You must be Miss Acton. We are friends of Dr Freud and Dr Younger. Can we help you, my dear?'

With admirable grace, Nora shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, and let it be known, without saying so, that she wished a word with me. I knew to a certainty that the girl had to be in inner turmoil. Her poise was remarkable, and not only for a seventeen-year-old.

Away from the others, she said, 'I've run away. I couldn't think of anyone else to go to. I'm sorry. I know I repulse you.'

Her last words were a knife in my heart. 'How could you possibly have that effect on anyone, Miss Acton?'

'I saw the look on your face. I hate your Dr Freud. How could he know?'

'Why have you run away?'

The girl's eyes welled up. 'They are planning to lock me up. They call it a sanatorium; they call it a rest treatment. My mother has been on the telephone with them since dawn. She told them I had a fantasy of being attacked in the night – and she raised her voice so that I would be sure to hear her, and Mr and Mrs Biggs too. Why can't I remember it more – more normally?'

'Because he gave you chloroform.'

'Chloroform?'

'A surgical anaesthetic,' I went on. 'It produces the very effects you experienced.'

'Then he was there. I knew it. Why would he do that?'

'So he could make it seem as if you had done it to yourself. Then no one would believe you about either attack,' I said.

She looked at me and turned away.

'I've told Detective Littlemore,' I said.

'Will Mr Banwell come for me again?'

'I don't know.' 'At least my parents can't send me away now.'

'They can,' I said. 'You are their child.'

'What?'

'The decision is theirs so long as you are a minor,' I explained. 'Your parents may not accept my word. We can't prove it. Chloroform leaves no trace.'

'How old must one be before one is no longer a child?' she asked with a sudden urgency.

'Eighteen.'

'I shall be eighteen this Sunday.'

'Will you really?' I was going to say that she therefore had no need to fear an involuntary confinement, but a foreboding overtook me.

'What's wrong?' she asked.

'We must fend them off until Sunday. If they succeed in hospitalizing you today or tomorrow, you could not be released until your parents said so.'

'Even after I turned eighteen?'

'Even after.'

'I will run away,' she said. 'I know – our summer cottage. Now they have come back, it's empty. It's the last place he'll look for me. It's the last place any of them will look. Can you see me there? It's only an hour away by ferry. The Day Line stops right in Tarry Town if you ask them. Please, Doctor. I have no one else.'

I considered. Getting Nora out of town was very sensible. George Banwell had somehow gotten into her bedroom wholly unobserved; he might get to her again. And Nora could hardly take the ferry herself: it wasn't safe for a young woman, particularly of Miss Acton's allure, to travel upriver alone. Everything else could wait until this evening. Freud was stuck in bed. If Brill's efforts to contact his friend at the New York Times proved fruitless, the next step would be for me to go to Worcester personally to speak with Hall, but I could do that tomorrow.

'I'll take you,' I said.

'Are you going to wear that suit?' she asked.

A half hour after the delivery of the morning post, the Banwells' maid informed Clara that a visitor – 'a policeman, ma'am' – was waiting in the foyer. Clara followed her maid to the marble entry hall, where her butler was holding the hat of a small, pale man in a brown suit, with beady, almost desperate eyes, a bushy mustache, and equally bushy eyebrows.

Clara started when she saw him. 'And you are -?' she asked stiffly.

'Coroner Charles Hugel,' he replied, no less stiffly. 'I am chief investigator of the murder of Elizabeth Riverford. I would like a word with you.'

'I see,' replied Clara. She turned to her butler. 'Surely this is Mr Banwell's business, Parker, not mine.'

'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' answered Parker. 'The gentleman asked for you.'

Clara turned back to the coroner. 'Did you ask for me, Mr – Mr -?'

'Hugel,' said Hugel. 'I – no, I merely thought, with your husband out, Mrs Banwell, that you -'

'My husband is not out,' said Clara. 'Parker, inform Mr Banwell that we have a caller. Mr Hugel, I am sure you will excuse me.' A few minutes later, from her dressing room, Clara heard a cascade of oaths sworn in George Banwell's deep voice, followed by a slamming of the front door. Then Clara heard her husband's heavy footsteps approaching. For a moment Clara's hands – applying powder to her lovely face – began to tremble, until she willed them still.

An hour and a quarter later, Nora Acton and I were steaming north up the Hudson River past the spectacular burnt-orange cliffs of New Jersey. We had left the Hotel Manhattan through a basement door, just in case – after I had changed clothes. On the New York side of the river, an armada of three-masted wooden ships was anchored under Grant's Tomb, their white sails flapping lazily in the bright sunshine, part of the elaborate preparations for the Hudson-Fulton celebrations this fall. A few puffs of cloud floated in an otherwise unblemished sky. Miss Acton sat on a bench near the prow, her hair flowing and tousled by the breeze.

'It's lovely, isn't it?' she said.

'If you like boats,' I answered.

'Don't you?'

'I'm against boats,' I said. 'There is first of all the wind. If people enjoy a wind in their face, they should stand in front of an electric fan. Then there are the exhaust fumes. And the infernal horn – the visibility is perfect, there's no one around for miles, and they blow that blasted horn so loud it kills entire schools of fish.'

'My father withdrew me from Barnard this morning. He called the registrar. Mother made him.'

'That is reversible,' I said, embarrassed to have been chattering so ridiculously.

'Did your father teach you to shoot, Dr Younger?' she asked.

The question took me by surprise. I couldn't tell what she meant by it – or if she even knew what she might have meant by it.

'What makes you think I can shoot?' I said.

'Can't all men of our social class shoot?' She uttered social class almost contemptuously.

'No,' I answered, 'unless you include shooting one's mouth off:

'Well, you can,' she said. 'I saw you.'

'Where?'

'I told you: at the horse show last year. You were amusing yourself at the shooting gallery.'

'Was I?'

'Yes,' she said. 'You seemed to be enjoying yourself a good deal.'

I looked at her for a long time, trying to see how much she knew. My father's suicide had involved a gun. Not to put too fine a point on it, he had blown his brains out. 'My uncle taught me,' I said. 'Not my father.'

'Your Uncle Schermerhorn or your Uncle Fish?'

'You know more about me than I realized, Miss Acton.'

'A man who lists himself in the Social Register can hardly complain if his relations are common knowledge.'

'I did not list myself. I was listed, just as you were.'

'Did you grieve when he died?'

'Who?'

'Your father.'

'What is it you want to know, Miss Acton?'

'Did you?'

'No one mourns a suicide,' I said.

'Really? Yes, I suppose the death of fathers is common. Your father lost a father, after all, and that father lost his too.'

'I thought you hated Shakespeare.'

'What is it like, Doctor, to be raised by someone you despise?'

'Wouldn't you know better than I, Miss Acton?'

'Me?' she said. 'I was raised by someone I love.'

'You do not usually display that emotion when speaking of your parents.'

'I am not speaking of my parents,' Nora replied. 'I am speaking of Mrs Biggs.'

'I didn't hate my father,' I said.

'I hate mine. At least I am not afraid to say so.'

The wind grew stronger. Perhaps the weather was turning. Nora gazed steadfastly at the shore. What exactly she meant to make me feel, I didn't know.

'We have this much in common, Miss Acton,' I said: 'We both grew up wishing not to be like our parents. Either of them. But defiance, Dr Freud says, shows just as much attachment as obedience.'

'I see: you have achieved detachment.'

Some minutes later, she asked me to tell her more about Freud's theories. I did, avoiding any mention of Oedipus and his cognates. Breaching the usual professional etiquette, I described to her some of my previous analysands – anonymously, of course – hoping to illustrate the workings of the transference and its extreme effects on analytic patients. To this end I told her about Rachel, the girl who had tried to disrobe for me in virtually every session.

'Was she good-looking?' asked Nora.

'No,' I lied.

'You're lying,' she said. 'Men always like that kind of girl. I suppose you had sex with her.'

'I certainly did not,' I answered, surprised by her explicitness.

'I am not in love with you, Doctor,' she said, as if it were a perfectly logical reply to make. 'I know that's what you think. I mistakenly supposed I had some feelings for you yesterday, but that was the product of very trying circumstances and your own declaration of affection for me.'

'Miss Acton -'

'Don't be alarmed. I don't hold you to it. I understand that what you said yesterday no longer reflects your true sentiments, just as what I said yesterday no longer reflects mine. I have no feelings for you. This, this transference of yours, which you say makes patients either love or hate their doctors, has no application to me. I am your patient, as you said. That is all.'

I let her words pass without response as the ferry churned upriver.

A little after noon on Friday, Detective Littlemore stood outside a small, filthy cell in the massive gray detention castle known as the Tombs. There was no daylight, no window anywhere in sight. Next to Littlemore was a prison guard. The two of them were staring through a grill of iron bars at the sprawled-out body of Chong Sing, who lay unconscious on a lousy cot. His white undershirt was badly stained. His feet were bare and dirty.

'He's asleep?' asked Littlemore.

Chuckling, the guard explained that Sergeant Becker had kept Chong up all last night. Littlemore was at first surprised to hear Becker's name. Then he realized: Miss Sigel was found in the Tenderloin, so the interrogation would naturally have been given to Becker. Still, the detective was puzzled. Chong had already talked yesterday; he had admitted seeing his cousin Leon kill the girl. The mayor had said so. What did Becker want with him last night?

The prison guard was able to answer that question. It was Becker who had made Chong talk in the first place. But Chong wouldn't admit to having assisted in the killing itself. He insisted he had gone into Leon's room only after the girl was already dead.

'And Becker didn't buy it?' asked Littlemore.

The guard hummed a little tune and shook his head. 'Kept at him real good. All night, like I said. Shoulda seen him.'

The sleeping Chong Sing turned over on the cot, revealing his right eye, purpled and swollen to the size of a plum. Dried blood was visible under Sing's nose and below his ear. The nose may have been broken, but Littlemore could not be sure.

'Oh, boy,' said the detective. 'Did Chong break?'

'Huh-uh.'

Littlemore had the guard open the cell. He woke the sleeping prisoner. The detective pulled up a chair, lit himself a cigarette, and offered one to the Chinese. Chong eyed his new interrogator unhappily. He took the cigarette.

'I know you understand English, Mr Chong,' said Littlemore. 'I may be able to help you. Just answer a couple of questions. When did you start working at the Balmoral, end of July?'

Chong Sing nodded.

'What about down at the bridge?' asked the detective.

'Maybe same time,' he said hoarsely. 'Maybe few days later.'

'If you weren't there, Chong, how'd you see it?' asked Littlemore.

'Hah?'

'If you went into Leon's room after he killed the girl, how do you know he killed her?'

'I told already,' Chong replied. 'I hear fighting. I look through keyhole.'

Littlemore glanced at the guard, who confirmed that Chong had told the same story the day before. The detective turned back to Chong Sing. 'Is that right?'

'That right.'

'No, it's not. I was there, Mr Chong, remember? I went to Leon's room. I picked the lock. I looked through that keyhole. You can't see anything through it.'

Chong was silent.

'How'd you get those jobs, Chong? How'd you get two jobs working for Mr Banwell?'

The Chinese shrugged.

'I'm trying to help you,' said Littlemore.

'Leon,' said Chong quietly. 'He got me jobs.'

'How did Leon know Banwell?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know?'

'I don't know,' Chong Sing insisted. 'I not murder anyone.'

Littlemore rose and signaled the guard to open the cell again. 'I know you didn't,' he said.

The Actons' summer cottage was a cottage in the Newport sense of the word, meaning an estate aspiring to – indeed, exceeding – the standards of lower European royalty. I had intended to return to the city after seeing Nora to the door, but I found I couldn't. I didn't want to leave her alone, even here.

The servants greeted Nora warmly, throwing open doors and windows in a flurry of activity. They appeared to know nothing of her travails. Although barely speaking, Nora evidently wanted me to see everything. She led me through the first floor of the main house. A double-winged marble staircase ascended from the gallery of its two-story entry hall. To the right was a stained-glass cupola; to the left an octagonal, wood-beamed library. Marble columns and gilded plaster abounded.

In back was a tile-ceilinged veranda. A rolling sward of green grass and tall oaks descended clear down to the river far below. The girl set out into the greenery. I followed, and we arrived shortly at the stables, where the air smelled wholesomely of horse and fresh hay. It turned out the cook had already taken the liberty of sending a picnic basket down to the stable in case Miss Nora wanted to go for a ride.

She proved every bit as good a rider as I. After a quick canter, we spread a blanket in a shady spot with a magnificent view of the Hudson. Inside the picnic basket, we found a dozen clams packed on ice, cold chicken, potato croquettes, a tin full of tiny soda biscuits, and a cherry and watermelon salad. Along with a canteen of iced tea, the cook had included a half bottle of claret, evidently for 'the gentleman.' I had not eaten a thing since the previous evening.

When we were done, Nora asked me, 'Are you honest?'

'To a fault,' I said, 'but only because I am such a bad actor. Will the servants call your parents to tell them you're here?'

'There's no telephone.' She removed her panama hat, allowing the sun to tangle up its rays in her hair. 'I am sorry for my behavior on the ferry, Doctor. I don't know why I brought up your father. Please forgive me. I feel I am in a house that's burning down and there's no way out. Clara is the only person I have been able to turn to, and now even she can't help me.'

'There is a way out,' I said. 'You will stay here till Sunday. You will then be eighteen and out of your parents' control. At the same time, with any luck, Detective Littlemore will have traced the evidence we found to Banwell and arrest him.'

'What evidence?'

I told her of our trip to the caisson. Even now, I explained, Detective Littlemore might have confirmed that the contents of the trunk belonged to Miss Riverford, which would be all he needed to put Mr Banwell under arrest. Perhaps Banwell was under arrest already.

'I doubt it very much,' said Nora, shutting her eyes. 'Tell me something else.'

'What?'

'Tell me anything so long as it does not concern George Banwell.'

In the Acton residence on Gramercy Park, Nora's mother was ransacking her daughter's bedroom. Nora had disappeared. Mildred Acton sent Mrs Biggs to see if Nora was in the park, but the girl was not there. The thought of being deceived by her daughter filled Mrs Acton with indignation. Apparently her daughter was deranged, wicked and deranged. Nothing she said could be trusted. Mrs Acton had seen the discovery of cigarettes and cosmetics in her daughter's bedroom; what else might she be concealing there?

Mrs Acton found nothing worth confiscating until she poked a hand beneath her daughter's pillow. She was astonished to discover a kitchen knife.

The discovery had an odd effect on Mildred Acton. For a split second, a series of bloody images flashed through her mind. Among these were memories of the birth of her only child, which in turn reminded Mrs Acton, as it always did, that she and her husband had slept in different beds since that day. A moment later, these sanguinary images and associations were gone. Mrs Acton had quite forgotten them, but they left her in a state. Feeling a great sense of her own propriety in protecting her daughter from herself, she returned the knife to its place in the kitchen.

Mrs Acton wished her husband would do something. She wished he were not so hopeless, always holed up in his study in town or playing polo in the country. Harcourt spoiled Nora dreadfully. But then Harcourt was a failure at everything. If he had not inherited a small fortune from his father, the man would have ended in the poorhouse. Mildred had told him so many times.

Mrs Acton decided she must call at once on Dr Sachs for another electromassage treatment. True, she had just had one yesterday and the cost was outrageous, but she felt she couldn't live without another. Dr Sachs was so good at it. It would have been nicer, she reflected, if she had found, a Christian physician who was equally expert. But didn't everyone say the best doctors were Jewish?

Naturally my mind went blank the moment Nora asked me to say something to distract her. Then it came to me. 'Last night,' I said, 'I solved "To be, or not to be.'"

'I didn't know a solution was required,' she answered.

'Oh, people have been trying to solve it for centuries. But no one has, because everyone has always thought that not to be means to die.'

'Doesn't it?'

'Well, there's a problem if you read it that way. The whole speech equates "not to be" with action: taking up arms, taking vengeance, and so on. So if not to be meant to die, then death would have the name of action on its side, when surely that title belongs to life. How did acting get on the side of not being ? If we could answer that question, we would know why, for Hamlet, "to be" means not to act, and then we would have solved the real riddle: why he doesn't act, why he is paralyzed for so very long. I'm boring you, I'm sorry.'

'You aren't in the least. But "not to be" can only mean death,' said Nora. 'Not to be means' – she shrugged – 'not to be.'

I had been reclining on my side. Now I sat up. 'No: I mean yes. I mean, "not to be" has a second meaning. The opposite of being is not only death. Not for Hamlet. To not be is also to seem '

'To seem what?'

'Just to seem ' I stood, pacing and, I'm ashamed to say, cracking my knuckles savagely. 'The clue has been there all along, at the very beginning of the play, where Hamlet says, "Seems, madam? Nay it is. I know not 'seems.'" Think of it. Denmark is rotten. Everyone ought to be in mourning for Hamlet's father. His mother especially ought to be in mourning. He, Hamlet, ought to be king. Instead, Denmark is celebrating his mother's marriage to, of all people, his loathsome uncle, who has assumed the throne.

'And what most galls him is the feigning of grief, the seeming, the wearing of black by people who can't wait to feast at the marriage tables and disport themselves like animals in their beds. Hamlet wants no part of such a world. He won't pretend. He refuses to seem. He is.

'Then he learns of his father's murder. He swears revenge. But from that point on, he enters the world of seeming. His first step is to "put on an antic disposition" – to pretend to be mad. Next he listens in awe as an actor weeps for Hecuba. Then he actually instructs the players on how to pretend convincingly. He even writes a script for them himself, to be played that night, a scene he must pretend is anodyne, but that will actually reenact his father's murder, in order to surprise his uncle into an admission of guilt.

'He is falling into the domain of playing, of seeming.

For Hamlet, "To be, or not to be" isn't "to be, or not to exist." It's "to be, or to seem "; that's the decision he has to make. To seem is to act – to feign, to play a part. There's the solution to all of Hamlet, right there, in front of everyone's nose. Not to be is to seem, and to seem is to act. To be, therefore, is not to act. Hence his paralysis! Hamlet was determined not to seem, and that meant never acting. If he holds to that determination, if he would be, he cannot act. But if he would take arms and avenge his father, he must act – he must choose to seem, rather than to be.'

I looked to my audience of one. 'I see,' she said. 'Because he must deceive to get at his uncle.'

'Yes, yes, but it's also universal. All action is acting. All performing is performance. There's a reason these words have double meanings. To design means to plan, but also to deceive. To fabricate is to make with skill, but also to deceive. Art means deception. Craft – deception. There is no escaping it. If we would play a part in the world, we must act. Say a man psychoanalyzes a woman. He becomes her doctor; he assumes a role. It isn't lying, but it is acting. If he drops that role with her, he assumes another – friend, lover, husband, whatever it is. We can choose what part we play, but that's all.'

Nora's brows were knit. 'I've acted,' she said. 'With you.'

It happens that way sometimes: the moment of truth erupts right in the middle of some other scene, when the action is elsewhere and the attention diverted. I knew what she must be talking about: her secret fantasy about her father, which she had confessed yesterday, but which she had naturally tried to keep secret. 'It's my fault,' I replied. 'I didn't want to hear the truth. I felt the same way about Hamlet for the longest time. I didn't want to believe that Freud's view of the play could be right.'

'Dr Freud has a view about Hamlet?' she inquired.

'Yes, it's – it's what I told you. That Hamlet has a secret wish to – to have sex with his mother.'

'Dr Freud says that?' she exclaimed. 'And you believe it? How repulsive.'

'Well, yes, but I'm a little surprised to hear you say so.'

'Why?' she asked.

'Because of what you said yesterday.'

'What did I say?'

'You confessed,' I said, 'to the same kind of incestuous wish.'

'You are insane.'

I lowered my voice but spoke severely. 'Miss Acton, you admitted to me in the park yesterday, very plainly, that you were jealous when you saw Clara Banwell with your father. You said you wished you were the one who -'

She flushed scarlet. 'Stop it! Yes, I said I was jealous, but not of Clara! How disgusting! I was jealous of my father!'

We faced each other, both standing now, across the little woolen blanket. A pair of squirrels, which had been frolicking about a nearby tree trunk, froze in their tracks and eyed us suspiciously. 'That's why you thought you were vile?' I asked.

'Yes,' she whispered.

'That's not vile,' I said. 'At least, not by comparison.'

My remark did not amuse her. I touched her cheek. She looked down. Taking her chin in my hand, I lifted her face to mine and bent toward her. She pushed me away.

'Don't,' she said.

She wouldn't meet my eyes. She withdrew from me and set about the picnic things, gathering the remains, packing them in the basket, shaking the crumbs from the blanket. In silence, we rode back to the stables and returned to the house.

So: all my fine ethical scruples about taking advantage of Nora's transferential interest in me – supposing she had any – melted away when I discovered she had confessed to a Sapphic desire, not an incestuous one. I was embarrassed to discover this about myself, but there was a logic to it. The moment I understood the truth, I no longer felt Nora would be kissing her father were she to kiss me. Perhaps I ought to have concluded she would be kissing Clara, but it didn't feel that way.

The main house was quiet now, the summer afternoon air perfectly still, the large interior rooms shadowy and empty. All the windows were shuttered again – to keep the sun off the drapery and furniture, I supposed. Nora, pensive and wordless, led me into the octagonal library with the splendidly carved woodwork. She locked the doors behind us and pointed to an armchair. I was meant to sit down in it – and did. Nora knelt on the floor in front of me.

For the first time since she had turned me away, she spoke. 'Do you remember when you first saw me? When I couldn't speak?'

I was unable to read her expression. She looked penitent and virginal at once. 'Of course,' I said.

'I didn't lose my voice.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'I only pretended,' she said.

I tried not to reveal how dry my mouth suddenly felt. 'That's why you could speak the next morning,' I said.

She nodded.

'Why?' I asked.

'And my amnesia.'

'What about it?'

'That wasn't real either,' she said.

'You had no amnesia?'

'I was pretending.'

The girl gazed up at me. I had the peculiar notion that she was someone I had never met before. I tried to reorient what I knew or thought I knew around these new facts. I tried to restructure all the various scenes of the last week, to make them cohere – but couldn't. 'Why?'

She shook her head, biting her lower hp.

'You were trying to ruin Banwell?' I asked. 'You were going to say he did it?'

'Yes.'

'But you were lying.'

'Yes. But the rest of it – almost all of it – was true.'

She seemed to be pleading for sympathy. I felt none. No wonder she said the transference had no application to her. I hadn't psychoanalyzed her at all. 'You made a fool of me,' I said.

'I didn't mean to. I couldn't – it's so -'

'Everything you told me was a lie.'

'No. He did try to take me when I was fourteen. He tried again when I was sixteen. And I did see my father with Clara. Right here, in this room.'

'You told me you saw your father and Clara at the Banwells' summerhouse.'

'Yes.'

'Why would you lie about that?'

'I didn't.'

My mind wheeled and groped. I remembered now: her parents' summerhouse was in the Berkshires, in Massachusetts. We were not at her parents' summerhouse at all. We were at the Banwells'. The servants knew her not because they were her servants, but because she had been here so often. The reality of the situation suddenly became fragile, as if it might crack. I stood. She took my hands and gazed up at me.

'You did those things to your own body,' I said. 'You whipped yourself. You scarred yourself. You burned yourself.'

She shook her head.

A series of recollections came to my mind. First, helping Nora into a carriage outside the hotel. My hands had closed entirely around her waist, including her lower spine, yet she had not flinched. When I touched her neck, to trigger her memories – which had all been a lie – I held her by the small of the back once more. Again she didn't wince. 'You have no injuries,' I said. 'You faked them. You painted them on, and allowed no one to touch you. You were never attacked.'

'No,' she said.

'No you weren't, or no you were?'

'No,' she repeated.

I seized her wrists. She gasped. 'I'm asking you a simple question. Were you whipped? I don't care who did it. Did any man – if not Banwell, then someone else – whip you? Yes or no. Tell me.'

She shook her head. 'No,' she whispered. 'Yes. No. Yes. So hard I thought I would die.'

If it hadn't been so awful, her changing her story four times in five seconds would have been funny. 'Show me your back,' I said.

She shook her head. 'You know it's true. Dr Higginson told you.'

'You fooled him as well.' I grasped the top of her dress, tore it, and let it fall to her shoulders. She gasped but didn't move or try to stop me. Her shoulders were unhurt. I saw the top of her bosom; bare, unhurt. I turned her around. There seemed to be no wounds on her back, but I couldn't see below her shoulder blades. A white, tight-laced corset covered her from the scapula down.

'Are you going to rip my bodice as well?' she asked.

'No. I've seen enough. I'm going back to the city, and you're coming with me.' She belonged, very possibly, in a sanatorium after all. If she did not, I didn't know where she belonged, but she had to be in someone's charge, and it wasn't mine. Nor was I going to be responsible for having shipped her off to the Banwells' country house. 'I'm taking you home.'

'Very well,' she said.

'Oh, not worried anymore about being locked up in an asylum? That was another lie?'

'No. It's true. But I have to leave here.'

'Do you think I'm a fool?' I asked, knowing the answer was yes. 'If you were in danger of being locked up, you would refuse to leave.'

'I can't stay the night here. Mr Banwell will find out eventually. The servants may wire from town this evening.'

'So what?' I asked.

'He will come to kill me,' she said.

I laughed dismissively, but she merely looked up at me. I examined her lying blue eyes as deeply as I could. Either she believed what she was saying, or she was the best prevaricator I'd ever seen – which I already knew to be the case. 'You are making a fool of me again,' I said, 'but I'm going to believe you mean what you say. Banwell knows you named him as your assailant; perhaps you have reason to fear him, even though you invented the attack. In any event, all the more reason I should take you home.'

'I can't go like this,' she said, looking down at her torn dress. 'I'll find something of Clara's.'

As she neared the doorway, I called out to her. 'Why did you bring me here?'

'To tell you the truth.' She opened the doors and ran up the marble stairway, clutching her dress to her chest with both hands. Fortunately, none of the help was there to see her. They would probably have called the police and reported a rape.

Chapter Twenty-four

'I'm not saying he killed her, Your Honor. I'm just saying he's hiding something.' Detective Littlemore was speaking to Mayor McClellan in the latter's office late Friday afternoon. He was referring to George Banwell.

'What is your evidence?' asked an exasperated McClellan. 'Be quick, man; I can give you no more than five minutes.'

Littlemore considered telling the mayor about the trunk he and Younger had found in the caisson but decided against it, since the trunk had revealed nothing conclusive so far, and since he wasn't supposed to have gone down to the caisson in the first place. 'I just heard from Gidow, sir, in Chicago. He's checked with the police. He went through the whole city directory. He looked at the blue book. She didn't come from Chicago, sir. No one's ever heard of Elizabeth Riverford in Chicago.'

McClellan looked long and hard at the detective. 'I was with George Banwell Sunday night,' he said. 'I've told you that three times.'

'I know, sir. And I'm sure Miss Riverford couldn't have been there with you, wherever you were, without your knowing it, right, sir?'

'What?'

'I'm sure Mr Banwell didn't secretly bring Miss Riverford with him, sir, and kill her around midnight, and then bring her back with him to the city and put her in the apartment, making it look like she was killed there. If you follow me, Your Honor.'

'Good Lord, Detective.'

'It's just that I don't know where you were, sir, or how Mr Banwell got there, or whether you were together the whole time.'

McClellan took a deep breath. 'Very well. On Sunday night, Mr Littlemore, I dined with Charles Murphy at the Grand View Hotel near Saranac Inn. The dinner was arranged that very day – by George Banwell. Mr Haffen was another of the guests.'

Littlemore was startled. Boss Murphy was the head of Tammany Hall. Louis Haffen, a Tammany man, had been borough president of the Bronx – until last Sunday. 'But you just had Haffen kicked out of office, sir. By Governor Hughes.'

'Hughes was down the road, at Mr Colgate's, with Governor Fort.'

'I don't understand, sir.'

'I was there, Detective, to hear what conditions Murphy would demand in exchange for making me Tammany's mayoral candidate.'

Littlemore said nothing. The news astonished him.

Everyone knew the mayor had declared himself the enemy of Tammany Hall. He had sworn to have no dealings with the likes of Murphy.

McClellan went on. 'George persuaded me to go. He argued that, with Haffen's dismissal, Murphy might be willing to deal. He was. Murphy desired me to install Haffen in the office of the comptroller. Not right away, but in a month or two. If I agreed, Justice Gaynor would stand down. I become the nominee, and the election is mine. They claimed that Hughes wanted me nominated, which rather surprised me, and they volunteered to commit themselves before the governor that very night, if only I would give them my word.'

'What did you say, sir?'

'I told him that Mr Haffen was not in need of a new post, having already embezzled a quarter of a million dollars from the city in his last one. George was quite disappointed. He wanted me to accept. No doubt he has profited from our friendship, Littlemore, but he has earned every dollar the city paid him. In fact, I gave him his last payment this week, not a penny more than his original bid. And no, I don't see how he could have killed Miss Riverford at Saranac Inn. We left the Grand View at nine- thirty or ten, dropped in at Colgate's, and returned to the city together. We rode in my car, arriving in Manhattan at seven in the morning. I don't believe Banwell was out of my sight for more than five or ten minutes at a time the entire night. Why he would misrepresent the location of Miss Riverford's family is a mystery to me – if he did.

He may have meant that Riverford lives in one of the surrounding towns.'

'We're checking them now, sir.'

'At any rate, he could not have killed her.'

'I don't believe he did, Your Honor. I wanted to rule him out. But I'm close, sir. Real close. I have a good lead on the murderer.'

'Good heavens, Littlemore. Why didn't you say so? Who is it?'

'If you don't mind, sir, I'll know if my lead pans out tonight. If I could just wait until then.'

The mayor agreed. But before he dismissed Littlemore, he gave the detective a card with a telephone number on it. 'That is the telephone in my house,' he said. 'Call me at once, at any hour, if you discover anything.'

At eight-thirty Friday evening, Sigmund Freud responded to a knock at his hotel room door. He was dressed in a bathrobe, with dinner trousers, white shirt, and black tie beneath it. Outside his door was a tall young man, looking both physically and morally exhausted.

'Younger, there you are,' said Freud. 'My goodness, you look terrible.'

Stratham Younger made no reply. Freud could see immediately that something had happened to him. But Freud's store of sympathy was greatly depleted. The boy's dishevelment signified for him the general disarray into which things had descended since his arrival in New York. Must every American be involved in some kind of disaster? Couldn't at least one of them keep his shirt tucked in?

'I came to see how you were, sir,' said Younger.

'Apart from having lost both my digestion and my most important follower, I am quite well, thank you,' replied Freud. 'The cancelation of my lectures at your university will of course also be a source of satisfaction. Altogether a most successful journey to your country.'

'Did Brill go to the Times, sir?' asked Younger. 'Did he find out if the article is genuine?'

'Yes. It is genuine,' Freud said. 'Jung gave the interview.'

'I will go to President Hall tomorrow, Dr Freud. I read the article. It is gossip, anonymous gossip. I am sure I can persuade Hall not to cancel. Jung says nothing against you.'

'Nothing against me?' Freud laughed derisively, recollecting his last exchange with Jung. 'He has repudiated Oedipus. He has rejected the sexual aetiology. He denies even that a man's childhood experiences are the source of his neuroses. As a result, your medical establishment has thrown its weight behind him, rather than me. And your President Hall apparently intends to follow suit.'

The two men remained at the threshold of Freud's hotel room, one on either side. Freud did not invite Younger in. Neither spoke.

Younger broke the silence. 'I was twenty-two when I first read your work, sir. The moment I read it, I knew the world would never be the same. Yours are the most important ideas of the century. America is hungry for them. I am certain of it.'

Freud opened his mouth to answer, but his reply died on his lips. He softened. 'You're a good boy, Younger,' he said, sighing. 'I'm sorry. As for hunger, I should not stake too much on it: a hungry man will eat anything. Speaking of which, we are going to Brill's again for dinner. Ferenczi is just on his way. You'll join us?'

'I can't,' Younger replied. 'I wouldn't be able to keep my eyes open.'

'For heaven's sake, what have you been doing all this time?' asked Freud.

'It would be hard to describe my last twenty-four hours, sir. Most recently, I have been with Miss Acton.'

'I see.' Freud observed that Younger hoped to be asked in, but he did not feel up to it. In fact Freud felt as exhausted as Younger looked. 'Well, you will tell me all about it tomorrow.'

'Tomorrow – right,' Younger replied, making to leave.

Perceiving Younger's disappointment, Freud added, 'Ah, I meant to tell you. Clara Banwell, we must think about her.'

'Sir?'

'All family life is organized around the most damaged person in it. We know that Nora has essentially substituted the Banwells for her own parents. The question then becomes which person in this constellation has suffered the greatest psychological injuries.'

'You think it might be Mrs Banwell?'

'We mustn't assume that it is Nora. Mrs Banwell is a compelling figure, as narcissists often are, but the men in her life have undoubtedly mistreated her in some profound way. Her husband, certainly. You heard what she said.'

'Yes,' said Younger. 'She told me more about that.'

'At Jelliffe's?'

'No, sir. I spoke with her again at Miss Acton's.'

'I see,' said Freud, raising an eyebrow. 'I expect it is to her that we can credit Nora's learning that Mrs Banwell had performed fellatio on her father.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'You remember,' said Freud. He closed his eyes and, without opening them, recited the exchange he and Younger had had on this subject two days earlier, beginning with his own words: '"Do you not find anything strange in Nora's assertion that, when she saw Mrs Banwell with her father, she didn't understand at the time exactly what she was witnessing?" "Most American girls of fourteen are ill- informed on that point, Dr Freud." "I appreciate that, but that is not what I meant. She implied that she now understood what she had witnessed, did she not?'"

Younger stared. 'You have a phonographic memory, sir?'

'Yes. A useful skill for an analyst. You should cultivate it. I used to be able to recall conversations for months, but now it is only days. At any rate, I think you will find that it was Mrs Banwell herself who educated Nora about the nature of the act. I suspect she has taken the girl into her confidence, enlisting her sympathy. Otherwise Nora's feelings for her are inexplicable.'

'Nora's feelings for Mrs Banwell,' Younger repeated.

'Come, my boy, think of it. Instead of hating Mrs Banwell as she ought to have done, Nora has essentially accepted her as a mother substitute. This means that Mrs Banwell found a way to form a special bond with the girl, a remarkable achievement under the circumstances. Almost certainly, she confided her forbidden erotic secrets to Nora – a favorite means by which women achieve intimacy.'

'I see,' said Younger, glassily.

'Do you? It has undoubtedly made things harder for Nora. And it indicates a lack of scruple on Mrs Banwell's part as well. A woman will not confide such things in a girl whom she intends to keep innocent. Well, I can see there is something you wish to tell me, but you are too tired. It would do no good to speak of it now. We'll talk tomorrow. Go take your rest.'

Smith Ely Jelliffe sang an aria as he strolled into the Balmoral a little after eleven on Friday night. Tipping the doormen lavishly, he informed them, quite without having been asked, that he had spent the evening at the Metropolitan, in the company of a feminine creature of the best kind – the kind who knew how to occupy herself during an opera. His face shining, Jelliffe looked like a man convinced of the largeness of his own soul.

His glow was dimmed somewhat by the appearance of a young man in a threadbare suit blocking his path to the elevator. It was dimmed several shades further when the young man identified himself as a police detective.

'You're Harry Thaw's doctor, aren't you, Dr Jelliffe?' asked Littlemore.

'Are you aware of the hour, my good man?' replied Jelliffe.

'Just answer the question.'

'Mr Thaw is under my care,' Jelliffe acknowledged. 'Everyone knows that. It has been widely reported.'

'Was he under your care,' pursued Littlemore, 'here in town last weekend?'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' said Jelliffe.

'Sure you don't,' the detective replied, beckoning to a girl who, ostentatiously attired, was waiting on a leather sofa at the other end of the marble lobby. Greta now approached. Littlemore asked her if she recognized Jelliffe.

'It's him, all right,' said Greta. 'Dr Smith. Came with Harry and left with him.'

That afternoon, before calling on the mayor, the detective had returned to his office, reread the trial transcript, and found Jelliffe testifying that Thaw was insane. When he saw in the transcript that Jelliffe's first name was Smith, he put two and two together. 'So, Dr Smith,' said Littlemore. 'Want to come clean here – or downtown?'

The detective did not have to wait long for a confession. 'It wasn't my decision at all,' Jelliffe blurted out. 'It was Dana's. Dana was in charge.'

Littlemore told Jelliffe to take them to his apartment. When they entered Jelliffe's ornate foyer, the detective nodded appreciatively. 'Boy, you got a lot to lose, Dr Smith,' Littlemore said. 'So you brought Thaw into town last weekend? How'd you do it, bribe the guards'

'Yes, but it was Dana's decision, not mine,' Jelliffe insisted.

He dropped heavily into a chair at his dining table. 'I only did what he said we should.'

Littlemore stared down at him. 'Was it your idea to take him to Susie's?'

'Thaw chose the house, not me. Please, Detective. It was a medical necessity. A healthy man can be driven insane at a place like Matteawan. Surrounded by lunatics. Deprived of normal physical outlets.'

'But Thaw is insane,' said Littlemore. 'That's why he's in the loony bin.'

'He is not insane. He is highly strung,' responded Jelliffe. 'He has a nervous temperament. No good is done by shutting up such a man.'

'Too bad you told them the opposite at the trial,' remarked Littlemore. 'This wasn't the first time you brought Thaw into town, was it? You had him here about a month ago, didn't you?'

'No, I swear it,' said Jelliffe. 'This was the first time.'

'Sure it was,' answered Littlemore. 'And how did Thaw know Elsie Sigel?'

Jelliffe denied ever having heard of Elsie Sigel until he read about her in the papers yesterday afternoon.

'When you took Thaw to Susie's,' Littlemore went on, 'did you know what he liked to do to girls? Was that a medical necessity too?'

Jelliffe hung his head. 'I had heard of his proclivities,' he mumbled, 'but I thought we had resolved them.'

'Uh-huh,' said Littlemore. The detective looked with disgust at Jelliffe's manicured fingernails gripping his immense waist.

'Before you went to Susie's that night, when you had Thaw here at your apartment, how long was he out of your sight? Did you leave him by himself? Did he go out? What happened?'

'Here?' said Jelliffe, anxious and confused. 'I would never have brought the man here.'

'Don't play with me, Smith. I got plenty enough already to make you an accessory to murder – before the fact and after.'

'Murder?' asked Jelliffe. 'Dear God. It can't be. There was no murder.'

'A girl was killed right here in this building last Sunday night, the same night you had Thaw in your apartment.'

Jelliffe's face was pale. 'No,' he said. 'Thaw came into the city Saturday night. I took the train to Matteawan with him myself Sunday morning. He was there Sunday and Monday as well. You can ask Dana. You can check the records at Matteawan. They'll prove it.'

Jelliffe's desperation sounded sincere, but Littlemore had contradictory evidence. 'Nice try, Smith,' he said, 'but I've got a half dozen girls who put you and Thaw at Susie's last Sunday. Isn't that right, Greta?'

'Yeah,' said Greta. 'Around one or two Sunday morning. Just like I told you.'

Littlemore froze. 'Wait a minute, wait a minute. Do you mean Saturday night or Sunday?'

'Saturday night – Sunday morning – same difference' was Greta's answer.

'Greta,' said the detective, 'I need to be sure about this.

When did Thaw come in, Saturday night or Sunday night?'

'Saturday night,' said Greta. 'I don't work Sunday nights.'

Littlemore was once more at a loss. The Thaw connection had loomed up again like a ten-ton sure thing. Everything pointed to it. But now Thaw was at Susie's the wrong night – the night before. 'I'm going to check those hospital records,' Littlemore said to Jelliffe, 'and you better hope you're right. Come on, Greta. We're going.'

Jelliffe, swallowing, hiked himself up in his chair. 'I should think you owe me an apology, Detective,' he said.

'Maybe,' said Littlemore. 'But if you ask me for it again, you'll do one to five at Sing Sing for conspiring in the escape of a state prisoner. Not to mention never practicing medicine again.'

For a second consecutive night, Carl Jung walked beneath Calvary Church across from Gramercy Park. This time, he carried his revolver in a pocket. Perhaps it gave him courage. Without wavering, he strode purposefully along the wrought- iron fence to Gramercy Park South, crossed the street, and walked straight toward the officer in front of the Actons' house. The policeman asked his business. Jung replied that he was looking for the theatrical club: could the officer direct him?

'The Players, that's what you want,' said the policeman. 'Number sixteen, four doors down.'

Jung knocked at the door of number sixteen and, when he mentioned Smith Jelliffe's name, was allowed in. The air was filled with music and feminine laughter. Now he was inside, Jung could not believe what a fool he had been, to come almost to the door of the place twice before and then turn tail. Imagine: a man of his stature frightened of entering a house where women could be had for money.

The club's hat-check girl, greeting Jung in the foyer, was momentarily disconcerted when he drew his revolver. But he handed it to her with European politeness, explaining that, having seen a policeman a few doors down, he was concerned that there might be some murderer abroad. 'It's okay,' said the girl, smiling prettily at him. 'For a second there, I thought you were the murderer.'

As the two of them laughed and the front door was shut, a different man stepped out of a carriage in the shadows of Calvary Church. The cab drove away, leaving this man by himself in almost the very spot that Jung had occupied the night before. He was dressed in white tie. Despite the summer evening heat, he wore yet another layer of clothing, an overcoat, as well as white deerskin gloves. His hat was pulled low to cover as much of his face as possible. The man did not move. He watched from the darkness, where the policemen at the Actons' house could not see him.

As soon as he heard the door shut, Smith Jelliffe went to his telephone. He asked an operator to connect him to the Matteawan State Hospital. It took fifteen minutes, but Jelliffe at last got through to a hospital guard with whom he was on excellent terms. Jelliffe began issuing frantic commands, but he was quickly interrupted.

'You're too late,' said the guard. 'He's gone.'

'Gone?'

'He left three hours ago.'

Jelliffe put down the receiver. With nervous fingers, he dialed the number of Charles Dana's Fifth Avenue home. There was no answer. It was nearing midnight. After six rings, Jelliffe hung up.

'Dear God,' he said.

Across the street from the Balmoral, Littlemore said goodbye to Greta under a streetlamp. The night was as hot and muggy as they came. 'I can say he came in Sunday night,' Greta volunteered, 'if you want me to.'

Littlemore had to laugh. He shook his head, hailing a passing cab.

'You aren't going to look for my Fannie now, are you?' she asked forlornly.

'No, I'm not going to look for her,' Littlemore said. 'I'm going to find her.'

He told the driver Fortieth Street and gave the man a dollar to cover the fare. Greta stared at him. 'You're a pistol, you know that?' she said. 'You wouldn't want to marry me, by any chance? We're both redheads.'

Littlemore laughed again. 'Sorry, sugar, I'm spoken for.'

Greta kissed him on the cheek. As the cab drove off, Littlemore turned around to find Betty Longobardi standing right behind him. On his way uptown, the detective had made a stop at the Longobardis', leaving word for Betty to meet him at the Balmoral as soon as she got home.

'Start explaining,' said Betty, 'and make it good.'

Littlemore did not explain. Instead, he said she'd just have to trust him, then led her to his parked car. From the trunk, the detective drew out a lumpy sack. 'I need to show you some things that might have belonged to Miss Riverford. You're the only one who can identify them.'

Littlemore emptied the sack into the trunk of his car. The clothing was too soaked to be recognizable. The jewelry and shoes, Betty thought, looked familiar, but she couldn't be sure. Then she saw a sequined sleeve hanging from a dense tangle of fabric. She extricated the dress to which it belonged and held it out under the lamplight. 'This was hers! I saw her in it.'

'Wait a second,' said Littlemore. 'Wait a second.' He rummaged through the clothing. 'Is there anything here a woman could wear in the daytime?'

'Not these,' said Betty, raising her eyebrows as she pieced through the lingerie. 'Not these either. Not really, Jimmy. It's all evening wear.'

'Evening wear,' the detective repeated slowly.

'What is it?' asked Betty.

Littlemore said nothing, lost in thought.

'What, Jimmy?'

'But then Mr Hugel…' Hurriedly, the detective began patting his pockets and fishing through them until at last he found an envelope containing several photographs. One of these he showed Betty. 'Recognize this face?' he asked.

'Of course,' she said, 'but why -?'

'We're going back upstairs,' Littlemore interrupted. He grabbed from his trunk a cumbersome brass object that looked like a motorcar's headlamp stuck to a candlestick. It was an electric lantern. Then he led Betty back into the Balmoral. They rode the Alabaster Wing elevator to the top floor.

'How tall was Miss Riverford?' Littlemore asked on their way up.

'A little taller than me.' Betty was five-foot-two. 'At least she looked taller.'

'What do you mean?'

'She was always in heels,' Betty explained. 'Real tall heels. Wasn't used to them, though.'

'How much did she weigh?'

'I don't know, Jimmy. Why?'

The hallway of the eighteenth floor was empty. Over Betty's objections, Littlemore picked the lock of Elizabeth Riverford's apartment and opened the front door. Inside, all was dark and silent. There were no overhead lights. The lamps had been taken away.

'What are we doing here?' asked Betty.

'Figuring something out.' Littlemore headed down the corridor toward Miss Riverford's bedroom, shining his flickering light into the blackness.

'I don't want to go in there,' said Betty, following reluctantly.

They came to the door. As Littlemore reached for the knob, his hand froze in midair. A high-pitched note suddenly pierced the air. It was coming from within the bedroom. The note grew louder, becoming a far-off wail.

Betty seized Littlemore's arm. 'That's the sound I told you about, Jimmy, the sound we heard the morning Miss Elizabeth died.'

The detective opened the door. The wail grew louder still.

'Don't go in,' whispered Betty.

Abruptly the noise stopped. All was silent. Littlemore entered the room. Too afraid to stay where she was, Betty went in as well, clinging to his sleeve. The furniture was still in place: bed, mirror, end tables, chests of drawers. These created eerie shadows in the beam of the detective's lantern. Littlemore put his ear to a wall, rapping it with his knuckles, listening intently. He moved a few feet down and did the same thing.

'What are you doing?' whispered Betty.

Littlemore snapped his fingers. 'The fireplace,' he said. 'I saw the clay near the fireplace.'

He went to the fireplace and drew aside its iron-mesh curtain, stretching himself out on the floor. With his lantern, he lit up the chimney. At the far back wall of the hearth, Littlemore saw bricks, mortar – and three apertures arranged in a triangle, the topmost being circular in shape.

'That's it,' said the detective. 'That's got to be it. Now how would he -?'

Littlemore lit up the andirons hanging next to the fireplace. One instrument was a trident poker. Two of its three tines were sharply pointed; the other was circular. The three ends, together, made a triangle. Littlemore jumped up, took hold of this poker, and prodded the back of the chimney with it. When he found the apertures, the poker's three ends fit into them as if they had been specially designed to do so – as of course they had. A moment later, the entire hearth swung away on interior hinges, and a strong breeze blew into Littlemore's face.

'Will you look at that,' said Littlemore. Inside, small jets of blue flame dotted the walls. 'Where have I seen those before? Come on, Betty.'

They stepped into the passage, Betty holding Littlemore s hand. When they passed a large, square iron grate on one of the walls, the detective put his ear to it and told Betty to do likewise. They could hear, far away, the same wailing noise that had given Betty such a fright.

'Air shaft,' said Littlemore. 'Some kind of forced-air system. There must be a pump. When the pump comes on, you get that sound. When the pump stops, the noise stops.' They followed the passage several hundred feet, passing half a dozen similar grates and turning three or four sharp corners. Betty's fingernails were digging into Littlemore's arm. At last they came to the end. A wall barred their way, but on that wall, a small metal plate glinted below a final blue gas jet. Littlemore pushed on the plate, and the wall swung out.

In the light of the electric lantern, they could see an expensively furnished man's study. Bookshelves lined the walls, although, instead of books, the shelves were filled with a collection of scale models of bridges and buildings. In the middle of the study stood a massive desk with brass lamps on it. Littlemore switched on a lamp. Quietly, Littlemore and Betty left the study and walked down a hallway. They crossed a white marble entry foyer. Then they heard a muffled noise. Farther down the hall, past the most spacious living room either Littlemore or Betty had ever seen, a door was rattling, its knob turning back and forth. Someone was evidently behind the door and trying in vain to open it. Littlemore called out, identifying himself as a police detective.

A female voice answered. 'Open the door. Let me out.'

It did not take Littlemore long to do so. When the door opened, a linen closet was revealed, as was the back of a woman, pressed into a space not intended for a person, her hands tied behind her. Mrs Clara Banwell turned around, thanked the detective, and begged him to untie her.

Sweat glistened on Henry Kendall Thaw's forehead as he eyed the policeman on the other side of Gramercy Park, patrolling back and forth under the gas streedamp in front of the Actons' house. It dampened the back of his shirt below his dinner jacket. It trickled down his sleeves and trousers.

From his vantage point on East Twenty-first Street between Fourth and Lexington avenues, Thaw could see the entire row of imposing houses that lined Gramercy Park South. He could see the Players Club, lit up gaily on a Friday night. Indeed, he could see behind the translucent curtains of the club's first-floor windows, where well-heeled older men and bare-shouldered young women passed to and fro, drinking Duplexes and Bronx Cocktails.

Thaw's eyes were better than Jung's. He detected, three stories above the patrolman, a movement on the Actons' roof. There, against the night sky, he discerned the silhouette of another policeman and the outline of the rifle he was carrying. Thaw was a wiry man, thin almost to the point of appearing frail, with arms slightly longer than they should have been. His face was surprisingly boyish for a man in his late thirties. He might almost have been handsome, except that his small eyes were a little too deep-set and his lips a little too thick. Whether in motion or stationary, he seemed unable to catch his breath.

Thaw was now in motion. He walked east, keeping to the shadows. He pulled the brim of his hat even farther down as he crossed Lexington Avenue: he knew the house on this corner very well. He had watched it for hours at a time in the old days, waiting to see if a certain girl would come out of it, a pretty girl he wanted to hurt so much it made his skin tingle. He skirted the iron fence of the park until he came to its southeastern corner, with Irving Place separating him from the watchful policemen. The officers never saw him enter the back alley behind the houses of Gramercy Park South.

Two miles away, in his apartment on the second floor of the small house on Warren Street, Coroner Charles Hugel had packed his bags. He stood in the middle of his living room, biting his knuckles. He had delivered his letter of resignation to the mayor. He had notified his landlord. He had gone to the bank and closed his account. All the money he possessed lay before him, stacked in neat piles on the floor. He had to decide how to carry it. He bent down and started counting the bills – for the third time – wondering whether it would be enough to establish him in another, smaller town. His hands jerked open and fifty- dollar bills flew into the air when he heard the pounding on his door.

If the patrolman in front of the Actons' house had only looked up, he might have noticed a deeper darkening at the window of Nora's bedroom. He might possibly have realized that a man had passed behind its curtains. But he didn't look up.

The intruder loosed the white silk tie that was around his neck. Silently, he drew the tie from his collar and wrapped its ends around his hands. He closed on Nora's bed. Despite the darkness, he could make out the girl's sleeping form on the bed. He could see the line where the pretty chin gave way to her soft, unprotected throat. Slipping the tie between headboard and pillow, he worked it downward, slowly downward, beneath the pillow, closer and closer to the girl's neck, infinitely slowly, until its two ends should emerge out from under the pillow. He listened all the while to her breathing, which went on softly, undisturbed.

It is a fine question whether the kitchen knife, had Mrs Mildred Acton not removed it from beneath the girl's pillow, could have done any good. Could Nora Acton, jolted awake by a man in the night, have reached the knife? If she had reached it, could she have used it? Nora always slept on her stomach. Even if she had got her hands on the weapon, could she – with her breath choked off – have saved her life with it?

All fine questions, but all quite academic, since not only was the kitchen knife not there, neither was Nora.

'Put 'em up, Mr Banwell,' said a voice from behind the intruder at Nora's bed. An electric lantern, held by a uniformed officer standing in the doorway, suddenly lit up the room. George Banwell threw his hands before his face.

'Step away from the bed, Mr Banwell,' said Detective Littlemore, jutting the muzzle of his gun into Banwell's back. 'Okay, Betty, you can get up now.'

Betty Longobardi rose from the bed, fearful but defiant. As Littlemore patted down Banwell's pockets, he glanced at Nora's hearth. There, as he expected, a wall panel had swiveled open, revealing a secret passageway behind it. 'Okay. Put your hands down now. Behind your back. Nice and slow.'

Banwell didn't move. 'What's your price?' he asked.

'More than you can pay,' answered Littlemore.

'Twenty thousand,' said Banwell, his hands still over his head. 'I'll give each of you twenty thousand dollars.'

'Hands behind your back,' repeated Littlemore.

'Fifty thousand,' said Banwell. Squinting into the beam of light, he could see there were two men in the doorway, one holding the lantern and another behind him, in addition to whoever had the gun sticking in his back. At the words 'fifty thousand,' the two men in the doorway shifted uneasily. Banwell addressed them. 'Think of it, boys. You’re smart; I can tell by the look of you. Where do you think Chief Byrnes got his? You know what Byrnes has in the bank? Three hundred fifty thousand. That's right. I made him rich, and I'll make you rich.'

'The mayor won't like your trying to bribe us,' said Littlemore, lowering one of Banwell's arms and placing a cuff around his wrist.

'Are you going to listen to this fool behind me?' Banwell shot out, still addressing the two men in the doorway, his voice strong and confident notwithstanding his predicament. 'I'll break him during the trial. I'll break him, do you hear me? Be smart. You want to be poor your whole lives? Think of your wives, your children. You want them to be poor their whole lives? Don't worry about the mayor. I own the mayor.'

'Do you, George?' said the man behind the officer holding the lantern. He stepped into the light. It was Mayor McClellan. 'Do you really?'

Littlemore snapped the handcuffs over Banwell's other wrist, the lock catching with a satisfying click. With a quickness surprising for a man of his size, Banwell wrenched himself out of the detective's grip and, arms locked behind his back, made for the passageway But he had to stop and duck to get in, which was his undoing. Littlemore had his gun in his hand. He had a clear shot but didn't fire. Instead he took one large step forward and brought the butt end of his gun down on Banwell's head. Banwell let out a cry and collapsed to the floor.

A few minutes later, Detective Littlemore sat the almost unconscious George Banwell at the foot of the Actons' stairs and secured him to the banister with a second pair of handcuffs, borrowed from one of the uniformed men. Blood was dripping down Banwell's face. Another policeman let a flustered Harcourt and Mildred Acton out of their bedroom.

Inside the Players Club, the hat-check girl welcomed a new guest, who also surprised her – not only because he had entered through the rear door, but also because the man was wearing an overcoat in the middle of summer. It gave Harry Thaw special pleasure to be enjoying his liberty in rooms designed by the very man he had murdered three years ago, Mr Stanford White. He gave his name as Monroe Reid from Philadelphia. It was under that appellation that he introduced himself to another out-of-towner, a foreign gentleman he met in the small ballroom, where dancers were performing a show number on a raised stage. Harry Thaw and Carl Jung got on quite well that evening. When Jung mentioned that the club member he knew was Smith Jelliffe, Thaw exclaimed that he knew the man well, although he did not give an entirely truthful account of their acquaintance.

'Well done, Detective,' said Mayor McClellan to Littlemore in the Actons' living room. 'I would never have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.'

Mrs Biggs was dressing the gash in Banwell's skull. Mr Acton had poured himself a large drink. 'Do you think you might tell us what's happening, McClellan?' he asked.

'I'm afraid I don't entirely know myself,' answered the mayor. 'I still cannot fathom how George could have killed Miss Riverford.'

The doorbell rang. Mrs Biggs looked to her employers, who in turn looked to the mayor. Littlemore said he would answer it. A moment later, everyone in the room saw Coroner Charles Hugel enter the room, firmly in the grasp of Officer John Reardon.

'Got him, Detective,' said Reardon. 'He was all packed just like you said he would be.'

Chapter Twenty-five

The telephone rang in my hotel room, waking me. I didn't remember falling asleep; I hardly remembered returning to my room. It was the front desk on the line.

'What time is it?' I asked.

'Just before midnight, sir.'

'What day?' The fog in my brain wouldn't clear.

'Still Friday, sir. Excuse me, Dr Younger, but you asked to be informed if Miss Acton had any visitors.'

'Yes?'

'A Mrs Banwell is on her way to Miss Acton's room now.'

'Mrs Banwell?' I said. 'All right. Don't let anyone else up, without calling me first.'

Nora and I had taken the train back from Tarry Town. We barely spoke. When we arrived at the Grand Central, Nora begged me to take her back to the Hotel Manhattan – to see whether her room there was still booked in her name. If so, she asked, couldn't she stay there until Sunday, when she need no longer fear that her parents might have her hospitalized against her will?

Contrary to my better judgment, I agreed to take her to the hotel. I warned her, though, that tomorrow morning, no matter what, I would notify her father of her whereabouts. I felt sure – and told her as much – that she would be able to come up with some fictitious story to keep her parents at bay for a mere twenty-four hours. As it happened, she was right about her room: it had never been released. The clerk handed her the keys, and she disappeared into an elevator.

I did not consider Mrs Banwell's midnight visit wise: her husband could have followed her. Nora must have telephoned her. But if Nora could deceive me as thoroughly as she had, Clara could probably deceive her husband about an evening's errand.

Freud's remarks about Nora's feelings for Clara came back to me. He still believed, of course, that Nora harbored incestuous wishes. I no longer did. In fact, given my interpretation of 'To be, or not to be,' I dared to think I finally had upended the whole Oedipus complex. Freud was right all along: yes, he had held the mirror up to nature, but he had seen in it a mirror image of reality.

It's the father, not the son. Yes, when a little boy enters the scene with his mother and father, one party in this trio tends to suffer a profound jealousy – the father. He may naturally feel the boy intrudes on his special, exclusive relationship with his wife. He may well half want to be rid of the suckling, puling intruder, whom the mother proclaims to be so perfect. He might even wish him dead.

The Oedipus complex is real, but the subject of all its predicates is the parent, not the child. And it only worsens as the child grows. A girl soon confronts her mother with a figure whose youth and beauty the mother cannot help resenting. A boy must eventually overtake his father, who as the son grows cannot but feel the churning of generations coming to plow him under.

But what parent will acknowledge a wish to kill his own issue? What father will admit to being jealous of his own boy? So the Oedipal complex must be projected onto children. A voice must whisper in the ear of Oedipus s father that it is not he – the father – who entertains a secret death wish against the son but rather Oedipus who covets the mother and compasses the father's death. The more intense these jealousies attack the parents, the more destructively they will behave against their own children, and if this occurs they may turn their own children against them – bringing about the very situation they feared. So teaches Oedipus itself. Freud had misinterpreted Oedipus: the secret of the Oedipal wishes lies in the parent's heart, not the child's.

The pity of it was that this discovery, if such it was, now seemed so stale, so profitless to me. What good was it? What good did thinking ever do?

'This is an outrage,' said Coroner Hugel, with what looked like a barely controllable indignation. 'I demand an explanation.'

George Banwell grunted in pain as Mrs Biggs applied a plaster to his skull. Blood remained clotted in his hair, but it was no longer running down his cheeks.

'What is the meaning of this, Littlemore?' asked the mayor.

'You want to tell him, Mr Hugel?' was the detective's answer. 'Or should I?'

'Tell me what?' asked McClellan.

'Let go of me,' the coroner said to Reardon.

'Let him go, Officer,' ordered the mayor. Reardon complied at once.

'Is this another of your jokes, Littlemore?' asked Hugel, straightening his suit. 'Don't listen to anything he says, McClellan. This is a man who pretended to be dead on my operating table yesterday.'

'Did you?' the mayor asked Littlemore.

'Yes, sir.'

'You see?' said Hugel to McClellan, his voice rising. 'I am no longer in the city's employ. My resignation was effective at five o'clock today; it is on your desk, McClellan, although no doubt you did not read it. I am going home. Good night.'

'Don't let him go, Mr Mayor,' said Littlemore.

The coroner paid no heed. Placing his hat on his head, he began striding toward the door.

'Don't let him go, sir,' Littlemore repeated.

'Mr Hugel, remain as you are, if you please,' ordered McClellan. 'The detective has already shown me one thing tonight I would not have believed possible. I will hear him out.'

'Thank you, Your Honor,' said Littlemore. 'I better begin with the photograph. Coroner Hugel took the picture, sir. It's a photograph of Miss Riverford with Mr Banwell's initials showing on her neck.'

Banwell stirred at the foot of the stairs. 'What's that?' he asked.

'His initials? What are you talking about?' asked McClellan.

'I have a copy of it here, sir,' said Littlemore. He handed the picture to the mayor. 'It's kind of complicated, sir. You see, Mr Hugel said Miss Riverford's body was stolen from the morgue because there was a clue on it.'

'Yes, you mentioned that to me, Hugel,' said the mayor.

The coroner said nothing, eyeing Littlemore warily.

'Then Riviere develops Mr Hugel's plates,' the detective continued, 'and sure enough, we find this picture of Miss Riverford's neck with some kind of imprint on it. Riviere and I didn't get it, but Mr Hugel explained it to us. The murderer strangles Miss Riverford with his tie, the tie still has his pin on it, and the pin has his monogram. So you see, Your Honor, the picture shows the murderer's initials on Miss Riverford's neck. That's what you told us, right, Mr Hugel?'

'Astounding,' said the mayor, who peered at the photograph, holding it close to his eyes. 'By God, I see it: GB.'

'Yes, sir. I've also got one of Mr Banwell's tiepins, and you can see they're alike.' Littlemore drew Banwell's tiepin from his trousers pocket and handed it to the mayor.

'Look at that,' said the mayor. 'Identical.'

'Rubbish,' said Banwell. 'I'm being framed.'

'Good Lord, Hugel,' said the mayor, ignoring Banwell. 'Why didn't you tell me, man? You had proof positive against him.'

'But I don't – I can't – let me see that photograph,' said Hugel.

The mayor gave the coroner the picture.

Hugel shook his head as he scrutinized it. 'But my picture -'

'Mr Hugel's never seen that photograph, Your Honor,' said Littlemore.

'I don't understand,' said the mayor.

'On Mr Hugel's photograph – on his original photograph, sir – the initials on the girl's neck weren't GB. They were the reverse of GB, the mirror image.'

'Well, as a matter of fact, the initials should have been in reverse, shouldn't they?' McClellan pointed out. 'The monogram should have left a reverse imprint, just like the seal on an envelope.'

'That's the trick of it,' said Littlemore. 'You got it right, Your Honor: the pin would have left a reverse imprint, so the reverse GB on Mr Hugel's photograph made it look like Mr Banwell was the killer. That's exactly what Mr Hugel said. The only problem was that Mr Hugel's photograph was already a reverse image. Riviere told us. That's what Mr Hugel didn't realize, sir. His picture showed a backward GB - okay? – but his photograph was already a reverse image of the girl's neck. That meant the imprint left on her neck was a true GB, and that meant the murderer's monogram was not a true GB but a reverse GB!

'Say that again,' said McClellan.

Littlemore did. In fact, he repeated the point several times until the mayor understood it. He also explained that he had made Riviere produce a reverse image of Hugel's picture, turning the GB around again, making it forward- facing, so he could compare the initials to Mr Banwell's actual monogram. This reversed picture was the one he had just shown the mayor.

'But it still makes no sense,' said the mayor irritably. 'It makes no sense at all. How could the monogram shown in Hugel's original photograph be the exact reverse of George Banwell's?'

'There's only one way, Your Honor,' said Littlemore. 'Somebody drew it.'

'What?'

'Somebody drew it. Somebody etched it right onto the dry plate before Riviere developed it. Somebody who had access both to Mr Banwell's tiepin and to Mr Hugel's plates. Somebody trying to make us think Mr Banwell killed Elizabeth Riverford. Whoever did it must have worked at it real hard. They did almost everything right, but they made one mistake: they made the photograph show a mirror image when they shouldn't have. They knew the imprint on Miss Riverford's neck had to be the mirror image of the real monogram. So they figured the photograph had to show a mirror image. But what they forgot was that a ferrotype is already a mirror image. That was their big mistake. When they put a reverse GB into the photograph, they gave the game away.'

Hugel broke in. 'Why, even I can't understand what the harebrain is saying. We have a clear photograph here of the girl's neck. And it says GB on it – not a negative, or a double negative, or a triple negative, or whatever Littlemore is babbling about. Just a simple GB. It is proof that Banwell was the murderer.'

There was a brief silence; the mayor broke it. 'Detective,' he said, 'I believe I have followed your reasoning. But I must say things are turned around so many times I am at a loss to know who is in the right. Is this the only reason you have for believing that Mr Hugel has tampered with evidence? Is it possible that Hugel is correct? That your photograph proves George Banwell to have been the murderer?'

Littlemore frowned. 'Let's see,' he said. 'I guess there is a lot of evidence against Mr Banwell, isn't there? Mr Mayor, could I put a couple of questions to Mr Banwell?'

'Go ahead,' replied McClellan.

'Mr Banwell, can you hear me okay, sir?'

'What do you want?' Banwell growled.

'You know, Mr Banwell, now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure we can convict you of Miss Riverford's murder. I found the secret passageway between your apartments.'

'Good for you,' was Banwell's reply.

'There was clay in her apartment that matches the clay at your construction site.'

'That's proof for you.'

'And we found the trunk with Miss Riverford's things in it – the one you buried in the East River below the Manhattan Bridge.'

'Impossible!' cried Banwell.

'Got it last night, Mr Banwell. Just before you flooded the caisson.'

'You were in the Manhattan Bridge caisson last night, Littlemore?' McClellan demanded.

'Yes, sir,' said Littlemore sheepishly. 'Sorry, Mr Mayor.'

'Oh, never mind,' replied McClellan. 'Go on.'

'I'm being framed,' Banwell interrupted. 'McClellan, I was with you all Sunday night. At Saranac Inn. You know I couldn't have killed her.'

'That's not how the prosecutor will see it,' Littlemore replied. 'He'll say you had someone drive Miss Riverford down to Saranac, that you snuck out of the dinner with the mayor, met her somewhere for a few minutes, and killed her. Then you had her body driven back to the Balmoral where it would look like she died there. You figured you'd use the mayor himself as your alibi. Too bad you left your initials on her neck. That's what the prosecutor will say, Mr Banwell.'

'I didn't kill her, I tell you,' said Banwell. 'I can prove it.'

'How can you prove it, George?' asked McClellan.

'Nobody killed Elizabeth Riverford,' said Banwell.

'What?' said the mayor. 'She's still alive? Where?'

Banwell shook his head.

'For God's sake, man,' said McClellan, 'explain yourself.'

'There is no Elizabeth Riverford,' said Banwell.

'Never was,' added Littlemore.

Banwell expelled a deep breath. Hugel took one. The mayor expostulated. 'Will someone explain to me what's going on?'

'It was her weight that first got me thinking,' said Littlemore. 'Mr Hugel's report said Miss Riverford was five- foot-five and weighed a hundred fifteen pounds. But the ceiling thing she was tied up to wouldn't have held a hundred- fifteen-pound girl. It would've broken right off. I tested it.'

'I could have been slightly off in height and weight,' said Hugel. 'I have been under considerable strain.'

'You weren't off, Mr Hugel,' said Littlemore. 'You did it on purpose. You also didn't mention that Miss Riverford's hair wasn't really black.'

'Of course it was black,' said Hugel. 'Everyone at the Balmoral will testify it was black.'

'A wig,' said Littlemore. 'We found another one just like it in Banwell's trunk.'

Hugel appealed to the mayor. 'He's lost his mind. Someone is paying him to say these things. Why would I deliberately misrepresent Miss Riverford's physical appearance?'

'Why, Detective?' said McClellan.

'Because if he had told everyone that Elizabeth Riverford was five-foot-two, a hundred and three pounds, with long blond hair, things would have gotten real sticky when Miss Nora Acton, five-foot-two, a hundred and three pounds, with long blond hair, turned up with the identical wounds the very next day – the same day Miss Riverford's body disappeared – wouldn't they, Mr Hugel?'

Nora buried herself in Clara's arms the moment the latter entered her hotel room.

'My darling,' said Clara. 'Thank heaven you're all right. I'm so glad you called.'

'I'm going to tell them everything,' Nora exclaimed. 'I've tried to keep it secret, but I can't.'

'I know,' said Clara. 'You said so in your letter. It's all right. Tell them everything.'

'No,' Nora replied, close to tears, 'I mean really everything.'

'I understand. It's all right.'

'He didn't believe I'd been hurt at all,' said Nora. 'Doctor Younger. He thought I had painted on my wounds.'

'How awful.'

'I deserved it, Clara. Everything went wrong. I am so bad. It was all for nothing. It would be better if I were dead.'

'Hush. We need something to calm our nerves, both of us.' She went to a credenza on which stood a half-filled decanter and several glasses. 'Here. Oh, what awful brandy. But I'm going to pour us a little. We'll share it.'

She handed Nora a snifter with a little golden liquor swirling in its bowl. Nora had never had brandy before, but Clara helped her taste it and, after the first burning sensation had passed, to finish the glass. A little spilled onto the front of Nora's dress.

'Goodness,' said Clara. 'Is that my dress you have on?'

'Yes,' said Nora. 'I'm sorry. I went to Tarry Town today. Do you mind?'

'Of course not. It looks so well on you. My things always suit you.' Clara poured another finger of brandy into the snifter and took a little for herself, closing her eyes. Then she put the glass to Nora's lips. 'Do you know,' she said, 'I bought that dress with you in mind? These shoes were meant to go with it – these, the ones I am wearing now. Here, you try them. You have such a fine ankle. Let's put everything out of our minds and dress you up, just as we used to.'

'Shall I?' said Nora, trying to smile.

'You mean Elizabeth Riverford was Nora Acton?' an uncomprehending Mayor McClellan asked Detective Littlemore.

'I can prove it, Your Honor,' said Littlemore. He gestured toward Betty as he pulled a photograph from his pocket. 'Mr Mayor, Betty here was Miss Riverford's maid at the Balmoral. This is a picture I found in Leon Ling's apartment. Betty, tell these people who this woman is.'

'That's Miss Riverford on the left,' said Betty. 'The hair is different, but that's her.'

'Mr Acton, would you please look at the photograph now?' Littlemore handed Harcourt Acton the picture of Nora Acton, William Leon, and Clara Banwell.

'It's Nora,' said Acton.

McClellan shook his head. 'Nora Acton was living at the Balmoral under the name of Elizabeth Riverford? Why?'

'She wasn't living there,' grumbled Banwell. 'She was going to come up a few nights a week, that's all. What are you looking at? Look at Acton, why don't you?'

'You knew?' McClellan asked Mr Acton incredulously.

'Certainly not,' answered Mrs Acton for her husband. 'Nora must have done it on her own.'

Harcourt Acton said nothing.

'If he didn't know, he's a damned fool,' announced Banwell. 'But I never touched her. It was all Clara's idea anyway.'

'Clara knew too?' The mayor was even more incredulous.

'Knew? She arranged it.' Banwell's voice broke off. Then he resumed. 'Now let me go. I've committed no crime.'

'Except for running me over yesterday,' said Detective Littlemore. 'Plus trying to bribe a police officer, trying to kill Miss Acton, and killing Seamus Malley. I'd say you had a pretty full week, Mr Banwell.'

At the sound of Malley s name, Banwell struggled to rise from the floor, despite the handcuffs attaching him to the railing. In the commotion, Hugel broke for the door. Both men failed to achieve their object. Banwell succeed only in injuring his wrists. The coroner was caught by Officer Reardon.

'But why, Hugel?' asked the mayor.

The coroner didn't speak.

'My God,' the mayor went on, still addressing the coroner. 'You knew Elizabeth Riverford was Nora. Was it you who whipped her? Dear God.'

'I didn't,' Hugel cried out, miserably, still in Reardon's grip. 'I didn't whip anyone. I was only trying to help. I had to get him convicted. She promised me. I would never – she planned everything – she told me what to do – she promised me -'

'Nora?' asked the mayor. 'What in God's name did she promise you?'

'Not Nora,' said Hugel. He jerked his head toward Banwell. 'His wife.'

Nora Acton slipped out of her own shoes and tried on Clara's. The heels were high and pointed, but the shoes were made of a lovely, soft black leather. When the girl looked up, she saw in Clara's hand an unexpected object: a small revolver, with a mother-of-pearl grip. 'It is so hot in here, my dear,' said Clara. 'Let's go out on your balcony.'

'Why are you pointing a gun at me, Clara?'

'Because I hate you, darling. You made love with my husband.'

'I didn't,' Nora protested.

'But he wanted you to. Quite desperately. It's the same; no, it's worse.'

'But you hate George.'

'Do I? I suppose so,' said Clara. 'I hate both of you equally.'

'Oh, no. Don't say that. I would rather die.'

'Well, then.'

'But Clara, you made me -'

'Yes, I made you,' said Clara. 'And now I will unmake you. Just consider my position, darling. How can I let you tell the police what you know? I am so close to success. All that stands in my way is – you. Up, my dear. To the balcony. Go. Don't make me shoot you.'

Nora rose. She tottered. Clara's stiletto heels were much

too high for her. She could barely walk. Supporting herself on the back of the sofa, then on an armchair, then on a table, she made her way to the open French doors that led to the balcony.

'That's it,' said Clara. 'Just a little farther.'

Nora took a step onto the balcony and stumbled. She caught herself on the railing and stood up, facing out to the city. Eleven flights above ground, a strong breeze was blowing. Nora felt this cooling breeze on her forehead and cheeks. 'You put me in these shoes,' she said, 'so that it would be easy to push me over, didn't you?'

'No,' answered Clara, 'so that it will look like an accident. You were not used to the heels. You were not used to the brandy, which they will smell on your dress. A terrible accident. I don't want to push you, my darling. Won't you jump? Just let yourself go. I think you would rather.'

Nora saw the clock on the Metropolitan Life tower a mile to the south. It was midnight. She saw the brilliant glow of Broadway to the west. 'To be, or not to be,' she whispered.

'Not to, I'm afraid,' said Clara.

'Can I ask one thing?'

'I don't know, my dear. What is it?'

'Will you kiss me?' Nora asked. 'Just once, before I die?'

Clara Banwell considered this request. 'All right,' she said.

Nora turned, slowly, her arms behind her, gripping the railing, blinking away the tears in her blue eyes. She tipped her chin up, ever so slightly. Clara, keeping her revolver trained on Nora's waist, brushed a hair from Nora's mouth. Nora closed her eyes.

Standing over my hotel room sink, I splashed cold water on my face. It was clear to me now that Nora "had been, in her family, the target of an Oedipus complex of exactly the mirror-image kind I had just conceived. Without doubt, her mother was killingly jealous of her. But Nora's case was more complex because of the Banwells. Freud was right: the Banwells had in a sense become Nora's substitute mother and father. Banwell had wanted Nora – reverse Oedipus complex again – but Nora had apparently wanted Clara. That didn't fit. Neither, really, did Clara. Her position was the most complex of all. She had befriended Nora, as Freud pointed out, taking her into her confidence, describing her own sexual experiences. Freud believed Nora must be jealous of Clara. But by my lights, Clara should have been jealous of Nora. She should have hated her. She should have wanted to -

I leapt off my bed and ran from the room.

The moment their lips met, Nora seized Clara's hand, the hand holding the gun. The revolver fired. Nora was unable to dislodge the gun from Clara's hands, but she had managed to direct the barrel away from her own body. The bullet flew into the air above the city.

Nora scratched at Clara's face, drawing blood above and below her eye. When Clara cried out in pain, Nora bit Clara's hand – again, the one holding the gun – as hard as she could. The revolver fell to the concrete floor of the balcony and skittered back into the hotel room.

Clara struck Nora in the face. She struck her a second time, then pulled the girl by the hair to the balcony's edge. There she bent Nora backward over the railing, Nora's long tresses hanging straight down in the direction of the street far, far below.

Nora raised one of her shoes from the floor and brought it down on Clara's foot, the stiletto heel digging into Clara's bare instep. Clara let out a fearful cry and lost her grip on Nora, who tore herself away. She made it past Clara, through the French doors, but fell to the floor, unable to run in Clara's heels. On hands and knees she went on, crawling to reach the gun. Her fingertips had actually touched the pearl handle when Clara yanked her backward by her dress. Clara cast Nora aside, leapt over her, strode to the middle of the room, and seized the pistol.

'Very good, my dear,' said Clara, breathing hard. 'I had no idea you had it in you.'

They were interrupted by a crash. The locked door flew open, bits of wood scattering in the air, and Stratham Younger burst in.

'Dr Younger,' said Clara Banwell, standing in the middle of Nora's living room and pointing a small revolver directly at my midsection, 'how lovely to see you. Please close the door.'

Nora lay on the floor a dozen feet away. I saw a bruise on

her cheek but, thank God, no blood anywhere. 'Are you hurt?' I asked her.

She shook her head.

Exhaling the breath I hadn't realized I was holding in, 1 closed the door. 'And you, Mrs Banwell,' I said, 'how are you this evening?'

The corners of Clara's mouth edged up ever so slightly. She was badly scratched above and below her left eye. 'I will be better shortly,' she said. 'Step out onto the balcony, Doctor.'

I didn't move.

'Onto the balcony, Doctor,' she repeated.

'No, Mrs Banwell.'

'Really?' Clara returned. 'Shall I shoot you where you stand?'

'You can't,' I said. 'You gave your name downstairs. If you kill me, they will hang you for murder.'

'You are quite mistaken,' replied Clara. 'They will hang Nora, not me. I will tell them she killed you, and they will believe me. Have you forgotten? She is the psychopath. She is the one who burned herself with a cigarette. Even her parents think so.'

'Mrs Banwell, you don't hate Nora. You hate your husband. You have been his victim for seven years. Nora has been his victim too. Don't be his instrument.'

Clara stared at me. I took a step in her direction.

'Stop where you are,' said Clara sharply. 'You are a surprisingly poor judge of character for a psychologist, Dr Younger. And so credulous. What I told you, you think

true. Do you believe everything women tell you? Or do you believe them only when you want to sleep with them?'

'I don't want to sleep with you, Mrs Banwell.'

'Every man wants to sleep with me.'

'Please lower the gun,' I said. 'You are overwrought. You have every reason to be, but you misdirect your anger. Your husband beats you, Mrs Banwell. He has never consummated your marriage. He has made you – made you perform acts -'

Clara laughed. 'Oh, stop it. You are too comical. You will make me sick.'

It was not the laughter as such, but the condescending note in it, that brought me up short.

'He never made me do anything,' said Clara. 'I am no one's victim, Doctor. On our wedding night, I told him he would never have me. I, not he. How easy it was. I told him he was the strongest man I had ever met. I told him I would do things he would like even better. Which I did. I told him I would bring him other girls, young girls, whom he could do with as he pleased. Which I did. I told him he could hurt me, and I would make him happy while he hurt me. Which I did.'

Nora and I both stared at Clara in silence.

'And he liked it,' she added, smiling.

Again there was silence. I finally broke it. 'Why?'

'Because I knew him,' Clara said. 'His appetites are insatiable. He wanted me, of course, but not me alone. There were going to be others. Many, many others. Do you think

I could consent to be one of many, Doctor? I hated him from the moment I laid eyes on him.'

'It is not Nora,' I said, 'who has brought this upon you.'

'It is,' Clara snapped. 'She destroyed everything.'

'How?' This was Nora.

'By existing,' answered Clara with undisguised venom, declining even to look in Nora's direction. 'It – he fell in love with her. In love. Like a dog. Not a smart dog. A stupid dog. She was so spoiled and yet so unspoiled. What an enchanting contradiction. It became an obsession. So I had to get the dog his bone, didn't I? One can't live with a man slobbering like that.'

'That is why you agreed to have an affair with my father?' asked Nora.

'I didn't agree,' said Clara contemptuously, addressing Younger, not Nora. 'It was my idea. The weakest, most boring man I have ever known. If there is a heaven for selfless women, I – but even then she ruined it. She rejected George. She actually rejected him.' Clara took a deep breath; at last her demeanor lightened again. 'I tried a great many things to cure him of it. Many different things. Really I did.'

'Elsie Sigel,' I said.

A minute flinch at the corner of her mouth revealed Clara's surprise, but she didn't waver. 'You do have talent, Doctor, in the detection line. Have you considered changing careers?'

'You procured your husband another girl from a good family,' I went on. 'You thought it might make him forget Nora.'

' Very good. I don't believe any woman alive could have done it, other than myself. But when I found her Chinaman, I had her. She had written him love letters – to a Chinaman! He sold them to me, and I told the poor girl it was my duty to give them to her father unless she helped me. But my dog of a husband wasn't interested. You should have seen him, going through the motions. His mind was' – now Clara cast an eye at the still-prostrate Nora – 'on his bone.'

'You killed her,' I said. 'With chloroform. The same chloroform you gave your husband to use on Nora.'

Clara smiled. 'I said you should be a detective. Elsie simply couldn't keep her mouth shut. And what an unpleasant voice that one had. She left me no choice. She would have told. I could see it in her eyes.'

'Why didn't you just kill me! ' Nora shot out.

'Oh, it did occur to me, darling, but that wouldn't have done at all. You have no idea what it was like to see my husband's face when he understood that you, the love of his life, were doing everything in your little power to ruin him, to destroy him. It was worth more than all his money. Well, almost more, and I am going to have his money in any event. Dr Younger, I think you've kept me talking long enough.'

'You can't kill us, Mrs Banwell,' I said. 'If they find us both dead, shot by your gun, they will never believe you innocent. They will hang you. Put it down.' I took another step forward.

'Stop!' cried Clara, turning her gun on Nora. 'You are bold with your own life. You won't be so bold with hers. Now go to the balcony.'

I stepped forward again – not toward the balcony, but toward Clara.

'Stop!' Clara repeated. 'Are you mad? I'll shoot her.'

'You'll shoot at her, Mrs Banwell,' I replied. 'And you'll miss. What is that, a twenty-two single-action snub-nose? You couldn't hit a barn door with that unless you were within two feet of it. I'm within two feet of you now, Mrs Banwell. Shoot me.'

'Very well,' said Clara, shooting me.

I had the distinct though unaccountable impression of seeing a bullet emerge from the cylinder of Clara s revolver, fly slowly toward me, and pierce my white shirt. I felt a twinge below my lowest left rib. Only then did I hear the shot.

The gun recoiled slightly. I seized Clara's wrists. She struggled to free herself, but couldn't. I forced her toward the balcony – I walking forward, she backward, the gun over our heads, pointed at the ceiling. Nora got up, but I shook my head. Clara kicked over an enormous table lamp in Nora's direction; it broke at her feet, sending a shower of glass onto her legs. I forced her on toward the balcony. We crossed its threshold. I pushed her roughly into the balcony railing, the gun still above our heads.

'It's a long way down, Mrs Banwell,' I whispered in the dark, wincing as the bullet worked its way among my entrails. 'Let go of the gun.'

'You can't do it,' she said. 'You can't kill me.'

'Can't I?'

'No. That's the difference between us.'

Suddenly my stomach felt as if a red-hot fire iron were inside it. I had been certain of my ability to prevent her from gaining the upper hand. Now I was certain no longer. I realized my strength might give way at any moment. The burning inside my ribs seized me again. I lifted her a foot off the floor, never letting go of her wrists, and landed her hard against the side wall of the balcony. We came to a standstill face to face, chest to chest, arms and hands entangled between our torsos, her back pressed to the wall, our eyes and mouths only a few inches apart. I looked down at Clara, and she up at me. Rage makes some women ugly, some more beautiful. Clara fell into the latter category.

She still had possession of the gun, her finger at the trigger, somewhere between our two bodies. 'You don't know which of us the gun is pointed at, do you?' I asked, pressing her even harder against the wall, forcing a gasp from her. 'Want to know? It's pointed at you. At your heart.'

I could feel the blood running copiously down my shirt. Clara said nothing, her eyes holding mine.

Gathering my strength, I went on. 'You're right, I might be bluffing. Why don't you pull the trigger and find out? It's your only chance. In a moment I'll overpower you. Go ahead. Pull the trigger. Pull it, Clara.'

She pulled the trigger. There was. a muffled blast. Her eyes opened wide. 'No,' she said. Her body went rigid. She looked at me, unblinking. 'No,' she repeated. Then she whispered: 'My act.'

The eyes never closed. Her body slackened. She fell, dead, to the floor.

I was now holding the gun. I went back inside the hotel room. I tried to go to Nora but didn't make it. Instead, I stumbled to the sofa. There I lowered myself, holding my stomach, the blood running out between my fingers, a large red stain expanding on my shirt. Nora ran to me.

'Heels,' I said. 'I like you in heels.'

'Don't die,' she whispered.

I didn't speak.

'Please don't die,' she begged me. 'Are you going to die?'

'I'm afraid so, Miss Acton.' I turned my gaze to Clara's corpse, then to the balcony railing, past which I could see a few stars in the faraway night. Ever since they illuminated Broadway, the twinkling of stars had become a lost sight over Midtown. Finally, I looked once more into Nora's blue eyes. 'Show me,' I said.

'Show you what?'

'I don't want to die not knowing.'

Nora understood. She turned her upper body, presenting her back to me, as she had on the day of our first session, in this same room. Lying back against the sofa, I reached out with one hand – my clean hand – and undid the buttons of her dress. When the back fell open, I loosened the ties of her corset and drew the eyelets apart. Behind the crisscrossing laces, below and between her graceful shoulder blades, there were several of the still-healing lacerations. I touched one. Nora cried out, then stifled her cry.

'Good,' I said, standing up from the sofa. 'That's settled then. Now let's call the police and get me some medical attention, don't you think?'

'But,' replied Nora, gazing up at me stupefied, 'you said you were going to die.'

'I am,' I replied. 'Someday. But not from this fleabite.'

Chapter Twenty-six

The moment I woke up, late Saturday morning, a nurse ushered in two visitors: Abraham Brill and Sandor Ferenczi.

Brill and Ferenczi sported wan smiles. They tried to brave it out, loudly asking how 'our hero' was doing, keeping at me until I had reprised the whole story, but in the end they couldn't hide their gloom. I asked what the matter was.

'It's all over,' said Brill. 'Another letter from Hall.'

'For you, in fact,' Ferenczi added.

'Which Brill read, naturally,' I concluded.

'For God's sake, Younger,' Brill exclaimed, 'for all we knew, you might be dead.'

'Making it open season on my correspondence.'

Hall's letter, it turned out, contained both good news and bad news. He had rejected the donation to Clark. He could not accept any funds, he explained, conditional on the university's relinquishing its academic freedom. But he had now made up his mind about Freud's lectures. Unless he heard positively from us by four o'clock today that the

Times would not be publishing the article he had seen, the lectures would be canceled. He was most apologetic. Freud would of course receive the full fee promised him. Hall would issue a statement that Freud's health precluded him from speaking. Moreover, as a replacement, Hall would select the one person he was certain Freud would want to deliver the keynote lectures in his place: Carl Jung.

It was the last sentence, I think, that galled Brill most. 'If we only knew who was behind it all,' he said. I could practically hear his teeth gnashing.

There was a knock at the door. Littlemore poked his head in. After making introductions, I urged Brill to describe our situation to the detective. He did, in complete detail. The worst of it, Brill concluded, was not knowing whom we were up against. Who would be so determined to suppress Freud's book and block his lectures in Worcester?

'If you want my advice,' said Littlemore, 'we ought to go have a little chat with your friend Dr Smith Jelliffe.'

'Jelliffe?' said Brill. 'That's ridiculous. He's my publisher. He can only gain from Freud's lectures going well. He's been pushing me to hurry the translation for months.'

'Wrong way to think about it,' answered Littlemore. 'Don't try to figure it out all at once. This Jelliffe guy gets your book manuscript, and when he gives it back to you it's full of weird stuff. And he says it was put there by some pastor who borrowed his printing press? Fishiest story I ever heard. He's the guy to talk to first.'

They tried to stop me, but I dressed to go with them. If I weren't such a fool, I would have asked for help tying my shoes; I nearly tore my stitches out doing it. Before Jelliffe's, we made a stop at Brill's apartment. There was one item of evidence Littlemore wanted us to take uptown.

Littlemore waved to an officer in the lobby of the Balmoral. The police had been combing the Banwells' now-empty apartment all morning. Already a favorite among the uniformed men, Littlemore had suddenly become a figure of stature. News of his taking both Banwell and Hugel had spread all over the force.

Smith Ely Jelliffe opened his door clad in pajamas, a wet towel over his head. The sight of Drs. Younger, Brill, and Ferenczi startled him, but his surprise grew to alarm when he saw his nemesis, the detective from last night, jauntily following behind them.

'I didn't know,' Jelliffe blurted out to Littlemore. 'I didn't know anything about it until after you left. He was in town for only a few hours. There was no incident of any kind, I swear it. He's back at the hospital already. You can call. It won't happen again.'

'You two know each other?' Brill asked.

Littlemore questioned Jelliffe about Harry Thaw for several minutes, to the general astonishment of the others. When the detective was satisfied, he asked Jelliffe why he had sent Brill anonymous threats, burned his manuscript, dumped ash in his apartment, and slandered Dr Freud in the newspaper.

Jelliffe swore his innocence. He professed ignorance of any book-burning or threat-sending.

'Oh, yeah?' said Littlemore. 'Then who put those pages into the manuscript, the ones with the Bible stuff on them?'

'I don't know,' said Jelliffe. 'It must have been those church people.'

'Sure it was,' said Littlemore. He showed Jelliffe the article of evidence we had stopped for on our way – the single sheet of paper from Brill's manuscript that bore not only a verse from Jeremiah but a small stamped image of a turbaned, bearded, scowling man – and went on. 'Then how did this get there? Doesn't look very churchy to me.'

Jelliffe's mouth fell open.

'What is it?' asked Brill. 'You recognize it?'

'The Charaka,' said Jelliffe.

'What?' asked Littlemore.

'Charaka is ancient Hindoo physician,' replied Ferenczi. 'I said Hindoo. You remember I said Hindoo?'

Younger spoke: 'The Triumvirate.'

'No,' said Brill.

'Yes,' Jelliffe acknowledged.

'What?' asked Ferenczi.

Younger addressed Brill: 'We should have seen it all along. Who in New York is not only on the board of Morton Prince's journal, privy to everything Prince is going to publish, but also able to have a man arrested in Boston at the drop of a hat?'

'Dana,' said Brill.

'And the family offering Clark the donation? Hall told us one of them was a doctor knowledgeable about psychoanalysis. There's only one family in the country rich enough to fund an entire hospital that can also boast a world- famous neurologist among its members.'

'Bernard Sachs!' exclaimed Brill. 'And the anonymous doctor in the Times is Starr. I should have recognized the pompous blowhard the minute I read it. Starr is always boasting of having studied in Charcot's laboratory decades ago. He might actually have met Freud there.'

'Who?' asked Ferenczi. 'What is Triumvirate?'

Taking turns, Younger and Brill explained. The men they had just named – Charles Loomis Dana, Bernard Sachs, and M. Allen Starr – were the three most powerful neurologists in the country. Collectively, they were known as the New York Triumvirate. They owed their extraordinary prestige and power to an impressive combination of accomplishment, pedigree, and money. Dana was the author of the nation's leading text on adult nervous diseases. Sachs had a worldwide reputation – particularly because of his work on a disease first described by the Englishman Warren Tay – and wrote the first textbook on children's nervous conditions. Naturally, the Sachses were not the social equals of the very best Danas; they could not participate in society at all, being of the wrong religion. But they were richer. Bernard Sachs's brother had married a Goldman; the private bank founded as a result of this alliance was on its way to becoming a Wall Street bastion. Starr, a professor at Columbia, was the least accomplished of the three.

'He's a windbag,' said Brill, referring to Starr, 'a puppet of Dana's.'

'But why would they seek ruin of Freud?' asked Ferenczi.

'Because they are neurologists,' answered Brill. 'Freud terrifies them.'

'I am not following.'

'They belong to the somatic school,' said Younger. 'They believe that all nervous diseases result from neurological malfunction, not psychological causes. They don't believe in childhood trauma; they don't believe sexual repression causes mental illness. Psychoanalysis is anathema for them. They call it a cult.'

'Over scientific disagreement,' asked Ferenczi, 'they would do these things – burn manuscripts, make threats, spread false accusations?'

'Science has nothing to do with it,' Brill replied. 'The neurologists control everything. They are the "nerve specialists," which makes them the experts in "nervous conditions." All the women go to them for their hysterics, their palpitations, their anxieties, their frustrations. The practice is worth millions to them. They're right to see us as the devil. We're going to put them out of business. No one's going to consult a nerve specialist once they realize that psychological illnesses are caused by psychology, not neurology.'

'Dana was at your party, Jelliffe, 'Younger pursued. 'He was as hostile to Freud as anyone I've ever heard. Did he know of Brill's book?'

'Yes,' answered Jelliffe, 'but he wouldn't have burned it. He approved it. He encouraged me to publish it. He even found me an editor to help prepare the copy.'

'An editor?' asked Younger. 'Did this editor ever take the manuscript out of your offices?'

'Certainly,' Jelliffe replied. 'He often took it home to work on.'

'Well, now we know,' said Brill. 'The bastard.'

'What's this Charaka business?' Littlemore asked.

'It's their club,' Jelliffe replied. 'One of the most exclusive in the city. Hardly anyone is let in. The members wear a signet ring with a face on it. That's the face there – the one on the page.'

'It's a cabal,' said Brill. 'A secret society.'

'But these are scientists,' Ferenczi protested. 'They would burn manuscript and dump ash in Brill's flat?'

'They probably burn incense and sacrifice virgins too,' answered Brill.

'The question is whether they are responsible for the story on Jung in the Times ,' said Younger. 'That's what we need to know.'

'Are they?' Littlemore asked Jelliffe.

'Well, I – I may have heard them talking about it once,' said Jelliffe. 'And they did make the arrangements for Jung to speak at Fordham.'

'Of course,' said Brill. 'They are launching Jung to bring Freud down. And Hall is falling for it. What are we going to do? We can't fight Charles Dana.'

'I don't know about that,' Littlemore replied. He addressed Jelliffe again. 'You mentioned a Dana last night, didn't you? Same man?'

Jelliffe nodded.

The servant at the door of the small but elegant house on

Fifty-third Street at Fifth Avenue informed us that Dr Dana was not at home. 'Tell him a detective wants to ask him a few questions about Harry Thaw,' Littlemore replied. 'And mention that I just came from Dr Smith Jelliffe. Maybe he'll be at home after he hears that.'

On the detective's advice, Littlemore and I alone had made the trip to Charles Dana's house; Brill and Ferenczi returned to the hotel. A minute later, the two of us were invited in.

Dana's house had none of the gaudiness of Jelliffe's apartment or of the other houses recently erected on Fifth Avenue – including those of certain relations of mine. Dana's was a red-brick affair. The furniture was handsome without being heavy. As Littlemore and I entered the foyer, we saw Dana emerge from a dark, well-stocked library. He closed the doors behind him and greeted us. He was surprised at my presence, I believe, but reacted with perfect aplomb. He asked after my Aunt Mamie, I after some of his cousins. He made no inquiry into my reason for accompanying Littlemore. One had to be impressed by the man's grace. He looked his age – sixty, I should have thought – but age suited him well. He showed us to another room where, I imagine, he did business and saw patients.

Our conversation with Dana was brief. Littlemore's tone changed. With Jelliffe, he had been hectoring. He made accusations and dared Jelliffe to deny them. With Dana, he was far more careful – still conveying, however, that we knew something Dana would not want us to know.

Dana displayed none of Jelliffe's cringing. He acknowledged that Thaw had retained his services in connection with the trial but noted that his role, unlike Jelliffe s, had been merely advisory. He had rendered no opinion about Thaw's mental state at any time, past or present.

'Did you render an opinion about Thaw's coming into New York last weekend?' asked Littlemore.

'Was Mr Thaw in New York last weekend?' replied Dana.

'Jelliffe says it was your decision.'

'I am not Mr Thaw's physician, Detective. Jelliffe is. I severed my professional relationship with Mr Thaw last year, as public records will demonstrate. Dr Jelliffe has occasionally sought my counsel, and I have given him what advice I could. I know nothing of Jelliffe's ultimate treatment decisions, and I certainly could not be said to have made them.'

'Fair enough,' said Littlemore. 'I guess I could arrest you for conspiring in the escape of a state prisoner, but it sounds like I couldn't convict you.'

'I doubt it very much,' said Dana. 'But I could probably have you fired if you tried.'

'And I guess,' said Littlemore, 'you also couldn't have made any decisions about stealing a manuscript, burning it, and putting the ashes in the home of Dr Abraham Brill?'

For the first time, Dana appeared disconcerted.

'Nice ring you got there, Dr Dana,' Littlemore went on.

I hadn't noticed; on Dana's right hand there was a signet ring. No one spoke. Dana clasped his long fingers together – not, however, hiding the ring – and reclined in his chair. 'What do you want, Mr Littlemore?' he asked. He turned to me. 'Or perhaps I should ask you that question, Dr Younger.'

I cleared my throat. 'It's a tissue of lies,' I said. 'The accusations you have made against Dr Freud. Every single one of them is false.'

'Assume I know what you are talking about,' answered Dana. 'I ask you again: what do you want?'

'It's three-thirty,' I replied. 'In half an hour, I am going to wire G. Stanley Hall in Worcester. I am going to say that a certain story is not going to be published in the New York Times tomorrow. I want my telegram to be true.'

Dana sat in silence, holding my stare. 'Let me tell you something,' he said at last. 'The problem is this: our knowledge of the human brain is incomplete. We don't have medicines to change the way people think. To cure their delusions. To relieve their sexual desires while keeping them from overpopulating the world. To make them happy. It is all neurology, you know. It has to be. Psychoanalysis is going to set us back a hundred years. Its licentiousness will appeal to the masses. Its prurience will appeal to young scientific minds and even to some old ones. It will turn the masses into exhibitionists and physicians into mystics. But someday people will wake up to the fact that it is all the emperor's new clothes. We will discover drugs to change the way people think, sooner or later. To control the way they feel. The question is only whether, by then, we will still have enough of a sense of shame to be embarrassed by the fact that everyone is running around naked. Send your telegram, Dr Younger. It will be true – for now.'

After leaving Dana's house, Littlemore drove me across town. 'So, Doc,' he said, 'I know how you feel about Nora and all, but aren't you – I mean, why'd she do it?'

'For Clara,' I answered.

'But why?'

I didn't answer.

Littlemore shook his head. 'Everybody did everything for Clara.'

'She procured girls for Banwell,' I said.

'I know,' replied Littlemore.

'You know?'

'Last night,' he said, 'Nora was telling Betty and me about the work she and Clara did with the immigrant families downtown, and it didn't sound kosher to me, if you see what I mean, not after everything else I'd heard. So I got some names and addresses from Nora and ran them down this morning. I found a few of the families Clara had "helped." Most of them wouldn't talk, but I finally got the story. I'm telling you, it's ugly. Clara would find girls with no fathers, sometimes no parents at all. Real young girls – thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. She'd pay off whoever was taking care of them and take them to Banwell.'

Littlemore drove on without speaking.

'Did you find out,' I asked, 'how the passage into Nora's bedroom got there?'

'Yup. Banwell gave us his story today too,' said the detective. 'He blames the whole thing on Clara. He never suspected she was against him – not until yesterday. Three or four years ago, the Actons hired him to rebuild their house at Gramercy Park. That's when they met.'

'And Banwell became obsessed with Nora,' I said.

'Looks like it. She's – what, fourteen at the time, but he's got to have her. So get this: his boys are working on the house, and they find this old passage running from one of the second-floor rooms to the garden shed out back. Apparently the Actons didn't know it was there. But they're out of town, and Banwell never lets on. He has the passage fixed up so he can enter it from the back alley without ever going onto the Actons' property. And he designs the house so the room on the second floor becomes Nora's new bedroom. I asked him if his plan was just to go to Nora's bedroom one night and rape her. You know what? He laughed in my face. According to him, he never raped anybody. They all wanted it. With Nora, he figures he's going to seduce her, and he needs a way in and out of her room without her parents knowing about it. But I guess Nora didn't go for the seduction.'

'She rejected him,' I said.

'That's what he told us. He swears he never touched her. Never used the secret passage until this week. You know, I think it really upset him. Maybe no girl ever turned him down before.'

'Could be,' I said. 'Maybe he was in love with her.'

'You think so?'

'I think so. And Clara decided to get Nora for him.'

'How would she do that?' asked Littlemore.

'I think she tried to make Nora fall in love with her.'

'What?' he said.

I didn't respond.

'I don't know about that,' Littlemore went on, 'but I'll give you this much: Banwell says getting Nora to play Elizabeth Riverford was Clara's idea. When he builds the Balmoral, he lays down another passage, only this time connected to his own study. The apartment it goes to is going to be his bird's nest. He sets it up just the way he wants it: big brass bed, silk sheets, the works. Fills the closet with lingerie and furs. Puts a couple of his own suits there, too, in a different closet he keeps locked. A little while ago, if you can believe Banwell, Clara tells him Nora has finally said yes. The idea is that Nora's going to rent the apartment under a false name, and she's going to come up to see him whenever she can. I don't know what the truth is there. I didn't want to ask Nora about it.'

I knew. Nora had told me the whole story last night, while we waited for the police.

One day in July, Clara tearfully told Nora that she could no longer bear her marriage. George flogged and raped her almost every night. She feared for her life but couldn't leave him, because he would kill her if she did.

Nora was horrified, but Clara said there was nothing anyone could do. Only one thing could save her, but it was impossible. Clara knew a man highly placed in the police force: Hugel, obviously; Clara had met him when she and Nora were 'helping' an immigrant family whose daughter had died. According to Clara, she revealed her plight to him. Hugel took pity on her but said the law was powerless, because a husband had a legal right to rape his wife. When, however, Clara added that George raped other girls too – whose families he paid off in exchange for their silence, and at least one of whom had been killed – the coroner had allegedly grown outraged. He supposedly decided there was only one thing to be done: they must stage a murder.

A girl must be found seemingly dead in the apartment that George kept for his mistresses. It must look like she died by his hand. It could be done, because he himself (the coroner) would administer the catalepsy-inducing drug and he himself would be the medical examiner. A piece of evidence left at the scene would identify Banwell as the perpetrator. Clara made Nora believe the entire scheme originated with the coroner.

Nora remembered being shocked by the audacity of the plan. She asked if Clara really thought it possible.

No, Clara said. She could never ask anyone to play the part of Banwell's mistress and victim. She (Clara) must simply endure her fate.

It was then that Nora said she would do it.

Clara reacted with apparent shock. Absolutely not, she replied. The girl who played the part of the victim would have to allow herself to be hurt. Nora asked Clara if, by hurt, she meant raped. Of course not, Clara said, but the victim would have to let herself be bound, with a cord or rope around her neck, and Clara might even have to leave a mark or two. Nora insisted that she would do it. At last Clara gave in, and they went forward with the plot. Nora was unsure exactly what happened at the Balmoral on Sunday night, undoubtedly because of the coroner's catalepsy-inducing drug. Nora did remember Clara telling her not to scream, and she remembered she kept forgetting her false name. The rest, however, was indistinct. I explained all this to Littlemore.

'I know what happened next,' he said. 'When Nora wakes up Monday morning, she's with Hugel in the morgue. He tells her the bad news: the tie he was supposed to find at the murder scene, the silk tie with Banwell's monogram, which was going to prove Banwell did it, wasn't there. That's because Banwell went in through the passage as soon as he found out about the "murder." He had to get his own clothes out of there, so we didn't connect him to Miss Riverford.'

'But Banwell was out of town Sunday night, with the mayor,' I said. 'Hugel didn't know?'

'None of them knew. Banwell was supposed to be having dinner in the city. Banwell's thing with the mayor in Saranac came up at the last minute. All very hush-hush. There was no way for Clara to find out about it either, because there's no phone at the Banwells' country place. So Clara sneaks in from Tarry Town that night, does her business to Nora around nine or so, and drives back. She told Hugel to put the time of death between midnight and two, because Banwell was supposed to have been home by then.'

'But Banwell saw his tie there the next morning and took it away before Hugel arrived.'

'Right. Without the tie, Hugel's in trouble. He can't reach Clara. So he decides he's got to stage another fake attack, this one at Nora's house, where they'll leave another piece of evidence. He needs to convict Banwell, see? That's his deal with Clara. She had given him ten thousand dollars up front, and he was going to get another thirty thousand if Banwell was convicted. But something went wrong the second time too, I don't know what. Hugel clammed up.'

Again, I could fill in the blanks. Nora had gone along with the second attack both because she still thought she was rescuing Clara and because she didn't know how else she would explain all the wounds she had woken up with. In the second 'attack,' the coroner would merely tie her up and leave her. She was not to be hurt again at all. And she wasn't. (That was why she hadn't been able to answer my questions yesterday. I asked her whether any man had whipped her. She was afraid to tell me the truth, because Clara had sworn that Banwell would kill her – Clara – if he ever found out.) But when the coroner tied Nora up, he had grown unstable. He kept staring at her. He was sweating and seemed to be having trouble swallowing, Nora said. He never threatened her; nor did he molest her. But he kept adjusting the rope around her wrists. He wouldn't leave. Then he brushed up against her.

'Apparently your coroner lost control of himself,' I said, without further detail. 'Nora screamed.'

'And Hugel panicked, right?' said Littlemore. 'He runs out the back way. He's got Banwell's tiepin; he meant to leave it in the bedroom. But he's so panicked he forgot. So he throws it into the garden, figuring we'll find it when we search the grounds.'

After the coroner ran away, Nora didn't know what to do. The coroner was supposed to have rendered her unconscious, but he had run out without giving her the narcotic. At a loss, Nora pretended she couldn't speak or remember anything about what had happened. Her real voice loss from three years earlier, and her real – although quite limited – amnesia from the night before gave her the idea.

'Why did Banwell put the trunk in the river?' I asked.

'The guy was in a tight spot,' said Littlemore. 'Think about it. If he let us go through all the stuff in the apartment, he knew we'd trace it and bag him for the murder. But he couldn't just tell us that Elizabeth was Nora. Even if we believed him, he'd have a huge scandal on his hands, and he'd probably go to jail for corrupting a minor. So he told the mayor he was sending Miss Riverford's things back to Chicago. He loaded them into a trunk and took it down to the caisson. Figured it's the perfect place – until he ran into Malley.'

'He almost fooled us,' I said.

'With Malley?'

'No. When he – when he burned Nora.' The thought of it made me feel I had killed the wrong Banwell.

'Yup,' said Littlemore. 'He wanted us to think Nora was crazy and did everything to herself. He figures if he can pull that off, he can beat the whole rap. Doesn't matter what Nora says; no one will believe her.'

'What made him go back to kill her last night?' I asked.

'Nora sent Clara a letter,' he answered. 'It said she was going to tell the police about everything Banwell did to Clara and to the other girls, the immigrant girls. Apparently Banwell saw it.'

'I wonder if Clara let him see it,' I said.

'Could be. But then Hugel pays a visit. Banwell's in the apartment when Hugel gets there, and he starts to put two and two together. That night, he ties Clara up to keep her out of the way and heads downtown to the Actons'. That's when I stumble onto the secret passage at the Balmoral. Boy, Clara was good. She tells me her husband's gone to kill Nora, but she made it seem like I was dragging it out of her. I don't think she realized then that Nora wasn't in her house at all. How did Clara find out Nora was at the hotel?'

'Nora called her,' I said. 'What about the Chinaman?'

'Leon? They'll never find him,' Littlemore answered. 'I had a long talk today with Mr Chong. Seems that Cousin Leon comes to him a month ago, says there's a rich guy who will pay them to take a trunk off his hands. That night, the two of them go to the Balmoral and bring the trunk back to Leon's room by cab. Next day, Leon's packing up. Where you going? Chong asks him. Washington, says Leon, then back to China. Chong's getting nervous. What's in the trunk? he asks. Look for yourself, says Leon. So Chong opens it, and he sees one of Leon's girlfriends dead inside. Chong gets upset; he says the police are going to think Leon killed her. Leon laughs and says that's exactly what the police are supposed to think. Leon also tells Chong to show up at the Balmoral the next day, and they'll give him a real good job. Chong's mad about that. He figures Leon got paid off big; otherwise he couldn't be going back to China. So, being a Chinaman, Chong asks for two jobs as his reward, not one, and Leon fixes it up for him.'

We pulled up at the hotel, each in our own thoughts.

Littlemore said, 'There's just one thing. Why does Clara work so hard to get Nora for Banwell if Clara is so jealous of her? That doesn't make sense.'

'Oh, I don't know,' I replied, getting out of the car. 'Some people feel a need to bring about the very thing that will most torment them.'

'They do?'

'Yes.'

'Why?' asked Littlemore.

'I have no idea, Detective. It's an unsolved mystery.'

'That reminds me: I'm not a detective anymore,' he said. 'The mayor's making me a lieutenant.'

A torrential rain poured down on our entire party – Freud, a visibly uncomfortable Jung, Brill, Ferenczi, Jones, and myself – at the South Street harbor Saturday evening. As their luggage was loaded onto the overnight boat from New York to Fall River, Freud pulled me to one side.

'You are not coming with us?' he said to me, from the cocoon of his umbrella to the cocoon of mine.

'No, sir. The surgeon said I shouldn't travel for a day or two.'

'I see,' he replied skeptically. 'And Nora remains here in New York, of course.'

'Yes,' I said.

'But there is still something more, isn't there?' Freud stroked his beard.

I preferred to change the subject. 'How are things with Dr Jung, sir, if I may ask?' I knew – and Freud knew I knew – of the extraordinary scene between Jung and Freud that had taken place the other night.

'Better,' Freud replied. 'Do you know, I believe he was jealous of you.'

'Of me?'

'Yes,' said Freud. 'It finally came to me that he took my appointing you to analyze Nora as a betrayal. When I explained to him that I named you only because you live here, it improved things between us immediately.' He looked out into the rain. 'It won't last, however. Not very long.'

'I don't understand Mrs Banwell, Dr Freud,' I said. 'I don't understand her feelings for Miss Acton.'

Freud reflected. 'Well, Younger, you solved the mystery. Remarkable.'

'You solved it, sir. You warned me last night that they were all in Mrs Banwell's orbit and that Clara's friendship with Miss Acton was not entirely innocent. I don't really understand Mrs Banwell, Dr Freud. I don't understand what moved her!

'If I had to guess,' said Freud, 'I would say that Nora was for Mrs Banwell a mirror in which she saw herself as she was ten years ago – and in which she saw, therefore, by contrast, what she had become. Certainly this would account for her desire to corrupt Nora and to hurt her. You must bear in mind the years of punishment she endured as the willing object of a sadist.'

'Yet she stayed with him.' It couldn't have been only the money that kept her with Banwell. 'She was a masochist?'

'There is no such thing, Younger, not in pure form. Every masochist is also a sadist. In men, at any rate, masochism is never primary – it is sadism turned on the self – and Mrs Banwell unquestionably had a strong masculine side. She may have been plotting the destruction of her husband for some time.'

I had one other question. I was unsure whether to voice it; it seemed so basic and ignorant. But I decided to go ahead. 'Is homosexuality a pathology, Dr Freud?'

'You are wondering if Nora is a homosexual,' he said.

'I am so transparent?'

'No man can keep a secret,' Freud answered. 'If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips.'

I resisted the urge to glance at my fingertips.

'No need to look at your fingertips,' he went on. 'You are not transparent. With you, my boy, I merely ask myself how I would have felt in your place. But I will answer your question. Homosexuality is certainly no advantage, but it cannot be classified as an illness. It is no shame, no vice, no degradation at all. In women in particular, there may be a primary narcissism, a self-love, that directs their desire toward others of their sex. I would not call Nora a homosexual, though. I would say, rather, she was seduced.

But I should have seen her love for Mrs Banwell at once. It was plainly the strongest unconscious current in her mental life. You told me the first day how fondly she spoke of Mrs Banwell, when of course she ought to have felt the fiercest jealousy toward a woman engaged in a sexual act with her father – an act she wished to be performing on him herself. Only the most powerful desire for Mrs Banwell could have allowed her to repress that jealousy.'

Naturally I could not wholly join in this observation. I only nodded in reply.

'You don't agree?' he asked.

'I don't believe Nora was jealous of Clara,' I said, 'in that way.'

Freud raised his eyebrows. 'You can't disbelieve that unless you reject Oedipus.'

Again I said nothing.

'Ah,' said Freud. And he repeated it: 'Ah.' He took a deep breath, sighed, and observed me closely. 'That is why you are not coming to Clark with us.'

I considered broaching with Freud my reinterpretation of the Oedipus complex. I would have liked to; I would have liked even more to discuss Hamlet with him. But I found I couldn't. I knew how much he had suffered from Jung's seeming defection. There would be other occasions. I would be in Worcester by Tuesday morning, in time for his first lecture.

'In that case,' Freud resumed, 'let me raise one possibility with you before I go. You are not the first to reject the

Oedipus complex. You will not be the last. But you may have a special reason for doing so, associated with my person. You have admired me from afar, my boy. There is always a kind of father love in such relationships. Now, having met me in the flesh, and having the opportunity to complete this cathexis, you fear doing so. You fear I will take myself away from you, as your real father did. Thus you forestall my anticipated withdrawal by denying the Oedipus complex.'

The rain beat down. Freud looked at me with kindly eyes. 'Someone has told you,' I said, 'that my father committed suicide.'

'Yes.'

'But he didn't.'

'Oh?' asked Freud.

' 'I killed him.'

'What?'

'It was the only way,' I said, 'to overcome my Oedipus complex.'

Freud looked at me. For a moment I was afraid he might actually take me seriously. Then he laughed aloud and shook my hand. He thanked me for helping him through his week in New York, and especially for rescuing his lectures at Clark. I accompanied him onto the boat. His face seemed much more deeply furrowed than it had been a week ago, his back slightly bent, his eyes a decade older. As I began to disembark, he called out my name. He was at the railing; I had taken a step or two down the gangway. 'Let me be honest with you, my boy,' he said, from under his umbrella, as the rain poured down. 'This country of yours: I am suspicious of it. Be careful. It brings out the worst in people – crudeness, ambition, savagery. There is too much money. I see the prudery for which your country is famous, but it is brittle. It will shatter in the whirlwind of gratification being called forth. America, I fear, is a mistake. A gigantic mistake, to be sure, but still a mistake.'

That was the last time I saw Freud in America. The same night, I took Nora to the top of the Gillender Building at the corner of Nassau and Wall, a place where vast fortunes were made and lost every day. On a Saturday night, Wall Street was deserted.

I had gone to the Actons' directly after seeing Freud off. Mrs Biggs greeted me like an old friend. Harcourt and Mildred Acton were nowhere to be seen; they were evidently not receiving. I asked after Nora's condition. Mrs Biggs noisily withdrew, and Nora came down presently.

Neither of us could find a word to say. Finally, I asked if she would care for a walk; I opined that it would be medically advisable. Suddenly I was sure she would decline and I would never see her again.

'All right,' she said.

The rain had stopped. The smell of wet pavement, which in the city passes for freshness, rose pleasantly in the air. Downtown, the pavement turned to cobblestone, and the clip-clop of distant horses, with no motorcar or omnibus in sight, reminded me of the New York I knew as a boy. We spoke little.

The doorman at the Gillender heard we wished to see the famous view and let us in. In the dome room, nineteen stories up, four great pointed windows overlooked the city, one facing each direction of the compass. Uptown, we could see mile after mile of the ever-expanding northward march of electric Manhattan; to the south was the tip of the island, the water, and the burning torch of the Statue of Liberty.

'They are going to demolish the building any day now,' I said. The Gillender, when erected in 1897, was one of the tallest skyscrapers in Manhattan. With its slender silhouette and classical proportions, it was also one of the most widely admired. 'It will be the tallest building in the history of the world to be torn down.'

'Have you ever been happy?' Nora asked abruptly.

I considered. 'Dr Freud says that unhappiness is caused when we cannot let go of our memories.'

'Does he say how one is supposed to let go of one's memories?'

'By remembering them.'

Neither of us spoke.

'That does not sound quite logical, Doctor,' said Nora.

'No.'

Nora pointed to a rooftop about a block to the north. 'Look. That's the Hanover Building, where Mr Banwell forced himself on me three years ago.'

I said nothing.

'You knew?' she asked. 'You knew I would see it from here?'

Again I made no answer.

'You are still treating me,' said Nora.

'I never treated you.'

She gazed out. 'I was so very stupid.'

'Not nearly so stupid as I.'

'What will you do now?' Nora asked.

'Return to Worcester,' I said. 'Practice medicine. The students will be coming back in a few weeks.'

'My classes start the twenty-fourth,' Nora replied.

'Then you are going to Barnard after all?'

'Yes. I have bought my books already. I'm leaving my parents' house. I'll be living uptown, in a dormitory called Brooks Hall.'

'And what will you be studying at Barnard, Miss Acton?' I asked. 'Shakespeare's women?'

'As a matter of fact,' she replied airily, 'I am thinking of a concentration in Elizabethan drama and psychology. Oh – and also detection.'

'An absurd combination of interests. No one will take it seriously.'

There was another pause.

'I guess,' I said, 'we ought to say good-bye then.'

'I've been happy once,' she answered.

'Once?'

'Last night,' she said. 'Good-bye, Doctor. Thank you.'

I didn't answer. It was a good thing. Had I not given her the extra instant, she might not have said the words I longed to hear:

'Are you going to kiss me good-bye at least?' she asked.

'Kiss you?' I replied. 'You are underage, Miss Acton. I wouldn't dream of it.'

'I'm like Cinderella,' she said, 'only in reverse. At midnight I turn eighteen.'

Midnight came. And so it fell out that I could not bring myself to leave New York City even once all the rest of that young month.