The Interpretation of Murder

Chapter Nine

When we got back to Miss Acton's rooms, Mrs Biggs was frantic. She ordered Miss Acton first to lie down, then to sit up, then to move about in order to 'get her color back.' Miss Acton paid no mind to any of these commands. She headed straight to the little kitchen with which her suite was equipped and began preparing a pot of tea. Mrs Biggs threw up her arms in protest, declaring that she should be fixing tea. The old woman would not be quiet until Miss Acton sat her down and kissed her hands.

The girl had an uncanny capacity either to regain her composure after the most overwhelming events or to affect a composure she did not feel. She finished the tea and handed a steaming cup to Mrs Biggs.

'You would have been killed, Miss Nora,' said the old woman. 'You would have been killed if not for the young doctor.'

Miss Acton placed her hand on top of the woman's, urging her to take her tea. When Mrs Biggs had done so, the girl told her she would have to leave us because she needed to speak privately with me. After a good deal more importuning, Mrs Biggs was persuaded to go.

When we were alone, Miss Acton thanked me.

'Why have you made your servant leave?' I asked.

'I did not "make" her leave,' replied the girl. 'You wanted to know the circumstances in which I lost my voice three years ago. I wish to tell you.'

The teapot now began to shake in her hands. Attempting to pour, she missed the cup altogether. She put the pot down and clasped her fingers together. 'That poor horse. How could he do such a thing?'

'You are not to blame, Miss Acton.'

'What is the matter with you?' She looked at me furiously. 'Why would I be to blame?'

'There is no reason. But you sound as if you are blaming yourself.'

Miss Acton went to the window. She parted the curtain, revealing a balcony behind a pair of French doors and opening up a panoramic view of the city below. 'Do you know who that was?'

'No.'

'That was George Banwell, Clara's husband. My father's friend.' The girl's breathing became unsteady. 'It was by the lake at his summerhouse. He proposed to me.'

'Please lie down, Miss Acton.'

'Why?'

'It is part of the treatment.'

'Oh, very well.'

When she was on the couch again, I resumed. 'Mr Banwell asked you to marry him — when you were fourteen?'

'I was sixteen, Doctor, and he did not propose marriage.'

'What did he propose?'

'To have — to have — ' She stopped.

'To have intercourse with you?' It is always delicate to refer to sexual activity with young female patients, because one cannot be sure how much they know of biology. But it is worse to let an excess of delicacy reinforce the pernicious sense of shame that a girl may attach to such an experience.

'Yes,' she answered. 'We were staying at his country house, my whole family He and I were walking along the path around their pond. He said he had purchased another cottage nearby, where we could go, with a lovely large bed, where the two of us could be alone and no one would know.'

'What did you do?'

'I slapped him in the face and ran,' said Miss Acton. 'I told my father — who did not take my side.'

'He didn't believe you?' I asked.

'He acted as if I were the wrongdoer. I insisted he confront Mr Banwell. A week later, he told me he had. Mr Banwell denied the charge, according to my father, with great indignation. I am sure he wore very much the same look you saw just now. He only conceded mentioning his new cottage to me. He maintained that I had drawn the wicked inference myself, because of — because of the kind of books I read. My father chose to believe Mr Banwell. I hate him.'

'Mr Banwell?'

'My father.'

'Miss Acton, you lost your voice three years ago. But you are describing an event that occurred last year.'

'Three years ago, he kissed me.'

'Your father?'

'No, how disgusting,' said Miss Acton. 'Mr Banwell.'

'You were fourteen?' I asked.

'Were mathematics difficult for you at school, Dr Younger?'

'Go on, Miss Acton.'

'It was Independence Day,' she said. 'My parents had met the Banwells only a few months earlier, but already my father and Mr Banwell were the best of friends. Mr Banwell's people were rebuilding our house. We had just spent three weeks with them in the country while they finished all the construction. Clara was so kind to me. She is the strongest, most intelligent woman I have ever met, Dr Younger. And the most beautiful. Did you see Lina Cavalieri's Salome?'

'No,' I answered. The famously beautiful Miss Cavalieri had performed the role at the Manhattan Opera House last winter, but I had been unable to get down from Worcester to see it.

'Clara looks just like her. She was on the stage too, years ago. Mr Gibson did a picture of her. In any event, Mr Banwell had one of those enormous buildings of his going up downtown — the Hanover, I think. We were planning to go to the roof of that building to watch the fireworks. But my mother took ill — she always takes ill — so she remained behind. Somehow, at the last moment, my father couldn't come downtown either. I don't know why. I think he was also ill; there was a fever that summer. In any event, Mr Banwell volunteered to take me to the rooftop, since I had been looking forward to it so very much.'

'Just the two of you?'

'Yes. He drove me in his carriage. It was night. He made the horses canter down Broadway. I remember the hot wind in my face. We rode up in the elevator together. I was very nervous; it was the first time I had ever been in an elevator. I couldn't wait for the fireworks, but when the first cannons burst out, they scared me terribly. I may have screamed. The next thing I knew he had clasped me in both arms. I can still feel him pulling my — my upper body — against him. Then he pressed his mouth upon my lips.' The girl grimaced, as if she wanted to spit.

'And then?' I asked.

'I tore myself from him, but there was nowhere to go. I didn't know how to escape from his roof. He motioned me to calm down, to be quiet. He told me it would be our secret and said we would just watch the fireworks now Which is what we did.'

'Did you tell anyone?'

'No. That is when I lost my voice: that night. Everyone thought I had caught the fever. Perhaps I had. My voice came back to me the next morning, just as it did this time. But I have told no One until this day. After that, I would not consent to be alone with Mr Banwell again.'

A long silence ensued. The girl had evidently come to the end of her immediately conscious memories. 'Think of yesterday, Miss Acton. Do you remember anything?'

'No,' she said quietly. 'I'm sorry.'

I asked her permission to convey what she had said to Dr Freud. She agreed. I then informed her that we should resume our conversation tomorrow.

She seemed surprised: 'What else do we have to converse about, Doctor? I have told you everything.'

'Something more may occur to you.'

'Why do you say that?'

'Because you are still suffering your amnesia. When we have uncovered everything connected with this event, I believe your memory will come back to you.'

'You think I am concealing something?'

'It is not concealment, Miss Acton. Or rather, it is something you are concealing from yourself.'

'I don't know what you are talking about,' the girl replied. When I was a step from the door, she stopped me with her clear, soft voice. 'Dr Younger?'

'Miss Acton?'

Her blue eyes had tears in them. She held her chin high. 'He did kiss me. He did — propose to me by the lake.'

I hadn't realized how anxious she was over the possibility that I too, like her father, might not credit what she told me. There was something indescribably endearing in the way she used 'propose' instead of 'proposition.' 'Miss Acton,' I replied, 'I believe every word you say.'

She burst into tears. I left her, wishing Mrs Biggs a good afternoon as I passed her in the hallway.

In a private corner of the saloon at the Hotel Manhattan,

George Banwell sat with Mayor McClellan. The mayor remarked that Banwell looked as if he had been in a fist- fight. Banwell shrugged. 'A little problem with a filly,' he said.

The mayor withdrew an envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to Banwell. 'Here's your check. I advise you to go to your bank this afternoon. It's very large. And it's the last one. There won't be any more, no matter what. Do we understand each other?'

Banwell nodded. 'If there are additional costs, I'll bear them myself.'

The mayor then explained that Miss Riverford's murderer had apparently struck again. Did Banwell know Harcourt Acton?

'Of course I know Acton,' Banwell replied. 'He and his wife are at my summerhouse now. They joined Clara there yesterday.'

'So that's why we have not been able to reach them,' said McClellan.

'What about Acton?' asked Banwell.

'The second victim was his daughter.'

'Nora? Nora Acton? I just saw her on the street, not one hour ago.'

'Yes, thank God she survived,' answered the mayor.

'What happened?' asked Banwell. 'Did she tell you who did it?'

'No. She's lost her voice and can't remember a thing. She doesn't know who did it, and neither do we. Some specialists are looking at her now. She's here, in fact. I've put her up at the Manhattan until Acton gets back.'

Banwell took this in. 'A good-looking girl.'

'She certainly is,' agreed the mayor.

'Raped?'

'No thank heavens.'

'Thank heavens.'

I found the others in the halls of Roman and Greek antiquity at the Metropolitan Museum. While Freud was engrossed in conversation with the guide — Freud's knowledge was quite astounding — I fell behind with Brill. He was feeling better about his manuscript. His publisher, Jelliffe, had at first been as mystified as we had been, but then recalled that he lent his press the previous week to a church minister, who was publishing a series of edifying biblical pamphlets. Somehow the two jobs must have been merged together.

'Did you know,' I asked Brill, 'that Goethe was Jung's great-grandfather?'

'Rot,' said Brill, who had lived in Zurich for a year, working under Jung. 'Self-glorifying family legends. Did he get to von Humboldt too?'

'Yes, actually,' I replied.

'You would think it would be enough for a man to marry into a fortune without having to invent a lineage for himself.'

'Unless that's why he invents it,' I said.

Brill grunted noncommittally. Then, with a strange lightness, he pulled back a forelock of his hair, revealing a wicked scrape on his brow. 'You see that? Rose did that last night, after you had all left. She threw a fying pan at me.'

'Good Lord,' I said. 'Why?'

'Because of Jung.' 'What?'

'I told Rose about the remarks I made to Freud concerning Jung,' said Brill. 'It sent her into a rage. She told me I was jealous of Jung, that Freud values him, and that I was a fool because Freud would see through my envy and think worse of me for it. To which I replied that I had good reason to be jealous of Jung, given the way she was looking at him all night. In retrospect that may have been a false note, since it was Jung who was looking at her. Do you know she has the same medical training I do? But she can't get a job as a doctor, and I can't support her, with my four patients.'

'She threw a frying pan at you?' I asked.

'Oh, don't give me that diagnostic look. Women throw things. All of them, sooner or later. You'll learn. All except Emma, Jung's wife. Emma merely hands Carl a fortune, mothers his children, and smiles when he cheats on her. Serves his mistresses dinner when he brings them into the house. The man is a sorcerer. No, if I hear another word about Goethe and von Humboldt, I just may kill him.'

Before we left the museum, there was nearly a crisis. Freud suddenly required a urinal, just as he had at Coney Island, and the guide sent us to the basement. On the way downstairs, Freud remarked, 'Don't tell me. I will have to go through endless miles of corridor, and at the end there will be a marble palace.' He was right on both counts. We only reached the palace in the nick of time.

Coroner Hugel did not get back to his office until Tuesday evening. He had spent the afternoon at the Acton house on Gramercy Park. He knew what he would write in his report: that physical evidence — hairs, silk threads, shreds of rope — now proved beyond doubt that the same man who killed Elizabeth Riverford attacked Nora Acton. But the coroner cursed himself for what he had not found. He had scoured the master bedroom. He had pored over the rear garden. He had even crawled through it on hands and knees. As he knew he would, he found broken branches, trampled flowers, and plenty of other signs of flight, but nowhere the proof he sought, the one piece of hard evidence with which he could expose the perpetrator's identity.

He was exhausted when he reached his office. Despite the mayor's command, Hugel hadn't circulated to his staff the offer of a reward to anyone who found the Riverford girl's body. But he could hardly be blamed for that, Hugel told himself. It had been the mayor who ordered him to go directly to the Actons' house rather than back to the morgue.

In the hall, he found Detective Littlemore waiting. Littlemore reported that one of the barracks boys, Gitlow, was on a train to Chicago. He would be there by tomorrow night. In his usual chipper spirits, Littlemore also recounted the strange episode of Mr Banwell and the horse. Hugel listened intently and then exclaimed, 'Banwell! He must have seen the Acton girl outside the hotel. That's what scared him!'

'Miss Acton's not exactly what I'd call scary, Mr Hugel,' said Littlemore.

'You fool' was the coroner's response. 'Of course — he thought she was dead!'

'Why would he think she was dead?'

'Use your head, Detective.'

'If Banwell's the guy, Mr Hugel, he knows she's alive.'

'What?'

'You're saying Banwell's the guy, right? But whoever attacked Miss Acton knows she's alive. So if Banwell's the guy, he doesn't think she's dead.'

'What? Nonsense. He might have thought he had finished her. Or — or he may have been afraid she would recognize him. Either way, he would have panicked when he saw her.'

'Why do you think he's the guy?'

'Littlemore, he is over six foot tall. He is middle-aged. He is rich. His hair was dark but now is graying. He is right-handed. He lived in the same building as the first victim, and he panicked at the sight of the second.'

'How do you know that?'

'From you. You said his driver told you he took fright. What other explanation is there?'

'No, I meant how do you know he's right-handed?'

'Because I met him yesterday, Detective, and I make use of my eyes.'

'Gee, you're something, Mr Hugel. What am I, right- handed or left-handed?' The detective put his hands behind his back.

'Will you stop it, Littlemore!'

'I don't know, Mr Hugel. You should have seen him after it was all over. He was cool as a cucumber, giving orders, cleaning everything up.'

'Nonsense. A good actor, in addition to a murderer. We have our man, Detective.'

'We don't exactly have him.'

'You're right,' mused the coroner. 'I still have no hard evidence. We need something more."