The Interpretation of Murder

Chapter Eight

On the eastern bank of the Hudson River, sixty miles north of New York City, stood a massive, sprawling, red-brick Victorian institution built in the late nineteenth century, with six wings, small windows, and a central turret. This was the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

The Matteawan asylum had relatively little security. After all, the 550 inmates were not criminals. They were merely criminally insane. Many had not been charged with a crime at all, and those who were had been found not guilty.

Medical knowledge of insanity in 1909 was not a perfected science. At Matteawan, some 10 percent of the occupants were determined to have been driven insane solely as a result of masturbation. Most others were found to suffer from hereditary lunacy. For a substantial number of inmates, however, the hospital's doctors were hard-pressed to say what had made them mad or, indeed, if they were mad at all.

The violent and raving were packed into overcrowded rooms with padded walls and barred windows. The others were hardly watched. No medication was on offer, no 'talking cures.' The organizing medical idea was mental hygiene. Hence the treatment consisted of early rising, followed by mild but time-consuming labor (principally planting and tending vegetables on the thousand-acre farm surrounding the hospital), prayer service on Sundays, a punctual but vapid supper in the refectory at five, checkers or other wholesome diversions in the evening, and an early bedtime.

The patient in room 3121 passed his days in a different fashion. This patient also had rooms 3122-24. He slept not on a cot, like the other inmates, but on a double bed. And he slept late. Not a reader of books, he received by post several of the New York dailies and all the weekly magazines, which he read over poached eggs while his fellow patients were marched en masse out to the farm for their morning labor. He met with his lawyers several times a week. Best of all, a chef from Delmonico's came up by rail on Friday evenings to prepare his supper, which he took in his own dining room. His champagne and liquor, he liberally shared with the small staff of Matteawan guards, with whom he also played poker at night. When he lost at poker, he tended to break things: bottles, windows, occasionally a chair. So the guards saw to it he did not lose much: the few nickels they sacrificed at cards were more than made up for by the payments he made them to ensure his exemption from the hospital's rules. And they pocketed what was for them a small fortune when they brought in girls for his recreation.

This was not, however, so easy to do. Getting the girls in was not the problem. But the patient in 3121 had definite tastes. He liked his girls young and pretty. This requirement alone made the guards' job a hard one. Worse still, when they found a satisfactory girl, she would never last more than a couple of visits, notwithstanding the lavish remuneration. After a mere twelve months, the guards had well nigh exhausted their supply.

The two gentlemen emerging from room 3121 at one o'clock on Tuesday, the last day of August 1909, had given considerable thought to this difficulty — and had resolved it, at least to their satisfaction. They were not guards. One was a corpulent man wearing a highly self-satisfied expression under his bowler hat. The other was an elegant older gentlemen with a watch chain draped from his vest pocket, a gaunt face, and a pianist's hands.

Mayor McClellan's description of the events at the Acton residence left the coroner sputtering.

'What's the matter with you, Hugel?' asked the mayor.

'I was not informed. Why wasn't I told?'

'Because you are a coroner,' said McClellan. 'No one was killed.'

'But the crimes are virtually identical,' Hugel objected.

'I didn't know that,' said the mayor.

'If you had read my report, you would have!'

'For God's sake, calm down, Hugel.' McClellan ordered the coroner to take a seat. After the two men reviewed the crimes in more detail, Hugel declared that there could be no doubt: Elizabeth Riverford's murderer and Nora Acton's attacker had been one and the same man. 'Great God,' said the mayor quietly. 'Must I issue a warning?'

Hugel laughed dismissively. 'That a killer of society girls is haunting our streets?'

McClellan was puzzled by the coroner's tone. 'Well, yes, I suppose, or words to that effect.'

'Men do not attack young women arbitrarily,' Hugel declared. 'Crimes have motives. Scotland Yard never caught the Ripper because they never found the link between the victims. They never looked. The moment they decided they were dealing with a madman, the case was lost.'

'Great God, man, you're not suggesting the Ripper is here?'

'No, no, no,' replied the coroner, throwing up his hands in exasperation. 'I'm saying that the two attacks are not random. Something connects them. When we find the connection, we will have our man. You don't need a public warning, you need to protect that girl. He already wanted her dead, and now she is the only person who can identify him in court. Don't forget: he doesn't know she lost her memory. He will undoubtedly try to finish the job.'

'Thank heavens I moved her into the hotel,' said McClellan.

'Does anyone else know where she is?'

'The doctors, of course.'

'Did you tell any friends of the family?' asked Hugel.

'Certainly not,' said McClellan.

'Good. Then she is safe for now. Has she remembered anything today?'

'I don't know,' said McClellan gravely. 'I haven't been able to get through to Dr Younger.' The mayor considered his options. He wished he could have called up old General Bingham, his longtime police commissioner, but McClellan had pushed Bingham into retirement only last month. Bingham had refused to reform the police, but he was himself incorruptible and would have known what to do. The mayor also wished Baker, the new commissioner, had not already proved so inept. Baker's only subject of conversation was baseball and how much money could be made in it. Hugel, the mayor reflected, was one of the most experienced men on the force. No: in homicides, he was the most experienced. If he didn't consider a warning necessary, he was probably right. The papers would certainly make hay of it, sowing as much hysteria as they possibly could and heaping scorn on the mayor as soon as they learned, as they certainly would, of the loss of the first victim's body. Then too, McClellan had assured Banwell that the police would try to solve the case without publicity. George Banwell was one of the few friends the mayor had left. The mayor decided to follow Hugel's advice.

'Very well,' said McClellan. 'No warning for now. You had better be right, Mr Hugel. Find me the man. Go to Acton's at once; you will supervise the investigation there.

And tell Littlemore I want to see him immediately.'

Hugel protested. Cleaning his spectacles, he reminded the mayor that it was no part of a coroner's duties to gallivant up and down the city like an ordinary detective. McClellan swallowed his irritation. He assured the coroner that only he could be trusted with a case of such delicacy and importance, that his eyes were famously the sharpest on the force. Hugel, blinking in a way that appeared to express perfect agreement with these assertions, consented to go to the Actons'.

Directly Hugel left his office, McClellan summoned his secretary. 'Ring George Banwell,' he instructed her. The secretary informed the mayor that Mr Banwell had been calling all morning. 'What did he want?' asked the mayor.

'He was rather blunt, Your Honor,' she replied.

'It's all right, Mrs Neville. What did he want?'

Mrs Neville read from her shorthand notes. 'To know "who the devil murdered the Riverford girl, what was taking the blasted coroner so long to finish the autopsy, and where his money was.'"

The mayor sighed deeply. 'Who, what, and where. He's only missing when.' McClellan looked at his watch. The when was running short for him as well. In two weeks at most, the candidates for mayor had to be announced. He had no hope of the Tammany nomination now. His only chance was as an independent or fusion candidate, but that kind of campaign required money. It also required good press, not news of a spree of unsolved attacks on society girls. 'Ring Banwell back,' he added to Mrs Neville. 'Leave word for him to meet me in an hour and a half at the Hotel Manhattan. He won't object; he has a job near there he'll want a look at in any event. And get me Littlemore.'

A half hour later, the detective introduced his head into the mayor's office. 'You wanted to see me, Your Honor?'

'Mr Littlemore,' said the mayor, 'you are aware we have had another attack?'

'Yes, sir. Mr Hugel told me, sir.'

'Good. This case is of special importance to me, Detective. I know Acton, and George Banwell is an old friend of mine. I want to be kept abreast of every development. And I want the utmost discretion. Go to the Hotel Manhattan on the double. Find Dr Younger and see if any progress has been made. If there is any new information, call here at once. And Detective, make yourself inconspicuous. Word must not get out that we have a potential murder witness at the hotel. The girl's life may depend on it. Do you understand?'

'Yes, sir, Mr Mayor,' Littlemore replied. 'Do I report to you, sir, or to Captain Carey at Homicide?'

'You will report to Mr Hugel,' said the mayor, 'and to me. I need this case solved, Littlemore. At any price. You have the coroner's description of the killer?'

'Yes, sir.' Littlemore hesitated. 'Um, one question, sir? What if the coroner's description of the killer is wrong?'

'Do you have reason to think it wrong?'

'I think — ' said Littlemore. 'I think a Chinaman might be involved.'

'A Chinaman?' the mayor repeated. 'Have you told Mr Hugel?'

'He doesn't agree, sir.'

'I see. Well, I would advise you to trust Mr Hugel. I know he is — sensitive — on some points, Detective, but you must bear in mind how hard it is for an honest man to do his work in relative obscurity, while dishonest men attain wealth and renown. That is why corruption is so pernicious. It breaks the will of good men. Hugel is extremely capable. And he thinks highly of you, Detective. He asked specifically that you be assigned to this case.'

'He did, sir?'

'He did. Now get going, Mr Littlemore.'

I was leaving the hotel when I ran into the girl and her servant, Mrs Biggs, about to do their shopping. A cab was just pulling up for them. Because the street bed, rutted with dirt and dry mud, was unfit, I lifted Miss Acton into the carriage. As I did, I noticed uncomfortably that her tiny waist almost fit into my two hands. I sought to assist Mrs Biggs as well, but the good woman would have none of it.

To Miss Acton, I said I looked forward to seeing her tomorrow morning. She asked what I meant. I was referring, I explained, to her next psychoanalytic session. My hand was resting on the open door of her cab; she yanked the door shut, dislodging me. 'I don't know what is wrong with all of you,' she said. 'I don't want any more of your sessions. I will remember everything by myself. Just leave me alone.'

The cab drove off. It is hard to describe my feelings as I watched it rattle away. Disappointed would not quite be adequate. I wished my too-solid body might break up and disperse into the dirt of the street. Brill should have been the analyst. A medical journeyman, a town general practitioner, would have been better, so abysmally had I imitated a psychoanalyst.

I had failed before even beginning. The girl had rejected analysis, and I had been unable to change her mind. No: I had caused the rejection, pressing too hard before the groundwork had been laid. The truth was that I had been unprepared to find she could speak. I had forgotten Freud's own speculation that she might recover her voice overnight. Her voice ought to have been a boon to the treatment, the luckiest possible development. Instead, it disrupted me. I had pictured myself as the patient and infinitely accommodating doctor. Instead, I had dealt with her resistance defensively, like a blundering amateur.

What would I say to Freud?

Entering the Hotel Manhattan, Detective Littlemore passed a young gentleman helping a young lady into a cab. The two figures represented, for Littlemore, a world to which he had no access. They were both easy on the eyes, decked out in the kind of finery that only the better set could afford. The young gentleman was tall, dark-haired, and cheekbony, the young lady more like an angel than Littlemore thought possible on earth. And the gentleman had a way of moving, a fluidity when he swung the young lady into the carriage, that Littlemore knew he himself did not possess.

None of this bothered the detective in the least. He did not resent the young gentleman, and he liked Betty, the maid, better than he liked the angelic young lady. But he decided he was going to learn to move the way the gentleman did. That was something he could figure out and copy. He pictured himself hoisting Betty into a cab just like that — if he ever got to take a cab, much less take one with Betty.

A minute later, after a quick exchange with the reception clerk, Littlemore hustled back outside toward the same young man, who had not moved an inch. Hands clasped behind his back, he was staring at the receding carriage with such ferocious concentration that Littlemore thought there might be something wrong with him.

'You're Dr Younger, aren't you?' asked the detective. There was no reply. 'You okay, pal?'

'Excuse me?' replied the young gentleman.

'You're Younger, right?'

'Unfortunately.'

'I'm Detective Littlemore. The mayor sent me. Was that Miss Acton in the cab?' The detective could see that his interlocutor was not listening.

'I beg your pardon,' replied Younger. 'Who did you say you were?'

Littlemore identified himself again. He explained that Miss Acton's assailant had murdered a girl last Sunday night, but that the police still had no witnesses. 'Has the Miss remembered anything, Doc?'

Younger shook his head. 'Miss Acton has her voice back, but still no memory of the incident.'

'The whole thing seems pretty weird to me,' said the detective. 'Do people lose their memory a lot?'

'No,' Younger answered, 'but it does happen, especially after episodes like the one Miss Acton went through.'

'Hey, they're coming back.'

It was so: Miss Acton's carriage had turned around at the end of the block and was drawing near the hotel once again. As it pulled up, Miss Acton explained to Younger that Mrs Biggs had forgotten to return their room key to the clerk.

'Give it to me,' said Younger, extending his hand. 'I'll take it in for you.'

'Thank you, but I am quite able,' replied Miss Acton, hopping out of the cab unaided and sweeping past Younger without a glance in his direction. Younger showed nothing, but Littlemore knew a feminine rebuff when he saw one, and he sympathized with the doctor. Then a different thought occurred to him.

'Say, Doc,' he said, 'do you let Miss Acton go around the hotel like that — by herself, I mean?'

'I have little say in the matter, Detective. None, actually. But no, I think she's been with her servant or the police at almost every moment until now. Why? Is there any danger?'

'Shouldn't be,' said Littlemore. Mr Hugel had told him that the murderer did not know Miss Acton's location. Still, the detective was uncomfortable. The whole case was out of whack: a dead girl nobody knew anything about, people losing their memory, Chinamen running away, bodies disappearing from the morgue. 'Can't hurt to have a look around, though.'

The detective reentered the hotel, Younger beside him. Littlemore lit a cigarette as they watched the diminutive Miss Acton cross the colonnaded, circular lobby. A man returning his room key would simply have dropped it on the desk and left, but Miss Acton stood patiently at the counter, waiting to be helped. The place was crowded with travelers, families, and businessmen. Half the men there, the detective noticed, could conceivably have met the coroner's description.

One man, however, drew Littlemore's attention. He was waiting for an elevator: tall, black-haired, wearing glasses, a newspaper in his hands. Littlemore didn't have a good angle on his face, but there was something vaguely foreign in the cut of his suit. It was the newspaper that attracted the detective's attention. The man held it slightly higher than was normal. Was he trying to cover his face? Miss Acton had returned her key; she was now walking back. The man threw a quick glance in her direction — or was it toward the detective himself? — and then buried his head in the paper again. An elevator opened; the man went in, by himself.

Miss Acton did not acknowledge the presence of the doctor or the detective as she passed them on her way out. Nevertheless, Younger followed her outside, seeing her back to her carriage.

Littlemore stayed behind. It was nothing, he told himself. Nearly every man in the lobby had looked up at Miss Acton as she walked unaccompanied across the marble floor. All the same, Littlemore kept his eye on the arrow above the elevator into which the man had stepped. The arrow moved slowly, jerking up toward the higher numbers. Littlemore did not, however, see the arrow's final resting place. It was still moving when he heard a piercing cry outside.

The cry was not human. It was the shrill neighing of a horse in pain. The horse in question belonged to a carriage that had just emerged from a construction site on Forty- second Street, where the steel skeleton of a new nine-story commercial building was being raised. The man driving this carriage was superbly attired, with a top hat and a fine cane across his knees. It was Mr George Banwell.

In 1909, the horse was still doing battle with the automobile on every major avenue of New York City. In fact, the battle was already lost. The jerking, honking motorcars were faster and more nimble than a buggy; more than this, the automobile put an end to pollution — a term referring at that time to horse manure, which by midday fouled the air and made the busier thoroughfares almost impassable. Although George Banwell liked his motorcars as much as the next gentleman, he was at heart a horseman. He had grown up with the horse and was not ready to give it up. In fact he insisted on driving his own carriage, making his coachman sit awkwardly beside him.

Banwell had spent most of the morning at his Canal Street site, where he was supervising a vastly larger project. At eleven-thirty, he had driven uptown to Forty-second Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues, less than half a block, from the Hotel Manhattan. Having completed a quick inspection of his men's work there, Banwell was now making for the hotel to meet the mayor. But a moment after taking the reins, he had given them a fierce and abrupt yank, driving the bit into the unfortunate horse's mouth, causing her to halt and cry out. This cry had no effect on Banwell. He seemed not even to hear it. Staring transfixed at a point less than a block ahead of him, he kept the bit digging ever deeper into his horse's jaw, to the appalled dismay of his coachman.

The horse threw her head from side to side, trying in vain to loosen the cutting bit. Finally the creature reared up on her hind legs and let out the extraordinary, anguished cry heard by Littlemore and everyone else up and down the street. She returned to earth but immediately reared again, this time even more wildly, and the entire carriage began to topple. Banwell and his coachman spilled out like sailors from a capsized boat. The carriage tumbled to the ground with an enormous clatter, dragging the horse down with it.

The coachman was first to his feet. He tried to help his master, but Banwell pushed him away violently, brushing the dirt from his knees and elbows. A crowd had gathered about them. Impatient motorists were already blowing their horns. The spell on Banwell was apparently broken. He was not the kind of man who tolerated being thrown by a horse; to be thrown from a carriage was unthinkable. His eyes were furious — at the motorists, at the gawking crowd, and above all at the confused, prostrate horse, which was struggling unsuccessfully to right herself. 'My gun,' he said to his coachman coldly. 'Get me my gun.'

'You can't destroy her, sir,' objected the coachman, who was crouching by the side of the horse, extricating her hoofs from a brace of twisted ropes. 'Nothing's broken. She's just tangled up. There she is. There you are' — this he said to the horse, as he helped her upright — 'it wasn't your fault.'

Doubtless the coachman meant well, but he could not have chosen more ill-favored words. 'Not her fault, eh?' said Banwell. 'She rears like an unbroken jade, and it's not her fault?' He seized the bit and roughly twisted the horse's neck, looking her in the eye. 'I can see,' he said to the coachman, his voice still cold, 'you never taught her to keep her head down. Well, I will.'

Yanking the carriage rods out of her bridle, Banwell seized the reins and mounted the horse bareback. He drove her back into the construction site and there wheeled about until he came to the great dangling hook of the crane that loomed sky-high in the middle of the plot of ground. Taking that hook in both hands, Banwell fixed it under the horse's halter, which was in turn secured firmly around her underbelly. He leaped off the horse and shouted to the crane man, 'You there, take her up. You in the crane: take her up, I say. Can't you hear me? Take her up!'

The astonished crane man was slow to respond. At last he engaged the gears of the hulking machine. Its long cable went taut; its hook clenched at the saddle. The horse stirred and pawed at the uncomfortable sensation. For a moment nothing more happened.

'Lift, you bugger,' Banwell cried to his crane operator, 'lift or go home to your wife tonight without a job!'

The crane man manipulated the levers again. With a lurch, the horse lifted up off the ground. The moment her feet left the earth, uncomprehending panic fell upon the animal. She screamed and thrashed about, succeeding only in making herself twist wildly in the air, suspended by the crane's thick hook.

'Let her go!' a girl's voice, angry and stricken, cried out. It was Miss Acton. Watching the spectacle unfold, she had hurried across Forty-second Street and was now at the front of the crowd. Younger was right next to her, and Littlemore several rows behind. She called out again, 'Let her down. Someone, make him stop!'

'Up,' Banwell ordered. He heard the girl's voice. For a moment, he looked right at her. Then he returned his attention to the horse. 'Higher.'

The crane man did as he was bid, hoisting the creature higher and higher: twenty, thirty, forty feet above the ground. Philosophers say it cannot be known whether animals feel emotions comparable to a human's, but anyone who has seen sheer terror in a horse's eyes can never doubt it again.

Because all human eyes were on the helpless, dangling, thrashing animal, no one in the crowd noticed the stirring of the steel girder three stories up the scaffolding. This girder was secured to a rope, which was in turn connected to the crane hook. Until now that rope had been slack, the steel beam lying harmlessly in place on the scaffold. But as the hook rose, this rope too eventually pulled taut, and now, without warning, the steel girder rolled off the wooden planks. From there it swung freely. Being attached to the crane's hook, it naturally swung in the direction of the hook — which is to say, in the direction of George Banwell.

Banwell never saw the deadly girder hurtling at him, gathering speed as it swung. The beam turned inexorably in the air, so that it came at him dead on, like a gigantic spear aimed at his stomach. Had it struck, it would certainly have killed him. As it happened, it missed him by a foot. This was a stroke of excellent and not atypical good fortune for Banwell, but its consequence was that the beam flew on, now heading for the crowd, several members of whom screamed in fright, a good dozen men diving to the dirt to protect themselves.

There was only one among them, however, who should have dived away. That was Miss Nora Acton, since the twelve- foot steel girder was swinging straight toward her. Miss Acton, however, neither screamed nor moved. Whether it was because the onrushing beam held her somehow in thrall or because it was difficult to know which way to go, Miss Acton stood rooted to her spot, aghast and about to die.

Younger seized the girl by her long blond braid, pulling her hard — and not very chivalrously — into his arms. The hurtling girder whistled by them, so close the two could feel its wind, and flew high into the air behind them.

'Ow!' said Miss Acton.

'Sorry,' said Younger. Then he drew her by the hair a second time, pulling her now in the other direction.

'Ow!' said Miss Acton again, more emphatically, as the steel beam, making its return trip, flew past them once more, this time just missing the back of her head.

Banwell eyed the sailing girder dispassionately as it shot by. With disgust, he watched it soar up and slam into the scaffold from which its journey had begun, destroying that structure as if it had been made of toothpicks, sending men, tools, and wooden planks flying in all directions. When the dust cleared, only the horse was still making noise, neighing and spinning helplessly above their heads. Banwell signaled the crane man to bring her down and, with a cold rage, issued orders to his men to clear the debris.

'Take me back to my room, please,' Miss Acton said to Younger.

The crowd milled about for a long while, admiring the damage and replaying the events. The horse was returned to the coachman, whom Detective Littlemore now approached. The detective had recognized George Banwell. 'Say, how's she doing, the poor thing?' Littlemore asked the coachman. 'What is she, a Perch?'

'Half Perch,' replied the driver, trying as best he could to calm the still trembling animal. 'They call her a Cream.' 'She's a beauty, that's for sure.'

'That she is,' said the coachman, stroking the horse's nose. 'Gee, I wonder what made her rear up like that. Something she saw, probably.' 'Something he saw, more like.' 'How's that?'

'It wasn't her at all,' grumbled the coachman. 'It was him. He was trying to back her up. You can't back up a carriage horse.' He spoke to the mare. 'Tried to make you back up, that's what he did. Because he was scared.' 'Scared? Of what?'

'Ask him, why don't you? He don't scare easy, not him. Scared like he saw the devil himself.'

'How do you like that?' said Littlemore, before heading back to the hotel.

At the same moment, on the top floor of the Hotel Manhattan, Carl Jung stood on his balcony, surveying the scene below. He had seen the extraordinary events in the construction site. Those events had not only frightened him; they filled him with a profound, swelling elation — of a kind he had felt only once or twice in his entire life. He withdrew into his room, where he sat numbly on the floor, his back against the bed, seeing faces no one else could see, hearing voices no one else could hear.