The Interpretation Of Murder (16 page)
Read The Interpretation Of Murder Online
Authors: Jed Rubenfeld
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."
Leaving the Metropolitan, we took a
carriage across the park to Columbia University's new campus, with its
stupendous library. I had not been there since 1897, when I was fifteen and my
mother dragged us to the dedication of the Schermerhorn building. Brill,
fortunately, did not know of my marginal connection to that clan, or he
doubtless would have mentioned it to Freud.
We visited the psychiatric clinic,
where Brill had an office. Afterward, Freud announced that he wished to hear
about my session with Miss Acton. So, while Brill and Ferenczi remained behind,
discussing therapeutic technique, Freud and I took a stroll on Riverside Drive,
whose broad promenade afforded a fine lookout on the Palisades, the wild and
broken New Jersey cliffs across the Hudson River.
I left out nothing, describing to
Freud both my first session with Miss Acton, ending in failure, and the second,
ending in her revelations concerning her father's friend, Mr Banwell. He
questioned me closely, wanting every detail, no matter how seemingly
irrelevant, and insisting that I mustn't paraphrase but relay her exact words.
At the close, Freud stubbed out his cigar on the sidewalk and asked whether I
thought the episode on the rooftop three years ago was the cause of Miss
Acton's loss of voice at the time.
'It would seem so,' I answered.
'There was involvement of the mouth and an injunction not to tell. Something
unspeakable had been done to her; therefore she made herself unable to speak.'
'Good. So the fourteen-year-old's
shameful kiss on the roof made her hysterical?' said Freud, measuring my
reaction.
I understood: he meant the opposite
of what he was saying. The episode on the roof, as Freud saw things, could not
be the cause of Miss Acton's hysteria. That episode was not from her childhood,
nor was it Oedipal. Only childhood traumas lead to neurosis, although a later
event is typically the trigger that awakens the memory of the long- repressed
conflict, producing hysterical symptoms. 'Dr Freud,' I asked, 'isn't it possible
in this one case that an adolescent trauma caused hysteria?'
'It's possible, my boy, except for
one thing: the girl's behavior on the roof was already entirely and completely
hysterical.' Freud drew another cigar from his pocket, thought better of it,
and put it back. 'Let me offer you a definition of the hysteric: one in whom an
occasion for sexual pleasure elicits feelings largely or wholly unpleasurable.'
'She was only fourteen.'
'And how old was Juliet on her
nuptial night?'
'Thirteen,' I acknowledged.
'A robust, fully mature man - of whom
we know nothing other than that he is strong, tall, successful, well-made -
kisses a girl on the lips,' said Freud. 'He is obviously in a state of sexual
arousal. Indeed, I think we may be confident that Nora had a direct sensation
of this arousal. When she says she can still feel this Banwell pulling her body
against his, I have little doubt what part of the man's body she felt. All
this, in a healthy girl of fourteen, would certainly have produced a
pleasurable genital stimulation. Instead, Nora was overcome by the
unpleasurable feeling proper to the back of the throat or gorge - that is, by
disgust. In other words, she was already hysterical long before that kiss.'
'But mightn't Banwell's advances have
been - unwelcome?'
'I very much doubt they were. You
disagree with me, Younger.'
I did disagree - strenuously -
although I had been trying not to show it.
Freud went on. 'You imagine Mr
Banwell thrusting himself on an unwilling and innocent victim. But perhaps it
was she who seduced him: a handsome man, her father's best friend. The conquest
would have appealed to a girl her age; it would likely have inspired jealousy
in her father.'
'She rejected him,' I said.
'Did she?' asked Freud. 'After the
kiss, she kept his secret, even after regaining her voice. Correct?'
'Yes.'
'Is that more consistent with fearing
repetition of the event - or desiring it?'
I saw Freud's logic, but the innocent
explanation of the girl's behavior did not yet seem refuted. 'She refused to be
alone with him afterward,' I countered.
'On the contrary,' rejoined Freud.
'She walked with him alone, two years later, by the shore of a lake, a romantic
location if ever there was one.'
'But she rejected him there again.'
'She slapped him,' said Freud. 'That
is not necessarily a rejection. A girl, like an analytic patient, is required
to say no before she says yes.'
'She complained to her father.'
'When?'
'Immediately,' I stated, a little too
immediately. Then I reflected. 'Actually, I don't know that. I didn't ask.'
'Perhaps she was waiting for Mr
Banwell to make another attempt on her, and, when he did not, she told her
father out of pique.' I did not say anything, but Freud could see I was not
entirely persuaded. He added, 'In this, my boy, you must bear in mind that you
are not disinterested.'
'I don't follow you, sir,' I said.
'Yes, you do.'
I considered. 'You mean I
wish
Miss Acton to have found Banwell's advances unwelcome?'
'You have been defending Nora's
honor.'
I was conscious that I continued to
call Miss Acton 'Miss Acton,' whereas Freud called her by her first name. I was
also conscious of a rush of blood to my face. 'That is only because I'm in love
with her,' I said.
Freud said nothing.
'You must take over the analysis, Dr
Freud. Or Brill. It should have been Brill in the first place.'
'Nonsense. She is yours, Younger. You
are doing very well. But you must not take these feelings of yours so
seriously. They are unavoidable in psychoanalysis. They are part of the
treatment. Nora is very probably coming under the influence of the
transference, as you are of the counter- transference. You must treat these
feelings as data; you must deploy them. They are fictitious. They have no more
reality than the feelings an actor generates onstage. A good Hamlet will feel
rage toward his uncle, but he will not mistakenly suppose he is actually angry
at his fellow tragedian. It is the same with analysis.'
