The Interpretation Of Murder (3 page)

    'There is train
below
river?'
asked Sandor Ferenczi incredulously.

    Not only did such a train exist,
Brill and I assured him, but we were going to ride it. In addition to the new
tunnel across the Hudson River, the Hoboken tube boasted another innovation:
full baggage service. All a voyager arriving in the United States had to do was
mark his luggage with the name of his hotel in Manhattan. Porters stowed the
trunks in the train's baggage car, and handlers on the other end did the rest.
Taking advantage of this amenity, we walked out onto the platform, which
overlooked the river. With the setting of the sun, the fog had lifted,
revealing the jagged Manhattan skyline, studded with electric lights. Our
guests stared in wonder: at the sheer expanse of it, and at the spires piercing
the clouds.

    'It's the centre of the world,' said
Brill.

    'I dreamt of Rome last night,' Freud
replied.

    We waited on pins and needles - at
least I did - for him to go on.

    Freud drew on his cigar. 'I was
walking, alone,' he said. 'Night had just fallen, as it has now. I came upon a
shop window with a jewelry box. That of course means a woman. I looked around.
To my embarrassment, I had wandered into an entire neighborhood of bordellos.'

    A debate ensued on whether Freud's
teachings dictated defiance of conventional sexual morality. Jung held that
they did; indeed, he maintained that anyone who failed to see this implication
had not understood Freud. The whole point of psychoanalysis, he said, was that
society's prohibitions were ignorant and unhealthy. Only cowardice would make
men submit to civilized morality once they had understood Freud's discoveries.

    Brill and Ferenczi vigorously
disagreed. Psychoanalysis demanded that a man be conscious of his true sexual
wishes, not that he succumb to them. 'When we hear a patient's dream,' said
Brill, 'we interpret it. We don't tell the patient to fulfill the wishes he is
unconsciously expressing. I don't, at any rate. Do you, Jung?'

    I noticed both Brill and Ferenczi
sneaking glances at Freud as they elaborated his ideas - hoping, I supposed, to
find endorsement. Jung never did. He either had, or affected having, perfect
confidence in his position. As for Freud, he intervened on neither side,
apparently content to watch the debate unfold.

    'Some dreams do not require
interpretation,' Jung said; 'they require action. Consider Herr Professor
Freud's dream last night of prostitutes. The meaning is not in doubt:
suppressed libido, stimulated by our anticipated arrival in a new world. There
is no point talking about such a dream.' Here Jung turned to Freud. 'Why not
act on it? We are in America; we can do what we like.'

    For the first time, Freud broke in:
'I am a married man, Jung.'

    'So am I,' Jung replied.

    Freud raised an eyebrow, nodding, but
made no reply.

    I informed our party that it was time
to board the train. Freud took a last look over the railing. A stiff wind blew
in our faces. As we all gazed at the lights of Manhattan, he smiled. 'If they
only knew what we are bringing them.'

    'Mrs Neville,' the mayor called out
to his secretary as he rang off. 'Get me Hugel. At once.'

    Charles Hugel was coroner of the City
of New York. It was his duty to see to the corpse in any case of suspected
homicide. Mrs Neville informed the mayor that Mr Hugel had been waiting in the
mayor's antechamber all morning.

    McClellan closed his eyes and nodded,
but said, 'Excellent. Send him in.'

    Before the door had even closed
behind him, Coroner Hugel launched into an indignant tirade against the
conditions at the city morgue. The mayor, who had heard this litany of
complaints before, cut him off. He described the situation at the Balmoral and
ordered the coroner to take an unmarked vehicle uptown. Residents of the
building must not be made aware of any police presence. A detective would
follow later.

    'I?' said the coroner. 'O'Hanlon from
my office can do it.'

    'No,' replied the mayor, 'I want you
to go yourself. George Banwell is an old friend of mine. I need a man with
experience - and a man whose discretion I can count on. You are one of the few
I have left.'

    The coroner grumbled but in the end
gave way. 'I have two conditions. First, whoever is in charge at the building
must be told immediately that nothing is to be touched.

    Nothing. I cannot be expected to
solve a murder if the evidence is trampled and tampered with before I arrive.'

    'Eminently sensible,' replied the
mayor. 'What else?'

    'I am to have full authority over the
investigation, including the choice of detective.'

    'Done,' said the mayor. 'You can have
the most seasoned man on the force.'

    'Exactly what I don't want,' replied
the coroner. 'It would be gratifying for once to have a detective who won't
sell out the case after I have solved it. There's a new fellow - Littlemore.
He's the one I want.'

    'Littlemore? Excellent,' said the
mayor, turning his attention to the stack of papers on his large desk. 'Bingham
used to say he's one of the brightest youngsters we have.'

    'Brightest? He's a perfect idiot.'

    The mayor was startled: 'If you think
so, Hugel, why do you want him?'

    'Because he can't be bought - at
least not yet.'

    When Coroner Hugel arrived at the Balmoral,
he was told to wait for Mr Banwell. Hugel hated being made to wait. He was
fifty-nine years old, the last thirty of which had been spent in municipal
service, much of it in the unhealthy confines of city morgues, which had lent
his face a grayish cast. He wore thick glasses and an oversized mustache
between his hollow cheeks. He was altogether bald except for a wiry tuft
sprouting from behind each ear. Hugel was an excitable man. Even in repose, a
swelling in his temples gave the impression of incipient apoplexia.

    The position of coroner in New York
City was in 1909 a peculiar one, an irregularity in the chain of command. Part
medical examiner, part forensic investigator, part prosecutor, the coroner
reported directly to the mayor. He did not answer to anyone on the police
force, not even the commissioner; but neither did anyone on the force answer to
him, not even the lowliest beat patrolman. Hugel had little but scorn for the
police department, which he viewed, with some justification, as largely inept
and thoroughly crooked. He objected to the mayor's handling of the retirement
of Chief Inspector Byrnes, who had obviously grown rich on bribes. He objected
to the new commissioner, who did not appear to have the slightest appreciation
of the art or importance of a properly held inquest. In fact, he objected to
every departmental decision he ever heard of, unless it had been made by
himself. But he knew his job. Although not technically a doctor, he had
attended a full three years of medical school and could perform a more expert
autopsy than the physicians who served as his assistants.

    After fifteen infuriating minutes, Mr
Banwell at last appeared. He wasn't, in fact, much taller than Hugel but seemed
to tower over him. 'And you are?' he asked.

    'The coroner of the City of New
York,' said Hugel, trying to express condescension. 'I alone touch the
deceased. Any disturbance of evidence will be prosecuted as obstruction. Am I
understood?'

    George Banwell was - and plainly knew
it - taller, handsomer, better dressed, and much, much richer than the coroner.
'Rubbish,' he said. 'Follow me. And keep your voice down while you're in my
building.'

    Banwell led the way to the top floor
of the Alabaster Wing. Coroner Hugel, grinding his teeth, followed. Not a word
was spoken in the elevator. Hugel, staring resolutely at the floor, observed Mr
Banwell's perfectly creased pinstriped trousers and gleaming oxfords, which
doubtless cost more than the coroners suit, vest, tie, hat, and shoes put
together. A manservant, standing guard outside Miss Riverford's apartment,
opened the door for them. Silently, Banwell led Hugel, the head manager, and
the servant down a long corridor to the girl's bedroom.

    The nearly naked body lay on the
floor, livid, eyes closed, luxurious dark hair strewn across the intricate
design of an Oriental carpet. She was still exquisitely beautiful - her arms
and legs still graceful - but her neck had an ugly redness around it, and her
figure was scored with the marks of a lash. Her wrists remained bound, thrown
back over her head. The coroner walked briskly to the body and placed a thumb
to those wrists, where a pulse would have been.

    'How was she - how did she die?'
Banwell asked in his gravelly voice, arms folded.

    'You can't tell?' replied the
coroner.

    'Would I have asked if I could tell?'

    Hugel looked under the bed. He stood
and gazed at the body from several angles. 'I would say she was strangled to
death. Very slowly.'

    'Was she -?' Banwell did not complete
the question.

    'Possibly,' said the coroner. 'I
won't be certain until I've examined her.'

    With a piece of red chalk, Hugel
roughed a circle seven or eight feet in diameter around the girl's body and
declared that no one was to intrude within it. He surveyed the room. All was in
perfect order; even the expensive bed linens were scrupulously tucked and
squared. The coroner opened the girl's closets, her bureau, her jewelry boxes.
Nothing appeared to be amiss. Sequined dresses hung straight in the wardrobe.
Lace underthings were folded neatly in drawers. A diamond tiara, with matching
earrings and necklace, lay in harmonious composition inside a midnight-blue
velvet case on top of the bureau.

    Hugel asked who had been in the room.
Only the maid who had found the body, the manager answered. Since then, the
apartment had been locked, and no one had entered. The coroner sent for the
maid, who at first refused to come past the bedroom door. She was a pretty
Italian girl of nineteen, in a long skirt and a full-length white apron. 'Young
lady,' said Hugel, 'did you disturb anything in this room?'

    The maid shook her head.

    Despite the body on the floor and her
employer looking on, the maid held herself straight and met her interrogator's
eyes. 'No, sir,' she said.

    'Did you bring anything in, take
anything out?'

    'I'm no thief,' she said.

    'Did you move any article of
furniture or clothing?'

    'No.'

    'Very good,' said Coroner Hugel.

    The maid looked to Mr Banwell, who
did not dismiss her. Instead, he addressed the coroner: 'Get it over with.'

    Hugel cocked an eye at the owner of
the Balmoral. He took out a pen and paper. 'Name?'

    'Whose name?' said Banwell, with a
growl that made the manager cower. 'My name?'

    'Name of deceased.'

    'Elizabeth Riverford,' Banwell
replied.

    'Age?' asked Coroner Hugel.

    'How do I know?'

    'I understood you were acquainted
with the family.'

    'I know her father,' said Banwell.
'Chicago man. Banker.'

    'I see. You wouldn't have his address,
by any chance?' asked the coroner.

    'Of course I have his address.'

    The two men stared at each other.

    'Would you be so good,' asked Hugel,
'as to provide me the address?'

    'I'll provide it to McClellan,' said
Banwell.

    Hugel began grinding his molars
again. 'I am in charge of this investigation, not the mayor.'

    'We'll see how long you're in charge
of this investigation,' answered Banwell, who ordered the coroner for a second
time to bring his business to a close. The Riverford family, Banwell explained,
wanted the girl's body sent home, a duty he would be seeing to immediately.

    The coroner said he could by no means
allow it: in cases of homicide, the decedent's body must by law be taken into
custody for an autopsy.

    'Not this body,' answered Banwell. He
instructed the coroner to ring the mayor if he required clarification of his
orders.

    Hugel responded that he would take no
orders except from a judge. If anyone tried to stop him from taking Miss
Riverford's body downtown for an autopsy, he would see that they were
prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. When this admonition failed
appreciably to move Mr Banwell, the coroner added that he knew a reporter for
the
Herald
who found murder and obstruction of justice highly newsworthy.
Reluctandy, Banwell yielded.

    The coroner had brought his old,
bulky box camera with him. This he now put to use, replacing the exposed plate
with a fresh one after each smoky detonation of his flashlight. Banwell
remarked that if the pictures made their way to the
Herald,
the coroner
could be sure he would never be employed in New York or anywhere else again.
Hugel did not reply; at that moment a strange whine began to fill the room,
like the quiet cry of a violin stretched to its highest note. It seemed to have
no source, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. It rose louder and
louder, until it became almost a wail. The maid screamed. When she finished,
there was no sound in the room at all.

    Mr Banwell broke the silence. 'What
the devil was that?' he asked the manager.

    'I don't know, sir,' replied the
manager. 'It's not the first time. Perhaps some settling in the walls?'

    'Well, find out,' said Banwell.

    When the coroner finished his
photography, he announced he was leaving and taking the body with him. He had
no intention of questioning the help or the neighboring residents - which was
not his job - or of waiting for Detective Littlemore. In this heat, he
explained, decomposition would rapidly set in if the corpse was not refrigerated
at once. With the assistance of two elevator men, the girl's body was taken
down to the basement in a freight elevator and from there to a back alley,
where the coroner's driver was waiting.

    When, two hours later, Detective
Jimmy Littlemore arrived - not in uniform - he was flummoxed. It had taken some
time for the mayor's messenger boys to find Littlemore; the detective had been
in the basement of the new police headquarters still under construction on
Centre Street, trying out the pistol range. Littlemore's orders were to make a
thorough inspection of the murder scene. Not only did he find no murder scene,
he found no murderee. Mr Banwell would not speak with him. The staff also
proved surprisingly untalkative.

    And there was one person whom
Detective Littlemore did not even get a chance to interview: the maid who had
found the body. After Coroner Hugel left but before the detective arrived, the
manager had called the young woman to his office and handed her an envelope
with her month's pay - minus one day, of course, since it was only August 30.
He informed the girl he was letting her go. 'I'm sorry, Betty,' he said to her.
'I'm really sorry.'