The Interpretation Of Murder (38 page)

    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.'

    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.