The Interpretation Of Murder (41 page)

    A little after noon on Friday,
Detective Littlemore stood outside a small, filthy cell in the massive gray
detention castle known as the Tombs. There was no daylight, no window anywhere
in sight. Next to Littlemore was a prison guard. The two of them were staring
through a grill of iron bars at the sprawled-out body of Chong Sing, who lay
unconscious on a lousy cot. His white undershirt was badly stained. His feet
were bare and dirty.

    'He's asleep?' asked Littlemore.

    Chuckling, the guard explained that
Sergeant Becker had kept Chong up all last night. Littlemore was at first
surprised to hear Becker's name. Then he realized: Miss Sigel was found in the
Tenderloin, so the interrogation would naturally have been given to Becker.
Still, the detective was puzzled. Chong had already talked yesterday; he had
admitted seeing his cousin Leon kill the girl. The mayor had said so. What did
Becker want with him last night?

    The prison guard was able to answer
that question. It was Becker who had made Chong talk in the first place. But
Chong wouldn't admit to having assisted in the killing itself. He insisted he
had gone into Leon's room only after the girl was already dead.

    'And Becker didn't buy it?' asked
Littlemore.

    The guard hummed a little tune and
shook his head. 'Kept at him real good. All night, like I said. Shoulda seen
him.'

    The sleeping Chong Sing turned over
on the cot, revealing his right eye, purpled and swollen to the size of a plum.
Dried blood was visible under Sing's nose and below his ear. The nose may have
been broken, but Littlemore could not be sure.

    'Oh, boy,' said the detective. 'Did
Chong break?'

    'Huh-uh.'

    Littlemore had the guard open the
cell. He woke the sleeping prisoner. The detective pulled up a chair, lit himself
a cigarette, and offered one to the Chinese. Chong eyed his new interrogator
unhappily. He took the cigarette.

    'I know you understand English, Mr
Chong,' said Littlemore. 'I may be able to help you. Just answer a couple of
questions. When did you start working at the Balmoral, end of July?'

    Chong Sing nodded.

    'What about down at the bridge?'
asked the detective.

    'Maybe same time,' he said hoarsely.
'Maybe few days later.'

    'If you weren't there, Chong, how'd
you see it?' asked Littlemore.

    'Hah?'

    'If you went into Leon's room
after
he killed the girl, how do you know he killed her?'

    'I told already,' Chong replied. 'I
hear fighting. I look through keyhole.'

    Littlemore glanced at the guard, who confirmed
that Chong had told the same story the day before. The detective turned back to
Chong Sing. 'Is that right?'

    'That right.'

    'No, it's not. I was there, Mr Chong,
remember? I went to Leon's room. I picked the lock. I looked through that keyhole.
You can't see anything through it.'

    Chong was silent.

    'How'd you get those jobs, Chong?
How'd you get two jobs working for Mr Banwell?'

    The Chinese shrugged.

    'I'm trying to help you,' said
Littlemore.

    'Leon,' said Chong quietly. 'He got
me jobs.'

    'How did Leon know Banwell?'

    'I don't know.'

    'You don't know?'

    'I don't know,' Chong Sing insisted.
'I not murder anyone.'

    Littlemore rose and signaled the
guard to open the cell again. 'I know you didn't,' he said.

    The Actons' summer cottage was a
cottage in the Newport sense of the word, meaning an estate aspiring to -
indeed, exceeding - the standards of lower European royalty. I had intended to
return to the city after seeing Nora to the door, but I found I couldn't. I
didn't want to leave her alone, even here.

    The servants greeted Nora warmly,
throwing open doors and windows in a flurry of activity. They appeared to know
nothing of her travails. Although barely speaking, Nora evidently wanted me to
see everything. She led me through the first floor of the main house. A
double-winged marble staircase ascended from the gallery of its two-story entry
hall. To the right was a stained-glass cupola; to the left an octagonal,
wood-beamed library. Marble columns and gilded plaster abounded.

    In back was a tile-ceilinged veranda.
A rolling sward of green grass and tall oaks descended clear down to the river
far below. The girl set out into the greenery. I followed, and we arrived
shortly at the stables, where the air smelled wholesomely of horse and fresh
hay. It turned out the cook had already taken the liberty of sending a picnic
basket down to the stable in case Miss Nora wanted to go for a ride.

    She proved every bit as good a rider
as I. After a quick canter, we spread a blanket in a shady spot with a
magnificent view of the Hudson. Inside the picnic basket, we found a dozen
clams packed on ice, cold chicken, potato croquettes, a tin full of tiny soda
biscuits, and a cherry and watermelon salad. Along with a canteen of iced tea,
the cook had included a half bottle of claret, evidently for 'the gentleman.' I
had not eaten a thing since the previous evening.

    When we were done, Nora asked me,
'Are you honest?'

    'To a fault,' I said, 'but only
because I am such a bad actor. Will the servants call your parents to tell them
you're here?'

    'There's no telephone.' She removed
her panama hat, allowing the sun to tangle up its rays in her hair. 'I am sorry
for my behavior on the ferry, Doctor. I don't know why I brought up your
father. Please forgive me. I feel I am in a house that's burning down and
there's no way out. Clara is the only person I have been able to turn to, and
now even she can't help me.'

    'There
is
a way out,' I said.
'You will stay here till Sunday. You will then be eighteen and out of your
parents' control. At the same time, with any luck, Detective Littlemore will
have traced the evidence we found to Banwell and arrest him.'

    'What evidence?'

    I told her of our trip to the
caisson. Even now, I explained, Detective Littlemore might have confirmed that
the contents of the trunk belonged to Miss Riverford, which would be all he
needed to put Mr Banwell under arrest. Perhaps Banwell was under arrest
already.

    'I doubt it very much,' said Nora,
shutting her eyes. 'Tell me something else.'

    'What?'

    'Tell me anything so long as it does
not concern George Banwell.'

    In the Acton residence on Gramercy Park,
Nora's mother was ransacking her daughter's bedroom. Nora had disappeared.
Mildred Acton sent Mrs Biggs to see if Nora was in the park, but the girl was
not there. The thought of being deceived by her daughter filled Mrs Acton with
indignation. Apparently her daughter was deranged, wicked and deranged. Nothing
she said could be trusted. Mrs Acton had seen the discovery of cigarettes and
cosmetics in her daughter's bedroom; what else might she be concealing there?

    Mrs Acton found nothing worth confiscating
until she poked a hand beneath her daughter's pillow. She was astonished to
discover a kitchen knife.

    The discovery had an odd effect on
Mildred Acton. For a split second, a series of bloody images flashed through
her mind. Among these were memories of the birth of her only child, which in
turn reminded Mrs Acton, as it always did, that she and her husband had slept
in different beds since that day. A moment later, these sanguinary images and
associations were gone. Mrs Acton had quite forgotten them, but they left her
in a state. Feeling a great sense of her own propriety in protecting her
daughter from herself, she returned the knife to its place in the kitchen.

    Mrs Acton wished her husband would do
something. She wished he were not so hopeless, always holed up in his study in
town or playing polo in the country. Harcourt spoiled Nora dreadfully. But then
Harcourt was a failure at everything. If he had not inherited a small fortune
from his father, the man would have ended in the poorhouse. Mildred had told
him so many times.

    Mrs Acton decided she must call at
once on Dr Sachs for another electromassage treatment. True, she had just had
one yesterday and the cost was outrageous, but she felt she couldn't live
without another. Dr Sachs was so good at it. It would have been nicer, she
reflected, if she had found, a Christian physician who was equally expert. But
didn't everyone say the best doctors were Jewish?

    Naturally my mind went blank the
moment Nora asked me to say something to distract her. Then it came to me.
'Last night,' I said, 'I solved "To be, or not to be.'"

    'I didn't know a solution was
required,' she answered.

    'Oh, people have been trying to solve
it for centuries. But no one has, because everyone has always thought that
not
to be
means to die.'

    'Doesn't it?'

    'Well, there's a problem if you read
it that way. The whole speech equates "not to be" with
action:
taking up arms, taking vengeance, and so on. So if
not to be
meant to
die, then death would have the name of action on its side, when surely that
title belongs to life. How did acting get on the side of
not being
? If
we could answer that question, we would know why, for Hamlet, "to be"
means
not
to act, and then we would have solved the real riddle: why he
doesn't act, why he is paralyzed for so very long. I'm boring you, I'm sorry.'

    'You aren't in the least. But
"not to be" can only mean death,' said Nora. 'Not to be means' - she
shrugged - 'not to be.'

    I had been reclining on my side. Now
I sat up. 'No: I mean yes. I mean, "not to be" has a second meaning.
The opposite of being is not only death. Not for Hamlet. To
not be
is
also
to seem
'

    'To seem what?'

    'Just to
seem
' I stood, pacing
and, I'm ashamed to say, cracking my knuckles savagely. 'The clue has been
there all along, at the very beginning of the play, where Hamlet says,
"Seems, madam? Nay it is. I know not 'seems.'" Think of it. Denmark
is rotten. Everyone ought to be in mourning for Hamlet's father. His mother
especially ought to be in mourning. He, Hamlet, ought to be king. Instead,
Denmark is celebrating his mother's marriage to, of all people, his loathsome
uncle, who has assumed the throne.

    'And what most galls him is the
feigning of grief, the
seeming,
the wearing of black by people who can't
wait to feast at the marriage tables and disport themselves like animals in
their beds. Hamlet wants no part of such a world. He won't pretend. He refuses
to
seem.
He
is.

    'Then he learns of his father's
murder. He swears revenge. But from that point on, he enters the world of
seeming. His first step is to "put on an antic disposition" - to
pretend
to be mad. Next he listens in awe as an actor weeps for Hecuba.
Then he actually instructs the players on how to pretend convincingly. He even
writes a script for them himself, to be played that night, a scene he must
pretend is anodyne, but that will actually reenact his father's murder, in
order to surprise his uncle into an admission of guilt.

    'He is falling into the domain of
playing, of seeming.

    For Hamlet, "To be, or not to
be" isn't "to be, or not to
exist."
It's "to be, or
to
seem
"; that's the decision he has to make. To seem is to
act
-
to feign, to play a part. There's the solution to all of
Hamlet,
right there, in front of everyone's nose. Not to be is to seem, and to seem is
to act.
To be,
therefore, is
not to act.
Hence his paralysis!
Hamlet was determined not to
seem,
and that meant
never acting.
If he holds to that determination, if he would
be,
he cannot
act.
But if he would take arms and avenge his father, he
must
act - he must
choose to seem, rather than to be.'

    I looked to my audience of one. 'I
see,' she said. 'Because he must deceive to get at his uncle.'

    'Yes, yes, but it's also universal.
All action is acting. All performing is performance. There's a reason these
words have double meanings. To design means to plan, but also to deceive. To
fabricate is to make with skill, but also to deceive. Art means deception.
Craft - deception. There is no escaping it. If we would play a part in the
world, we must act. Say a man psychoanalyzes a woman. He becomes her doctor; he
assumes a role. It isn't lying, but it is acting. If he drops that role with
her, he assumes another - friend, lover, husband, whatever it is. We can choose
what part we play, but that's all.'

    Nora's brows were knit. 'I've acted,'
she said. 'With you.'

    It happens that way sometimes: the
moment of truth erupts right in the middle of some other scene, when the action
is elsewhere and the attention diverted. I knew what she must be talking about:
her secret fantasy about her father, which she had confessed yesterday, but
which she had naturally tried to keep secret. 'It's my fault,' I replied. 'I
didn't want to hear the truth. I felt the same way about
Hamlet
for the
longest time. I didn't want to believe that Freud's view of the play could be
right.'

    'Dr Freud has a view about Hamlet?'
she inquired.

    'Yes, it's - it's what I told you.
That Hamlet has a secret wish to - to have sex with his mother.'

    'Dr Freud says that?' she exclaimed.
'And you believe it? How repulsive.'

    'Well, yes, but I'm a little
surprised to hear you say so.'

    'Why?' she asked.

    'Because of what you said yesterday.'

    'What did I say?'

    'You confessed,' I said, 'to the same
kind of incestuous wish.'

    'You are insane.'

    I lowered my voice but spoke
severely. 'Miss Acton, you admitted to me in the park yesterday, very plainly,
that you were jealous when you saw Clara Banwell with your father. You said you
wished you were the one who -'

    She flushed scarlet. 'Stop it! Yes, I
said I was jealous, but not of Clara! How disgusting! I was jealous of my
father!'

    We faced each other, both standing
now, across the little woolen blanket. A pair of squirrels, which had been
frolicking about a nearby tree trunk, froze in their tracks and eyed us
suspiciously. 'That's why you thought you were vile?' I asked.

    'Yes,' she whispered.

    'That's not vile,' I said. 'At least,
not by comparison.'

    My remark did not amuse her. I
touched her cheek. She looked down. Taking her chin in my hand, I lifted her
face to mine and bent toward her. She pushed me away.

    'Don't,' she said.

    She wouldn't meet my eyes. She
withdrew from me and set about the picnic things, gathering the remains,
packing them in the basket, shaking the crumbs from the blanket. In silence, we
rode back to the stables and returned to the house.

    So: all my fine ethical scruples
about taking advantage of Nora's transferential interest in me - supposing she
had any - melted away when I discovered she had confessed to a Sapphic desire,
not an incestuous one. I was embarrassed to discover this about myself, but
there was a logic to it. The moment I understood the truth, I no longer felt
Nora would be kissing her father were she to kiss me. Perhaps I ought to have
concluded she would be kissing Clara, but it didn't feel that way.

    The main house was quiet now, the
summer afternoon air perfectly still, the large interior rooms shadowy and
empty. All the windows were shuttered again - to keep the sun off the drapery
and furniture, I supposed. Nora, pensive and wordless, led me into the
octagonal library with the splendidly carved woodwork. She locked the doors
behind us and pointed to an armchair. I was meant to sit down in it - and did.
Nora knelt on the floor in front of me.

    For the first time since she had
turned me away, she spoke. 'Do you remember when you first saw me? When I
couldn't speak?'

    I was unable to read her expression.
She looked penitent and virginal at once. 'Of course,' I said.

    'I didn't lose my voice.'

    'I beg your pardon?'

    'I only pretended,' she said.

    I tried not to reveal how dry my
mouth suddenly felt. 'That's why you could speak the next morning,' I said.

    She nodded.

    'Why?' I asked.

    'And my amnesia.'

    'What about it?'

    'That wasn't real either,' she said.

    'You had no amnesia?'

    'I was pretending.'

    The girl gazed up at me. I had the
peculiar notion that she was someone I had never met before. I tried to
reorient what I knew or thought I knew around these new facts. I tried to
restructure all the various scenes of the last week, to make them cohere - but
couldn't. 'Why?'

    She shook her head, biting her lower
hp.

    'You were trying to ruin Banwell?' I
asked. 'You were going to say he did it?'

    'Yes.'

    'But you were lying.'

    'Yes. But the rest of it - almost all
of it - was true.'

    She seemed to be pleading for sympathy.
I felt none. No wonder she said the transference had no application to her. I
hadn't psychoanalyzed her at all. 'You made a fool of me,' I said.

    'I didn't mean to. I couldn't - it's
so -'

    'Everything you told me was a lie.'

    'No. He did try to take me when I was
fourteen. He tried again when I was sixteen. And I did see my father with
Clara. Right here, in this room.'

    'You told me you saw your father and
Clara at the Banwells' summerhouse.'

    'Yes.'

    'Why would you lie about that?'

    'I didn't.'

    My mind wheeled and groped. I
remembered now: her parents' summerhouse was in the Berkshires, in
Massachusetts. We were not at her parents' summerhouse at all. We were at the
Banwells'. The servants knew her not because they were her servants, but
because she had been here so often. The reality of the situation suddenly
became fragile, as if it might crack. I stood. She took my hands and gazed up
at me.

    'You did those things to your own
body,' I said. 'You whipped yourself. You scarred yourself. You burned
yourself.'

    She shook her head.

    A series of recollections came to my
mind. First, helping Nora into a carriage outside the hotel. My hands had
closed entirely around her waist, including her lower spine, yet she had not flinched.
When I touched her neck, to trigger her memories - which had all been a lie - I
held her by the small of the back once more. Again she didn't wince. 'You have
no injuries,' I said. 'You faked them. You painted them on, and allowed no one
to touch you. You were never attacked.'

    'No,' she said.

    'No you weren't, or no you were?'

    'No,' she repeated.

    I seized her wrists. She gasped. 'I'm
asking you a simple question. Were you whipped? I don't care who did it. Did
any man - if not Banwell, then someone else - whip you? Yes or no. Tell me.'

    She shook her head. 'No,' she
whispered. 'Yes. No. Yes. So hard I thought I would die.'

    If it hadn't been so awful, her
changing her story four times in five seconds would have been funny. 'Show me
your back,' I said.

    She shook her head. 'You know it's
true. Dr Higginson told you.'

    'You fooled him as well.' I grasped
the top of her dress, tore it, and let it fall to her shoulders. She gasped but
didn't move or try to stop me. Her shoulders were unhurt. I saw the top of her
bosom; bare, unhurt. I turned her around. There seemed to be no wounds on her
back, but I couldn't see below her shoulder blades. A white, tight-laced corset
covered her from the scapula down.

    'Are you going to rip my bodice as
well?' she asked.

    'No. I've seen enough. I'm going back
to the city, and you're coming with me.' She belonged, very possibly, in a
sanatorium after all. If she did not, I didn't know where she belonged, but she
had to be in someone's charge, and it wasn't mine. Nor was I going to be
responsible for having shipped her off to the Banwells' country house. 'I'm
taking you home.'

    'Very well,' she said.

    'Oh, not worried anymore about being
locked up in an asylum? That was another lie?'