In the light of the electric lantern, they could see an expensively furnished man's study. Bookshelves lined the walls, although, instead of books, the shelves were filled with a collection of scale models of bridges and buildings. In the middle of the study stood a massive desk with brass lamps on it. Littlemore switched on a lamp. Quietly, Littlemore and Betty left the study and walked down a hallway. They crossed a white marble entry foyer. Then they heard a muffled noise. Farther down the hall, past the most spacious living room either Littlemore or Betty had ever seen, a door was rattling, its knob turning back and forth. Someone was evidently behind the door and trying in vain to open it. Littlemore called out, identifying himself as a police detective.
A female voice answered. 'Open the door. Let me out.'
It did not take Littlemore long to do so. When the door opened, a linen closet was revealed, as was the back of a woman, pressed into a space not intended for a person, her hands tied behind her. Mrs Clara Banwell turned around, thanked the detective, and begged him to untie her.
Sweat glistened on Henry Kendall Thaw's forehead as he eyed the policeman on the other side of Gramercy Park, patrolling back and forth under the gas streedamp in front of the Actons' house. It dampened the back of his shirt below his dinner jacket. It trickled down his sleeves and trousers.
From his vantage point on East Twenty-first Street between Fourth and Lexington avenues, Thaw could see the entire row of imposing houses that lined Gramercy Park South. He could see the Players Club, lit up gaily on a Friday night. Indeed, he could see behind the translucent curtains of the club's first-floor windows, where well-heeled older men and bare-shouldered young women passed to and fro, drinking Duplexes and Bronx Cocktails.
Thaw's eyes were better than Jung's. He detected, three stories above the patrolman, a movement on the Actons' roof. There, against the night sky, he discerned the silhouette of another policeman and the outline of the rifle he was carrying. Thaw was a wiry man, thin almost to the point of appearing frail, with arms slightly longer than they should have been. His face was surprisingly boyish for a man in his late thirties. He might almost have been handsome, except that his small eyes were a little too deep-set and his lips a little too thick. Whether in motion or stationary, he seemed unable to catch his breath.
Thaw was now in motion. He walked east, keeping to the shadows. He pulled the brim of his hat even farther down as he crossed Lexington Avenue: he knew the house on this corner very well. He had watched it for hours at a time in the old days, waiting to see if a certain girl would come out of it, a pretty girl he wanted to hurt so much it made his skin tingle. He skirted the iron fence of the park until he came to its southeastern corner, with Irving Place separating him from the watchful policemen. The officers never saw him enter the back alley behind the houses of Gramercy Park South.
Two miles away, in his apartment on the second floor of the small house on Warren Street, Coroner Charles Hugel had packed his bags. He stood in the middle of his living room, biting his knuckles. He had delivered his letter of resignation to the mayor. He had notified his landlord. He had gone to the bank and closed his account. All the money he possessed lay before him, stacked in neat piles on the floor. He had to decide how to carry it. He bent down and started counting the bills - for the third time - wondering whether it would be enough to establish him in another, smaller town. His hands jerked open and fifty- dollar bills flew into the air when he heard the pounding on his door.
If the patrolman in front of the Actons' house had only looked up, he might have noticed a deeper darkening at the window of Nora's bedroom. He might possibly have realized that a man had passed behind its curtains. But he didn't look up.
The intruder loosed the white silk tie that was around his neck. Silently, he drew the tie from his collar and wrapped its ends around his hands. He closed on Nora's bed. Despite the darkness, he could make out the girl's sleeping form on the bed. He could see the line where the pretty chin gave way to her soft, unprotected throat. Slipping the tie between headboard and pillow, he worked it downward, slowly downward, beneath the pillow, closer and closer to the girl's neck, infinitely slowly, until its two ends should emerge out from under the pillow. He listened all the while to her breathing, which went on softly, undisturbed.
It is a fine question whether the kitchen knife, had Mrs Mildred Acton not removed it from beneath the girl's pillow, could have done any good. Could Nora Acton, jolted awake by a man in the night, have reached the knife? If she had reached it, could she have used it? Nora always slept on her stomach. Even if she had got her hands on the weapon, could she - with her breath choked off - have saved her life with it?
All fine questions, but all quite academic, since not only was the kitchen knife not there, neither was Nora.
'Put 'em up, Mr Banwell,' said a voice from behind the intruder at Nora's bed. An electric lantern, held by a uniformed officer standing in the doorway, suddenly lit up the room. George Banwell threw his hands before his face.
'Step away from the bed, Mr Banwell,' said Detective Littlemore, jutting the muzzle of his gun into Banwell's back. 'Okay, Betty, you can get up now.'
Betty Longobardi rose from the bed, fearful but defiant. As Littlemore patted down Banwell's pockets, he glanced at Nora's hearth. There, as he expected, a wall panel had swiveled open, revealing a secret passageway behind it. 'Okay. Put your hands down now. Behind your back. Nice and slow.'
Banwell didn't move. 'What's your price?' he asked.
'More than you can pay,' answered Littlemore.
'Twenty thousand,' said Banwell, his hands still over his head. 'I'll give each of you twenty thousand dollars.'
'Hands behind your back,' repeated Littlemore.
'Fifty thousand,' said Banwell. Squinting into the beam of light, he could see there were two men in the doorway, one holding the lantern and another behind him, in addition to whoever had the gun sticking in his back. At the words 'fifty thousand,' the two men in the doorway shifted uneasily. Banwell addressed them. 'Think of it, boys. You’re smart; I can tell by the look of you. Where do you think Chief Byrnes got his? You know what Byrnes has in the bank? Three hundred fifty thousand. That's right. I made him rich, and I'll make you rich.'
'The mayor won't like your trying to bribe us,' said Littlemore, lowering one of Banwell's arms and placing a cuff around his wrist.
'Are you going to listen to this fool behind me?' Banwell shot out, still addressing the two men in the doorway, his voice strong and confident notwithstanding his predicament. 'I'll break him during the trial. I'll break him, do you hear me? Be smart. You want to be poor your whole lives? Think of your wives, your children. You want them to be poor their whole lives? Don't worry about the mayor. I own the mayor.'
'Do you, George?' said the man behind the officer holding the lantern. He stepped into the light. It was Mayor McClellan. 'Do you really?'
Littlemore snapped the handcuffs over Banwell's other wrist, the lock catching with a satisfying click. With a quickness surprising for a man of his size, Banwell wrenched himself out of the detective's grip and, arms locked behind his back, made for the passageway But he had to stop and duck to get in, which was his undoing. Littlemore had his gun in his hand. He had a clear shot but didn't fire. Instead he took one large step forward and brought the butt end of his gun down on Banwell's head. Banwell let out a cry and collapsed to the floor.
A few minutes later, Detective Littlemore sat the almost unconscious George Banwell at the foot of the Actons' stairs and secured him to the banister with a second pair of handcuffs, borrowed from one of the uniformed men. Blood was dripping down Banwell's face. Another policeman let a flustered Harcourt and Mildred Acton out of their bedroom.
Inside the Players Club, the hat-check girl welcomed a new guest, who also surprised her - not only because he had entered through the rear door, but also because the man was wearing an overcoat in the middle of summer. It gave Harry Thaw special pleasure to be enjoying his liberty in
rooms designed by the very man he had murdered three years ago, Mr Stanford White. He gave his name as Monroe Reid from Philadelphia. It was under that appellation that he introduced himself to another out-of-towner, a foreign gentleman he met in the small ballroom, where dancers were performing a show number on a raised stage. Harry Thaw and Carl Jung got on quite well that evening. When Jung mentioned that the club member he knew was Smith Jelliffe, Thaw exclaimed that he knew the man well, although he did not give an entirely truthful account of their acquaintance.
'Well done, Detective,' said Mayor McClellan to Littlemore in the Actons' living room. 'I would never have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.'
Mrs Biggs was dressing the gash in Banwell's skull. Mr Acton had poured himself a large drink. 'Do you think you might tell us what's happening, McClellan?' he asked.
'I'm afraid I don't entirely know myself,' answered the mayor. 'I still cannot fathom how George could have killed Miss Riverford.'
The doorbell rang. Mrs Biggs looked to her employers, who in turn looked to the mayor. Littlemore said he would answer it. A moment later, everyone in the room saw Coroner Charles Hugel enter the room, firmly in the grasp of Officer John Reardon.
'Got him, Detective,' said Reardon. 'He was all packed just like you said he would be.'
Chapter Twenty-five
The telephone rang in my hotel room, waking me. I didn't remember falling asleep; I hardly remembered returning to my room. It was the front desk on the line.
'What time is it?' I asked.
'Just before midnight, sir.'
'What day?' The fog in my brain wouldn't clear.
'Still Friday, sir. Excuse me, Dr Younger, but you asked to be informed if Miss Acton had any visitors.'
'Yes?'
'A Mrs Banwell is on her way to Miss Acton's room now.'
'Mrs Banwell?' I said. 'All right. Don't let anyone else up, without calling me first.'
Nora and I had taken the train back from Tarry Town. We barely spoke. When we arrived at the Grand Central, Nora begged me to take her back to the Hotel Manhattan - to see whether her room there was still booked in her name. If so, she asked, couldn't she stay there until Sunday, when she need no longer fear that her parents might have her hospitalized against her will?
Contrary to my better judgment, I agreed to take her to the hotel. I warned her, though, that tomorrow morning, no matter what, I would notify her father of her whereabouts. I felt sure - and told her as much - that she would be able to come up with some fictitious story to keep her parents at bay for a mere twenty-four hours. As it happened, she was right about her room: it had never been released. The clerk handed her the keys, and she disappeared into an elevator.
I did not consider Mrs Banwell's midnight visit wise: her husband could have followed her. Nora must have telephoned her. But if Nora could deceive me as thoroughly as she had, Clara could probably deceive her husband about an evening's errand.
Freud's remarks about Nora's feelings for Clara came back to me. He still believed, of course, that Nora harbored incestuous wishes. I no longer did. In fact, given my interpretation of 'To be, or not to be,' I dared to think I finally had upended the whole Oedipus complex. Freud was right all along: yes, he had held the mirror up to nature, but he had seen in it a mirror image of reality.
It's the father, not the son. Yes, when a little boy enters the scene with his mother and father, one party in this trio tends to suffer a profound jealousy - the father. He may naturally feel the boy intrudes on his special, exclusive relationship with his wife. He may well half want to be rid of the suckling, puling intruder, whom the mother proclaims to be so perfect. He might even wish him dead.
The Oedipus complex is real, but the subject of all its predicates is the parent, not the child. And it only worsens as the child grows. A girl soon confronts her mother with a figure whose youth and beauty the mother cannot help resenting. A boy must eventually overtake his father, who as the son grows cannot but feel the churning of generations coming to plow him under.
But what parent will acknowledge a wish to kill his own issue? What father will admit to being jealous of his own boy? So the Oedipal complex must be projected onto children. A voice must whisper in the ear of Oedipus s father that it is not he - the father - who entertains a secret death wish against the son but rather Oedipus who covets the mother and compasses the father's death. The more intense these jealousies attack the parents, the more destructively they will behave against their own children, and if this occurs they may turn their own children against them - bringing about the very situation they feared. So teaches Oedipus itself. Freud had misinterpreted Oedipus: the secret of the Oedipal wishes lies in the parent's heart, not the child's.
The pity of it was that this discovery, if such it was, now seemed so stale, so profitless to me. What good was it? What good did thinking ever do?
'This is an outrage,' said Coroner Hugel, with what looked like a barely controllable indignation. 'I demand an explanation.'
George Banwell grunted in pain as Mrs Biggs applied a plaster to his skull. Blood remained clotted in his hair, but it was no longer running down his cheeks.
'What is the meaning of this, Littlemore?' asked the mayor.
'You want to tell him, Mr Hugel?' was the detective's answer. 'Or should I?'
'Tell me what?' asked McClellan.
'Let go of me,' the coroner said to Reardon.
'Let him go, Officer,' ordered the mayor. Reardon complied at once.
'Is this another of your jokes, Littlemore?' asked Hugel, straightening his suit. 'Don't listen to anything he says, McClellan. This is a man who pretended to be dead on my operating table yesterday.'
'Did you?' the mayor asked Littlemore.
'Yes, sir.'
'You see?' said Hugel to McClellan, his voice rising. 'I am no longer in the city's employ. My resignation was effective at five o'clock today; it is on your desk, McClellan, although no doubt you did not read it. I am going home. Good night.'
'Don't let him go, Mr Mayor,' said Littlemore.
The coroner paid no heed. Placing his hat on his head, he began striding toward the door.
'Don't let him go, sir,' Littlemore repeated.
'Mr Hugel, remain as you are, if you please,' ordered McClellan. 'The detective has already shown me one thing tonight I would not have believed possible. I will hear him out.'
'Thank you, Your Honor,' said Littlemore. 'I better begin with the photograph. Coroner Hugel took the picture, sir. It's a photograph of Miss Riverford with Mr Banwell's initials showing on her neck.'
Banwell stirred at the foot of the stairs. 'What's that?' he asked.
'His initials? What are you talking about?' asked McClellan.
'I have a copy of it here, sir,' said Littlemore. He handed the picture to the mayor. 'It's kind of complicated, sir. You see, Mr Hugel said Miss Riverford's body was stolen from the morgue because there was a clue on it.'
'Yes, you mentioned that to me, Hugel,' said the mayor.
The coroner said nothing, eyeing Littlemore warily.
'Then Riviere develops Mr Hugel's plates,' the detective continued, 'and sure enough, we find this picture of Miss Riverford's neck with some kind of imprint on it. Riviere and I didn't get it, but Mr Hugel explained it to us. The murderer strangles Miss Riverford with his tie, the tie still has his pin on it, and the pin has his monogram. So you see, Your Honor, the picture shows the murderer's initials on Miss Riverford's neck. That's what you told us, right, Mr Hugel?'
'Astounding,' said the mayor, who peered at the photograph, holding it close to his eyes. 'By God, I see it: GB.'
'Yes, sir. I've also got one of Mr Banwell's tiepins, and you can see they're alike.' Littlemore drew Banwell's tiepin from his trousers pocket and handed it to the mayor.
'Look at that,' said the mayor. 'Identical.'
'Rubbish,' said Banwell. 'I'm being framed.'
'Good Lord, Hugel,' said the mayor, ignoring Banwell. '
Why didn't you tell me, man? You had proof positive against him.'
'But I don't - I can't - let me see that photograph,' said Hugel.
The mayor gave the coroner the picture.
Hugel shook his head as he scrutinized it. 'But my picture -'
'Mr Hugel's never seen that photograph, Your Honor,' said Littlemore.
'I don't understand,' said the mayor.
'On Mr Hugel's photograph - on his original photograph, sir - the initials on the girl's neck weren't GB. They were the reverse of GB, the mirror image.'
'Well, as a matter of fact, the initials should have been in reverse, shouldn't they?' McClellan pointed out. 'The monogram should have left a reverse imprint, just like the seal on an envelope.'
'That's the trick of it,' said Littlemore. 'You got it right, Your Honor: the pin would have left a reverse imprint, so the reverse GB on Mr Hugel's photograph made it look like Mr Banwell was the killer. That's exactly what Mr Hugel said. The only problem was that Mr Hugel's photograph was already a reverse image. Riviere told us. That's what Mr Hugel didn't realize, sir. His picture showed a backward GB - okay? - but his photograph was already a reverse image of the girl's neck. That meant the imprint left on her neck was a true GB, and that meant the murderer's monogram was not a true GB but a reverse GB!
'Say that again,' said McClellan.
Littlemore did. In fact, he repeated the point several times until the mayor understood it. He also explained that he had made Riviere produce a reverse image of Hugel's picture, turning the GB around again, making it forward- facing, so he could compare the initials to Mr Banwell's actual monogram. This reversed picture was the one he had just shown the mayor.
The Interpretation Of Murder Page 34