The Interpretation Of Murder (17 page)

    On Tuesday, in the late afternoon,
the Triumvirate were reassembled in the library. They had a great deal to
discuss. One of the three gentlemen turned over, in his fine long hands, a report
he had recently received and had shared with the others. The report included,
among other things, a set of letters. 'These,' he said, 'we do not burn.'

    'I told you: they are degenerates,
all of them,' added the portly, ruddy-complexioned man next to him, with the
muttonchop sideburns. 'We must wipe them out. One by one.'

    'Oh, we will,' said the first. 'We
are. But we will make use of them first.'

    There was a brief silence. Then the
third man, the balding one, spoke. 'What of the evidence?'

    'There will be no evidence,' replied
the first, 'except what we choose to leave behind.'

    Detective Jimmy Littlemore exited the
subway at Seventy- second Street and Broadway, the stop closest to the
Balmoral. Mr Hugel might have his money on Banwell, but Littlemore hadn't given
up on his own leads.

    The evening before, when the Chinaman
had disappeared, Littlemore had not been able to find out anything about him.
The other laundry workers knew him as Chong, but that was all they knew about
him. An assistant had

    told him to come back in the daytime
and ask for Mayhew, the bookkeeper.

    Littlemore found Mayhew recording
figures in a back office. The detective asked the bookkeeper about the Chinaman
who worked in the laundry.

    'Just penciling in his name now,'
said Mayhew, without looking up.

    'Because he didn't show up for work
today?' asked Littlemore.

    'How did you know that?'

    'Lucky guess,' said the detective.
Mayhew had the information he wanted. The Chinaman's full name was Chong Sing.
His address was 782 Eighth Avenue, in Midtown. Littlemore asked if Mr Chong
ever made laundry deliveries to the Alabaster Wing - more specifically, to Miss
Riverford.

    Mayhew looked amused. 'You can't be
serious,' he said.

    'Why not?'

    'The man's Chinese.'

    'So?'

    'This is a first-class building,
Detective. Normally we don't even hire Chinese. Chong was not allowed out of
the basement. He was lucky to have a job here at all.'

    'Bet he was real grateful,' said Littlemore.
'Why'd you hire him?'

    Mayhew shrugged. 'I haven't any idea.
Mr Banwell asked us to find work for him, and that is what we did. Evidently,
he didn't realize how fortunate he was.'

    Littlemore s next task was to find
the cabbie who picked

    up the black-haired man Sunday night.
The doormen told the detective to try the stables on Amsterdam Avenue, where
all the hacks got their horses. But they said he shouldn't bother going until
later. The night drivers didn't come on until nine-thirty or ten.

    The interval suited Littlemore just
fine. It gave him a chance first to take another look at Miss Riverford's
apartment and then to drop in on Betty. She was in a much better mood. Agreeing
to come out to a nickelodeon, Betty introduced the detective to her mother and
gave a goodbye hug to each of her little brothers - who gaped when the
detective showed them his gun and who were delighted when he let them play with
his badge and handcuffs. Betty, it turned out, had a new job. She had spent a
luckless morning presenting herself at the large hotels, hoping vainly to find
a spot for an experienced maid. But at a shirtwaist factory near Washington
Square, she got an interview with the owner, a Mr Harris, who hired her on the
spot. She would start tomorrow.

    The hours of Betty's new job were not
so nice: seven in the morning to eight at night. Nor was she enthusiastic about
the pay, 'At least it's by the piece,' she said. 'Mr Harris says some of the
girls make two dollars a day.'

    About half past nine, Littlemore went
to the stable on Amsterdam Avenue near 100th Street. Over the next two hours, a
good dozen hackney drivers came in to drop off or pick up a horse. Littlemore
talked with every one of them but drew a blank. When the last stall was empty, the
stableboy told Littlemore to wait for one more old-timer who kept his own
horse. Sure enough, a little before twelve, an old nag came slow-stepping in,
piloted by an ancient driver. At first the old man wouldn't answer the
detective, but when Littlemore began flipping a quarter in the air, he found
his tongue. He had indeed picked up a black-haired man in front of the Balmoral
two nights ago. Did he remember where they went? He did: the Hotel Manhattan.

    Littlemore was speechless, but the
old driver had more to say. 'Know what he does when we get there? Climbs
straight into another cab, one of those red and green gasoline jobs, right in
front of my face. Taking money from my pocket, that's what I calls it, and
putting it in somebody else's.'

    Freud cut our conversation short,
abruptly declaring that he had to return to the hotel at once. I understood
what was happening. Luckily, a carriage was right at hand.

    The instant Freud and I set foot in
the hotel, Jung accosted us. He must have been waiting for Freud to return.
With inexplicable ardor, he planted himself right in front of Freud, blocking
our way, insisting on speaking with him without delay. The moment was the least
propitious possible. Freud had just informed me, with evident embarrassment,
how pressing was his need.

    'Great heavens, Jung,' said Freud,
'let me through. I have to get to my room.'

    'Why? Are you having the - the
problem again?'

    'Lower your voice,' Freud said. 'Yes.
Now let me pass. It is urgent.'

    'I knew it. Your enuresis,' said
Jung, using the medical term for involuntary micturition, 'is psychogenic.'

    'Jung, it is -'

    'It is a neurosis. I can help you!'

    'It is -' Freud stopped in
mid-sentence. His voice changed altogether. He spoke evenly and very quietly,
looking straight at Jung. 'It is now too late.'

    An extremely awkward pause ensued.
Then Freud went on. 'Do not look down, either of you. Jung, you will turn
around and walk just in front of me. Younger, you will be on my left. No, on my
left.
Walk directly to the elevator. Go.'

    Thus arranged, we made a stiff
procession to the elevators. One of the clerks stared at us; it was irritating,
but I don't think he suspected. To my astonishment, Jung would not stop
talking. 'Your Count Thun dream - it is the key to everything. Will you let me
analyze it?'

    'I am hardly in a position to refuse'
was Freud's reply.

    Freud's dream of Count Thun, the
former Austrian prime minister, was known to everyone who had read his work.
Reaching the elevator bank, I tried to leave them. To my surprise, Jung stopped
me. He said he needed me. We let one car go; the next we had to ourselves.

    Inside the elevator, Jung went on.
'Count Thun represented
me.
Thun: Jung - it could not be clearer. Both
names have four letters. Both share the
un,
whose meaning is obvious.
His family was originally German but obliged to emigrate; so was mine. He is of
higher birth than you; so am I. He is the picture of arrogance; I am accused of
arrogance. In your dream, he is your enemy but also a member of your inner
circle; someone you lead, but someone who threatens you - and an Aryan,
decidedly an Aryan. The conclusion is inescapable: you were dreaming of
me,
but you had to distort it, because you did not want to acknowledge that you
regard me as a threat.'

    'Carl,' said Freud slowly, 'I dreamt
of Count Thun in 1898. That was more than a decade ago. You and I did not meet
until 1907.'

    The doors opened. The corridor was
empty. Freud walked briskly out; we followed. I could not imagine what Jung was
thinking or what his response would be. It was this: 'I know it! We dream what
is to come as well as what has passed. Younger,' he exclaimed, his eyes
unnaturally bright, 'you can confirm it!'

    'I?'

    'Yes, of course you. You were there.
You saw the whole thing.' Suddenly Jung seemed to change his mind and addressed
Freud again. 'Never mind. Your enuresis signifies ambition. It is a means of
drawing attention to yourself - as you did just now, in the lobby. It appears
whenever you feel you have an enemy, an opposite number, an
un
you must
overcome. I am now that
un.
Hence your problem has reappeared.'

    We reached Freud's room. He fished in
his pocket for the key - a task uncomfortable for him at present. In the end,
the key dropped to the floor. No one moved. Then Freud picked it up. When
upright again, he said to Jung, 'I doubt very much I enjoy Joseph's gift of
prophecy, but

    I can tell you this: you are my heir.
You will inherit psychoanalysis when I die, and you will become its leader even
before that. I will see to it. I
am
seeing to it. I have said all this
to you before. I have told the others; I say it now again. There is no one
else, Carl. Do not doubt it.'

    'Then tell me the rest of your Count
Thun dream!' cried Jung. 'You have always said there was a part of that dream
you did not reveal. If I am your heir, tell me. It will confirm my analysis; I
am certain of it. What was it?'

    Freud shook his head. I think he was
smiling - ruefully, perhaps. 'My boy,' he said to Jung, 'there are some things
even I cannot divulge. I should never have any authority again. Now leave me,
both of you. I will join you in the dining room in half an hour.'

    Jung turned without a word and strode
away.

    The Manhattan Bridge, nearing
completion in the summer of 1909, was the last of the three great suspension
bridges built across the East River to connect the island of Manhattan with
what had been, until 1898, the City of Brooklyn. These bridges - the Brooklyn,
the Williamsburg, the Manhattan - were, when constructed, the longest single
spans in existence, extolled by Scientific American as the greatest engineering
feats the world had ever known. Together with the invention of spun-steel
cable, one particular technological innovation made them possible: the
ingenious conceit of the pneumatic caisson.

    The problem to which the caisson
responded was this. The massive support towers for these bridges, necessary to
hold up their suspension cables, had to rest on foundations built underwater,
almost a hundred feet beneath the surface. These foundations could not be laid
directly on the soft riverbed. Instead, layer upon layer of sand, silt, shale,
clay, and boulder had to be dredged, broken, and sometimes dynamited until one
reached bedrock. To perform such excavation underwater was universally regarded
as impossible - until the idea of the pneumatic caisson was hit upon.

    The caisson was basically an enormous
wooden box. The Manhattan Bridge caisson, on the New York City side, had an
area of seventeen thousand square feet. Its walls were made from countless
planks of yellow pine lumber, bolted together to a thickness of over twenty
feet and caulked with a million barrels of oakum, hot pitch, and varnish. The
lower three feet of the caisson were reinforced with boiler plate, inside and
out. The weight of the whole: over sixty million pounds.

    A caisson had a ceiling but no man-made
floor. Its floor was the riverbed itself. In essence, the pneumatic caisson was
the largest diving bell ever built.

    In 1907, the Manhattan Bridge caisson
was sunk to the river bottom, water filling its internal compartments. On land,
enormous steam engines were fired up, which, running day and night, pumped air
through iron pipes down into the great box. The forced air, building up to
enormous pressure, drove out all the water through boreholes drilled in the
caisson's walls. An elevator shaft connected the caisson to a pier. Men would
take this elevator down into the caisson, where they could breathe the pumped,
compressed air.

    There they had direct access to the
riverbed and hence were able to perform the underwater construction work previously
considered impossible: hammering the rock, shoveling the mud, dynamiting the
boulders, laying the concrete. Debris was discharged through ingeniously
devised compartments called windows, although one could not see through them.
Three hundred men could work in the caisson at one time.

    An invisible danger lay in wait for
them there. The men who emerged from a day's work in the very first pneumatic
caisson - employed for the Brooklyn Bridge - frequently began to feel a strange
light-headedness. This was followed by a stiffening of their joints, then by a
paralysis of the elbows and knees, then by an unendurable pain throughout the
entire body. Doctors called the mysterious condition
caisson disease
.
Workmen called it 'the bends,' because of the contorted posture into which its
sufferers were driven. Thousands of workers had their health ruined by it,
hundreds endured paralysis, and many died before it was discovered that slowing
the climb back to the surface - forcing the men to spend time at intermediate
stages as they ascended the shaft - prevented the disorder.

    By 1909, the science of decompression
had advanced impressively. Tables had been drawn up prescribing exactly how
long a man needed to decompress, which depended on how much time he had spent
down in the caisson. From these tables, the man preparing to enter the caisson
just after midnight on August 31, 1909, knew he could spend fifteen minutes
down below without requiring any decompression at all. He had no fear of the
underwater descent.

    He had made the trip many times. This
trip, however, would be different in one respect. He would be alone.

    He had driven one of his automobiles
almost down to the river itself, navigating around machinery, lumber, tilting
corrugated-tin shacks, fifty-foot rounds of steel cable, and piles of broken
stone. The construction site was deserted, the night watchman had completed his
final rounds, and the first crews of workmen would not arrive until dawn. The
tower of the bridge, virtually finished, cast a shadow over his car in the
moonlight, making him all but invisible from the street. The steam engines were
still roaring, pumping air down to the caisson a hundred feet below and masking
all other sound.

    From the back of his car, he removed
a large black trunk, which he carried onto the pier to the mouth of the caisson
shaft. Another man would not have been able to manage the feat, but this man
was strong, tall, and athletic. He knew how to hoist a heavy trunk over his
back. It made an incongruous sight, since the man was wearing black tie and
tails.

    He unlocked the elevator and entered
it, dragging the trunk in with him. Two jets of blue flame provided light. As
the elevator made its journey downward, the roar of the steam engines became a
distant throbbing. The darkness became cooler. There was a deep, dank smell of
earth and salt. The man felt the pressure building in his inner ear. He
negotiated the air lock without difficulty, opened the caisson hatch, forced
the trunk down a ramp - it echoed monstrously as it fell - and descended to the
wooden planks below.

    Blue-flame gaslights also illuminated
the caisson. They burned pure oxygen, providing enough light to work by while
emitting neither smoke nor odor. In their unsteady glow, catlike shadows
shifted on the ground and in the rafters. The man looked at his watch, went
directly to one of the so-called windows, opened its inner hatch, and with a
grunt pushed the trunk inside it. Resealing the window, he operated two pull
chains hanging from the wall. The first opened the window's outer hatch. The
second caused the window's compartment to rotate, dumping its contents - in
this case, one heavy black trunk - into the river. With a different set of
chains, he closed the outer hatch and activated an air pipe that flushed the
river water from the compartment, making the window ready for the next user.

    He was done. He looked at his watch:
only five minutes had elapsed since he entered the caisson. Then he heard a
piece of wood creaking.

    Among the various sounds one can hear
indoors in the nighttime, some are instantly recognizable. There is, for
example, the unmistakable pattering of a small animal. There is the banging of
a door in the wind. Then there is the sound of an adult human being shifting
his weight or taking a step on a wooden floor: this was the sound the man had
just heard.

    He spun around and called out, 'Who's
there?'

    'It's only me, sir,' answered a
voice, sounding falsely distant in the compressed air.

    'Who is me?' said the man in black
tie and tails.

    'Malley, sir.' Out from the shadows
where two joists intersected stepped a redheaded man, short but with the girth
of a bear, muddy, unkempt, and smiling.

    'Seamus Malley?'

    'The one and only,' answered Malley.
'You won't fire me, will you, sir?'

    'What the devil are you doing down
here?' replied the taller man. 'Who else is with you?'

    'Not a soul. It's just they have me
working twelve hours of a Tuesday, sir, and then the morning shift on
Wednesday.'

    'You're spending the night here?'

    'What's the point of going up at all,
I ask, when by the time you're up it's only time to come down again?' Malley
was a favorite among the workmen, known for his fine tenor, which he liked to
exercise in the echoing chambers of the caisson, and his seemingly unlimited
capacity to consume alcoholic potables of any kind. The latter talent had
caused him trouble around the Malley household the day before yesterday, which,
being a Sunday, was a time when no alcohol ought to have been consumed at all.
His incensed wife told him not to show his face until he could show it sober
the next Sunday. It was this injunction that, in truth, had obliged Malley to
make his bed in the caisson. 'So I say to myself, Malley, just kip down here
for the night, why don't you, and none the worse or the wiser.'

    'Been watching me all this time, have
you, Seamus?' asked the man.

    'Never in life, sir. I was sleeping
all the while,' said Malley, who shivered like a man who had been sleeping in a
cold, damp place.

    The man in black tie doubted this
assertion very much, although it happened to be true. But true or not, it made
no difference, because Malley had seen him now. 'Shame on me, Seamus,' he said,
'if I'm the man to fire you for such a thing. Don't you know my mother, God
rest her soul, was Irish?'

    'I didn't know it, sir.'

    'Why, didn't she take me by the hand
thirty years ago to see Parnell himself come off the ship, practically right
above our heads, where we're standing at this moment?'

    'You're a lucky man, sir,' Malley
answered.

    'I'll tell you what you need, Seamus,
and that's a fifth of good Irish whiskey to keep you company down here, which I
happen to have in my car. Why don't you come up with me and I'll give it to you,
provided you share a drop first. Then you can come back and make yourself
comfortable.'

    'You're too good, sir, too good,'
said Malley.

    'Oh, stop your gabbing and come on then.'
Ushering Malley up the ramp to the elevator, the man in black tie pulled the
lever to begin their ascent. 'I'll be needing to charge you rent, don't you
know It's only fair.'

    'Why, I'd pay anything at all for the
view alone,' replied Malley. 'We're going to miss the first holding stage, sir.
You need to stop.'

    'Not a bit of it,' said the taller
man. 'You're coming straight back down in five minutes, Seamus. No need to stop
if you go straight back down.'

    'Is that it, sir?'

    'That's it. It's all in the tables.'
And the man in black tie actually pulled a copy of the decompression tables
from his vest, waving them before Malley It was quite true: a man in the
caisson could make a quick trip up and down without illness, provided he spent
no more than a few minutes on the surface. 'All right: ready to hold your
breath?'

    'My breath?' Malley asked.

    The man in black tie yanked down the
elevator brake, jerking the cabin to a sudden stop. 'What are you thinking,
man?' he cried. 'We're going straight up, I tell you. You've got to hold your
breath from here clear to the top. You want to die of the bends?' They were
about a third of the way up the shaft, some sixty-five feet below the surface.
'How long have you been down, fifteen hours?'

    'Closer on to twenty, sir.'

    'Twenty hours down, Seamus - you'd be
paralyzed for sure, if you lived at all. I'll tell you what it is. You take a
deep breath, like me, and you hold it for dear life. Don't let go. You'll feel
a little pressure, but don't let go, no matter what. Are you ready?'

    Malley nodded. The two men each
swallowed an immense lungful of air. Then the man in black tie started the
elevator once more. As they rose, Malley felt an increasing burden in his
chest. The man in black tie felt no such pressure, because he was only
pretending to hold his breath. In actuality, he was steadily but invisibly
exhaling as the elevator made its way to the surface. Over the throbbing din of
the steam engines, the sound of his breath escaping could not be heard.

    Malley's chest began to ache. To
indicate his discomfort, and his difficulty keeping in his breath, he pointed
at his chest and mouth. The man in black tie shook his head and waved his
forefinger, emphasizing how important it was that Malley not exhale. He
beckoned Malley toward him, put his large hand over Malley's mouth and nose,
closing off those passageways completely. He raised his eyebrows as if to ask
Malley whether that was better. Malley nodded, grimacing. His face turned
redder, his eyes began to bulge, and just as the elevator reached its terminus,
he coughed involuntarily into the hand of the man with black tie. That hand was
now covered with blood.

    The human lung is surprisingly
inelastic. It cannot stretch. At sixty-five feet below the earth's surface,
when Malley took his last breath, the ambient pressure is approximately three
atmospheres, which means that Malley took into his lungs three times the normal
quantity of air. As the elevator ascended, this air expanded. His lungs quickly
inflated beyond their capacity, like overstretched balloons. Soon the pleura in
Malley's lungs - the tiny sacs that hold the air - began to burst, rapid-fire,
one after the other. The released air invaded his pleural cavity - the space
between chest and lung - causing a condition called pneumothorax, in which one
of his lungs collapsed.