The Interpretation Of Murder (21 page)

    In the library, after Jung's
departure, curling tails of smoke wafted up to the ceiling. A servant removed
glasses, replaced ashtrays, then quietly withdrew.

    'Do we have him?' asked the balding
man, who had been referred to as Sachs.

    'Without doubt,' answered Dana. 'He
is even weaker than I had imagined. And we have more than sufficient to destroy
him in any event. Does Ochs have your remarks, Allen?'

    'Oh, yes,' answered the portly,
sideburned gentleman with the thick lips. 'He will publish mine the same day he
interviews the Swiss.'

    'What about Matteawan?' asked Sachs.

    'Leave that to me,' Dana replied.
'What remains is to block their other means of dissemination. Which, by
tomorrow, we will have done.'

    Even after hearing the mayor
exculpate him, I could not accept Banwell's innocence. Subjectively, that is.
Objectively, I had no grounds for disbelief or protest.

    Nora refused to go home. Her father
pleaded. Her mother was indignant at what she called the girl's obstinacy. The
mayor resolved the situation. Now that he had seen the note, he said, it was
clear the hotel was no longer safe. But the Actons' home could be secured.
Indeed, it could be made safer than could a large hotel with its many
entrances. He would station policemen outside the house, front and back, day
and night. Moreover, he reminded Miss Acton, she was still a minor: under the
law, he would be obliged to effectuate her father's wishes, even against her
will.

    I thought Miss Acton would burst out
in some way. Instead she gave in, but only on the condition that she be
permitted to continue her medical treatment tomorrow morning. 'Especially,' she
added, 'now that I know my memory is not to be trusted.' This she said with
apparent sincerity, but it was impossible to say whether she was faulting the
trustworthiness of her memory or rebuking those who refused to trust it.

    She did not look at me after that,
not even once. The silent ride down the elevator was excruciating, but Miss
Acton held herself with a dignity lacking in her mother, who appeared to regard
everything she encountered as a personal affront. An appointment was made for
me to visit their house on Gramercy Park early the next day, and they departed
in an automobile downtown. McClellan did the same. Banwell, casting a last
glance in my direction, by no means benevolent, departed in a horse-drawn
carriage, leaving Detective Littlemore and me on the sidewalk.

    He turned to me. 'She told you it was
Banwell?'

    'Yes,' I said.

    'And you believe her, don't you?'

    'I do.'

    'Can I ask you something?' said
Littlemore. 'Say a girl loses her memory. Just comes up empty. Then her memory
comes back. Can you put money on it, when it comes back? Can you bank on it?'

    'No,' I replied. 'It could be false.
It could be fantasy, mistaken for memory.'

    'But you believe her?'

    'Yes.'

    'So what are you saying, Doc?'

    'I don't know what I'm saying,' I
said. 'Can I ask
you
something, Detective? What were you going to tell
the mayor in Miss Acton's room?'

    'I just wanted to remind him that
Coroner Hugel - he's in charge of the case - thought Banwell was the killer
too.'

    'Thought so?' I asked. 'You mean he
doesn't anymore?'

    'Well, he can't anymore, not after
what the mayor just said,' Littlemore replied.

    'Couldn't Banwell have attacked Miss
Acton even if someone else killed the other girl?'

    'Nope,' answered the detective.
'We've got proof. It was the same guy both times.'

    I went back inside, unsure of myself,
my patient, my situation. Was it conceivable that McClellan was covering for
Banwell? Would Nora be safe at her house? The front clerk called out my name.
There was a letter for me, just delivered. It proved to be from G. Stanley
Hall, president of Clark University. The letter was long - and deeply
disturbing.

    Outside the Hotel Manhattan,
Detective Littlemore made for the cabstand.

    From the old hack last night,
Littlemore knew that the black-haired man - the one who left the Balmoral at midnight
on Sunday - had climbed into a red and green gas-powered taxi in front of the
Hotel Manhattan. That piece of information told the detective a good deal. Only
a decade previously, every taxi in Manhattan had been horse-drawn. By 1900, a
hundred motorized taxis tooled around the city, but these were electrically
powered. Weighed down by their eight-hundred-pound batteries, the electric
taxis were popular but ponderous; passengers occasionally had to get out and
help push when going up the rare steep incline. In 1907, the New York Taxicab
Company launched the first fleet of gasoline cars for hire, equipped with
meters so that riders could see the fare. These cabs were instant hits - hits,
that is, with the better class, who alone could afford the fifty-cents-per-mile
charge - and quickly came to outnumber all other cabs, electric and horse, in
the city. You always knew a New York Taxicab when you saw one, because of its
distinctive red and green paneling.

    Several of these vehicles were parked
at the Hotel Manhattan cabstand. The drivers told Littlemore to try the Allen
garage on Fifty-seventh Street, between Eleventh and Twelfth avenues, where New
York Taxicab had its main office and where he could easily find out who had
been working the graveyard shift on Sunday. The detective's luck was good. Two
hours later, he had answers. A driver named Luria had picked up a black-haired
man in front of the Hotel Manhattan after midnight last Sunday. Luria
remembered it distinctly, because the man had come not out of the hotel but out
of a hackney. Littlemore also learned where the black-haired man had gone, and
the detective went to that destination - a private house - himself. There his
luck ran out.

    The house was on Fortieth just off
Broadway. It was a two-story affair, with a gaudy knocker and thick red
curtains on its windows. Littlemore had to knock five or six times before an
attractive young woman answered. The girl was considerably underdressed for the
middle of the afternoon. When Littlemore explained that he was a police
detective, she rolled her eyes and told him to wait.

    He was shown to a parlor with thick
Oriental carpets on the floor, a dazzling array of mirrors on the walls, and a
smother of purple velour on the furniture. The odor of tobacco and alcohol
clung to the folds of the curtains. A baby was crying upstairs. Five minutes
later, another woman, older and quite fat, came down the red-carpeted stairs in
a claret-colored robe.

    'You've got a lot of nerve,' said
this woman, who introduced herself as Susan Merrill - Mrs Susan Merrill. From a
wall safe concealed behind a mirror, she withdrew a carved iron strongbox,
which she opened with a key. She counted out fifty dollars. 'Here. Now get out.
I'm already late.'

    'I don't want your money, ma'am,'
said Littlemore.

    'Oh, don't tell me. You make me sick,
all of you. Greta, get back in here.' The underdressed girl lounged in,
yawning. Although it was a quarter past three, she had in fact been asleep
until Littlemore knocked at the door. 'Greta, the detective doesn't want our
money. Take him to the green room. Make it quick, mister.'

    'I'm not here for that either,
ma'am,' said Littlemore. 'I just want to ask you a question. There was a guy
who came here late Sunday night. I'm trying to find him.'

    Mrs Merrill eyed the detective
dubiously. 'Oh, so now you want my customers? What are you going to do, shake
them down too?'

    'You must know some bad policemen,'
said Littlemore.

    'Is there any other kind?'

    'A girl was killed Sunday night,'
Littlemore answered. 'The guy who did it whipped her. Tied her up, cut her up
pretty good too. Then he strangled her. I want that guy. That's it.'

    The woman drew her burgundy robe
around her shoulders. She restored her money to the strongbox and shut it. 'Was
she a streetwalker?'

    'No,' said the detective. 'Rich girl.
Really rich. Lived in a fancy building uptown.'

    'Well, isn't that a shame. What's it
got to do with me?'

    'This guy who came here,' Littlemore
answered. 'We think he might be the killer.'

    'Do you have any idea, Detective, how
many men come through here on a Sunday night?'

    'This guy would have been by himself.
Tall, black hair, carrying a black case or bag or something.'

    'Greta, do you remember anybody like
that?'

    'Let me think,' mused the dreamy
Greta. 'No. Nobody.'

    'Well, what do you want from me?'
said Mrs Merrill. 'You heard her.'

    'But the guy came here, ma'am. The
cabbie left him off right outside your door.'

    'Left him off? That doesn't mean he
came in. I'm not the only house on the block.'

    Littlemore nodded slowly. It seemed
to him that Greta was a little too blase, and Mrs Merrill a little too eager to
see him leave.