The Interpretation Of Murder (39 page)

    At a two-story house on Fortieth
Street, just off Broadway, Detective Littlemore banged the gaudy knocker
furiously. In a moment the door was opened by a girl the detective had never
seen before. 'Where's Susie?' he demanded.

    The girl, through a cigarette that
never left her mouth, would say only that Mrs Merrill was out. Hearing female
voices down the hall, Littlemore made his way to the parlor. There were half a
dozen girls in the richly mirrored room, in various states of undress, black
and scarlet being the favored hues of such clothing as they had on. In the
center was the one Littlemore was looking for. 'Hello, Greta,' he said.

    She blinked at him, otherwise making
no reply. She looked decidedly less dreamy than she had the other day.

    'He was here last weekend, wasn't
he?' the detective demanded.

    Greta still made no answer.

    'You know who I'm talking about,'
said Littlemore. 'Harry.'

    'We know a lot of Harrys,' said one.
'Harry Thaw,' said the detective.

    Greta sniffed. Only then did Littlemore
realize she had been crying. She was trying to hold it in, but she broke down
and hid her face in a handkerchief. The other girls gathered around her at
once, uttering words of sympathy. 'You're the one, aren't you, Greta?' said
Littlemore. 'You're the one he whipped. Did he do it again last Sunday?' He put
the question to all the girls: 'Did Thaw hurt her? Is that what happened?'

    'Oh, leave her alone,' said the girl
with the cigarette in her mouth.

    In addition to the handkerchief,
Greta was clutching a pink cloth with little pink strings dangling from one
end. It was a bib. The detective realized that the noise of an infant's crying,
so piercing on his last visit, was absent today. 'What happened to the baby?'
he asked.

    Greta froze.

    Littlemore took a chance. 'What
happened to your baby, Greta?'

    'Why couldn't I keep her?' Greta
burst out, directing her words to no one in particular. She recommenced
sobbing. The others did their best to comfort her, but she was inconsolable.
'She never hurt anybody.'

    'Someone took her baby away?' asked
Littlemore.

    Greta buried her face again. One of
the other girls spoke up: 'Susie did it. Real mean, I call it. She got a family
in Hell's Kitchen to take her. She won't even tell Greta who they are.'

    'She's docking Greta for it too,'
added another. 'Three dollars a week. It ain't fair.'

    'And I'll bet you Susie's only paying
them a dollar fifty,' commented the smoker shrewdly.

    'I don't care about the money,' said
Greta. 'I just want Fannie. I want her back.'

    'Maybe I could get her back,' said
Littlemore.

    'You could?' said Greta hopefully.

    'I could try.'

    'I'll do anything you want,' said
Greta imploringly. 'Anything.'

    Littlemore considered the prospect of
prying information from a woman whose baby had just been taken from her. 'No
charge,' he said, putting his hat on. 'Tell Susie I'll be back.'

    He got as far as the front door when
he heard Greta's voice behind him. 'He
was
here,' she said. 'He came in
around one in the morning.'

    'Thaw?' said Littlemore. 'Last
Sunday?'

    Greta nodded. 'You can ask all the
girls. He looked kind of crazy. He asked for me. I always was his favorite. I
told Susie I didn't want to, but she didn't care. She starts in on him for all
the money he owes her for us keeping quiet, but he just laughs out loud and -'

    'What money for keeping quiet?'

    'The money so the rest of us wouldn't
testify at the trial and tell them about all the things he did to us. Susie got
hundreds. She told him it was for us, but she kept it all. We never saw a
penny. But his mother stopped paying after he got sent away. That's why Susie
was so mad. She told him he would have to pay double and up front before he
could have me. She made him promise to be nice. But he wasn't.' The faraway
look came back to Greta, as if she were describing events that happened to
someone else. 'After he gets me undressed, he pulls the sheets off the bed and
says he's going to tie me up, like he used to. I told him to get away or else.
He says, "Or else what?" and he's laughing like crazy. Then he says,
"Don't you know I'm insane? I can do anything I want. What are they going
to do, lock me up?" That's when Susie comes in. She was listening the
whole time, I guess.'

    'No, she wasn't,' piped up one of the
other girls, the group having assembled in the hall. '
I
was listening. I
told Susie what he was up to. So Susie marches right in. He was always scared
to death of her. Course she wouldn't of done nothing if Thaw had paid up front,
like she wanted him to. But you should of seen him run out of there, the little
rat.'

    'He came into my room,' said another
girl, 'wailing and waving his arms like a little boy. Then Susie comes in and
chases him out again.'

    The girl with the cigarette had the
end of the story: 'She chased him all over the house. You know where she caught
him? Behind the icebox. Chewing his fingernails off. Susie pulls him up by the
ear, drags him down the hall, and throws him out on the street, like the sack of
garbage he is. That's why she went to jail, you know. Becker came around a
couple of days later.'

    'Becker?' asked Littlemore.

    'Yeah, Becker' was the reply.
'Nothing happens without Becker gets his fingers in it.'

    'Will you testify that Thaw was here
last Sunday?' Littlemore asked.

    None of them answered until Greta
said, 'I will, if you find my Fannie.'

    Again Littlemore was about to leave,
when the smoker asked, 'Want to know where he went after he left?'

    'How would you know?' returned the
detective.

    'I heard his friend tell the driver.
From the upstairs window.'

    'What friend?'

    'The one he come in with.'

    'I thought he was alone,' said
Littlemore.

    'Huh-uh,' she replied. 'Fat man.
Thought he was the Lord's gift. Ready enough with his money, though, I'll give
him that. Dr Smith, he called himself.'

    'Dr Smith,' repeated the detective,
feeling that he had heard that name recently. 'Where'd they go?'

    'Gramercy Park. I heard him tell the
driver loud and clear.'

    'Son of a bitch,' said Littlemore.

    It was past ten when I arrived at the
hotel. Handing over my key, the clerk looked down his nose at Littlemore's
threadbare jacket, which left a conspicuous gap between the ends of its sleeves
and the beginnings of my hands. There had been a letter for me, I was told, but
Dr Brill received it on my behalf. The clerk gestured toward a corner of the
lobby; there was Brill, sitting with Rose and Ferenczi.

    'Good Lord, Younger,' said Brill when
I greeted them. 'You look terrible. What have you been doing all night?'

    'Just trying to keep my head above
water, really,' I said.

    'Abraham,' Rose chided her husband,
'he is simply wearing another man's suit.'

    'Rose is here,' Brill said to me, 'to
tell everyone what a coward I am.'

    'No,' replied Rose firmly, 'I am here
to tell Dr Freud that he and Abraham must go forward with the publication of Dr
Freud's book. The cowards are the ones leaving you those dreadful messages.
Abraham has told me all about it, Dr Younger, and we are not going to be
intimidated. Imagine burning a book in this country. Don't they know we have
freedom of the press?'

    'They got into our apartment, Rosie,'
said Brill. 'They buried it in ash.'

    'And you want to go hide in a mouse
hole?' she answered.

    'I told you,' Brill said to me,
raising his eyebrows helplessly.

    'Well, I don't. And I won't have you
hiding behind my skirts either, as if I'm the one you're protecting. Dr
Younger, you must help me. Tell Dr Freud it will be an insult to me if concern
over my safety should in any way delay his book. This is America. What did
those young men die for at Gettysburg?'

    'To ensure that all slavery would be
wage slavery?' asked Brill.

    'Be quiet' was Rose's reply. 'Abraham
has poured his heart into that book. It has given meaning to his life. We are
not rich, but we have two things in this country that are worth more than
anything else: dignity and freedom. What is left if we give in to such people?'

    'Now she is running for office,'
commented Brill, causing Rose to mount an assault on his shoulder with her
handbag. 'But you see why I married her.'

    'I am serious,' Rose continued,
rearranging her hat. 'Freud's book must be published. I am not leaving this
hotel until I tell him so myself.'

    I commended Rose's bravery, whereupon
Brill rebuked me, declaring that the greatest risk I had ever taken with my own
safety was dancing all night with overeager debutantes. I said he was probably
right and asked after Freud. Apparently he had not come down at all this
morning. According to Ferenczi, who had knocked at his door, he was
'undigested.' Moreover, Ferenczi added in a whisper, there had been a
tremendous row between Freud and Jung last night.

    'There's going to be a worse one when
Freud sees what Hall sent Younger this morning,' said Brill, handing me the
letter he had procured from the clerk.

    'You have not actually opened my
correspondence, Brill?' I asked.

    'Isn't he awful?' said Rose,
referring to her husband. 'He did it without telling us. I would never have let
him.'

    'It was from Hall, for God's sake,'
Brill protested. 'Younger had vanished. If Hall intends to cancel Freud's
lectures, don't you think we ought to know?'

    'Impossible,' I declared.

    'Virtually certain,' Brill replied.
'See for yourself.'

    The envelope was oversized. Inside
was a folded-up piece of vellum. When I straightened it out, I was looking at a
foil-page, seven-column article in newspaper type under the banner headline,
'AMERICA
FACING ITS MOST TRAGIC MOMENT
' -
DR CARL JUNG
. Below was a full-length photograph of a
dignified, bespectacled Jung, referred to as 'the famous Swiss psychiatrist.'
The odd thing was that the paper was too thick and of too high a quality for
newsprint. More puzzlingly, the date shown at the top was Sunday, September 5,
two days hence.

    'It is the galley proof of an article
that will appear in this Sunday's
Times,'
said Brill. 'Read Hall's
note.'

    Suppressing my irritation, I followed
this instruction. Hall's letter read as follows:

    My Dear Younger,

    I received the enclosed today from
the family that has offered the University so handsome a donation. I am told it
is a page from the
New York Times,
forthcoming Sunday. You will see what
it says. The family was kind enough to give me advance notice so that I might
take action now, rather than after the taint of scandal has become inevitable.
Please assure Dr Freud I have no wish to cancel his lectures, to which I have
looked forward so keenly, but surely it would not serve his interests, or ours,
if his presence here drew a certain kind of attention. Naturally I myself give
no credence to innuendo, but I am obliged to consider what others may think. It
is my fervent hope that this supposed newspaper article is not genuine and that
our vigentennial will proceed unclouded and undisrupted.

    Yours, etc. etc.

    The letter, to my dismay, confirmed
Brill's view: Hall was on the verge of canceling Freud's lectures. Who was
orchestrating this campaign against him? And what did Jung have to do with it?

    'Frankly,' said Brill, snatching the
newspaper article out of my hands, 'I don't know who comes off worse from this
idiotic story, Freud or Jung. Listen to this. Where is it? Ah, yes:
"American girls like the way European men make love. "That's our Jung
speaking. Can you believe it? "They prefer us because
they
sense we
are a little dangerous." All he can talk about is how much American girls
want him. "It is natural for women to want to be afraid when they love.
The American woman wants to be mastered and possessed in the archaic European
way. Your American man only wants to be the obedient son of his
mother-wife." This is "America's tragedy." He's gone completely
off his chain.'

    'But that isn't an attack on Freud,'
I said.

    'They have someone else pronouncing
on Freud.'

    'Who?' I asked.

    'An anonymous source,' said Brill,
'identified only as a doctor who speaks for the "reputable" American
medical community. Listen to what he says:

    'I knew Dr Sigmund Freud of Vienna
very well some years ago. Vienna is not a moral city. Quite the contrary.
Homosexuality, for example, is there considered the sign of an ingenious
temperament. Working side by side with Freud in the laboratory all through one
winter, I learned that he enjoyed Viennese life - enjoyed it thoroughly. He
felt no compunction about cohabitation, or even about fathering children out of
wedlock. He was not a man who lived on a particularly high plane. His
scientific theory, if that is what it should be called, is the result of this
saturnalian environment and the peculiar life he led there.'