The Interpretation Of Murder (47 page)

    After leaving Dana's house,
Littlemore drove me across town. 'So, Doc,' he said, 'I know how you feel about
Nora and all, but aren't you - I mean, why'd she do it?'

    'For Clara,' I answered.

    'But why?'

    I didn't answer.

    Littlemore shook his head. 'Everybody
did everything for Clara.'

    'She procured girls for Banwell,' I
said.

    'I know,' replied Littlemore.

    'You know?'

    'Last night,' he said, 'Nora was
telling Betty and me about the work she and Clara did with the immigrant
families downtown, and it didn't sound kosher to me, if you see what I mean,
not after everything else I'd heard. So I got some names and addresses from
Nora and ran them down this morning. I found a few of the families Clara had
"helped." Most of them wouldn't talk, but I finally got the story.
I'm telling you, it's ugly. Clara would find girls with no fathers, sometimes
no parents at all. Real young girls - thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. She'd pay
off whoever was taking care of them and take them to Banwell.'

    Littlemore drove on without speaking.

    'Did you find out,' I asked, 'how the
passage into Nora's bedroom got there?'

    'Yup. Banwell gave us his story today
too,' said the detective. 'He blames the whole thing on Clara. He never suspected
she was against him - not until yesterday. Three or four years ago, the Actons
hired him to rebuild their house at Gramercy Park. That's when they met.'

    'And Banwell became obsessed with
Nora,' I said.

    'Looks like it. She's - what,
fourteen at the time, but he's got to have her. So get this: his boys are
working on the house, and they find this old passage running from one of the
second-floor rooms to the garden shed out back. Apparently the Actons didn't
know it was there. But they're out of town, and Banwell never lets on. He has
the passage fixed up so he can enter it from the back alley without ever going
onto the Actons' property. And he designs the house so the room on the second
floor becomes Nora's new bedroom. I asked him if his plan was just to go to
Nora's bedroom one night and rape her. You know what? He laughed in my face.
According to him, he never raped anybody. They all wanted it. With Nora, he
figures he's going to seduce her, and he needs a way in and out of her room
without her parents knowing about it. But I guess Nora didn't go for the
seduction.'

    'She rejected him,' I said.

    'That's what he told us. He swears he
never touched her. Never used the secret passage until this week. You know, I
think it really upset him. Maybe no girl ever turned him down before.'

    'Could be,' I said. 'Maybe he was in
love with her.'

    'You think so?'

    'I think so. And Clara decided to get
Nora for him.'

    'How would she do that?' asked
Littlemore.

    'I think she tried to make Nora fall
in love with
her.'

    'What?' he said.

    I didn't respond.

    'I don't know about
that,'
Littlemore went on, 'but I'll give you this much: Banwell says getting Nora to play
Elizabeth Riverford was Clara's idea. When he builds the Balmoral, he lays down
another passage, only this time connected to his own study. The apartment it
goes to is going to be his bird's nest. He sets it up just the way he wants it:
big brass bed, silk sheets, the works. Fills the closet with lingerie and furs.
Puts a couple of his own suits there, too, in a different closet he keeps
locked. A little while ago, if you can believe Banwell, Clara tells him Nora
has finally said yes. The idea is that Nora's going to rent the apartment under
a false name, and she's going to come up to see him whenever she can. I don't
know what the truth is there. I didn't want to ask Nora about it.'

    I knew. Nora had told me the whole
story last night, while we waited for the police.

    One day in July, Clara tearfully told
Nora that she could no longer bear her marriage. George flogged and raped her
almost every night. She feared for her life but couldn't leave him, because he
would kill her if she did.

    Nora was horrified, but Clara said
there was nothing anyone could do. Only one thing could save her, but it was
impossible. Clara knew a man highly placed in the police force: Hugel,
obviously; Clara had met him when she and Nora were 'helping' an immigrant family
whose daughter had died. According to Clara, she revealed her plight to him.
Hugel took pity on her but said the law was powerless, because a husband had a
legal right to rape his wife. When, however, Clara added that George raped
other girls too - whose families he paid off in exchange for their silence, and
at least one of whom had been killed - the coroner had allegedly grown
outraged. He supposedly decided there was only one thing to be done: they must
stage a murder.

    A girl must be found seemingly dead
in the apartment that George kept for his mistresses. It must look like she
died by his hand. It could be done, because he himself (the coroner) would
administer the catalepsy-inducing drug and he himself would be the medical
examiner. A piece of evidence left at the scene would identify Banwell as the
perpetrator. Clara made Nora believe the entire scheme originated with the
coroner.

    Nora remembered being shocked by the
audacity of the plan. She asked if Clara really thought it possible.

    No, Clara said. She could never ask
anyone to play the part of Banwell's mistress and victim. She (Clara) must
simply endure her fate.

    It was then that Nora said she would
do it.

    Clara reacted with apparent shock.
Absolutely not, she replied. The girl who played the part of the victim would
have to allow herself to be hurt. Nora asked Clara if, by hurt, she meant
raped. Of course not, Clara said, but the victim would have to let herself be
bound, with a cord or rope around her neck, and Clara might even have to leave
a mark or two. Nora insisted that she would do it. At last Clara gave in, and
they went forward with the plot. Nora was unsure exactly what happened at the
Balmoral on Sunday night, undoubtedly because of the coroner's
catalepsy-inducing drug. Nora did remember Clara telling her not to scream, and
she remembered she kept forgetting her false name. The rest, however, was
indistinct. I explained all this to Littlemore.

    'I know what happened next,' he said.
'When Nora wakes up Monday morning, she's with Hugel in the morgue. He tells
her the bad news: the tie he was supposed to find at the murder scene, the silk
tie with Banwell's monogram, which was going to prove Banwell did it, wasn't
there. That's because Banwell went in through the passage as soon as he found
out about the "murder." He had to get his own clothes out of there,
so we didn't connect him to Miss Riverford.'

    'But Banwell was out of town Sunday
night, with the mayor,' I said. 'Hugel didn't know?'

    'None of them knew. Banwell was
supposed to be having dinner in the city. Banwell's thing with the mayor in
Saranac came up at the last minute. All very hush-hush. There was no way for
Clara to find out about it either, because there's no phone at the Banwells'
country place. So Clara sneaks in from Tarry Town that night, does her business
to Nora around nine or so, and drives back. She told Hugel to put the time of
death between midnight and two, because Banwell was supposed to have been home
by then.'

    'But Banwell saw his tie there the
next morning and took it away before Hugel arrived.'

    'Right. Without the tie, Hugel's in
trouble. He can't reach Clara. So he decides he's got to stage another fake
attack, this one at Nora's house, where they'll leave another piece of evidence.
He needs to convict Banwell, see? That's his deal with Clara. She had given him
ten thousand dollars up front, and he was going to get another thirty thousand
if Banwell was convicted. But something went wrong the second time too, I don't
know what. Hugel clammed up.'

    Again, I could fill in the blanks.
Nora had gone along with the second attack both because she still thought she
was rescuing Clara and because she didn't know how else she would explain all
the wounds she had woken up with. In the second 'attack,' the coroner would
merely tie her up and leave her. She was not to be hurt again at all. And she
wasn't. (That was why she hadn't been able to answer my questions yesterday. I
asked her whether any
man
had whipped her. She was afraid to tell me the
truth, because Clara had sworn that Banwell would kill her - Clara - if he ever
found out.) But when the coroner tied Nora up, he had grown unstable. He kept
staring at her. He was sweating and seemed to be having trouble swallowing,
Nora said. He never threatened her; nor did he molest her. But he kept
adjusting the rope around her wrists. He wouldn't leave. Then he brushed up
against her.

    'Apparently your coroner lost control
of himself,' I said, without further detail. 'Nora screamed.'

    'And Hugel panicked, right?' said
Littlemore. 'He runs out the back way. He's got Banwell's tiepin; he meant to
leave it in the bedroom. But he's so panicked he forgot. So he throws it into
the garden, figuring we'll find it when we search the grounds.'

    After the coroner ran away, Nora
didn't know what to do. The coroner was supposed to have rendered her
unconscious, but he had run out without giving her the narcotic. At a loss,
Nora pretended she couldn't speak or remember anything about what had happened.
Her real voice loss from three years earlier, and her real - although quite
limited - amnesia from the night before gave her the idea.

    'Why did Banwell put the trunk in the
river?' I asked.

    'The guy was in a tight spot,' said
Littlemore. 'Think about it. If he let us go through all the stuff in the
apartment, he knew we'd trace it and bag him for the murder. But he couldn't
just tell us that Elizabeth was Nora. Even if we believed him, he'd have a huge
scandal on his hands, and he'd probably go to jail for corrupting a minor. So
he told the mayor he was sending Miss Riverford's things back to Chicago. He
loaded them into a trunk and took it down to the caisson. Figured it's the
perfect place - until he ran into Malley.'

    'He almost fooled us,' I said.

    'With Malley?'

    'No. When he - when he burned Nora.'
The thought of it made me feel I had killed the wrong Banwell.

    'Yup,' said Littlemore. 'He wanted us
to think Nora was crazy and did everything to herself. He figures if he can
pull that off, he can beat the whole rap. Doesn't matter what Nora says; no one
will believe her.'

    'What made him go back to kill her
last night?' I asked.

    'Nora sent Clara a letter,' he
answered. 'It said she was going to tell the police about everything Banwell
did to Clara and to the other girls, the immigrant girls. Apparently Banwell
saw it.'

    'I wonder if Clara let him see it,' I
said.

    'Could be. But then Hugel pays a visit.
Banwell's in the apartment when Hugel gets there, and he starts to put two and
two together. That night, he ties Clara up to keep her out of the way and heads
downtown to the Actons'. That's when I stumble onto the secret passage at the
Balmoral. Boy, Clara was good. She tells me her husband's gone to kill Nora,
but she made it seem like I was dragging it out of her. I don't think she
realized then that Nora wasn't in her house at all. How did Clara find out Nora
was at the hotel?'

    'Nora called her,' I said. 'What
about the Chinaman?'

    'Leon? They'll never find him,'
Littlemore answered. 'I had a long talk today with Mr Chong. Seems that Cousin
Leon comes to him a month ago, says there's a rich guy who will pay them to
take a trunk off his hands. That night, the two of them go to the Balmoral and
bring the trunk back to Leon's room by cab. Next day, Leon's packing up. Where
you going? Chong asks him. Washington, says Leon, then back to China. Chong's
getting nervous. What's in the trunk? he asks. Look for yourself, says Leon. So
Chong opens it, and he sees one of Leon's girlfriends dead inside. Chong gets
upset; he says the police are going to think Leon killed her. Leon laughs and
says that's exactly what the police are supposed to think. Leon also tells
Chong to show up at the Balmoral the next day, and they'll give him a real good
job. Chong's mad about that. He figures Leon got paid off big; otherwise he
couldn't be going back to China. So, being a Chinaman, Chong asks for two jobs
as his reward, not one, and Leon fixes it up for him.'

    We pulled up at the hotel, each in
our own thoughts.