The Interpretation Of Murder (22 page)

    'You have them?' Coroner Hugel
demanded of Louis Riviere, head of photographic facilities, in the basement of
police headquarters.

    'I am varnishing now,' called out
Riviere, standing over a sink in his darkroom.

    'But I left the plates for you at
seven this morning,' Hugel protested. 'Surely they're ready.'

    'Be tranquil, if you please,' said
Riviere, switching on a light. 'Come in. You can look at them.'

    Hugel entered the darkroom and pored
over the pictures with nervous excitement. He went through the plates rapidly,
one by one, casting aside those in which he was not interested. Then he
stopped, gazing at a close-up of the girl's neck, showing a prominent circular
mark.

    'What's this, here, on the girl's
throat?' he asked.

    'A bruise, no?' said Riviere.

    'No ordinary bruise would be so
perfectly circular,' the coroner replied, taking off his glasses and bringing
the picture within an inch of his face. The photograph showed a grainy, round
black spot against an almost white neck. 'Louis, where is your glass?'

    Riviere produced what looked like an
inverted shot glass. The coroner snatched it from his hands, placed it on the
photograph where the dark spot was, and put his eye to it. 'I have him!' he
cried. 'I have him!'

    From outside the darkroom came
Detective Littlemore s voice. 'What is it, Mr Hugel?'

    'Littlemore,' said Hugel, 'you're
here. Excellent.'

    'You asked me to come, Mr Hugel.'

    'Yes, and now you'll see why,' said
the coroner, gesturing for Littlemore to look through Riviere's magnifying
glass. The detective complied. Under magnification, the grainy lines inside the
black circle resolved into a more distinct figuring.

    'Say,' said Littlemore, 'are those
letters?'

    'They are indeed,' replied the
coroner triumphantly. 'Two letters.'

    'There's something funny about them,'
Littlemore went on. 'They don't look right. The second one could be a
J.
The
first one - I don't know.'

    'They don't look right because they
are backward, Mr Littlemore,' said the coroner. 'Louis, explain to the
detective why the letters are backward.'

    Riviere looked through the glass. 'I
see them: two letters, interlocking. If they are backward, then the one on the
right, which Monsieur Littlemore called J, is not
J
but G.'

    'Correct,' said the coroner.

    'But why,' Riviere asked, 'should the
writing be backward?'

    'Because, gentlemen, it is an imprint
left on the girl's neck by the murderer's tiepin.' Hugel paused for dramatic
effect. 'Recall that the murderer used his own silk tie to strangle Miss
Riverford. He was clever enough to remove that tie from the murder scene. But
he made one mistake. On his tie, when he committed the act, was his pin - a pin
embossed with his own monogram. By chance, the pin was in direct contact with
the soft, sensitive skin of the girl's throat. Because of the extreme and
lengthy pressure, the monogram left an impression on her neck, just as a tight
ring will leave an indentation on the finger. This imprint, gentlemen, records
the murderer's initials as definitively as if he had left us a calling card,
except in mirror image. The letter on the right is a reverse
G,
because
G is the first initial of the man who killed Elizabeth Riverford. The letter on
the left is a reverse
B,
because that man was George Banwell. Now we
know why he had to steal her body from the morgue. He saw the telltale bruise
on her neck and knew I would eventually decipher it. What he did not foresee
was that stealing the corpse would be useless - because of this photograph!'

    'Mr Hugel, sir?' said Detective
Littlemore.

    The coroner heaved a sigh. 'Shall I
explain it again, Detective?'

    'Banwell didn't do it, Mr Hugel,'
Littlemore said. 'He's got an alibi.'

    'Impossible,' said Hugel. 'His
apartment is on the same floor of the very same building. The murder occurred
between midnight and two on a Sunday. Banwell would have returned from any
engagement before that.'

    'He's got an alibi,' Littlemore
repeated, 'and what an alibi. He was with the mayor all Sunday night until
early Monday morning - out of town.'

    'What?' said the coroner.

    'There is another flaw in your
argument,' interjected Riviere. 'You are not so familiar with photographs as I.
You took these pictures yourself?'

    'Yes,' replied the coroner, frowning.
'Why?'

    'These are ferrotypes. Most
retrograde. You are fortunate I keep a supply of iron sulfate. The image you
have here differs from the reality. Left is right, and right is left.'

    'What?' said Hugel again.

    'A reverse image. So if the mark on
the girl's neck is the reverse of the true monogram, then the photograph is the
reverse of the reverse.'

    'A double reverse?' asked Littlemore.

    'A double negative,' said Riviere.
'And a double negative is a positive. Meaning that this picture shows the
monogram as it would actually look, not a reverse of it.'

    'It can't be,' cried Hugel, more
injured than disbelieving, as if Littlemore and Riviere were deliberately
trying to rob him.

    'But undoubtedly it is, Monsieur
Hugel,' said Riviere.

    'So that
was
a J,' said
Detective Littlemore. 'The guy's named Johnson or something. What's the first
letter?'

    Riviere put his eye to the glass
again. 'It does not look like a letter at all. But it is possibly an
E,
I would like to say - or no, maybe a C.'

    'Charles Johnson,' said the
detective.

    The coroner only stood where he was,
repeating, 'It can't be.'

    At last a taxi pulled up at Brill's building,
and the four men - Freud, Brill, Ferenczi, and Jones - piled out. It turned out
they had gone to a moving-picture show after lunch, a cops-and-robbers affair
with wild chases. Ferenczi could not stop talking about it. He had, Brill told
me, actually dived out of his seat when a locomotive appeared to steam straight
at the audience; it was his first motion picture.

    Freud asked me if I wanted to take an
hour in the park with him to report on Miss Acton. I said I would like nothing
more but that something else had come up; I had received unpleasant news in the
post.

    'You're not the only one,' said
Brill. 'Jones got a wire this morning from Morton Prince up in Boston. He was
arrested yesterday.'

    'Dr Prince?' I was shocked.

    'On obscenity charges,' Brill
continued. 'The obscenity in question: two articles he was about to publish
describing cures of hysteria effected through the psychoanalytic method.'

    'I shouldn't worry about Prince,'
said Jones. 'He was mayor of Boston once, you know. He'll come out right.'

    Morton Prince was never mayor of
Boston - his father was - but Jones was so definite I didn't want to embarrass
him. Instead I asked, 'How could the police know what Prince was planning to
publish?'

    'Exactly what we have been
wondering,' said Ferenczi.

    'I never trusted Sidis,' added Brill,
referring to a doctor on the editorial board of Prince's journal. 'But we must
remember it's Boston. They'll arrest a chicken breast sandwich there if it's
not properly dressed. They arrested that Australian girl - Kellerman, the
swimmer - because her bathing costume didn't cover her knees.'

    'I'm afraid my news is even worse,
gentlemen,' I said, 'and it concerns Dr Freud directly. The lectures next week
are in doubt. Dr Freud has been personally attacked - I mean, his name has been
attacked - in Worcester. I cannot tell you how sorry I am to be the messenger.'

    I proceeded to summarize as much as I
could of President Hall's letter without entering into the sordid accusations
against Freud. An agent representing an exceedingly wealthy New York family met
with Hall yesterday, offering a donation to Clark University that Hall
described as 'most handsome.' The family was prepared to fund a fifty-bed
hospital for mental and nervous disorders, paying for a new building as well as
all the most modern equipment, nurses, staff, and salaries sufficient to
attract the best neurologists from New York and Boston.

    'That would cost half a million
dollars,' said Brill.

    'Considerably more,' I replied. 'It
would make us in one blow the leading psychiatric institute in the nation. We
would surpass McLean.'

    'Who is the family?'

    'Hall doesn't say,' I replied to
Brill.

    'But is this permitted?' asked
Ferenczi. 'A private family paying a public university?'

    'It is called philanthropy,' answered
Brill. 'It is why American universities are so rich. And why they will soon
overtake the greatest European universities.'

    'Bosh,' ejaculated Jones. 'Never.'

    'Go on, Younger,' said Freud. 'There
is nothing amiss in what you have told us so far.'

    'The family has stipulated two
conditions,' I continued. 'A member of the family is apparently a well-known
physician with views about psychology. The first condition is that
psychoanalysis cannot be practiced at the new hospital or taught anywhere in
Clark's curriculum. The second is that Dr Freud's lectures next week must be
canceled. Otherwise the gift will go to another hospital - in New York.'

    Various exclamations of dismay and
denunciation followed. Only Freud remained stoic. 'What does Hall say he will
do?' he asked.

    'I'm afraid that is not all,' I said.
'Nor is it the worst. President Hall was given a dossier on Dr Freud.'

    'Go on, for God's sake,' Brill
scolded me. 'Don't play hide-and-seek.'

    I explained that this dossier
purported to document instances of licentious - indeed, criminal - behavior by
Freud. President Hall was told that Freud's gross misconduct would soon be
reported by the New York press. The family was certain that Hall, after reading
the contents, would agree that Freud's appearance at Clark must be canceled for
the good of the university. 'President Hall did not send the file itself,' I
said, 'but his letter summarizes the charges. May I give you the letter, Dr
Freud? President Hall asked me specifically to say he felt you had a right to
be informed of everything said against you.'

    'Sporting of him,' remarked Brill.

    I don't know why - perhaps because I
was the letter's bearer - but I felt responsible for the unfolding disaster. It
was as if I had personally invited Freud to Clark, only to destroy him. I was
not anxious solely for Freud's sake. I had selfish reasons for not wanting to
see this man brought down, on whose authority I had staked so many of my own
beliefs - indeed, so much of my own life. None of us is saintly, but somehow I
had formed the belief years ago that Freud was different from the rest of us. I
imagined that he (unlike myself) had through psychological insight acceded to a
plane above the baser temptations. I hoped to heaven the accusations in Hall's
letter were false, but they had that degree of detail that imparts the ring of
truth.

    'There is no need for me to read the
letter privately,' said Freud. 'Tell us what has been said against me. I have
no secrets from anyone here.'

    I started with the least of the
charges: 'You are said not to be married to the woman you live with, although
you hold her out to the world as your wife.'

    'But that's not Freud,' cried Brill.
'It's Jones.'

    'I beg your pardon,' Jones replied
indignantly.

    'Oh, come, Jones,' Brill said.
'Everyone knows you're not married to Loe.'

    'Freud not married,' said Jones,
looking behind his left shoulder. 'How absurd.'

    'What else?' asked Freud.

    'That you were discharged from
employment at a respected hospital,' I continued, awkwardly, 'because you would
not stop discussing sexual fantasies with twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls,
who were in the hospital for the treatment of purely physical, not nervous,
conditions.'

    'But it's Jones they're talking
about!' exclaimed Brill.

    Jones had taken a sudden and minute
interest in the architecture of Brill's apartment building.

    'That you have been sued by the
husband of one of your female patients and shot at by another,' I said.

    'Jones again!' Brill called out.

    'That you are currently having a
sexual affair,' I went on, 'with your teenage housekeeper.'

    Brill looked from Freud to me to
Ferenczi to Jones, who was now gazing skyward, apparently studying the
migratory patterns of Manhattan's avian species. 'Ernest?' said Brill. 'Surely
you're not. Tell us you're not.'

    A series of musical throat-clearing
noises came from Jones, but no verbal response.

    'You're disgusting,' Brill said to
Jones. 'Really disgusting.'

    'Is that the end of them, Younger?'
asked Freud.

    'No, sir,' I answered. The final
allegation was the worst of all. 'There is one more: that you are currently
engaged in another sexual liaison, this one with a patient of yours, a
nineteen-year-old Russian girl, a medical student. Your affair is said to be so
notorious that the girl's mother wrote you, begging you not to ruin her
daughter. The dossier claims to reproduce the letter you wrote the mother in
reply. In your letter, or what they say is your letter, you demand money from
the mother in exchange for - for refraining from further sexual relations with
the patient.'

    After I had finished, no one spoke
for a considerable time. At last Ferenczi burst out, 'But that one's Jung, for
heaven's sake!'

    'Sandor!' Freud rejoined sharply.

    'Jung wrote that?' asked Brill. 'To a
patient's mother?'

    Ferenczi threw his hand over his
mouth. 'Oop,' he said. 'But, Freud, you can't let them think it's you. They are
going to tell newspapers. I am imagining headlines already.'

    I was too:
FREUD
CLEARED OF ALL CHARGES
.

    'So,' Brill mused darkly, 'we are
under attack in Boston, in Worcester, and New York at the same time. It cannot
be a coincidence.'

    'What is attack in New York?' asked
Ferenczi.

    'The Jeremiah and Sodom and Gomorrah
business,' Brill answered, irritably. 'Those two messages weren't the only ones
I've received. There have been many.'

    We were all surprised and asked Brill
to explain.

    'It began right after I started
translating Freud's hysteria book,' he said. 'How they knew I was doing it is a
mystery. But the very week I started, I received the first one, and it's been
getting worse ever since. They turn up when I least expect them. I am being
threatened, I feel sure of it. Every time it's some murderous biblical passage
- always about Jews and lust and fire. It makes me think of a pogrom.'