'Freud, you are being unfair,' said Ferenczi. 'Younger did not say he was looking for religion.'
'The boy has taken an interest in my ideas; he may as well know their implications.' Freud scrutinized me. All at once, the severity disappeared, and he gave me an almost fatherly look. 'And as I may possibly take an interest in his, I return the question: are you a religious man, Younger?'
To my embarrassment, I did not know how to respond. 'My father was,' I said.
'You answer a question,' Ferenczi replied, 'different from the one that was put.'
'But I understand him,' said Freud. 'He means: because his father believed, he is inclined to doubt.'
'That's true,' I said.
'But he also wonders,' Freud added, 'whether a doubt so founded is a good doubt. Which inclines him to believe.'
I could only stare. Ferenczi asked my question. 'How can you possibly know that?'
'It all follows,' answered Freud, 'from what he told us last night: that going into medicine was his father's wish, not his own. And besides,' he added, taking a satisfied pull at his cigar, 'I felt the same way when I was younger.'
With its grand marble facade, Greek pediments, and fantastic dome, softly lit by streedamps, the new police headquarters at 240 Centre Street looked more like a palace than a municipal building. Passing through a pair of massive oak doors, we found a uniformed man behind a semicircular desk raised up to chest level. Electrical lights cast a yellow glow around him. He cranked up a telephonic device, and soon enough we were greeted by Mayor McClellan, together with an older, worried-looking, potbellied gentleman named Higginson, who turned out to be the Actons' family doctor.
Shaking each of us by the hand, McClellan apologized to Freud profusely for causing him so dreadful an inconvenience. 'Younger tells me you are also an expert on ancient Rome. I will give you my book on Venice. But I must take you upstairs. Miss Acton is in the most lamentable condition.'
The mayor led us up a marble staircase. Dr Higginson talked a good deal about the measures he had taken - none of which sounded harmful, so we had some luck there. We entered a large office in the classic style, with leather chairs, a good deal of brass, and an imposing desk. Behind this desk, looking much too small for it, a girl was seated, wrapped in a light blanket, with a policeman on either side of her.
McClellan was correct: she was in a pitiable state. She had been crying hard; her face was horribly red and swollen from it. Her long blond hair was loose and matted. She looked up at us with the largest, most fearful eyes I have ever seen - fearful and distrustful.
'We've been at it every which way,' McClellan declared. 'She is able to tell us, by writing, everything that happened before and after. But as to the - ah - incident itself, she remembers nothing.' Next to the girl were sheets of paper and a pen.
The mayor introduced us. The girl's name was Nora. He explained that we were special doctors who, he hoped, would be able to help her recover her voice and her memory. He spoke to her as if she were a child of seven, perhaps confusing her speaking difficulty with a difficulty in understanding, although one could tell instantly from her eyes that she had no impairment on that score. Predictably, the entrance of three more strange new men had the effect of overwhelming the girl. Tears came to her eyes, but she held them back. She actually wrote an apology to us, as if she were at fault for her amnesia.
'Please proceed, gentlemen,' said McClellan.
Freud wanted first to rule out a physiological basis for her symptoms. 'Miss Acton,' he said, 'I would like to be sure you have not suffered an injury to your head. Will you permit me?' The girl nodded. After making a thorough inspection, Freud concluded, 'There is no cranial injury of any kind.'
'Damage to the larynx could cause aphonia,' I remarked, referring to the girl's loss of voice.
Freud nodded and invited me, by gesture, to examine the girl myself.
Approaching Miss Acton, I felt inexplicably nervous. I could not identify the source of this anxiety; I seemed to be afraid that I would appear to Freud as inexperienced, yet I had performed examinations infinitely more complicated - and these in front of my professors at Harvard - without any such unease. I explained to Miss Acton that it was important to determine whether a physical injury might be causing her inability to speak. I asked if she would take my hand and place it on her neck in such a way as to minimize her own discomfort. I held my hand out, two fingers extended. Reluctantly, she conducted it toward her throat, placing my fingers, however, on her collarbone. I asked her to lift her head. She complied, and as I ran my fingers up her throat to the larynx, I noticed, despite her injuries, the soft, perfect lines of her neck and chin, which might have been carved in marble by Bernini. When I applied pressure to various points, she squinted but did not draw back. 'There is no evidence of laryngeal trauma,' I reported.
Miss Acton looked even more mistrustful now than when we first came in. I didn't blame her. It can be more upsetting for a person to find out there isn't anything physically wrong with her than to find out there is. At the same time, she was without her family, surrounded by strange men. She seemed to be assessing us all, one by one.
'My dear,' Freud said to her, 'you are anxious about the loss of your memory and your voice. You need not be.
Amnesia after such an incident is not uncommon, and I have seen loss of speech many times. Where there is no permanent physical injury - and you have none - I have always succeeded in eliminating both conditions. Now: I am going to ask you some questions, but none about what happened to you today. I want you to tell me only how you are at this moment. Would you care for something to drink?' She nodded gratefully; McClellan sent out one of the officers, who returned shortly with a cup of tea. In the meantime, Freud engaged the girl in conversation - he speaking, she writing - but only on the most general of facts, such as, for example, that she was to be a freshwoman at Barnard starting next month. In the end, she wrote that she was sorry she could not answer the policemen's questions, and she wanted to go home.
Freud indicated that he wished to speak with us outside the girl's hearing. This prompted a grave trooping of men
Freud, Mayor McClellan, Ferenczi, Dr Higginson, and I
to the far corner of the spacious office, where Freud asked, in a very low voice, 'Was she violated?'
'No, thank God,' whispered McClellan.
'But her wounds,' said Higginson, 'are conspicuously concentrated around her - private parts.' He cleared his throat. 'Apart from her back, it seems she was whipped repeatedly about her buttocks and - ah - pelvis. In addition, she was cut once on each of her thighs with a sharp knife or razor.'
'What kind of monster does such a thing?' McClellan asked.
'The question is why it doesn't happen more often,' replied Freud quietly. 'Satisfying a savage instinct is incomparably more pleasurable than satisfying a civilized one. In any event, the best course of action tonight is certainly inaction. I am not convinced her amnesia is hysterical. Severe asphyxiation could bring about the same effect. On the other hand, she is plainly suffering from some deep self- reproach. She should sleep. She may wake up asymptomatic. If her symptoms persist, analysis will be in order.'
'Self-reproach?' asked McClellan.
'Guilt,' said Ferenczi. 'The girl is suffering not only from attack but from guilt she feels in connection with it.'
'Why on earth would she feel guilt?' asked the mayor.
'There are many possible reasons,' said Freud. 'But an element of self-reproach is almost invariable in cases of sexual assault on the young. She has already twice apologized to us for her memory loss. Her voice loss is more puzzling.'
'Sodomized, perhaps?' asked Ferenczi in a whisper. 'Per os'
'Great God,' McClellan interjected, also whispering. 'Is that possible?'
'It is possible,' Freud answered, 'but not likely. If an oral penetration were the source of her symptoms, her inability to use her mouth would be expected to extend to taking in. But you will notice she drank he
r tea without difficulty. Indeed, that is why I asked if she was thirsty.'
We contemplated this momentarily. McClellan spoke again, no longer whispering. 'Dr Freud, forgive my ignorance, but does her memory of the event still exist, or has it been, so to speak, wiped out?'
'Assuming hysterical amnesia, the memory certainly exists,' Freud answered. 'It is the cause.'
'The memory is the cause of the amnesia?' McClellan asked.
'The memory of the attack - along with the deeper recollections rekindled by it - is unacceptable. Therefore she has repressed it, producing the appearance of an amnesia.'
'Deeper recollections?' repeated the mayor. 'I don't follow you.'
'An episode of the kind this girl has undergone,' said Freud, 'however brutal, however terrible, will not at her age ordinarily cause amnesia. The victim remembers, provided she is otherwise healthy. But where the victim has suffered another,- earlier traumatic episode - so traumatic the memory of it had to be wholly suppressed from consciousness - an attack can bring about amnesia, because the fresh attack cannot be remembered without also triggering recollections of the older episode, which her consciousness cannot allow.'
'Good Lord,' said the mayor.
'What is to be done?' asked Higginson.
'Can you cure her?' the mayor cut in. 'She is the only one who can give us a description of her assailant.'
'Hypnosis?' Ferenczi suggested.
'I advise strongly against it,' said Freud. 'It would not help her, and memories yielded under hypnosis are not reliable.'
'What of this - this analysis, as you call it?' the mayor asked.
'We could begin as early as tomorrow,' Freud replied. 'But I should warn you: psychoanalysis is an intensive treatment. The patient must be seen daily, for at least an hour each day.'
'I see no difficulty there,' declared McClellan. 'The question is what to do with Miss Acton tonight.' The girl's parents, summering at their house in the Berkshire country, could not be reached. Higginson suggested calling on some friends of the family, but the mayor said it wouldn't do. 'Acton will not want word of the episode to get out. People might believe the girl has been permanently injured.'
Miss Acton almost certainly overheard the last comment. I saw her now writing a new note for us. I went to her and received it; I want to go home, it said. Now.
McClellan immediately told the girl he could not allow it. Criminals had been known, he warned her, to return to the scene of their crime. The assailant might be keeping watch over her house even now. Fearing that she could identify him, he might believe his only hope of escaping justice was to take her life. Returning to Gramercy Park was therefore out of the question, at least until her father was back in town to assure her safety. At this, Miss Acton's face changed again and she made a gesture with her hands, expressing an emotion I could not identify.
'I have it,' McClellan announced. Miss Acton, he said, would be taken to the Hotel Manhattan, where we were staying. The mayor himself would pay for her rooms. She would be settled there along with Mrs Biggs, the old housekeeper, who could see to it that proper attire and other necessaries were sent up from Gramercy Park. Miss Acton would stay at the hotel until her parents returned from the country. This arrangement would be not only the safest but the most convenient for purposes of commencing her treatment.
'There is a further difficulty,' said Freud. 'Psychoanalysis requires from the doctor a substantial commitment of time. Obviously I cannot make such a commitment. Neither can my colleague Dr Ferenczi. What about you, Younger? Will you take her on?'
Freud saw by my hesitation that I wished to respond privately to him. He drew me aside.
'It should be Brill,' I said, 'not me.'
Freud fixed me again with the look that could bore into rock. He replied quietly, 'I have no doubt of your abilities, my boy; your case history proves them. I want you to take her on.'
It was simultaneously an order I could not disobey and an expression of confidence whose effect on me I cannot describe. I agreed.
'Good,' he said aloud. 'She is yours. I will supervise as long as I remain in America, but Dr Younger will perform the analysis. Assuming, of course,' he added, turning toward Miss Acton, 'that our patient is as willing as we are.'
Part 2
Chapter Six
Coroner Hugel's sunken cheeks, Detective Littlemore noticed on Tuesday morning, were looking even hollower than usual. The pouches below his eyes had pouches of their own, the dark circles their own circles. Littlemore felt sure his discoveries would boost the coroner's spirits.
'Okay, Mr Hugel,' said the detective, 'I went back to the Balmoral. Wait till you hear what I got.'
'You spoke with the maid?' Hugel asked immediately.
'Doesn't work there anymore,' answered the detective. 'She was fired.'
'I knew it!' the coroner exclaimed. 'Did you get her address?'
'Oh, I found her all right. But here's the first thing: I went back to Miss Riverford's bedroom to look at that molding on the ceiling - you know, the bowling-ball thing you said she was tied up to? You were right. There were rope threads on it.'
'Good. You secured them, I trust?' said Hugel.
'I got 'em. And the whole ball too,' said Littlemore, provoking an unpleasant look of foreboding on the coroner's face. The detective continued: 'I didn't think it looked very • strong, so I got up on the bed and gave it a good yank, and it broke right off.'
'You didn't think the ceiling looked very strong,' the coroner repeated, 'so you gave it a yank, and it broke. Excellent work, Detective.'
'Thanks, Mr Hugel.'
'Perhaps you could destroy the whole room next time. Is there any other evidence you damaged?'
'No,' answered Littlemore. 'I just don't get the way it broke off so easy. How could it hold her up?'
'Well, it obviously did.'
'There's more, Mr Hugel, something big. Two things.' Littlemore described the unknown man who left the Balmoral around midnight on Sunday carrying a black case. 'How about that, Mr Hugel?' asked the detective proudly. 'It could be him, right?'
'They're certain he wasn't a resident?'
'Positive. Never saw him before.'
'Carrying a bag, you say?' asked Hugel. 'In what hand?'
'Clifford didn't know.'
'You asked?'
'Sure did,' said Littlemore. 'Had to check the guy's dexterity.'
Hugel grunted dismissively. 'Well, it's not our man anyway.'
'Why not?'
'Because, Littlemore, our man has graying hair, and our man lives in that building.' The coroner grew animated.
'We know Miss Riverford had no regular visitors. We know she had no visitors from outside the building on Sunday night. How then did the murderer get into her apartment? The door was not forced. There is only one possibility. He knocked; she answered. Now, would a girl, living alone, open her door to just anyone? In the nighttime? To a stranger? I doubt it very much. But she would open it to a neighbor, someone who lived in the building - someone she was expecting, perhaps, someone to whom she had opened her door before.'
'A laundry guy!' said Littlemore.
The coroner stared at the detective.
'That's the other thing, Mr Hugel. Listen to this. I'm down in the basement of the Balmoral when I see this Chinaman tracking clay - red clay. I took a sample; it's the same clay I saw up in Miss Riverford's room, I'm sure of it. Maybe he's the killer.'
'A Chinaman,' said the coroner.
'I tried to stop him, but he got away. Laundry worker. Maybe this guy makes a laundry delivery to Miss Riverford on Sunday night. She opens the door for him, and he kills her. Then he goes back down to the laundry, and nobody's the wiser.'
'Littlemore,' said the coroner, taking a deep breath, 'the murderer was not a Chinese laundry boy. He is a wealthy man. We know that.'
'No, Mr Hugel, you figured he was wealthy because he strangled her with a fancy silk tie, but if you work in a laundry you clean silk ties all the ti
me. Maybe this
Chinaman steals one from there and kills Miss Riverford with it.'
'With what motive?' asked the coroner.
'I don't know. Maybe he likes killing girls, like that guy in Chicago. Say, Miss Riverford comes from Chicago. You don't think -?'
'No, Detective, I don't. Nor do I think your Chinaman has anything to do with Miss Riverford's murder.'
'But the clay -'
'Forget the clay.'
'But the Chinaman ran when -'
'No Chinaman! Do you hear me, Littlemore? No Chinaman figures in any way in this murder. The killer is at least six feet tall. He is white: the hairs I found on her body are Caucasian. The maid - the maid is the key. What did she tell you?'
I got to breakfast with about fifteen minutes to spare before I was to call on Miss Acton. Freud was just sitting down. Brill and Ferenczi were already at table, Brill with three empty plates in front of him and at work on a fourth. I had told him yesterday that Clark would pay for his breakfast. He was evidently making up for lost time.
'Now this is America,' he said to Freud. 'You begin with toasted oats in sugar and cream, then hot leg of lamb with French-fried potatoes, a basket of raised biscuits with fresh butter, and finally buckwheat cakes with syrup tapped from Vermont maples. I am in heaven.'
'I am not,' Freud replied. He was apparently in some digestive distress. Our food, he said, was too heavy for him.
'For me too,' complained Ferenczi, who had nothing but a cup of tea before him. He added unhappily, 'I think it was mayonnaise salad.'
'Where is Jung?' asked Freud.
'I haven't any idea,' answered Brill. 'But I do know where he went Sunday night.'
'Sunday night? He went to bed Sunday night,' said Freud.
The Interpretation Of Murder Page 7
