The Interpretation Of Murder

by Jed Rubenfeld

  Jung meant this, I think, as a compliment. Nevertheless, wanting to show that Americans were not entirely illiterate, I described to him the story of the Astor Place Shakespeare riot.

  'So the Americans wanted a muscular American Hamlet,' Jung mused, shaking his head. 'Your story confirms my point. A masculine Hamlet is a contradiction in terms. As my great-grandfather used to say, Hamlet represents man's feminine side: the intellectual, the inward soul, sensitive enough to see the spiritual world but not strong enough to bear the burden it imposes. The challenge is to do both: to hear the voices of the other world but live in this one - to be a man of action.'

  I was puzzled by the 'voices' Jung referred to - perhaps the unconscious? - but delighted to find he had an opinion about Hamlet. 'You are describing Hamlet almost exactly as Goethe did,' I said. 'That was Goethe's explanation of Hamlet's inability to act.'

  'I believe I said it was my great-grandfather's view,' Jung replied, sipping his coffee.

  It took me a moment. 'Goethe was your greatgrandfather?'

  'Freud prizes Goethe above all poets,' was Jung's reply. 'Jones, by contrast, calls him a dithyrambist. Can you imagine? Only an Englishman. I cannot understand what Freud sees in him.' The Jones to whom Jung referred was surely Ernest Jones, Freud's British follower, now living in Canada and expected to join our party tomorrow. I had concluded that Jung meant to avoid my question, but then he added, 'Yes, I am Carl Gustav Jung the third; the first, my grandfather, was Goethe's son. It is well known. The allegations of murder were of course ridiculous.'

  'I didn't know Goethe was accused of murder.'

  'Goethe - certainly not,' Jung answered indignantly. 'My grandfather. Evidently I resemble him in every way. They arrested him for murder, but it was a pretext. He wrote a murder novel, though, The Suspect - quite good - about an innocent man charged with murder; or at least one supposes him innocent. That was before von Humboldt took him under his protection. You know, Younger, I could almost wish your university had not bestowed equal honors on Freud and myself. He is very sensitive on such matters.'

  I could not well reply to this abrupt turn in Jung's conversation. Clark was not bestowing equal honors on Freud and Jung. As everyone knew, Freud was the centerpiece of Clark's celebration, the keynote speaker, delivering five full lectures, while Jung was a last-minute substitute for a panelist who had canceled.

  But Jung did not wait for an answer. 'I understand you asked Freud yesterday if he was a believer. A perceptive question, Younger.' This was another first: Jung had not previously shown a favorable reaction to anything I said. 'No doubt he told you he was not. He is a genius, but his insight has endangered him. One who spends his whole life examining the pathological, stunted, and base may lose sight of the pure, the high, the spirit. I for one don't believe the soul is essentially carnal. Do you?'

  'I am not sure, Dr Jung.'

  'But you are not drawn to the idea. It is not inherently appealing to you. To them, it is.'

  I had to ask him to whom he was now referring.

  'All of them,' Jung answered. 'Brill, Ferenczi, Adler, Abraham, Stekel - the lot. He surrounds himself with this - this kind. They all want to tear down whatever is high, to reduce it to genitalia and excrement. The soul is not reducible to the body. Even Einstein, one of their own, does not believe that God can be eliminated.'

  .'Albert Einstein?'

  'He is a frequent dinner guest at my house,' replied Jung. 'But he too has this same inclination to reduce. He would reduce the entire universe to mathematical laws. It is clearly a characteristic of the Jewish mind. The Jewish male, that is. The Jewish female is simply aggressive. Brill's wife is typical of the race. Intelligent, not unattractive, but so very aggressive.'

  'I believe Rose is not Jewish, Dr Jung,' I said.

  'Rose Brill?' Jung laughed. 'A woman with that name can be of only one religion.'

  I made no reply. Jung had evidently forgotten that Rose's name had not always been Brill.

  'The Aryan, 'Jung went on, 'is mythic by nature. He does not try to bring everything down to man's level. Here in

  America, there is a similar tendency to reduce, but it is different. Everything here is made for children. All is made simple enough for children to understand: the signs, the advertisements, everything. Even the gait with which people walk is childlike: swinging the arms, like so. I suspect it is the result of your intermingling with the Negro. They are a good-natured race and very religious, but so very simple- minded. They exercise a tremendous influence on you; I notice your Southerners actually speak with the Negro's accent. This is also the explanation of your country's matriarchy. Woman is undoubtedly the dominant figure in America. You American men are sheep, and your women play the ravening wolves.'

  I did not like the color in Jung's face. At first I had deemed it an improvement; now he seemed too flushed. The workings of his mind worried me too, for several different reasons. His conversation was disjointed, his logic faulty, his insinuations disturbing. On top of all this, I thought Jung considered himself remarkably well- informed about America for someone who had been in the country two days - particularly on the subject of American women. I changed the subject, informing him that I had just completed my first session with Miss Acton.

  Jung's voice went cold. 'What?'

  'She has taken rooms upstairs.'

  'You are analyzing the girl - you, here, in the hotel?'

  'Yes, Dr Jung.'

  'I see.' He wished me luck, not very convincingly, and rose to leave. I asked him to convey my regards to Dr Onuf. For a moment, he looked as if I were speaking jibberish. Then he said he would be happy to oblige me.

  Chapter Eight

  On the eastern bank of the Hudson River, sixty miles north of New York City, stood a massive, sprawling, red-brick Victorian institution built in the late nineteenth century, with six wings, small windows, and a central turret. This was the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

  The Matteawan asylum had relatively little security. After all, the 550 inmates were not criminals. They were merely criminally insane. Many had not been charged with a crime at all, and those who were had been found not guilty.

  Medical knowledge of insanity in 1909 was not a perfected science. At Matteawan, some 10 percent of the occupants were determined to have been driven insane solely as a result of masturbation. Most others were found to suffer from hereditary lunacy. For a substantial number of inmates, however, the hospital's doctors were hard-pressed to say what had made them mad or, indeed, if they were mad at all.

  The violent and raving were packed into overcrowded rooms with padded walls and barred windows. The others were hardly watched. No medication was on offer, no 'talking cures.' The organizing medical idea was mental hygiene. Hence the treatment consisted of early rising, followed by mild but time-consuming labor (principally planting and tending vegetables on the thousand-acre farm surrounding the hospital), prayer service on Sundays, a punctual but vapid supper in the refectory at five, checkers or other wholesome diversions in the evening, and an early bedtime.

  The patient in room 3121 passed his days in a different fashion. This patient also had rooms 3122-24. He slept not on a cot, like the other inmates, but on a double bed. And he slept late. Not a reader of books, he received by post several of the New York dailies and all the weekly magazines, which he read over poached eggs while his fellow patients were marched en masse out to the farm for their morning labor. He met with his lawyers several times a week. Best of all, a chef from Delmonico's came up by rail on Friday evenings to prepare his supper, which he took in his own dining room. His champagne and liquor, he liberally shared with the small staff of Matteawan guards, with whom he also played poker at night. When he lost at poker, he tended to break things: bottles, windows, occasionally a chair. So the guards saw to it he did not lose much: the few nickels they sacrificed at cards were more than made up for by the payments he made them to ensure his exemption from the hospital's rules. An
d they pocketed what was for them a small fortune when they brought in girls for his recreation.

  This was not, however, so easy to do. Getting the girls in was not the problem. But the patient in 3121 had definite tastes. He liked his girls young and pretty. This requirement alone made the guards' job a hard one. Worse still, when they found a satisfactory girl, she would never last more than a couple of visits, notwithstanding the lavish remuneration. After a mere twelve months, the guards had well nigh exhausted their supply.

  The two gentlemen emerging from room 3121 at one o'clock on Tuesday, the last day of August 1909, had given considerable thought to this difficulty - and had resolved it, at least to their satisfaction. They were not guards. One was a corpulent man wearing a highly self-satisfied expression under his bowler hat. The other was an elegant older gentlemen with a watch chain draped from his vest pocket, a gaunt face, and a pianist's hands.

  Mayor McClellan's description of the events at the Acton residence left the coroner sputtering.

  'What's the matter with you, Hugel?' asked the mayor.

  'I was not informed. Why wasn't I told?'

  'Because you are a coroner,' said McClellan. 'No one was killed.'

  'But the crimes are virtually identical,' Hugel objected.

  'I didn't know that,' said the mayor.

  'If you had read my report, you would have!'

  'For God's sake, calm down, Hugel.' McClellan ordered the coroner to take a seat. After the two men reviewed the crimes in more detail, Hugel declared that there could be no doubt: Elizabeth Riverford's murderer and Nora Acton's attacker had been one and the same man. 'Great God,' said the mayor quietly. 'Must I issue a warning?'

  Hugel laughed dismissively. 'That a killer of society girls is haunting our streets?'

  McClellan was puzzled by the coroner's tone. 'Well, yes, I suppose, or words to that effect.'

  'Men do not attack young women arbitrarily,' Hugel declared. 'Crimes have motives. Scotland Yard never caught the Ripper because they never found the link between the victims. They never looked. The moment they decided they were dealing with a madman, the case was lost.'

  'Great God, man, you're not suggesting the Ripper is here?'

  'No, no, no,' replied the coroner, throwing up his hands in exasperation. 'I'm saying that the two attacks are not random. Something connects them. When we find the connection, we will have our man. You don't need a public warning, you need to protect that girl. He already wanted her dead, and now she is the only person who can identify him in court. Don't forget: he doesn't know she lost her memory. He will undoubtedly try to finish the job.'

  'Thank heavens I moved her into the hotel,' said McClellan.

  'Does anyone else know where she is?'

  'The doctors, of course.'

  'Did you tell any friends of the family?' asked Hugel.

  'Certainly not,' said McClellan.

  'Good. Then she is safe for now. Has she remembered anything today?'

  'I don't know,' said McClellan gravely. 'I haven't been able to get through to Dr Younger.' The mayor considered his options. He wished he could have called up old General Bingham, his longtime police commissioner, but McClellan had pushed Bingham into retirement only last month. Bingham had refused to reform the police, but he was himself incorruptible and would have known what to do. The mayor also wished Baker, the new commissioner, had not already proved so inept. Baker's only subject of conversation was baseball and how much money could be made in it. Hugel, the mayor reflected, was one of the most experienced men on the force. No: in homicides, he was the most experienced. If he didn't consider a warning necessary, he was probably right. The papers would certainly make hay of it, sowing as much hysteria as they possibly could and heaping scorn on the mayor as soon as they learned, as they certainly would, of the loss of the first victim's body. Then too, McClellan had assured Banwell that the police would try to solve the case without publicity. George Banwell was one of the few friends the mayor had left. The mayor decided to follow Hugel's advice.

  'Very well,' said McClellan. 'No warning for now. You had better be right, Mr Hugel. Find me the man. Go to Acton's at once; you will supervise the investigation there.

  And tell Littlemore I want to see him immediately.'

  Hugel protested. Cleaning his spectacles, he reminded the mayor that it was no part of a coroner's duties to gallivant up and down the city like an ordinary detective. McClellan swallowed his irritation. He assured the coroner that only he could be trusted with a case of such delicacy and importance, that his eyes were famously the sharpest on the force. Hugel, blinking in a way that appeared to express perfect agreement with these assertions, consented to go to the Actons'.

  Directly Hugel left his office, McClellan summoned his secretary. 'Ring George Banwell,' he instructed her. The secretary informed the mayor that Mr Banwell had been calling all morning. 'What did he want?' asked the mayor.

  'He was rather blunt, Your Honor,' she replied.

  'It's all right, Mrs Neville. What did he want?'

  Mrs Neville read from her shorthand notes. 'To know "who the devil murdered the Riverford girl, what was taking the blasted coroner so long to finish the autopsy, and where his money was.'"

  The mayor sighed deeply. 'Who, what, and where. He's only missing when.' McClellan looked at his watch. The when was running short for him as well. In two weeks at most, the candidates for mayor had to be announced. He had no hope of the Tammany nomination now. His only chance was as an independent or fusion candidate, but that kind of campaign required money. It also required good press, not news of a spree of unsolved attacks on society girls. 'Ring Banwell back,' he added to Mrs Neville. 'Leave word for him to meet me in an hour and a half at the Hotel Manhattan. He won't object; he has a job near there he'll want a look at in any event. And get me Littlemore.'

  A half hour later, the detective introduced his head into the mayor's office. 'You wanted to see me, Your Honor?'

  'Mr Littlemore,' said the mayor, 'you are aware we have had another attack?'

  'Yes, sir. Mr Hugel told me, sir.'

  'Good. This case is of special importance to me, Detective. I know Acton, and George Banwell is an old friend of mine. I want to be kept abreast of every development. And I want the utmost discretion. Go to the Hotel Manhattan on the double. Find Dr Younger and see if any progress has been made. If there is any new information, call here at once. And Detective, make yourself inconspicuous. Word must not get out that we have a potential murder witness at the hotel. The girl's life may depend on it. Do you understand?'

  'Yes, sir, Mr Mayor,' Littlemore replied. 'Do I report to you, sir, or to Captain Carey at Homicide?'

  'You will report to Mr Hugel,' said the mayor, 'and to me. I need this case solved, Littlemore. At any price. You have the coroner's description of the killer?'

  'Yes, sir.' Littlemore hesitated. 'Um, one question, sir? What if the coroner's description of the killer is wrong?'

  'Do you have reason to think it wrong?'

  'I think - ' said Littlemore. 'I think a Chinaman might be involved.'

  'A Chinaman?' the mayor repeated. 'Have you told Mr Hugel?'

  'He doesn't agree, sir.'

  'I see. Well, I would advise you to trust Mr Hugel. I know he is - sensitive - on some points, Detective, but you must bear in mind how hard it is for an honest man to do his work in relative obscurity, while dishonest men attain wealth and renown. That is why corruption is so pernicious. It breaks the will of good men. Hugel is extremely capable. And he thinks highly of you, Detective. He asked specifically that you be assigned to this case.'

  'He did, sir?'

  'He did. Now get going, Mr Littlemore.'

  I was leaving the hotel when I ran into the girl and her servant, Mrs Biggs, about to do their shopping. A cab was just pulling up for them. Because the street bed, rutted with dirt and dry mud, was unfit, I lifted Miss Acton into the carriage. As I did, I noticed uncomfortably that her tiny waist almost fit into
my two hands. I sought to assist Mrs Biggs as well, but the good woman would have none of it.

  To Miss Acton, I said I looked forward to seeing her tomorrow morning. She asked what I meant. I was referring, I explained, to her next psychoanalytic session. My hand was resting on the open door of her cab; she yanked the door shut, dislodging me. 'I don't know what is wrong with all of you,' she said. 'I don't want any more of your sessions. I will remember everything by myself. Just leave me alone.'

  The cab drove off. It is hard to describe my feelings as I watched it rattle away. Disappointed would not quite be adequate. I wished my too-solid body might break up and disperse into the dirt of the street. Brill should have been the analyst. A medical journeyman, a town general practitioner, would have been better, so abysmally had I imitated a psychoanalyst.

  I had failed before even beginning. The girl had rejected analysis, and I had been unable to change her mind. No: I had caused the rejection, pressing too hard before the groundwork had been laid. The truth was that I had been unprepared to find she could speak. I had forgotten Freud's own speculation that she might recover her voice overnight. Her voice ought to have been a boon to the treatment, the luckiest possible development. Instead, it disrupted me. I had pictured myself as the patient and infinitely accommodating doctor. Instead, I had dealt with her resistance defensively, like a blundering amateur.

  What would I say to Freud?

  Entering the Hotel Manhattan, Detective Littlemore passed a young gentleman helping a young lady into a cab. The two figures represented, for Littlemore, a world to which he had no access. They were both easy on the eyes, decked out in the kind of finery that only the better set could afford. The young gentleman was tall, dark-haired, and cheekbony, the young lady more like an angel than Littlemore thought possible on earth. And the gentleman had a way of moving, a fluidity when he swung the young lady into the carriage, that Littlemore knew he himself did not possess.