The Interpretation Of Murder (14 page)

    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.

    None of this bothered the detective
in the least. He did not resent the young gentleman, and he liked Betty, the
maid, better than he liked the angelic young lady. But he decided he was going
to learn to move the way the gentleman did. That was something he could figure out
and copy. He pictured himself hoisting Betty into a cab just like that - if he
ever got to take a cab, much less take one with Betty.

    A minute later, after a quick
exchange with the reception clerk, Littlemore hustled back outside toward the
same young man, who had not moved an inch. Hands clasped behind his back, he
was staring at the receding carriage with such ferocious concentration that
Littlemore thought there might be something wrong with him.

    'You're Dr Younger, aren't you?'
asked the detective. There was no reply. 'You okay, pal?'

    'Excuse me?' replied the young
gentleman.

    'You're Younger, right?'

    'Unfortunately.'

    'I'm Detective Littlemore. The mayor sent
me. Was that Miss Acton in the cab?' The detective could see that his
interlocutor was not listening.

    'I beg your pardon,' replied Younger.
'Who did you say you were?'

    Littlemore identified himself again.
He explained that Miss Acton's assailant had murdered a girl last Sunday night,
but that the police still had no witnesses. 'Has the Miss remembered anything,
Doc?'

    Younger shook his head. 'Miss Acton
has her voice back, but still no memory of the incident.'

    'The whole thing seems pretty weird
to me,' said the detective. 'Do people lose their memory a lot?'

    'No,' Younger answered, 'but it does
happen, especially after episodes like the one Miss Acton went through.'

    'Hey, they're coming back.'

    It was so: Miss Acton's carriage had
turned around at the end of the block and was drawing near the hotel once
again. As it pulled up, Miss Acton explained to Younger that Mrs Biggs had
forgotten to return their room key to the clerk.

    'Give it to me,' said Younger,
extending his hand. 'I'll take it in for you.'

    'Thank you, but I am quite able,'
replied Miss Acton, hopping out of the cab unaided and sweeping past Younger
without a glance in his direction. Younger showed nothing, but Littlemore knew
a feminine rebuff when he saw one, and he sympathized with the doctor. Then a
different thought occurred to him.

    'Say, Doc,' he said, 'do you let Miss
Acton go around the hotel like that - by herself, I mean?'

    'I have little say in the matter,
Detective. None, actually. But no, I think she's been with her servant or the
police at almost every moment until now. Why? Is there any danger?'

    'Shouldn't be,' said Littlemore. Mr
Hugel had told him that the murderer did not know Miss Acton's location. Still,
the detective was uncomfortable. The whole case was out of whack: a dead girl
nobody knew anything about, people losing their memory, Chinamen running away,
bodies disappearing from the morgue. 'Can't hurt to have a look around,
though.'

    The detective reentered the hotel,
Younger beside him. Littlemore lit a cigarette as they watched the diminutive
Miss Acton cross the colonnaded, circular lobby. A man returning his room key
would simply have dropped it on the desk and left, but Miss Acton stood
patiently at the counter, waiting to be helped. The place was crowded with
travelers, families, and businessmen. Half the men there, the detective
noticed, could conceivably have met the coroner's description.

    One man, however, drew Littlemore's
attention. He was waiting for an elevator: tall, black-haired, wearing glasses,
a newspaper in his hands. Littlemore didn't have a good angle on his face, but
there was something vaguely foreign in the cut of his suit. It was the
newspaper that attracted the detective's attention. The man held it slightly
higher than was normal. Was he trying to cover his face? Miss Acton had
returned her key; she was now walking back. The man threw a quick glance in her
direction - or was it toward the detective himself? - and then buried his head
in the paper again. An elevator opened; the man went in, by himself.

    Miss Acton did not acknowledge the
presence of the doctor or the detective as she passed them on her way out.
Nevertheless, Younger followed her outside, seeing her back to her carriage.

    Littlemore stayed behind. It was
nothing, he told himself. Nearly every man in the lobby had looked up at Miss
Acton as she walked unaccompanied across the marble floor. All the same,
Littlemore kept his eye on the arrow above the elevator into which the man had
stepped. The arrow moved slowly, jerking up toward the higher numbers.
Littlemore did not, however, see the arrow's final resting place. It was still
moving when he heard a piercing cry outside.

    The cry was not human. It was the
shrill neighing of a horse in pain. The horse in question belonged to a
carriage that had just emerged from a construction site on Forty- second
Street, where the steel skeleton of a new nine-story commercial building was
being raised. The man driving this carriage was superbly attired, with a top
hat and a fine cane across his knees. It was Mr George Banwell.

    In 1909, the horse was still doing
battle with the automobile on every major avenue of New York City. In fact, the
battle was already lost. The jerking, honking motorcars were faster and more
nimble than a buggy; more than this, the automobile put an end to pollution - a
term referring at that time to horse manure, which by midday fouled the air and
made the busier thoroughfares almost impassable. Although George Banwell liked
his motorcars as much as the next gentleman, he was at heart a horseman. He had
grown up with the horse and was not ready to give it up. In fact he insisted on
driving his own carriage, making his coachman sit awkwardly beside him.

    Banwell had spent most of the morning
at his Canal Street site, where he was supervising a vastly larger project. At
eleven-thirty, he had driven uptown to Forty-second Street between Fifth and
Madison Avenues, less than half a block, from the Hotel Manhattan. Having
completed a quick inspection of his men's work there, Banwell was now making
for the hotel to meet the mayor. But a moment after taking the reins, he had
given them a fierce and abrupt yank, driving the bit into the unfortunate
horse's mouth, causing her to halt and cry out. This cry had no effect on
Banwell. He seemed not even to hear it. Staring transfixed at a point less than
a block ahead of him, he kept the bit digging ever deeper into his horse's jaw,
to the appalled dismay of his coachman.

    The horse threw her head from side to
side, trying in vain to loosen the cutting bit. Finally the creature reared up
on her hind legs and let out the extraordinary, anguished cry heard by
Littlemore and everyone else up and down the street. She returned to earth but
immediately reared again, this time even more wildly, and the entire carriage
began to topple. Banwell and his coachman spilled out like sailors from a
capsized boat. The carriage tumbled to the ground with an enormous clatter,
dragging the horse down with it.

    The coachman was first to his feet.
He tried to help his master, but Banwell pushed him away violently, brushing
the dirt from his knees and elbows. A crowd had gathered about them. Impatient
motorists were already blowing their horns. The spell on Banwell was apparently
broken. He was not the kind of man who tolerated being thrown by a horse; to be
thrown from a carriage was unthinkable. His eyes were furious - at the
motorists, at the gawking crowd, and above all at the confused, prostrate
horse, which was struggling unsuccessfully to right herself. 'My gun,' he said
to his coachman coldly. 'Get me my gun.'

    'You can't destroy her, sir,'
objected the coachman, who was crouching by the side of the horse, extricating
her hoofs from a brace of twisted ropes. 'Nothing's broken. She's just tangled
up. There she is. There you are' - this he said to the horse, as he helped her
upright - 'it wasn't your fault.'

    Doubtless the coachman meant well,
but he could not have chosen more ill-favored words. 'Not her fault, eh?' said
Banwell. 'She rears like an unbroken jade, and it's not her fault?' He seized
the bit and roughly twisted the horse's neck, looking her in the eye. 'I can
see,' he said to the coachman, his voice still cold, 'you never taught her to
keep her head down. Well, I will.'

    Yanking the carriage rods out of her
bridle, Banwell seized the reins and mounted the horse bareback. He drove her
back into the construction site and there wheeled about until he came to the great
dangling hook of the crane that loomed sky-high in the middle of the plot of
ground. Taking that hook in both hands, Banwell fixed it under the horse's
halter, which was in turn secured firmly around her underbelly. He leaped off
the horse and shouted to the crane man, 'You there, take her up. You in the
crane: take her up, I say. Can't you hear me? Take her up!'

    The astonished crane man was slow to
respond. At last he engaged the gears of the hulking machine. Its long cable
went taut; its hook clenched at the saddle. The horse stirred and pawed at the
uncomfortable sensation. For a moment nothing more happened.

    'Lift, you bugger,' Banwell cried to
his crane operator, 'lift or go home to your wife tonight without a job!'

    The crane man manipulated the levers
again. With a lurch, the horse lifted up off the ground. The moment her feet
left the earth, uncomprehending panic fell upon the animal. She screamed and
thrashed about, succeeding only in making herself twist wildly in the air,
suspended by the crane's thick hook.

    'Let her go!' a girl's voice, angry
and stricken, cried out. It was Miss Acton. Watching the spectacle unfold, she
had hurried across Forty-second Street and was now at the front of the crowd.
Younger was right next to her, and Littlemore several rows behind. She called
out again, 'Let her down. Someone, make him stop!'

    'Up,' Banwell ordered. He heard the
girl's voice. For a moment, he looked right at her. Then he returned his
attention to the horse. 'Higher.'

    The crane man did as he was bid,
hoisting the creature higher and higher: twenty, thirty, forty feet above the
ground. Philosophers say it cannot be known whether animals feel emotions
comparable to a human's, but anyone who has seen sheer terror in a horse's eyes
can never doubt it again.

    Because all human eyes were on the
helpless, dangling, thrashing animal, no one in the crowd noticed the stirring
of the steel girder three stories up the scaffolding. This girder was secured
to a rope, which was in turn connected to the crane hook. Until now that rope
had been slack, the steel beam lying harmlessly in place on the scaffold. But
as the hook rose, this rope too eventually pulled taut, and now, without
warning, the steel girder rolled off the wooden planks. From there it swung
freely. Being attached to the crane's hook, it naturally swung in the direction
of the hook - which is to say, in the direction of George Banwell.

    Banwell never saw the deadly girder
hurtling at him, gathering speed as it swung. The beam turned inexorably in the
air, so that it came at him dead on, like a gigantic spear aimed at his
stomach. Had it struck, it would certainly have killed him. As it happened, it
missed him by a foot. This was a stroke of excellent and not atypical good fortune
for Banwell, but its consequence was that the beam flew on, now heading for the
crowd, several members of whom screamed in fright, a good dozen men diving to
the dirt to protect themselves.

    There was only one among them,
however, who should have dived away. That was Miss Nora Acton, since the
twelve- foot steel girder was swinging straight toward her. Miss Acton,
however, neither screamed nor moved. Whether it was because the onrushing beam
held her somehow in thrall or because it was difficult to know which way to go,
Miss Acton stood rooted to her spot, aghast and about to die.

    Younger seized the girl by her long
blond braid, pulling her hard - and not very chivalrously - into his arms. The
hurtling girder whistled by them, so close the two could feel its wind, and
flew high into the air behind them.

    'Ow!' said Miss Acton.

    'Sorry,' said Younger. Then he drew
her by the hair a second time, pulling her now in the other direction.

    
'Ow!'
said Miss Acton again,
more emphatically, as the steel beam, making its return trip, flew past them
once more, this time just missing the back of her head.

    Banwell eyed the sailing girder
dispassionately as it shot by. With disgust, he watched it soar up and slam
into the scaffold from which its journey had begun, destroying that structure
as if it had been made of toothpicks, sending men, tools, and wooden planks
flying in all directions. When the dust cleared, only the horse was still
making noise, neighing and spinning helplessly above their heads. Banwell
signaled the crane man to bring her down and, with a cold rage, issued orders
to his men to clear the debris.

    'Take me back to my room, please,'
Miss Acton said to Younger.