Jed Rubenfeld - The Interpretation of Murder

'He is too stupid.'

I took this in. 'When you think of your amnesia, right now, what comes to mind?'

'Nothing,' she said.

'There is never nothing in one's mind.'

'You said that last time!' she exclaimed angrily, and then fell silent. She fixed me with her blue eyes. 'Only one thing you have ever done,' she said, 'even began to make me think you could help me, and that had nothing to do with all your questions.'

'What was that?'

She dropped her gaze. 'I do not know if I should tell you.'

'Why?'

'Oh, never mind why. It was in the police station.'

'I examined your neck.'

She spoke quietly, her head averted. 'Yes. When you first touched my throat, for one second I almost saw something — some picture, some memory. I don't know what it was.'

This news was unexpected but not illogical. Freud himself had discovered that a physical touch could release suppressed memories. I had employed that very technique with Priscilla. Possibly, Miss Acton's amnesia was susceptible to this form of treatment as well. 'Are you willing to try something similar again?' I asked her.

'It frightened me,' she said.

'It probably will again.'

She nodded. I went to her and extended my palm. She began to remove her scarf. I told her she needn't; I would touch her forehead, not her neck. She was surprised. I explained that touching the brow was one of Dr Freud's standard methods for eliciting memory. She did not look satisfied but said I should proceed. Slowly I placed my palm to her forehead. There was no reaction. I asked if any thought had come to her.

'Only that your hand is very cold, Doctor,' she replied.

'I'm sorry, Miss Acton, but it seems we must resume talking. The touching has not succeeded.' I took my seat again. She looked almost cross. 'Can you tell me one thing?' I went on. 'You said that Mrs Banwell's back — her bare back — was as white as something you had seen before. But you did not say what.'

'And you would like to know?'

'That is why I asked.'

'Get out,' she said, sitting up.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Get out!' she cried and flung the bowl of sugar cubes at me. Then she stood and did the same with her saucer and cup. Or, rather, these she did not fling; she threw them overhand, as hard as she could. Fortunately, the two objects skewed off in opposite directions, the saucer flying to my left, the cup sailing high and to my right, breaking into several pieces when it hit the wall. Miss Acton picked up the teapot.

'Don't do that,' I said.

'I hate you.'

I stood as well. 'You don't hate me, Miss Acton. You hate your father for trading you to Banwell — in exchange for his wife.'

If I thought the girl's reaction to this would be to collapse in tears on her sofa, I was mistaken. She pounced like a feral cat, swinging the teapot at me. It hit me on my left shoulder. The force was impressive; she had tremendous strength for such a small thing. The top of the pot flew off. Boiling-hot water spilled onto my arm. It hurt, actually, considerably — the scalding water, not the pot — but I neither moved nor showed any reaction. This, I guess, incensed her. She swung the pot at me again, this time at my head.

I was so much taller than she that all I had to do was draw back slightly. The teapot missed its target, and I caught Miss Acton by the arm. Her momentum carried her around, so that her back was to me. I held her arms tightly against her waist, pinning her to me.

'Let me go,' she said. 'Let me go or I will scream.'

'And then? Will you tell them I attacked you?'

'I am counting to three,' she replied fiercely. 'Let me go or I will scream. One, two, th-'

I seized her throat, stopping the word in her mouth. I should not have done so, but my blood was up. It stifled any possibility of her screaming but produced an unexpected side effect as well. All the tension in her body drained away. She dropped the teapot. Her eyes opened wide, disoriented, her sapphire irises darting rapidly back and forth. I didn't know what was stranger: her assault on me or this sudden transformation. I released my hold on her immediately.

'I saw him,' she whispered.

'Can you remember?' I asked.

'I saw him,' she repeated. 'Now it's gone. I think I was tied up. I couldn't move. Oh, why can't I remember?' She turned at once to face me. 'Do it again.'

'What?'

'What you just did. I will remember, I'm sure of it.'

Slowly, never taking her eyes off mine, she undid her scarf, revealing her still-bruised neck. She clutched my right hand in her delicate fingers and drew it toward her neck, just as she had the first time I saw her. I touched the soft skin under her chin, careful to avoid the ugly bruises.

'Is there anything?' I asked.

'No,' she whispered. 'You have to do what you did before.'

I made no reply. I didn't know if she meant what I had done in the police station or what I had done a moment ago.

'Choke me,' she said.

I did nothing.

'Please,' she said. 'Choke me.'

I put my finger and thumb to the place on her neck where the reddish marks were. She bit her lip; it must have hurt. With these bruises covered, there was no sign of her previous attack. There was only her exquisitely turned neck. I squeezed her throat. Instantly her eyes closed.

'Harder,' she said softly.

With my left hand, I held the small of her back. With my right, I choked her. Her back arched, her head fell back. She gripped my hand tightly but did not try to pull it away. 'Do you see anything?' I asked. She shook her head faintly, her eyes still closed. I drew her in more firmly, pressing harder at her neck. Her breath caught in her throat, then stopped altogether. Her lips, vermilion, parted.

It is not easy for me to confess to the wholly improper reactions that came upon me. I had never seen a mouth so perfect. Her lips, slightly swollen, were trembling. Her skin was the purest cream. Her long hair was sparkling, like falling water turned gold by sunlight. I drew her still closer to me. One of her hands was resting on my chest. I don't know when or how it got there.

Suddenly I became aware of her blue eyes looking up into mine. When had they opened? She was mouthing a word. I hadn't realized. The word was stop.

I let go her throat, expecting her to gasp desperately for breath. She did not. Rather, she said, so softly I could barely hear it, 'Kiss me.'

I am obliged to admit I don't know what I would have done with this invitation. But there came, at that moment, a sudden loud rapping at the door, followed by the rattling of a key being worked frantically in the lock. I released her immediately. In the space of a second, she retrieved the teapot from the floor and placed it on the table, from which she also seized the note I'd left there. We both faced the door.

'I remember,' she whispered urgently to me, as the knob turned. 'I know who did it.'

At noon the same day, September 1, Carl Jung was taken to lunch by Smith Ely Jelliffe — publisher, doctor, and professor of mental diseases at Fordham University — at a club on Fifty-third Street overlooking the park. Freud was not invited; neither was Ferenczi, nor Brill, nor Younger. Their exclusion did not perturb Jung. It was another mark, he felt, of his rising international stature. A less magnanimous man would have been crowing about such a thing, rubbing the invitation in the others' noses. But he, Jung, took his duty of charity seriously, so he concealed.

It was painful, however, to have to hide so much. It had started the very first day out of Bremen. Jung had not actually lied, of course. That, he told himself, he would never do. But it was not his fault; they drove him to dissemble.

For example, Freud and Ferenczi had booked second- class berths on the George Washington. Was he to blame? Not wanting to shame them, he had been obliged to say that, by the time he bought his ticket, only first-class cabins were available. Then there had been his dream the first night on board. Its true message was obvious — that he was surpassing Freud in insight and reputation — so, out of solicitude for Freud's sensitive pride, he asserted that the bones he discovered in the dream belonged to his wife, rather than to Freud. In fact, he had cleverly added that the bones belonged not only to his wife but also his wife's sister: he wanted to see how Freud would react to that, given the skeletons in Freud's own closet. These were trivialities, but they had laid the groundwork for the far greater dissimulation that had become necessary since his arrival in America.