Jed Rubenfeld - The Interpretation of Murder

'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.'