Jed Rubenfeld - The Interpretation of Murder

'Yes,' she whispered.

'That's not vile,' I said. 'At least, not by comparison.'

My remark did not amuse her. I touched her cheek. She looked down. Taking her chin in my hand, I lifted her face to mine and bent toward her. She pushed me away.

'Don't,' she said.

She wouldn't meet my eyes. She withdrew from me and set about the picnic things, gathering the remains, packing them in the basket, shaking the crumbs from the blanket. In silence, we rode back to the stables and returned to the house.

So: all my fine ethical scruples about taking advantage of Nora's transferential interest in me — supposing she had any — melted away when I discovered she had confessed to a Sapphic desire, not an incestuous one. I was embarrassed to discover this about myself, but there was a logic to it. The moment I understood the truth, I no longer felt Nora would be kissing her father were she to kiss me. Perhaps I ought to have concluded she would be kissing Clara, but it didn't feel that way.

The main house was quiet now, the summer afternoon air perfectly still, the large interior rooms shadowy and empty. All the windows were shuttered again — to keep the sun off the drapery and furniture, I supposed. Nora, pensive and wordless, led me into the octagonal library with the splendidly carved woodwork. She locked the doors behind us and pointed to an armchair. I was meant to sit down in it — and did. Nora knelt on the floor in front of me.

For the first time since she had turned me away, she spoke. 'Do you remember when you first saw me? When I couldn't speak?'

I was unable to read her expression. She looked penitent and virginal at once. 'Of course,' I said.

'I didn't lose my voice.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'I only pretended,' she said.

I tried not to reveal how dry my mouth suddenly felt. 'That's why you could speak the next morning,' I said.

She nodded.

'Why?' I asked.

'And my amnesia.'

'What about it?'

'That wasn't real either,' she said.

'You had no amnesia?'

'I was pretending.'

The girl gazed up at me. I had the peculiar notion that she was someone I had never met before. I tried to reorient what I knew or thought I knew around these new facts. I tried to restructure all the various scenes of the last week, to make them cohere — but couldn't. 'Why?'

She shook her head, biting her lower hp.

'You were trying to ruin Banwell?' I asked. 'You were going to say he did it?'

'Yes.'

'But you were lying.'

'Yes. But the rest of it — almost all of it — was true.'

She seemed to be pleading for sympathy. I felt none. No wonder she said the transference had no application to her. I hadn't psychoanalyzed her at all. 'You made a fool of me,' I said.

'I didn't mean to. I couldn't — it's so — '

'Everything you told me was a lie.'

'No. He did try to take me when I was fourteen. He tried again when I was sixteen. And I did see my father with Clara. Right here, in this room.'

'You told me you saw your father and Clara at the Banwells' summerhouse.'

'Yes.'

'Why would you lie about that?'

'I didn't.'

My mind wheeled and groped. I remembered now: her parents' summerhouse was in the Berkshires, in Massachusetts. We were not at her parents' summerhouse at all. We were at the Banwells'. The servants knew her not because they were her servants, but because she had been here so often. The reality of the situation suddenly became fragile, as if it might crack. I stood. She took my hands and gazed up at me.

'You did those things to your own body,' I said. 'You whipped yourself. You scarred yourself. You burned yourself.'

She shook her head.

A series of recollections came to my mind. First, helping Nora into a carriage outside the hotel. My hands had closed entirely around her waist, including her lower spine, yet she had not flinched. When I touched her neck, to trigger her memories — which had all been a lie — I held her by the small of the back once more. Again she didn't wince. 'You have no injuries,' I said. 'You faked them. You painted them on, and allowed no one to touch you. You were never attacked.'

'No,' she said.

'No you weren't, or no you were?'

'No,' she repeated.

I seized her wrists. She gasped. 'I'm asking you a simple question. Were you whipped? I don't care who did it. Did any man — if not Banwell, then someone else — whip you? Yes or no. Tell me.'

She shook her head. 'No,' she whispered. 'Yes. No. Yes. So hard I thought I would die.'

If it hadn't been so awful, her changing her story four times in five seconds would have been funny. 'Show me your back,' I said.

She shook her head. 'You know it's true. Dr Higginson told you.'

'You fooled him as well.' I grasped the top of her dress, tore it, and let it fall to her shoulders. She gasped but didn't move or try to stop me. Her shoulders were unhurt. I saw the top of her bosom; bare, unhurt. I turned her around. There seemed to be no wounds on her back, but I couldn't see below her shoulder blades. A white, tight-laced corset covered her from the scapula down.

'Are you going to rip my bodice as well?' she asked.

'No. I've seen enough. I'm going back to the city, and you're coming with me.' She belonged, very possibly, in a sanatorium after all. If she did not, I didn't know where she belonged, but she had to be in someone's charge, and it wasn't mine. Nor was I going to be responsible for having shipped her off to the Banwells' country house. 'I'm taking you home.'

'Very well,' she said.

'Oh, not worried anymore about being locked up in an asylum? That was another lie?'

'No. It's true. But I have to leave here.'

'Do you think I'm a fool?' I asked, knowing the answer was yes. 'If you were in danger of being locked up, you would refuse to leave.'

'I can't stay the night here. Mr Banwell will find out eventually. The servants may wire from town this evening.'

'So what?' I asked.

'He will come to kill me,' she said.

I laughed dismissively, but she merely looked up at me. I examined her lying blue eyes as deeply as I could. Either she believed what she was saying, or she was the best prevaricator I'd ever seen — which I already knew to be the case. 'You are making a fool of me again,' I said, 'but I'm going to believe you mean what you say. Banwell knows you named him as your assailant; perhaps you have reason to fear him, even though you invented the attack. In any event, all the more reason I should take you home.'

'I can't go like this,' she said, looking down at her torn dress. 'I'll find something of Clara's.'

As she neared the doorway, I called out to her. 'Why did you bring me here?'

'To tell you the truth.' She opened the doors and ran up the marble stairway, clutching her dress to her chest with both hands. Fortunately, none of the help was there to see her. They would probably have called the police and reported a rape.

'I'm not saying he killed her, Your Honor. I'm just saying he's hiding something.' Detective Littlemore was speaking to Mayor McClellan in the latter's office late Friday afternoon. He was referring to George Banwell.

'What is your evidence?' asked an exasperated McClellan. 'Be quick, man; I can give you no more than five minutes.'

Littlemore considered telling the mayor about the trunk he and Younger had found in the caisson but decided against it, since the trunk had revealed nothing conclusive so far, and since he wasn't supposed to have gone down to the caisson in the first place. 'I just heard from Gidow, sir, in Chicago. He's checked with the police. He went through the whole city directory. He looked at the blue book. She didn't come from Chicago, sir. No one's ever heard of Elizabeth Riverford in Chicago.'