'Of course. The answer, I believe, is no. Not yet, at any rate.' She returned the photograph of Nora to its place on the mantel, beside a picture of the girl's parents. 'In any event, Doctor, Nora is aware that I am — unhappy — in my marriage. I believe she is now trying to rescue me.'
'How?'
'Nora has a very fertile imagination. You must remember: even though to your man's eyes, Nora looks like a woman, a prize ready to be possessed, she is still just a child. A child whose parents have never had the slightest understanding of her. An only child. Nora has lived almost all her life in a world of her own.'
'You said she was trying to rescue you. How?'
'She may believe she can bring George down by telling the police he attacked her. She may even believe he did. Possibly we have overwhelmed the poor thing, and she is suffering from a delusion.'
'Or possibly your husband did attack her.'
'I don't say he is incapable of it. Far from it. My husband is capable of nearly anything. But in this case, it happens he didn't. George came home last night just after I returned from the party. It was eleven-thirty. Nora says she did not go to her room until quarter to twelve.'
'Your husband might have left home in the night, Mrs Banwell.'
'Yes, I know, he might well have on another night, but last night he didn't. He was too busy, you see, having his way with me. All night long.' She smiled, a very small, ironic, perfect smile, and rubbed one of her wrists unconsciously. Her long sleeves concealed her wrists, but she saw me looking. She took a deep breath. 'You might as well see.'
She came very near me, so near I became aware of the diamonds glinting in her earlobes and the fragrant smell of her hair. She pushed up her sleeves a little and revealed a painful rawness, of fresh origin, on both wrists. I have heard there are men who bind women for pleasure. I cannot be sure this was the meaning of the bruised skin Mrs Banwell showed me, but certainly it was the picture that came to mind.
She laughed lightly. The sound was wry, not bitter. 'I am a fallen woman, Doctor, and at the same time a virgin. Have you ever heard of such a thing?'
'Mrs Banwell, I am not a lawyer, but I believe you have more than ample grounds for divorce. Indeed, you may not be legally married at all, since there was never consummation.'
'Divorce? You don't know George. He would sooner kill me than let me go.' She smiled again. I could not help imagining what it would feel like to kiss her. 'And who would have me, Doctor, even if I could get away? What man would touch me, knowing what I have done?'
'Any man,' I said.
'You are kind, but you are lying.' She looked up at me. 'You are lying cruelly. You could be touching me right now. But you never would.'
I gazed down at her flawless, irredeemably charming features. 'No, Mrs Banwell, I never would. But not for the reasons you say.'
At that moment, Nora Acton appeared at the door.
Detective Littlemore's stride, after his interview with the coroner, lacked its customary snappiness. The news that Harry Thaw was still locked up in an asylum had come as a blow to him. Ever since he read the Thaw transcript, Littlemore had imagined that this case might be bigger than anybody realized and he might be on the verge of breaking it open. Now he didn't know if there was a case at all.
The detective had formed a high opinion of Mr Hugel, despite all his outbursts and idiosyncracies. Littlemore felt sure Hugel could solve the case. The police weren't supposed to just give up. The coroner in particular wasn't supposed to. He was too smart.
Littlemore believed in the police force. He had been on it for eight years, ever since he lied about his age in order to become a junior beat patrolman. It was the first real job he ever had, and he stuck to it. He loved living in the police barracks when he first joined up. He loved eating with the other cops, listening to their stories. He knew there were some rotten apples, but he thought they were the exceptions. If you told him, for example, that his hero Sergeant Becker shook down every brothel and casino in the Tenderloin for protection money, Littlemore would have thought you were pulling his leg. If you told him the new police commissioner wanted in on the game, he would have said you were crazy. In short, the detective looked up to his superiors on the force, and Hugel had let him down.
But Littlemore never turned against someone who disappointed him. His reaction was the opposite. He wanted to bring the coroner back on board. He needed to find something that would convince the coroner the case was still alive. Hugel had been certain that Banwell was the perpetrator from the start; maybe he was right all along.
To be sure, Littlemore believed in Mayor McClellan even more than he believed in Coroner Hugel, and the mayor had provided Banwell with a firm alibi on the night Miss Riverford was killed. But maybe Banwell had an accomplice — maybe a Chinese accomplice. Hadn't Banwell himself hired Chong Sing to work in the laundry of the Balmoral? And now it turned out that Miss Riverford's murderer might not have been Miss Acton's assailant: that's what Mr Hugel had just told him. So maybe Banwell's accomplice killed Miss Riverford, and Banwell attacked Miss Acton. It occurred to Littlemore that, based on this theory, Hugel would still have made a mistake. But the detective, while holding an elevated view of the coroner's powers, didn't regard him as infallible. And Hugel, Littlemore figured, wouldn't mind being wrong on a detail if he was right on the whole shebang.
So the detective, regaining the spring in his step, knew he had work to do. First, he went up the street to headquarters and found Louis Riviere in his basement darkroom. Littlemore asked Riviere if he could make a reverse image of the photograph that showed the mark on Elizabeth Riverford's neck. The Frenchman told him to come back at the end of the day to pick it up. 'And can you enlarge it for me too, Louie?' Littlemore asked.
'Why not?' replied Riviere. 'The sun is good.'
Next the detective headed uptown. He rode the train to Forty-second Street and from there strolled over to Susie Merrill's house. No one answered, so he took up a position down the block and across the street. An hour later, the hefty Susie let herself out, wearing another of her enormous hats, this one boasting a fruit medley. Littlemore followed her to a Child's Lunch Room on Broadway. She sat down at a booth alone. Littlemore waited until she was served to see if anyone else was going to show up. As Mrs Merrill was attacking her plate of corned beef hash, Littlemore slipped into the seat across from her.
'Hello, Susie,' he said. 'I found it — what you wanted me to find.'
'What are you doing here? Get out. I told you to keep me out of it.'
'No, you didn't.'
'Well, I'm telling you now,' said Susie. 'You want to get us both killed?'
'By who, Susie? Thaw's in a loony bin upstate.'
'Oh, yeah?'
'Yeah.'
'I guess he can't be your murderer then,' she observed.
'I guess not.'
'So there's nothing to talk about, is there?'
'Don't hold out on me, Susie.'
'You want to get yourself killed, that's fine with me, but leave me out of it.' Mrs Merrill rose, putting thirty cents on the table: a nickel for her coffee, twenty cents for her hash and poached egg, another nickel for the waitress. 'I've got a baby in the house,' she said.
Littlemore grabbed her arm. 'Think it over, Susie, I want answers, and I'll be coming back for them.'
Chapter Eighteen
Clara Banwell didn't show any of the discomfort I felt under Nora's frozen gaze. Filling the air with an easy flow of words, she said her good-byes, acting for all the world as if she and I had not been caught standing several inches too close together. She extended her hand to me, kissed Nora on the cheek, and thoughtfully added that we need not see her to the door; she didn't want to delay Nora's treatment a moment longer. Seconds later, I heard the front door close behind her.
