The Interpretation Of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld Read Free Book Online Page A

patients to my office, each of whom claimed to be
suffering from symptoms disturbingly similar to Priscilla's and all of whom
expected a diagnosis of unrequited love and a cure through the laying on of
hands.

 
        The train was pulling into City Hall
station when I finished. We had to change there for the BRT at Park Row, where
an elevated would take us all the way to Coney. No one commented on Priscilla's
case, and I began to think I must have made a fool of myself. Brill saved me.
He told Freud I deserved to know what 'the Master' thought of my analysis.
        Freud turned to me with, I hardly
dared to believe it, a twinkle in his eyes. He said that, a few minor points
aside, the analysis could not have been improved on. He called it brilliant and
asked my permission to refer to it in subsequent work. Brill clapped me on the
back; Ferenczi, smiling, shook my hand. This was not the most gratifying moment
of my professional life; it was the most gratifying moment of my entire life.
        I had never realized how splendid
City Hall station was, with its crystal chandeliers, inlaid murals, and vaulted
arches. Everyone remarked on it - with the exception of Jung, who suddenly
announced that he was not coming with us. Jung had made no comments either
during or after my case history. Now he said he needed to get to bed.
        'Bed?' Brill asked. 'You went to bed
last night at nine.' While the rest of us had retired well past midnight after
dining together in the hotel, Jung had gone to his room as soon as we arrived
and had not come down.
        Freud asked Jung whether he was all
right. When Jung replied that it was only his head again, Freud instructed me
to take him back to the hotel. But Jung declined assistance, insisting he could
easily retrace our steps. Hence Jung took the train back uptown; the rest of us
went on without him.

 
        When Detective Jimmy Littlemore
returned to the Balmoral Monday evening, one of the doormen had just come on
duty. This man, Clifford, had worked the graveyard shift the night before.
Littlemore asked if he knew the deceased Miss Riverford.
        Apparently Clifford had not received
the order to hold his tongue. 'Sure, I remember her,' he said. 'What a looker.'
        'Talk to her?' asked Littlemore.
        'She didn't talk much - not to me,
anyway.'
        'Anything special you remember about
her?'
        'I opened the door for her some
mornings,' said Clifford.
        'What's special about that?'
        'I'm off at six. The only girls you
see at that hour are working girls, and Miss Riverford didn't look like a
working girl, if you know what I mean. She would have been going out at, I
don't know, maybe five, five-thirty?'
        'Where was she going?' asked
Littlemore.
        'Beats me.'
        'What about last night? Did you
notice anybody or anything unusual?'
        'What do you mean unusual?' asked
Clifford.
        'Anything different, anybody you had
never seen before.'
        'There was this one fella,' said
Clifford. 'Left about midnight. In a big hurry. Did you see that fella, Mac?
Didn't look right, if you ask me.'
        The doorman addressed as Mac shook
his head.
        'Smoke?' said Littlemore to Clifford,
who accepted the cigarette, pocketing it since he wasn't permitted to indulge
on duty. 'Why didn't he look right?'
        'Just didn't. Foreigner, maybe.'
Clifford was unable to articulate his suspicion with any greater specificity,
but he asserted positively that the man did not live in the building.
Littlemore took a description: black hair, tall, lean, well dressed, high
forehead, mid- to late thirties, wearing glasses, carrying a black case of some
kind. The man climbed into a hackney cab outside the Balmoral, heading
downtown. Littlemore questioned the doormen for another ten minutes - none
remembered Clifford's black-haired man entering the building, but he might well
have gone up unremarked with a resident - and