The Interpretation Of Murder Read Online Free

was still exquisitely beautiful - her arms
and legs still graceful - but her neck had an ugly redness around it, and her
figure was scored with the marks of a lash. Her wrists remained bound, thrown
back over her head. The coroner walked briskly to the body and placed a thumb
to those wrists, where a pulse would have been.
        'How was she - how did she die?'
Banwell asked in his gravelly voice, arms folded.
        'You can't tell?' replied the
coroner.
        'Would I have asked if I could tell?'
        Hugel looked under the bed. He stood
and gazed at the body from several angles. 'I would say she was strangled to
death. Very slowly.'
        'Was she -?' Banwell did not complete
the question.
        'Possibly,' said the coroner. 'I
won't be certain until I've examined her.'
        With a piece of red chalk, Hugel
roughed a circle seven or eight feet in diameter around the girl's body and
declared that no one was to intrude within it. He surveyed the room. All was in
perfect order; even the expensive bed linens were scrupulously tucked and
squared. The coroner opened the girl's closets, her bureau, her jewelry boxes.
Nothing appeared to be amiss. Sequined dresses hung straight in the wardrobe.
Lace underthings were folded neatly in drawers. A diamond tiara, with matching
earrings and necklace, lay in harmonious composition inside a midnight-blue
velvet case on top of the bureau.
        Hugel asked who had been in the room.
Only the maid who had found the body, the manager answered. Since then, the
apartment had been locked, and no one had entered. The coroner sent for the
maid, who at first refused to come past the bedroom door. She was a pretty
Italian girl of nineteen, in a long skirt and a full-length white apron. 'Young
lady,' said Hugel, 'did you disturb anything in this room?'
        The maid shook her head.
        Despite the body on the floor and her
employer looking on, the maid held herself straight and met her interrogator's
eyes. 'No, sir,' she said.
        'Did you bring anything in, take
anything out?'
        'I'm no thief,' she said.
        'Did you move any article of
furniture or clothing?'
        'No.'
        'Very good,' said Coroner Hugel.
        The maid looked to Mr Banwell, who
did not dismiss her. Instead, he addressed the coroner: 'Get it over with.'
        Hugel cocked an eye at the owner of
the Balmoral. He took out a pen and paper. 'Name?'
        'Whose name?' said Banwell, with a
growl that made the manager cower. 'My name?'
        'Name of deceased.'
        'Elizabeth Riverford,' Banwell
replied.
        'Age?' asked Coroner Hugel.
        'How do I know?'
        'I understood you were acquainted
with the family.'
        'I know her father,' said Banwell.
'Chicago man. Banker.'
        'I see. You wouldn't have his address,
by any chance?' asked the coroner.
        'Of course I have his address.'
        The two men stared at each other.
        'Would you be so good,' asked Hugel,
'as to provide me the address?'
        'I'll provide it to McClellan,' said
Banwell.
        Hugel began grinding his molars
again. 'I am in charge of this investigation, not the mayor.'
        'We'll see how long you're in charge
of this investigation,' answered Banwell, who ordered the coroner for a second
time to bring his business to a close. The Riverford family, Banwell explained,
wanted the girl's body sent home, a duty he would be seeing to immediately.
        The coroner said he could by no means
allow it: in cases of homicide, the decedent's body must by law be taken into
custody for an autopsy.
        'Not this body,' answered Banwell. He
instructed the coroner to ring the mayor if he required clarification of his
orders.
        Hugel responded that he would take no
orders except from a judge. If anyone tried to stop him from taking Miss
Riverford's body downtown for an autopsy, he would see that they were
prosecuted to the fullest extent of