by Caleb Carr
“I submit that tonight would be more useful,” Dr. Kreizler replied. “If they have the child, they are far more likely to plan its fate in the dead of night than during the day.” CUBAN REVOLUTIONARIES went on the right-hand side of the circle.
“Then there’s the Spaniards themselves,” Mr. Moore said. “Personally, I like them the best—they remove the kid and keep the mother in the dark, figuring she’s not up to being part of it.”
“And make no announcement of what’s happened?” Miss Howard said. “Why frame our country and then fail to report the crime?”
Mr. Moore shrugged. “They may be waiting for the right moment. You know the situation in Washington, Sara—you said it yourself, McKinley’s still looking for some way out of this damned war. Maybe they’re waiting until he has no way out.”
“In that case, why not remove the child later?” Miss Howard asked. “Or sooner? There was more war hysteria in the spring than there is right now.”
“Perhaps they’ve simply mistimed their play,” the Doctor offered, writing SPANISH WAR PARTY on the board. “Spain is hardly being run by geniuses at the moment. Those who favor war are either psychopathic sadists like Weyler”—by which he meant the infamous General Weyler, the governor-general of Cuba who’d begun the practice of putting Cuban peasants into what they called “concentration camps,” where they couldn’t help the rebels but could die like flies of disease and starvation—“or deluded monarchists, dreaming of the days of the conquistadores.” The Doctor stood away from the board. “So—that completes the list of suspects. One of the groups hires a professional, he abducts the child, and it is taken into hiding. By—”
“The woman on the train,” Miss Howard answered quickly. “She’s the caretaker—unless you think the señora was mistaken about seeing the baby.”
“A different woman might have been,” the Doctor answered. “But this woman? No. She has the presence of mind to come here and discuss the affair in detail, even though she’s aware of the potential consequences should her husband discover it. This is not a woman given to either delusions or hysteria. No, when she says she saw the child, I believe her.” Inclining toward the bottom of the circle on the board, the Doctor wrote THE WOMAN ON THE TRAIN:, the colon showing that he intended to write more. “All right, John,” he continued. “Explain this mysterious woman in a political context.”
Mr. Moore looked to be at a loss. “Well, she’s—she’s just what Sara says. A caretaker. She was dressed like a governess, the señora said—probably another professional, hired for the job.”
“A job which she undertakes on the last car of the Third Avenue Elevated in the middle of the night? It won’t do, John, and you know it. Though I’m inclined to agree with you about her being a professional of some kind.” He wrote the words GOVERNESS OR NURSE after the last phrase as he added, “But for entirely different reasons.”
“She could’ve been taking the train down to the Cubans’ headquarters,” Mr. Moore protested.
“John,” Miss Howard said, fairly condescendingly, “anyone who goes to the trouble of hiring a kidnapper and a nurse can certainly afford to pay for a cab.”
“Have you ever met those Cuban Revolutionary fellows, Sara?” Mr. Moore answered, topping her condescension. “I have—they’re a moth-eaten group, if ever I saw one. Whatever money Hearst is using to spread war fever, he isn’t giving much of it to them.”
“John’s right about that much,” Marcus said. “Maybe they’ve run out of funds.”
“Which still does not explain what the devil she was doing on the train, in the first place,” the Doctor answered. “The general idea is to keep the child hidden, isn’t it? Not parade her around before half of the city. There must be a reason why they would allow her to be seen in public, and that reason must have a political dimension.”
Lucius spoke up: “Well—there’s really only one.”
The Doctor turned. “Yes?”
“They wanted the girl to be seen.”
Dr. Kreizler nodded once. “Yes. Thank you, Detective Sergeant. That is, in fact, the only possibility.” The words DELIBERATE DISPLAY then went up. “Someone, somewhere—perhaps even the señora—was supposed to see the child, so that the kidnappers could prove they actually have her and are in earnest. And the best place to do such a thing would be in a very public place. And so we arrive at our final destination …” The Doctor moved up to the left-hand side of the circle. “Having demonstrated that they have the child, our abductors make their demands known. Yet the señora seems to think that they have not.”
“Consul Baldasano and Linares could be lying to her,” Lucius said. “They may have received the demands and don’t intend to meet them. They don’t want a stink, so they lie to the mother.”
The Doctor was busy writing DEMANDS: as he weighed this. “Yes. Again, Lucius, the only possibility, really, unless Moore is right and they’re biding their time. But whether they’re waiting or have been refused, what is it that each group would want? A simple kidnapping for ransom is again ruled out here, because one doubts that the Spanish would fail to meet mere monetary demands. We must stick to the political dimension—which means what?”
“Well,” Mr. Moore said. “The American jingoes and the Cubans want just one thing—war. It’s not really a matter of ‘demands’ as such.”
The Doctor spun around and pointed an accusing finger at his old friend, smiling. “Precisely. Thank you, Moore, for eliminating two of your own suggested culprits.” He turned round again, writing WAR under DEMANDS:, as another lost look came over Mr. Moore’s face.
“What’re you talking about, Kreizler?”
“You abduct a child. Your goal is a diplomatic incident. The child’s disappearance is designed to be the cause—her absence alone is important. Beyond that, she is a liability.”
Miss Howard’s face lit up. “Yes. And in that case—why is the child still alive?”
“Exactly, Sara,” the Doctor answered. “For both the American war party and the Cubans, the living child is only a breathing risk—she can only contribute to their capture. If either group were responsible, the Linares girl would be at the bottom of one of our rivers by now, or perhaps, like the detective sergeants’ discovery of Sunday night, in pieces at the bottom of several rivers. Of all the potential political culprits, only the Spanish would have any interest in keeping the child alive—yet they also have the greatest interest in keeping her out of sight and the most resources with which to make sure she stays so. And thus”—the Doctor drew a hard line back to the top of the board—“a circle. Leading nowhere. Time, as I say, may reveal it to be the correct analysis, but…” He paused, looking at his work; then he said, “Detective Sergeant?” and inclined his head toward Lucius.
“Doctor?”
“Have you made a copy of this diagram?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Keep it, in the unlikely event that we should need to refer to it again.” The Doctor picked up an eraser.
“What are you saying, Dr. Kreizler?” Marcus asked.
“I am saying, Marcus,” he answered, starting to wipe away what he’d written with energetic strokes, “that it is all—so—much—poppycock!”
When the Doctor stepped back from the board again, only two sets of words remained: AN ABDUCTION toward the top of the board and THE WOMAN ON THE TRAIN: GOVERNESS OR NURSE at the bottom. “Remove all the improbable details contained in the circle, and we are left with a far more useful geometric configuration.” He proceeded to slowly and deliberately drag the chalk from the words at the top of the board to those at the bottom; “A straight line.”
We all looked at the thing for a few seconds: it seemed like there was an awful lot of empty space on that board, all of a sudden.
Mr. Moore sighed, putting his feet up. “Meaning exactly what, Kreizler?”
The Doctor turned, his face darkened by genuine apprehension. “It’s understandable that you seek to impose a political explanation
on this crime, John, because the alternative is, in fact, far more disturbing and volatile. Yet it is also far more likely.” He pulled out his cigarette case and offered its contents to Miss Howard, Marcus, and Mr. Moore in turn. I was dying for a smoke myself, but it’d have to wait. After they’d all lit their sticks, the Doctor took to pacing in his usual way, and he was still going when he announced, “I believe that the detective sergeants’ analysis of the physical evidence is, as always, flawless. Señora Linares was in all probability attacked by another woman, whose use of a piece of pipe she found on the scene, as well as her willingness to strike in a public place in broad daylight, indicates spontaneity. That she did not injure the señora more seriously is a testament to blind luck and the limits of her own strength, I suspect, and not to any professional skill.”
“All right,” Mr. Moore answered, though he was clearly unconvinced. “In that case, Kreizler, I’ve got only one question, though it’s a big one: why?”
“Indeed.” The Doctor walked over and wrote WHY? in large letters on the left-hand side of the board. “A woman takes a child. She demands no ransom. And several days later she is observed in public, apparently caring for the girl as if—as if—” The Doctor seemed to be searching for the right words.
It was Miss Howard that gave them to him: “As if she were her own.”
The Doctor turned his gleaming black eyes on Miss Howard for a moment. “As always, gentlemen,” he said, “Sara’s unique perspective cuts to the heart of the matter. As if the child were her own. Think of it: whoever this woman is, she has managed to abduct, out of all the children in New York, one whose disappearance could cause an international crisis. Bend your mind to it, for a moment, Moore—if there is no political dimension to the abduction, what does that tell us?”
Mr. Moore scoffed. “That she didn’t do her damned homework, that’s what it tells us.”
“Meaning?”
It was Cyrus’s turn to step in: “Meaning, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Moore, that, faced with the situation she was in, she couldn’t do anything but obey the impulse of the moment.” He glanced around at the others, then smiled a bit and looked to the floor. “Something I know a little about…”
“Precisely, Cyrus,” the Doctor said, starting to note things under the WHY? heading. “Thank you. It means that she was in the grip of an urge, a spontaneous urge that destroyed any possibility not only of self-control but of premeditation, of researching her victim. Of, as Moore rather caustically puts it, doing her homework. What could possibly cause such recklessness?”
“Well, I hate to state the obvious,” Marcus said, “but—she apparently wanted a baby.”
“True,” the Doctor said with a quick nod, adding this thought to the WHY? column. Then he erased the notations at the bottom of the board and moved them up to the middle-right-hand side. There were now three general categories up top—WHY?, AN ABDUCTION, and THE WOMAN ON THE TRAIN: GOVERNESS OR NURSE—with space to the extreme right for one more.
“But not just any baby,” Lucius added quickly. “Apparently, she wanted this baby.”
“And quite desperately,” Miss Howard said.
“Good,” the Doctor pronounced; then he scratched THE LINARES CHILD in the top-right-hand corner of the board. “But you must all slow down—we run ahead of ourselves.” He stood back, examining the board with the others. “It begins to take shape,” he murmured, putting his cigarette out in an ashtray with a deeply satisfied stamp. “Yes, Detective Sergeant, she wants the Linares child. But as John has said, she cannot have known who the Linares child was—and your own investigation demonstrates the spontaneity of the attack. Put those elements together, and what conclusion do you reach?”
Lucius gave that matter just a few seconds’ consideration: “That it’s not who the Linares child was that mattered—it’s what she was.”
“What she was?” Mr. Moore said, confused and still not completely convinced of the usefulness of the entire exercise. “She was a baby, is what she was—and we’ve already said that the woman wanted one.”
Miss Howard laughed. “Spoken like a truly confirmed bachelor. She wasn’t just a baby, John—every baby is different, every one has his or her own characteristics.” She turned to the board. “And so the character of the child can tell us about the character of her abductor,”
“Brava!” the Doctor fairly hollered, moving to the right-hand side of the board. “Continue, Sara—you are the one to take the lead here.”
Miss Howard got up and assumed the job of pacing in front of the chalkboard. “Well,” she said as the Doctor stood poised with the chalk. “We know that Ana was—happy. Cheerful by nature. Noisy, perhaps, but noisy in a way that charmed people.”
“Go on, go on,” the Doctor said, scratching away.
“In addition, she was healthy—she’d had every advantage and seemed to embody all of them.”
“Yes?”
“And bright. At a precociously early age she was amused by things that we consider great works of art but which were, to her, intriguing in an ingenuous way. There’s a sensitivity there.”
Mr. Moore grumbled, “You’re talking about her like she’s a person, for God’s sake …”
“She is a person, John,” the Doctor said, still writing. “Difficult as that may be for you to imagine. Anything else, Sara?”
“Only—only that she would have been a logical target, I’m afraid. Her gregariousness would, as I say, have attracted attention—admiring attention from most—”
“But covetous envy from one,” Marcus said, letting out a big cloud of smoke that caused his brother to cough hard. “Oh. Sorry, Lucius,” he said, though without much genuine concern.
“Excellent,” the Doctor said. “More than enough for a good beginning. Now, then—let us turn the light of these observations onto our shadowy woman on the El. We have already determined that she did not research her victim. Rather, she experienced an apparently irresistible spontaneous urge to immediately take this child, no matter whose she was. Any other conclusions?”
“She probably hasn’t got any children of her own,” Marcus offered.
“Granted,” the Doctor answered, noting it. “But many women don’t, and they are able to restrain themselves from kidnapping.”
“Perhaps she can’t have any children of her own,” Miss Howard said.
“Closer. But why not adopt one? The city abounds with unwanted children.”
“Maybe she can’t do that, either,” Lucius said. “A legal complication—probably a criminal record, if her behavior here is any indication.”
The Doctor considered it. “Even better. A woman physically incapable of childbirth, who is legally prevented from adopting an unwanted child because of a criminal record.”
“But it’s deeper than that,” Miss Howard murmured thoughtfully. “She doesn’t want an unwanted child. She’s drawn to this child in particular, a child who could not be more wanted. And with good reason, given the child’s healthy, vivacious character. So if we assume that all of this touches some chord …” She paused.
“Sara?” the Doctor asked.
Miss Howard seemed to shiver a bit. “I’m sorry. But there’s—almost a sense of tragedy about it. Could she have had children, Doctor, and lost them—say, to disease or poor health?”
The Doctor mulled that one over. “I like it,” he finally said. “It’s consistent with her choice of victim. Most of us—with the exception of the likes of Moore, there—feel a certain longing when we see such a child as Ana Linares. However unconscious or remote. Could tragedy have been the experience that made this woman’s longing irresistible? Is this to be the healthy, happy child she has always wanted?”
“And apparently feels entitled to,” Marcus added.
“What about the clothing?” Lucius asked. “If Señora Linares is right, and she was some kind of nurse or governess—”
“Ah, Detective Sergeant, you have read my thoughts,” the Doctor said. “For what have we
just described, if not a woman who would be drawn toward caring for children as a profession?”
“Oh, no,” Mr. Moore said, rising and backing away. “No, no, no, I smell where this is going …”
The Doctor laughed, “Indeed you do, Moore! But why should you be afraid of it? You proved during the Beecham case that you have a positive talent for such work!”
“I don’t care!” Mr. Moore answered, his horror only half theatrical. “I hated every minute of it! I’ve never had to do such boring, miserable drudgery—”
“Nevertheless, it will be where the hard part of our investigation begins,” the Doctor answered. “We will visit every nursing and governess service in this city, as well as every hospital, every foundling home, and every lying-in facility. The woman is here, with the child, and if Señora Linares’s eyes are to be trusted—as I believe they are—then she holds a position in the field somewhere.”
Lucius’s face had screwed up into a human question mark. “But—Doctor. We don’t even have a name. Just a verbal description. I mean, if we had a photograph, a picture of some kind—”
The Doctor set his chalk down, then slapped the white dust from his hands and vest. “And why shouldn’t we?”
Lucius looked even more confused. “Why shouldn’t we what?”
“Have a picture,” the Doctor answered simply. “After all, we have an extremely vivid description.” Picking his jacket up, he slipped it back on as he continued, “You gentlemen have missed the major feature of this case. What was the principal thing we lacked in the Beecham affair, the principal thing that is lacking in most crimes of this nature? An accurate description of the criminal. Yet we have one—and my guess is that, put to the test, Señora Linares’s description will be even more detailed than it has been thus far.”
“But how would we translate that into a visual image?” Miss Howard asked.
