The Angel of Darkness

by Caleb Carr

  “Ah,” Pinkie said. “My ‘Little Maid of Acadie.’ Yes, I rather like her, too—and she’s almost finished. You’ve a good eye, young Stevie.” He covered the unsettling picture on the easel back up. “Now, then, Laszlo, have you come just to check on my health, or for some other reason? I suspect the latter, as you are a man who always has reasons.”

  The Doctor looked away a little self-consciously. “Unkind, Albert,” he said with a smile. “But true. I told you, Sara, that Albert could have been a psychologist if he’d wished.” Pinkie shut the gas lamp off, and we started back for the front room. “The fact of the matter is, Albert, that we’ve come for a reference.”

  “A reference?”

  “We need a portraitist,” the Doctor said, as Miss Howard got back onto her flea-bitten throne. “One capable of doing a portrait not from life but from a detailed description.”

  Pinkie looked intrigued. “An unusual request, Laszlo.”

  “It’s my request, actually, Mr. Ryder,” Miss Howard said—and very wisely, too, for while Pinkie might’ve smelled something in the wind if the suggestion had come from a man, he’d take it as gospel coming from a woman—especially a handsome young woman. “It is—or rather was—a distant member of my family. She died rather suddenly. At sea. We’ve found that we have no painting, not even a photograph, to remember her by. My cousin and I—she lives in Spain, as did our dead relation—were discussing how much we wished we had some kind of an image for a keepsake, and the Doctor said it might be possible to do one from memories and descriptions.” She took a very fetching little sip of her beer. “Do you think it might? I have only the greatest admiration for your work, and would count your opinion as definitive.”

  Well, sir, Pinkie walked right into it: he grabbed hold of the lapels of his worn wool jacket, got most of the usual stoop out of his stance, and started to walk the floor as if his shoes were the best patent leather, instead of filled with straw and oatmeal. “I see,” he said thoughtfully. “An interesting idea, Miss Howard. Your relative was a woman, you say?”

  “Yes,” Miss Howard answered.

  “There are many excellent portraitists in New York. Ordinarily, Chase would be the first choice—do you know him, Kreizler?”

  “William Merritt Chase?” the Doctor asked. “We’ve only met briefly, but I know his work. And you’re right, Albert, he’s a superb choice—”

  “Actually,” Pinkie cut in, “I don’t think so. If your subject is a woman … and if you’re working from memories alone … I think you ought to have a woman do the job.”

  That brought a smile what was in no way an act to Miss Howard’s face. “What an excellent idea, Mr. Ryder!” She glanced up pointedly at the Doctor. “And how refreshing …” The Doctor simply rolled his eyes and turned away. “Do you happen to know one?”

  “I’m often taunted by my colleagues for seeing the work of as many artists as I can,” Pinkie answered, “whatever their background. Or sex. I believe there is merit in almost any serious picture, no matter who the painter may be. Yes, I believe I know the very person for you. Her name is Cecilia Beaux.” Miss Howard’s head cocked a bit, as if in recognition. “Do you know of her, Miss Howard?” Pinkie said, ready to be impressed.

  “I seem to know the name,” Miss Howard answered, wrestling with it. “Does she teach, by any chance?”

  “Yes, indeed. At the Pennsylvania Academy. She has a bright future there.”

  Miss Howard frowned. “No. That’s not it…”

  ” But she also conducts a private class,” Pinkie went on. “Twice a week, in New York. That is what made me think of her.”

  “Where is the class held?” the Doctor asked.

  “At the home of Mrs. Cady Stanton.”

  “Of course!” Miss Howard said, brightening. “Mrs. Cady Stanton and I are old friends. I’ve heard her speak of Miss Beaux—and in very admiring terms.”

  “As well she should,” Pinkie judged. “There is a quality in this woman’s work—well, Laszlo, I can’t do better than to say that she sees through to the very essence of the personality. She has been well appreciated in Europe, and will be here, in time. Remarkable portraits, really—particularly those of women and children. Yes, the more I think of it, Cecilia Beaux is the person for you.”

  “And I can reach her through Mrs. Cady Stanton,” Miss Howard said, looking at the Doctor. “First thing in the morning.”

  “Well, then”—the Doctor lifted his beer again—“our problem is solved. I knew we were right to come to you, Albert—you are a living compendium.” Pinkie flushed and smiled, then grew more serious as the Doctor said, “Now, Albert—about ‘The Race Track’—is it sold?”

  The two men fell to discussing the fate of the picture and drinking more beer. Pinkie hadn’t yet sold his unsettling work, but he insisted to the Doctor that he wouldn’t even consider doing so for a long time, as it was far from finished. (It wouldn’t be finished, by the way, until 1913.) It was the same story he told about all his canvases, and the Doctor displayed the same frustration what most collectors did on trying to bring Pinkie into the cold world of practicalities. Finally Dr. Kreizler dropped the subject and they all fell to talking of art in general, leaving me to wander into the studio again and have a little more of the delicious stew. As I ate, I looked up at the “Little Maid of Acadie” for a while longer, realizing for the first time that, in the vague sort of way what was our host’s style, it was the image of Kat.

  We stayed at Pinkie’s for another hour or so, everyone having a very pleasant time amidst those piles of relics, trash, and waste. A funny kind of life, that—the old boy lived just for his pictures, and was quite happy to have that much. Give him a little good, humble food, a room to work in, and the ability to take his long walks, and he was fine. Simple, you might say; to which I’d answer, yeah—so simple that only one in a million can manage it.

  CHAPTER 11

  The next morning Miss Howard called on the telephone to say that she’d contacted Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the famous old crusader who’d been pushing women’s rights for half a century. Miss Howard, it seemed, had known and admired Mrs. Cady Stanton (who always insisted on using her maiden name in addition to her husband’s) ever since childhood; and as Mrs. Cady Stanton had blue-blood relatives in the Hudson Valley, not far from where the Howard family estate was, Miss Howard had been able to make her acquaintance early on through mutual friends. Miss Howard had warned the Doctor that there were bound to be complications with Mrs. Cady Stanton being the agent of our meeting Miss Cecilia Beaux, as the sharp old bird was well aware of Miss Howard’s personal and professional connections. She’d know full well, for instance, that Miss Howard didn’t have any recently deceased relative, if Miss Howard even tried to float that lie. This left our friend with the job of trying to make her hiring of a portrait painter look thoroughly innocent. But Mrs. Cady Stanton also knew that Miss Howard was a private detective, and she instantly became fascinated by what she was sure was some kind of intrigue—so much so that she flat-out asked to be present for the sketching session what Miss Howard scheduled for Thursday evening at Number 808 Broadway. Left without a graceful way to tell Mrs. Cady Stanton to mind her own business, Miss Howard was forced to agree. So it looked as if we were going to have an additional guest for the occasion.

  Señora Linares, meanwhile, sent a note along to Miss Howard saying that her husband was definitely getting suspicious about her absences and that this was probably the last time she’d be able to get away: whatever we needed, we’d have to get it Thursday evening. As for the detective sergeants, their rousting of the Cubans had produced nothing except a lot of bad feeling, and they came away from the encounter convinced that nobody in the Cuban Revolutionary Party had the brains or the organizing skill to pull off anything like the kidnapping of Ana Linares. This little confirmation of his theory that the abductor was a woman acting alone sent the Doctor back into his study Wednesday afternoon, and by the following morning he still
hadn’t emerged; his food was taken in on trays, and he left strict orders not to be disturbed. Mr. Moore and Miss Howard dropped by at around two on Thursday to plan strategy for the sketching session. On finding the Doctor still closeted away, they asked me what was going on, to which I answered that I really didn’t know, being as I hadn’t seen him for twenty-four hours. It was time, however, to get things prepared for the evening to come, so together the three of us decided to go on up to the study and find out what was happening.

  Mr. Moore knocked on the door and got a sharp “Go away, please!” in return. He looked to me, but all I could do was shrug.

  “Kreizler?” Mr. Moore said. “What the hell’s going on, you’ve been in there for two days—and it’s time to get ready for the portrait!”

  A long, exasperated groan came from inside the study, and then the door unlocked from within. The Doctor, dressed in a smoking jacket and slippers, pulled it open, his face in a book. “Yes, and I could be in here for two years before I’d find anything really useful.” He looked up at us blankly, then, with a tilt of his head, signaled that we should follow him in.

  The study was lined on three sides with mahogany shelves and paneling, while the Doctor’s large desk sat in front of the window in the fourth wall. There were piles of open books everywhere, along with journals and monographs, also open. Some looked as though they’d been placed where they lay; some had clearly been thrown.

  “I have been attempting,” the Doctor announced, “to assemble some research with which we can make ourselves acquainted with the psychological peculiarities inherent in the woman-child relationship. And I have, not for the first time, been disappointed by my colleagues.”

  Mr. Moore grinned and cleared some journals off of a sofa, then plopped down onto it. “Well, that’s good news,” he said. “Then we don’t have to do any lessons this time around, eh?”

  He was referring to the Beecham case, during which the Doctor’d made everyone on the team read not only the basic psychological works of the day but also articles written by specialists what had particular application to the investigation. Cyrus and I had done most of the reading, too, just to keep up; and it had been, I don’t mind saying, tough going. There can’t be many people in the world what can blow wind like your average psychologists and alienists.

  The Doctor just frowned at Mr. Moore. “Assuming that you have retained even a portion of what you learned last year,” he said in some disgust, “then no, I don’t know that there’s a great deal more to be done. It’s idiotic. Perfectly sound, rational men, when they reach one specific instinct—the maternal—begin to blather like idiots! Listen to the august Herr G. H. Schneider—one of James’s favorites, John.” (Mr. Moore had been at Harvard with the Doctor and had also studied, though very briefly, with Professor James.) “‘As soon as a wife becomes a mother her whole thought and feeling, her whole being, is altered. Until then she had only thought of her own well-being, of the satisfaction of her vanity; the whole world appeared made only for her; everything that went on about her was only noticed so far as it had personal reference to herself—now, however’”—and here a wicked kind of sarcasm came into the Doctor’s voice—“ ‘the centre of the world is no longer herself, but her child. She does not think of her own hunger, she must first be sure that the child is fed—now, she has the greatest patience with the ugly, piping crybaby, whereas until now every discordant sound, every slightly unpleasant noise, made her nervous.’ I ask you, Sara, have you ever heard such utter rot?”

  Miss Howard’s face took on a resigned sort of look. “That is the common perception, I’m afraid.”

  The Doctor kept ranting. “Yes, but listen to what he goes on to say: ‘Thus, at least, it is in all unspoiled, naturally bred mothers, who, alas!, seem to be growing rarer.’ But does he go on to discuss the mental composition of those increasingly numerous ‘un-naturally bred’ mothers? He does not!” The Doctor set the book aside.

  The wheels in Miss Howard’s head had started to spin during this tirade: her brow wrinkled with an idea. “Doctor—” she started.

  But he wasn’t finished. Picking up another book, he bellowed, “And listen to James himself: ‘Parental love is an instinct stronger in woman than in man—the passionate devotion of a mother to a sick or dying child is perhaps the most simply beautiful moral spectacle that human life affords.’ And there ends the discussion! How would such men react, I should like to know, were I to show them the dozens of case studies I have compiled over the years of women beating their children, starving them, throwing them into lit ovens, or simply killing them outright? It’s unbelievable!”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Miss Howard tried again, “but I wonder—is there some usefulness in all this prejudicial thinking?”

  “Only by inference, Sara,” the Doctor scoffed, tossing the book he was holding onto a pile of others and then picking up the first volume again. “Just one brief comment of Schneider’s offers anything like illumination: ‘She’—meaning the mother—‘has, in one word, transferred her entire egotism to the child.’”

  “Yes, that’s it—exactly,” Miss Howard said. “Suppose you were one of those unnaturally bred mothers, one who’d lost her own children and couldn’t have any more—wouldn’t you feel the desire to somehow acquire another, if only to prove that you could adequately perform what is perceived by society to be the basic feminine function?”

  The Doctor’s face went blank, his hands fell to his side, and then he tossed the Schneider book onto the pile with the James. “And given the correct individual context,” he said, nodding, “that urge could grow to destroy normal inhibitory power …. Well—where have you been for the last two days, my oracle of the feminine psyche?” He walked over and put his hands on Sara’s shoulders. “It’s taken me God knows how many hours and pages of fruitless reading to reach that very conclusion!” The Doctor walked to the door and called out into the hall, “Cyrus! Draw me a bath, if you don’t mind, and lay out fresh clothes!” He turned to Miss Howard again. “The last time we worked together, Sara, we studied the known laws of psychology. This time, the biases of our society will force us to write some new ones, I suspect. You must keep careful notes and be always on hand, for yours is the perspective we most need. The rest of us cannot—”

  The Doctor was interrupted by the sound of light snoring coming from the sofa; we all turned to see Mr. Moore dozing. “Well,” the Doctor sighed, “let’s just say that certain other points of view will be far less crucial. However, let him rest, for the time being—because with any luck, we send him out onto the streets tomorrow.”

  Once the Doctor’d gotten himself cleaned up and dressed, we found that the only way to rouse Mr. Moore was to offer him a late lunch at Delmonico’s restaurant on Madison Square. Dr. Kreizler had been spending less time than usual at that establishment, because Mr. Charlie Delmonico, keeping pace with the steady uptown movement of fashion and money, had recently opened an additional restaurant on Forty-fourth Street; and though he swore to the Doctor that he had no plans to close the Madison Square branch, the Doctor believed that it was only a matter of time before that fate befell the place. So he’d been withholding as much as he could of his patronage (he could never have stayed away altogether) as a method of protest.

  Cyrus and I walked with the rest of them up to Madison Square. Though we never actually ate with the Doctor in the restaurant—that just wouldn’t have been possible in those days—we liked to go along, anyway, being as I’d been able to make friends with Mr. Ranhofer, the French head chef and bullyboy of the kitchen, and could usually net us a couple of containers of good food what we could eat in the park. We saw the Doctor and his guests to the main entrance, where Charlie Delmonico stood greeting patrons. Dr. Kreizler extended a hand what Mr. Delmonico shook, even as the Doctor announced half seriously, “I’m still not speaking to you, Charles.” Then, once they were inside, I ran around the corner to the delivery station.

  Winding my way through shouting men
carrying crates of vegetables and fruit, as well as ice-covered wooden pallets of fish and big sides of beef and lamb, I passed through a dark hallway and soon found myself in the brick kitchen, where dozens of pots and pans hung from the vaulted ceiling. I could already hear Mr. Ranhofer’s voice bouncing off the tiled walls: “No, no, no! Pig! I would not feed that to an animal! Why, why is it so impossible for you to learn?” The object of his bellowing, I soon saw, was a young dessert chef, who seemed to be taking all the insults very much to heart and looked ready to break down. Mr. Ranhofer—his huge round body wrapped in white and his big, similarly colored mustache bristling—tried to calm down a bit, then stepped over to the young man’s station. “Here, come, I show you—but only once!”

  Waiting for the exercise to be over, I glanced around at the enormous space, where some twenty or thirty chefs, assistant chefs, and assistant assistants were all working like mad and hollering at the top of their lungs—sometimes to nobody at all that I could see. Different-colored flames occasionally shot up from the stoves, and the hundred different smells of the place—some tasty, some just peculiar—blended together into one unidentifiable aroma. The whole joint had the general air of some of the insane asylums I’d visited with the Doctor—except that in the elegant dining rooms upstairs, people were paying top dollar for what came out of this madhouse.

  Eventually I saw an opening and grabbed at Mr. Ranhofer’s apron. “Say! Mr. Ranhofer!”

  He turned and, after a quick smile, frowned. “Please—Stevie—go away! Not today, it is lunacy—lunacy!”

  “Yeah, looks like it,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “He’ll kill me—that Charles will kill me! Three private luncheons and then to follow a dinner, for eighty! How in God’s name can any human manage such things?”