The Angel of Darkness

by Caleb Carr

  Yes, John,” Miss Howard said, “but a living demonstration that the simple accident of being born a woman doesn’t necessarily bring with it a talent for nurturing—or even an inclination toward it.”

  “And by using her case, along with similar examples,” the Doctor added, “we can dispense with Professor James’s sentimental drivel about the parental instinct being stronger in women than in men and the nobility of the mother caring for the sick child. Lydia Sherman had sick children, to be sure, but she’d made them sick by poisoning them with arsenic—and her noble ministrations consisted of further doses of the same poison. No, I am increasingly brought back to a single brief statement that I encountered several days ago—”

  Miss Howard guessed what he was referring to: “Herr Schneider’s remark about maternal egotism.”

  The Doctor nodded. “For the benefit of the rest of you, Schneider noted that the mother, once her baby is delivered, transfers—and I quote—‘her entire egotism to the child.’”

  “How’s that supposed to help us?” Mr. Moore asked. “The children at the Lying-in Hospital weren’t the Hunter woman’s, and neither is the Linares kid.”

  “But the way in which she took Ana,” Lucius said, “indicates that she may have felt—how did you put it, Marcus? That she felt entitled to the child?”

  “Correct.” I heard the Doctor snap his cigarette case closed. “And never forget her behavior on the train—caring for the child as if it were her own. Then, too, such psychological bonding often occurs between nurses and patients in general—especially where children are concerned. This is unquestionably not a woman to let something like what Sara refers to as the ‘accident of birth’ prevent her from feeling maternal in an intensely proprietary fashion about other people’s children. That much is obvious, John.”

  “Oh,” Mr. Moore said, lighting up a stick of his own. “Sorry I missed it, then.” I could hear him letting out some smoke, and then he spoke more pointedly to the Doctor. “But you’re mixing something up, Kreizler. Let’s say all this is true, and she has these feelings about any kid she takes a shine to—for whatever reason, she ‘transfers her egotism to them.’ Fine—but unlike your very considerate example of my personal habits, she starts from a nurturing attitude and moves toward a destructive one. None of the kids are sick when she gets hold of them—but they end up dead. What happens? They can’t be ‘in the way,’ like Lydia Sherman’s children were—these are kids she’s picked out and chosen to put herself close to. So what happens?”

  “Excellent, Moore,” the Doctor said. “That is the true mystery of this case. The woman invests her entire self-worth in these infants; yet she destroys them. What, indeed, happens?”

  “Could it be a form of indirect suicide?” Lucius asked.

  “No—too easy,” Miss Howard said. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, Lucius. How many times can you kill yourself, even by proxy? I think—I think we need to stay with the ideas we were discussing at the museum, Doctor. The duality—woman as creator alongside woman as destroyer.”

  A general sort of “Wha—?” sound came out of the others all at once, to which Miss Howard and the Doctor gave out with a brief summary of their thoughts outside the Metropolitan.

  “Then you’re saying that some part of this woman identifies with the notion of a woman having destructive power?” Marcus asked.

  “Why not?” Miss Howard said simply. “Haven’t you ever in your life identified with a destructive male figure, Marcus?”

  “Well, of course, but—”

  I didn’t turn, but I could tell that Miss Howard was probably shaking her head in disappointment; I hoped she wasn’t going for the derringer. “But you were a boy,” she said, fairly bitterly. Marcus didn’t answer—he didn’t have to. “Which means that girls don’t have destructive or angry thoughts,” Miss Howard went on, “and so never dream of having the power to embody them. Correct?”

  “Well,” Marcus answered, a bit sheepishly, “when you say it like that, it sounds fairly stupid.”

  “Yes,” Miss Howard answered, “it does.”

  “And it is,” the Doctor added. “My apologies, Detective Sergeant. But, as Sara said to me, look at the paradoxical examples young girls are offered when growing up—they are taught, on the one hand, that theirs is the pacific, nurturing sex. No outlet is provided for their feelings of anger and aggression. Yet they are human—it is, as Sara says, no more than stupidity to believe that they don’t experience anger, hatred, feelings of hostility. And as they do, they also hear different sorts of stories, from oblique sources—mythology, history, legend—of cruel goddesses and wanton queens, whose very creative or supreme power permits them to indulge-in rage, revenge, and destruction. What lesson would you take from it all?”

  There was a break in the talk, and then Lucius said, very softly, “The iron fist in the velvet glove …”

  “Detective Sergeant,” the Doctor said good-naturedly. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you come so close to poetry. An excellent image, truly—is it your own?”

  “Oh. No, I”—Lucius squirmed a bit—“I think I heard it somewhere.”

  “Well, it fits admirably,” the Doctor said. “Deadly anger, hidden behind a veil that approximates as closely as possible our society’s notion of ideal, or at least acceptable, feminine behavior.”

  “That’s very neat,” Mr. Moore said impatiently. “But it still doesn’t answer the question: Why, if you’re feeling all this shrouded anger, do you decide to go out and be a mother, or a natal nurse, or kidnap somebody else’s kid to take care of it like it’s your own? Doesn’t sound very angry to me.”

  “We’re not suggesting that it is, John,” Miss Howard said. “Not at that stage. Taking care of the child is the manifestation of the first half of the character—the one that’s acceptable, the one that’s responding to the constant statement that women are supposed to be nurturing, and aren’t fulfilling their basic role if they’re not. That’s when the transference of ego occurs.”

  “Okay,” Mr. Moore said, now pounding one foot on the step of the carriage so that the whole thing shook. “So where the hell does all this ‘evil goddess’ garbage come in?!”

  “Let me put a case to you, John,” the Doctor said. “You are such a woman. You have perhaps had your own children, but lost them—through disease, mishap, any number of misfortunes that may or may not have been your fault, but have certainly left you feeling that your own most basic role in life and in society has been taken away. You’ve been left to feel utterly worthless, even to yourself. So you find other ways to care for children. You become a nurse. But something happens—something that threatens your renewed ability to fulfill your primeval function. Something that enrages you so that you feel—to use Marcus’s term—entitled to become the wrathful, primitive goddess, the taker as well as the giver of life.”

  “And what is that something?” Mr. Moore asked anxiously, suspecting, now, that an answer was close.

  We’d reached Twenty-third Street, and were passing, on the northwest corner, the old, decaying Grand Opera House. Bolted to its Eighth Avenue side was a huge, ugly sign composed of electrical light bulbs what spelled out the hall’s current entertainment staple: VAUDEVILLE.

  I heard the Doctor say, “Ah, the old Grand,” in a voice that made me wonder if he was truly recalling fond memories or was just tormenting Mr. Moore. “There used to be some marvelous productions in there …”

  “Kreizler!” Mr. Moore was reaching his limit. “What is that something?”

  The Doctor’s voice stayed quiet: “Sara?”

  “There’s really only one possibility,” Miss Howard said. “The children don’t cooperate. At least, from her point of view they don’t. She tries to nurture, but they don’t accept it. They cry. Develop health, problems. Reject her attention and her care, no matter how much effort she puts into it. She tells herself it’s their fault. She has to. Because the alternative—”

  Mr. Moore finally pi
cked it up: “The alternative—is to admit that she has no nurturing skills.” He let out a low whistle. “My God … do you mean to tell me that this woman has structured her whole life around something she can’t do?”

  “Given the way that she has, in all probability, been raised,” the Doctor said, “what choice has she? In the face of failure she must always try again, with another candidate and even harder.”

  “I wonder, John,” Miss Howard added pointedly, “if you understand how truly difficult, how unbearable, it is to be a woman and acknowledge that you have no talent for maternity, in this society. In any society. How can most women acknowledge such a thing even to themselves? Oh, you can choose to say that you won’t be a mother—but to have it openly displayed that you can’t?”

  Mr. Moore had to give that a minute; and when he came back to the conversation, it wasn’t very gracefully. “But—well, I mean—why can’t she? What—well, what’s wrong with her?”

  I was sure I could hear the derringer cocking at that point; but it was only Miss Howard’s clicking tongue. Feeling compelled to turn around, I saw the others staring in amazement at Mr. Moore. “You really are insufferable sometimes, John,” Miss Howard spat out. “That’s a marvelously enlightened attitude. ‘What’s wrong with her? Why, I ought to—” She balled a fist, but the Doctor stayed her hand.

  “If, Moore,” he said, “by ‘what’s wrong with her?’ you in fact mean, what context could possibly have produced such a woman, then that is what we must determine. And the process won’t be helped by presuming fault or evil on the woman’s part. Remember—we must, as we did in our last case, try to see the situation through her eyes, understand it and experience it as she must have.”

  “Oh.” Mr. Moore’s voice had grown what you might call contrite. “Yes. Right.”

  “We’ve reached Fourteenth Street,” Lucius announced. “Just a few blocks to Bethune.”

  Turning west on Fourteenth and heading for Greenwich Street, we started to make our way past the shuttered packing houses of the meat district, where the stench of blood had so completely seeped into every cobblestone and building over the years that even on a pleasant, cool Sunday afternoon it was very noticeable: not exactly a good omen for what lay in front of us. Once we were south of Horatio Street on Greenwich, the structures around us turned back into residential houses, some three and four stories tall, some just old two-story jobs with dormers what seemed almost as big as the houses themselves. Trees of varying sizes and ages lined the blocks, and some of their branches had reached clear out into the street, only to be snapped off at the ends by passing traffic.

  As we moved through all this scenery, we began to discuss what strategy we should adopt once we arrived at Number 39 Bethune Street. The first move, made at the Doctor’s suggestion, was for me to draw Frederick up to a halt and jump down to raise the cover over the calash’s seat. Since not all of us were going to knock on the Hunters’ door—that would’ve looked a bit ridiculous—it would be best for those what stayed behind to be out of sight. That figured to be me, Cyrus, and at least one other person; and as we got back under way, it looked like Miss Howard was the only logical choice. Everybody agreed the detective sergeants should take the lead, and that the Doctor should accompany them: if Nurse Hunter and her husband still lived at Number 39 and were at home, it would be best to let Lucius and Marcus take a strict law enforcement line, being as the Linares child would probably be somewhere in the house and fairly easy to locate. And on the chance that the child needed medical help, the Doctor should be right there.

  If the Hunters still lived in the house but were not at home, on the other hand, the Isaacsons would question the neighbors on when the couple were likely to get back, while the rest of us kept an eye out for their approach. Finally, if the Hunters had moved on to another address, Lucius and Marcus again said that it would be best to let them flash their badges and frighten the new tenants or owners into saying where their predecessors had gone.

  As there wouldn’t be room for four of us to hide in the carriage while the detective sergeants and the Doctor approached the house, it was decided that Mr. Moore, too, would go along. Miss Howard was sort of miffed, at first, that she wasn’t going to be in the door-knocking delegation. But the Doctor explained that, given the type of woman we were speculating that Nurse Hunter was, the presence of another female was only likely to throw sand into the wheels of progress. This was especially true given what the woman had been through with the other nurses at the Lying-in Hospital. There was no real way for Miss Howard to argue with this reasoning, so she let the matter go. By way of consolation, I told her that I’d be sure to park the calash right up close to the entrance of the house, so that even though she, Cyrus, and I would be out of sight behind the raised cover, we’d be able to monitor whatever went on when and if Nurse Hunter came to greet the others.

  All in all, the thing seemed pretty straightforward; and I began to wonder, as we turned off of Greenwich Street onto Bethune and once again came within sight of the waters of the Hudson, why all the philosophical conversation had even been necessary. It seemed like the detective sergeants were just going to go in, get the kid if she was there, and then quietly return her to her mother. Open and shut, you might say.

  That, I soon discovered, was what alienists meant when they talked about “delusions.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Number 39 Bethune was a three-story, red brick job, with a few window boxes full of what looked like they were trying hard to be flowers. That should’ve tipped me off to the whole thing right away: it’d been a cool, moist June, but there’d been days of warmth and sun, too, and there was no reason for the plants in those boxes to look so sorry—unless, of course, somebody didn’t know how to tend to them. Anyway, I drew the calash around and in front of the building, which was on the south side of the street, then pulled to a halt just past the two or three small steps that led to the front door. Mr. Moore and Marcus jumped down from their perches, allowing the Doctor and Lucius to get out. Then Cyrus and I took their places inside and, together with Miss Howard, peered out through the small plate of glass that was stitched into the back of the carriage’s cover. On the sidewalk, the two detective sergeants buttoned up their jackets, got their badges ready, and tried to look their most businesslike, while the Doctor and Mr. Moore followed directly behind.

  They all stepped up to the door, and Marcus gave it a sharp rap.

  “Here we go …” Miss Howard whispered.

  A few minutes went by. Marcus knocked again. We could hear the sound of a voice yelling from an upper floor: a rasping, plaintive sort of sound, which I’d’ve said was being made by a man somewhere in his fifties. The voice stopped; Marcus knocked again.

  In a sudden, harsh sort of motion the door opened, and into its frame stepped a shapely female figure in a red patterned dress, with a grey apron tied around the neck and waist. The red of the dress ran right up to a black lace collar at the neck, and above the neck was a face we’d all come to know well:

  It was the woman in Miss Beaux’s sketch; it was the woman whose history we already knew peculiarly well; it was Nurse Elspeth Hunter herself.

  “My Lord,” Cyrus whispered next to me. I turned for an instant to see his face full of troubled wonder. “Can it really be this easy …?”

  Up on the small stoop, which wasn’t but ten feet from us, Nurse Hunter’s brilliant golden eyes flitted from face to face, taking in the men before her with a look what said her brain was working hard at a whole set of problems. She started wiping her wet hands on the lap of her apron, and just as I expected her to give out with some expression of shock or alarm, she smiled: gently, slowly, and very, very coyly.

  “Well…” she said quietly, in a complicated tone what matched the face. Then her hands went up to neaten her thick, attractive chestnut hair. “I’m very popular all of a sudden. Is there something I can do for you—gentlemen?” The accent wasn’t what I’d expected: there was no New England dr
awl, yet there was still a hint of the countryside.

  Marcus stepped to the fore. “Good afternoon. Am I right in supposing that you are Mrs. Elspeth Hunter?”

  “Yes,” she answered slowly, eyeing Marcus up and down and curling her lips. “You suppose correctly, Mister—”

  He held up his badge. “Detective Sergeant Marcus Isaacson. New York Police Department.”

  Nurse Hunter took in the badge without a blink; if she was who we were looking for, then she was as cool as any con I’d ever seen during my years in the trade.

  “I see,” she answered, never losing the lightly coquettish smile. “And are these your troops, Detective Sergeant?” she asked, turning the smile to Lucius and broadening it.

  It was as if she knew that Lucius would start to squirm under the flirtation, as indeed he did. “I’m, uh”—he held up his badge—“I’m Detective Sergeant Lucius Isaacson. Also of the New York Police Department.”

  “You’re not brothers?” Nurse Hunter said, the golden eyes dancing from one to the other. “How wonderful—and they let you work together, too! But you’re not at all what I’d expect—I thought that New York policemen were all named Mahoney, and had great handlebar mustaches.” The Isaacsons laughed just a little at that; it was exactly the right kind of joke to get to them with.

  Nurse Hunter’s manner became far less playful as she looked beyond the detective sergeants to Mr. Moore and the Doctor. “And these gentlemen?” she said. “They can’t be police.”

  “No,” Marcus answered. “They are—assisting us on a case. Mr. John Schuyler Moore and Dr. Laszlo Kreizler.”

  Her face straightening with what appeared to be genuine awe and humility, Nurse Hunter directed her sunlit stare into Dr. Kreizler’s black eyes. “I—don’t know what to say …” Her words seemed to come with genuine difficulty. “I know of your work, of course, Doctor. I used to be a nurse, you see, at the Lying-in Hospital, just down the street from your—”