by Caleb Carr
And it certainly wasn’t altered any that day when we hit the middle stretch of the Hudson, where the manor houses of the old Dutch and English river families began to dot the hillsides to our right. Mr. Moore came up to join us, and both he and Miss Howard grew very quiet as they stared out toward those heights. I knew that each of them had real cause for sadness, being as they’d both spent much of their bittersweet childhoods there. In Mr. Moore the scenery obviously brought back memories of the brother whose death had saddened him so and caused such a breach with the rest of his family (Mr. Moore having contended that they’d driven his brother to morphine and drink with their strict Dutch ways). Miss Howard, on the other hand, was clearly thinking about the many summers and autumns she’d spent hunting, shooting, and generally living a boy’s life with her beloved father, who’d had no son (nor any other child besides his one daughter) to share his sporting pursuits with. Said father had died in a mysterious hunting accident in amongst those woods some years back, and there’d been talk of suicide. But Miss Howard—who’d taken the death so hard that she’d had to retreat to a sanitarium for, a time—had always denied such rumors. Considering all this, it wasn’t too surprising to see the pair’s spirits sag beyond melancholy as they watched the high hills and thestately houses pass by. And though we eventually went below again to consume a very tasty lunch, and even managed to play a few silly but diverting deck sports afterwards, the general mood among our party remained what you might call reserved.
The Mary Powell stopped only briefly in Albany, a bustling city with many factories, railroad tracks, and workers’ houses lining its riverfront: not the kind of scenery that was going to put me or anyone else in a more cheerful state of mind. Many of the steamer’s passengers debarked at the state’s capital, leaving just them what were finishing off the round trip to New York, along with those of us who were going on through a dredged upper section of the river to Troy. Only a few miles of the riverside between Albany and Troy were still unpopulated, and the fiery, smoky factories that we passed, along with the large groups of dirty, miserable workers who were coming out of them, served to underline the notion that the countryside was becoming ever more infected by mankind’s petty but brutal desires.
As for the city of Troy, it was a prosperous but dreary place, its dozens of brick manufacturing works and cargo steamships fouling the river just so’s to make the latest laundry, gardening, and locomotive machinery available to the rest of the world. By the time we left the Mary Powell, a beautiful sunset had begun to appear above the western portion of the city, making me anxious to strike out into the country, toward that fiery sinking ball and away from the city; so it came as a great disapppointment to discover, when we reached the Union Depot and the offices of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Railroad Company, that the previous day’s great gale had struck this portion of the state, too, and caused a bad derailment on the line between Troy and Ballston Spa. We’d have to wait until morning to finish our journey, which meant spending a night in the nearby Union Hotel: not a terrible joint, by any means, but still discouraging for a young man who was chafing to get away from civilization and out into the wilderness.
The train ride the next morning offered me some relief, being as once we’d left Troy and its environs behind, we did start to pass through patches of countryside what hinted at how magical that part of the state must’ve been before civilization hit it like a runaway streetcar. There were long stretches of what seemed like ancient woodlands, and we passed by a couple of big silver lakes; but each time we’d quickly move on to some cluster of farms or past a bustling little town, all of which hammered home the point that the old forest was losing its fight for control of the landscape. Before long the conductor on our train was announcing our approach to Ballston Spa, and when we arrived at the town’s outskirts I found that my mood of the day beforehad returned, and maybe even gotten worse; though such was not a bad outlook to have, I quickly discovered, when you were entering the seat of Saratoga County.
Cyrus had brought along a little guidebook to the towns of the northern Hudson area, and he read from it as we chugged slowly toward the end of our journey. Ballston Spa, I learned, had once been famous for its string of quiet little health retreats, but over the last century things had changed pretty drastically: many of the mineral springs had dried up, and the spas had been replaced by a collection of mills. In their early days these large brickworks had produced wool, cotten, linens, and a peculiar battle-axe what looked like a Turkish scimitar (this last for the Union Army during the Civil War). But even the mills had fallen on hard times by 1897. Most of them had been built along a rushing creek what ran through the town, the Kayaderosseras (an old Iroquois word what meant something to the effect of “stream of the crooked waters”), but in the years that followed so much lumbering had been done around the stream’s watershed that the Kayaderosseras itself had been reduced to a trickling little creek what couldn’t power anything of consequence. So now the black smoke of furnaces poured from the chimneys of the mills, which, though they still made some farm tools, were currently known mostly for paper products.
Cyrus’s guidebook tried to relate all this information in what you might call a positive fashion, but there wasn’t much way to avoid the conclusion that—because of their own shortsightedness and in the space of just a century—the citizens of Ballston Spa had gone from operating the best health retreats in the North to boasting that their town was home to “the world’s finest paper bags.” The old resort hotels, which couldn’t compete with a string of gigantic, luxurious competitors what’d opened in nearby Saratoga Springs, had either been converted to boarding-houses for factory workers or burned down. Still, nobody ever thought to rename the town, even though, by 1897, there wasn’t much about Ballston that brought the word “spa” to mind.
The train depot sat just below a hill what separated the industrial parts of the town from the homes of the local swells. On top of said hill ran what some imaginative mug had named High Street, where most of the town’s churches, along with the county offices, were located. The station building itself wasn’t much to look at, just a long, low structure of the type you generally find in such places; and the few people who were standing out on the platform waiting for our train to pull in seemed made to match. All, that is, except for one of them:
He was all the way out on the easternmost end of the platform, as if he knew that Mr. Moore liked sitting at the back of trains and would’ve convinced us all to do likewise (which, in fact, he had). Smoking a pipe like his life depended on it, the short, ginger-haired man was also by turns pulling on a neatly clipped beard and mustache and running a hand through his similarly cut hair, all the while looking in every direction and walking round the platform as if the thing was on fire. His eyes, which I later determined were a very light grey, seemed a sort of silvery color from a distance, and they carried an expression that was both determined and a little wild. He pulled his watch out no less than three times while our train was slowing to a stop—just why I couldn’t say, seeing as we’d already arrived—and each time he tucked it away with a look of worry, then smoked and paced some more. I lost sight of the fellow as we made our way to the door of our car; but somehow I knew this was the man we’d come to see.
Mr. Moore turned to the rest of us as the train groaned and squeaked into the station. “All right, listen, all of you,” he said, his voice urgent. “Especially you, Kreizler. There’s one thing I neglected to mention about Rupert, because I didn’t want to discourage you from trusting the case to him. He truly is brilliant, but—well, the fact of the matter is, he can’t shut up.”
The rest of us looked at each other with expressions what indicated a shared belief that this must be some kind of gag.
“What do you mean, Moore?” the Doctor asked. “If he’s excessively verbal—”
“No,” Mr. Moore answered. “I mean he can’t shut up.”
Marcus laughed. “Of course he can’t. He’s a law
yer, for God’s sake—”
“No,” Mr. Moore said again. “It’s something more—something physical. He’s been to doctors about it. Some kind of—compulsion or something, I forget what they call it.”
“Pressured speech?” the Doctor guessed, looking intrigued.
Mr. Moore snapped his fingers. “That’s it. Anyway, it works wonders in court, but in conversation it can be a little much—” Banging into the closed front door of our car as the train came to a halt, Mr. Moore started for the steps. “I just wanted to warn you—he’s as nice a person as you’ll ever meet, but thoughts just come into his head and shoot right out of his mouth. So don’t take anything he says too personally, all right?” Checking each of our faces, Mr. Moore nodded once, and then we followed him out onto the platform.
Mr. Rupert Picton was still pacing and smoking, those big silver eyes looking very anxious. When Mr. Moore saw the sight, he grinned in a heartfelt way.
“Picton!” he called, walking toward his friend on the platform. “Good God, man, you look like you’re going to have kittens!”
“Your train’s late!” answered Mr. Picton, smiling through what he seemed to realize was very obvious nervousness. “They’re always late, these days—we can talk about going to war with Spain, but we can’t make our trains run on time! How are you, John?”
“Fine, fine,” Mr. Moore answered, as the rest of us joined him. “Let me introduce you to the others. This is Miss Sara Howard—”
“Hello, Mr. Picton,” Miss Howard said, extending a hand. “I’m afraid I’m the one who started all this unfortunate business.”
“Nonsense, Miss Howard,” Mr. Picton answered, shaking her hand vigorously and talking not only a lot, but at a very fast pace. “You mustn’t think that way. You didn’t start it—Libby Hatch did, when she first drew innocent blood and found that she had a taste for it! What you have started is an end to her sinister tale, and you should be proud that—ah! And here’s Dr. Kreizler!” The active little hand shot out again. “I recognize you from the pictures that have appeared with your monographs, sir—fascinating work, yours is, fascinating!”
“Thank you, Mr. Picton. It’s kind of you to—”
But Mr. Picton had already turned to Lucius and Marcus; he grinned and grabbed each of their hands in turn. “And I assume that you gentlemen are the Detective Sergeants Isaacson?”
Marcus smiled, and had just managed to say, “Why, yes—” before he was cut off.
“Don’t go crediting me with any powers of detection,” Mr. Picton said. “None greater than smell, at any rate. There is a vague aroma of sulfuric acid—”
Lucius cast his brother a hard glance as he took his turn shaking Mr. Picton’s hand. “I’m sorry about that, sir. If someone hadn’t made me perform that strychnine test again before we left New York …”
“I hope you’ve brought all your chemicals and devices along,” Mr. Picton answered, nodding encouragingly. “We’ll need them. Now, then, let’s get your things together—”
Cyrus and I, having found a porter to help us tend to the baggage as we watched all this, now approached the group from behind our host. Cyrus cleared his throat just once—but once was enough to make Mr. Picton, who hadn’t seen us coming, shoot into the air.
“Great jumping cats!” he cried, spinning on Cyrus. “Who’re you? Ah! Don’t tell me—John wrote about you. You’re Dr. Kreizler’s man, correct? Mr.—ah—ah—”
“May I present Mr. Cyrus Montrose,” the Doctor said, at which Mr. Picton shook Cyrus’s big hand. “As well as Master Stevie Taggert. Both associates of mine.”
Mr. Picton turned his hand in my direction, and I stuck my own out to receive his jolting shake. “Master Taggert! Good to meet you! Well—” He stood back and put his hands to his hips, taking us in. “So this is the group that has actually put fear into that murderess’s heart, eh? I admire you for it, I must say! Libby Hatch certainly never had anything to be nervous about in this county, I can tell you. Let’s get your bags onto my rig, and get over to my place. We need to get to business as soon as we can! Porter—follow me!”
“Your place?” Mr. Moore said. “But Rupert, I made reservations at the Eagle Hotel—”
“And I canceled them,” Mr. Picton answered. “I’ve got a house big enough for a regiment, John, with just me and the housekeeper. I won’t hear of you staying anywhere else!”
“But,” Mr. Moore said carefully, as we made for an old surrey what was standing outside the station, “are you sure you’re up to it, Rupert? I mean, I heard you weren’t well—”
“Not well?!” Mr. Picton thundered back. “Why, I’m as sound as a dollar—in fact, I’m even sounder, given the current strength of our currency. Oh, I know what they said in New York before I left, John, and I’ll admit that I needed a rest at the time. You know my disposition—high-strung I am, certainly, you’ll get no argument from me. But those rumors about my suffering a breakdown were just further attempts to discredit what I was saying.”
“Mmm, yes, I’m acquainted with that phenomenon,” the Doctor said, as Mr. Picton began to lob our luggage from the porter’s truck into his surrey, smoking furiously all the while.
“Yes, I understand you are, Dr. Kreizler!” our host answered. “I understand you are! And so you probably know the weariness it breeds—trying to stop what was going on in the district attorney’s office fairly well exhausted me, as I say, and wore my nerves positively raw. But that’s a far cry from madness, don’t you think?”
“Well—” the Doctor answered slowly; too slowly, it turned out, for Mr. Picton.
“Exactly my point!” he said. “It’s a funny world we’re living in, Dr. Kreizler—and I don’t mean funny in the amusing sense—where a man can be labeled mad simply for trying to expose egregious corruption! Ah, well, no matter …” Tossing the last of our bags into the surrey, Mr. Picton made for the driver’s bench. “Climb aboard, everyone. Mr. Montrose, perhaps you and Master Taggert might not mind riding on the steps, there. You can get a grip on the canopy, and we’re not going far.”
“Fine with me!” I said happily, finding that I was starting to enjoy Mr. Picton’s slightly crazy way of saying and doing things.
“Of course, sir,” Cyrus said, also taking an outside perch after the others had climbed aboard.
“Good men!” Mr. Picton said with a grin, saluting us with his pipe. “Hang, on, now—here we go!” The surrey began to roll, but we hadn’t even gotten out of the station yard before Mr. Picton had started in again. “As I say, Doctor, it doesn’t matter, really, all that business in New York, and what those people may have said about me—doesn’t matter at all, not in the long term. The world is going to Hell in a hack, and New York will be one of the first places to arrive, if it hasn’t already, and I could make a case for it having done so. That’s one of the reasons I came back to Ballston—it’s actually possible to do an occasional bit of good here without having to worry about the magnates and the bosses.” He let out a few more smokestack blasts with his pipe as he steered his horse along a street that ran west below the steepled hill. “But don’t let’s get drawn too far into this sort of talk—we have other matters that are pressing.” He took out his watch and checked it again. “Pressing, indeed! You must all get settled in and fed—Mrs. Hastings will see to that. My housekeeper.” He shook his head as we rattled our way toward the western edge of town. “Terrible case. She and her husband ran a dry-goods store together for most of their lives. Then, a couple of years ago, three local toughs—not all that much older than you, Master Taggert—robbed the place while she was out. Beat her husband to death with a shovel. I prosecuted the case, and afterwards she came to work for me—as much out of gratitude as anything else, I think.”
“Gratitude?” Miss Howard asked. “Because you helped her through a difficult time?”
“Because I made sure those three boys went to the electrical chair!” Mr. Picton answered. “Ah! There’s my house now—at the end of the stre
et.”
Mr. Picton had a mansion-sized place at the juncture of Charlton and High Streets, not too far from the court house and close to the old Aldridge Spa (currently a boardinghouse) and the Iron Railing Spring, the pair of which were the last real remains of the town’s salad days as a health resort. To judge by the four big turrets what formed the corners of Mr. Picton’s house, along with the wide porch what was wrapped around the whole structure, it wasn’t as old as many of the residences we’d seen and passed. But the size alone was enough to give it kind of an eerie quality, and I wondered why a man would choose to live alone with his housekeeper in such a building. The front and rear gardens were full of climbing roses and ivy that’d gone a little berserk, along with a couple of elm trees what must’ve been considerably older than the house itself—all of which only added to the feeling that this was a very ghostly dwelling indeed.
“My father built it for my mother,” Mr. Picton explained as we neared the house. “And thirty-five years ago it was considered the height of Victorian Gothic style. Nowadays, well—fashion has never mattered much to me, so I’ve left it more or less as it was. Mrs. Hastings is constantly after me to redecorate, but—oh, there she is now!” A round, kindly-looking woman of about sixty or so, wearing a blue dress with a white apron, came out the front door of the house just as we pulled into the yard. Mr. Picton drew the surrey to a stop and then smiled as he waved to his housekeeper. “Mrs. Hastings! You see, I managed to find them without any trouble. I trust the turret rooms are all ready?”
