The Angel of Darkness

by Caleb Carr

  Mr. Darrow took his hand from his neck and shrugged in a big, exaggerated motion. “Dramatic stuff, gentlemen. And, if it were true, very hard to contest. But the fact is, the story isn’t true. Clara Hatch didn’t just wake up one morning ready to tell her tale, and insistent on doing so—she was carefully coached, coached and prodded back into the speaking world. And by whom? By the same man who now sits behind the state’s attorney.” Mr. Darrow didn’t look to the Doctor at that point; but everybody else in the courtroom did. “A man who’s spent his life working with children who have been the victims of tragedy and violence. And a man who happens to have spent the last week assessing the mental condition of my client, and who will be called to the witness stand to speak on that subject—by the state” Finally, Mr. Darrow looked our way. “Dr. Laszlo Kreizler. The name may not be familiar to you, gentlemen, or to the citizens of Saratoga County generally. But it’s very well known in New York City. Very well known. Respected, by some. Others …” Mr. Darrow shrugged again. “Gentlemen, you may well wonder what and who has brought me here from Chicago to defend my client. But I wonder what and who has brought this stranger, this alienist, here from the madhouses of New York City, to coax a young girl into telling the world that her own mother shot her. That’s what’s got me confused, gentlemen’. That’s what troubles the very accomplished attorney,’ to the point where I just can’t gather my wits enough to be able to ‘work on your sympathies.’ Whatever that means …”

  Those of us in the two rows behind Mr. Picton shot each other wide, anxious glances—for while Mr. Picton had spoken eloquently to the jury, Mr. Darrow was speaking their own language, and we all knew it.

  Rubbing his neck wearily again, Mr. Darrow pulled out a handkerchief and started to wipe away beads of sweat that, as noon got closer, were starting to form faster and faster on his face. “Your Honor,” he said, his voice going very soft and sad, “gentlemen of the jury—life presents us with many events that go unexplained. Some of them are wondrous, and some of them are terrifying. A simple enough thought, maybe, but, like so many simple things, full of implications. Because the mind tends to reject what it can’t explain—reject, fear, and revile it. So it’s been with this case, especially for the men whose job it is to solve crimes and mete out justice for the state. The assistant district attorney calls my client’s explanation of what happened that night a ‘fantastic’ tale. Well … maybe it is. But that doesn’t make it false. That doesn’t even make it complicated. Look at what she’s said—that while she was driving her children home after a long day spent enjoying each other’s company in town and at the lakeshore, she was set upon by an apparently lunatic Negro, who attempted to assault her and threatened her children when she hesitated to surrender herself. The man was wild, crazed, desperate—and when my client made a sudden movement that this man interpreted as resistance, he shot the children and fled.”

  Thrusting his hands into the pockets of his pants, Mr. Darrow returned to the jury box. “You don’t get a lot of behavior like that up here in Saratoga County, I know. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. It happens every week in Chicago. Maybe we should ask Dr. Kreizler—who’s a man in a position to know, gentlemen—how many times a day it happens in New York City. Is it ‘fantastic’ there, too? Or just here, because this is a quiet, pleasant little town? The state’s going to tell you that the fact that no one besides my client ever saw hide nor hair of the crazed lunatic means that he didn’t exist. But remember, gentlemen—it was hours before my client was coherent enough to tell anyone exactly what had happened on the Charlton road. More than enough time for such a man to make his way to the train depot and hide aboard a freight car, or to sneak unnoticed into the back of a shipping truck, and find himself the next morning somewhere far from the search parties in Ballston Spa. Maybe he showed up in Chicago. Maybe in New York, He would’ve had time. Maybe he was picked up, raving about some white children he’d shot, by the New York City police, who, after failing to find that any white children had been shot in their jurisdiction, figured he was crazy and sent him over to the famous Bellevue Hospital Insane Pavilion. And maybe Dr. Kreizler—who does a lot of work in that hospital—was called in to, as the alienists say, ‘assess’ the man’s mental condition. Maybe he thought the fellow was having delusions. Maybe the miserable creature’s still there, rotting away in a cell, tortured by dreams of those three children in the wagon …”

  By now Mr. Darrow was staring at the floor, and a faraway, wandering tone had come into his voice. His brows then furrowed suddenly over his eyes, and he shook himself. “The point, gentlemen,” he continued, “is that we may never know. This case, and thousands like it every year, go unsolved and become open wounds in the soul of our society. We want to close those wounds—of course we do. Who wants to go through his everyday business with the knowledge that at any moment a lunatic may spring from the roadside and rob him of the things—or, more horribly, the people—he values most? None of us. And so we look for solutions, for safeguards, and every time we find one we tell ourselves that we’re that much closer to being perfectly safe, perfectly secure. But it’s an illusion, gentlemen—an illusion to which I have no intention of seeing my client sacrificed. The state may rest easier, thinking that it has brought the murderer of Thomas and Matthew Hatch to justice, and so may the citizens of this community. But that won’t make these charges any more true, or any more believable to those who have the courage to stand back and look at the thing in the cold light of reason. The state has told you what evidence it will introduce, and what witnesses it will call to prove its allegations. And I tell you now that on every one of these points the defense will enter the testimony of witnesses—expert and otherwise—that will refute the prosecution point by point.”

  Lifting a heavy finger and pointing it in Mr. Picton’s direction, Mr. Darrow started to pound away: “They’ll tell you that they have physical evidence, supported by ‘experts,’ that the gun used to shoot the Hatch children belonged to their father, and was fired by their mother. But that entire theory is based on forensic ‘science,’ which, as the defense’s expert witnesses will explain to you, isn’t worthy of the name. The prosecution will then tell you that my client had financial and romantic reasons for wanting her children dead. But, gentlemen—household gossip is not evidence!” His blood getting hot, Mr. Darrow spun round to look at the galleries, the first really quick movement he’d made. “Finally, they’ll tell you that my client is sane, and that, being sane, she deserves to be taken to a terrible little room in the state penitentiary and strapped into a chair that would’ve had more place in the dungeon of some blood-crazed medieval tyrant than it does in the United States, and that she should then be assaulted by the vicious power of electricity until she’s dead—all so that the state can declare the case closed and its citizens can have their ‘peace’ restored!”

  Stopping himself suddenly and catching his breath, Mr. Darrow dropped his hands helplessly. “Well, that’s really the point, isn’t it, gentlemen? Yes, my client’s sane. And in the days to come you’ll hear, from people who have a long experience with these matters, that no sane woman could or would commit such violence against her own children. Oh, the prosecution will give you precedents—they’ll tell you a lot of ghastly tales about women who’ve committed such crimes in the past, and were found sane by courts of law, and were locked away forever or hanged as punishment. But, gentlemen—prior injustices should not make you feel any better about committing an injustice here. Yes, there have been such women. But you will hear—again, from people who’ve studied these matters carefully—that those women, too, were suffering from terrible mental disorders, and that they were sacrificed to the same craving that drives the state in this case. The craving, not for justice, but for revenge—revenge and, even more urgently, an end to the uneasiness, the fear, that is engendered by a horrible crime that admits of no solution.”

  Wandering in front of the jury box, Mr. Darrow went back to work on his
neck again. “Gentlemen, I can’t tell you why this happened. I can’t tell you a lot of things. I can’t tell you why babies are born dead and deformed, why lightning and cyclones destroy lives and homes in an instant and without warning, or why disease, eats away at some good but unfortunate souls, while letting others lead long and useless lives. But I know that these things happen. And I wonder… if a bolt of lightning had flashed down out of the sky that night and put an end to those three poor children—just as the prosecution now seeks to put an end to their mother—would the district attorney’s office have tried to coax an explanation out of the sky, so that the citizens of this county and this state could rest easier? Because in the end, that’s the only place you’re probably going to get an explanation for what happened out on the Charlton road on May the thirty-first, 1894—from above. If you try to provide an answer here, in this courtroom, you will only compound the horror. And for that you—yes, you, and I, and the state’s attorney, and everyone else involved—will bear the responsibility. Chance terror killed Mrs. Hatch’s children, but her death would be something very different. Something very different, indeed …”

  With that Mr. Darrow wandered solemnly back over to his table and sat down. He never turned to Libby Hatch, but she did glance at him; and in her eyes was a light of hope, one what quickly became a frightening gleam of triumph when she looked beyond Mr. Darrow to all of us who were sitting behind Mr. Picton. It was pretty plain that she figured she was going to get off; and as I looked around at the faces of the jury and the people in the galleries, I couldn’t honestly say that I thought she was mistaken. Strange, the effect what that thought had on me: suddenly all I could think of was of the little Linares girl and Kat, and what would happen to them both if Libby was allowed to walk out of that court house a free woman—a possibility what had never seemed so likely before.

  To judge by the looks on both the Doctor’s and Mr. Picton’s faces, they also realized how much damage had been done. The jury and the crowd, who likely would have bought even a poor defense of Libby Hatch, had taken Mr. Darrow’s cagy, expert, and passionate words straight to heart. The evidence and the testimony, now more than ever, were our only hope. And that afternoon, the process of introducing them started with a bang, when Clara Hatch was called to the stand.

  CHAPTER 44

  The frightened little girl and her family arrived at the court house during the midday recess, escorted by Sheriff Dunning and a gang of specially appointed deputies. The Doctor made sure he was at the back door to greet Clara, and judging by the look on her face when she saw the crowd what was waiting for her, it was a good thing he did: even during my old days downtown, I’d rarely seen a kid what looked so confused, so lost, and so desperate. Searching through the jungle of faces and bodies what swarmed around her family’s carriage, Clara appeared to calm down only when her golden-brown eyes locked onto the Doctor; and she fairly flew down to the ground in her rush to get to him. Some nearby newspapermen took particular interest in that fact, for reasons I didn’t quite understand until I forced myself to look at the case from the opposition’s point of view: if you were disposed to think that the Doctor was controlling and engineering what Clara said and did, then her plainly urgent need to be close to him might’ve looked sinister, indeed.

  As the Westons followed Clara and the Doctor into the court house, Sheriff Dunning’s men strung themselves out across the back doorway, keeping the curious crowd outside. Then we all went up to the second floor of the building, where we sat in Mr. Picton’s office and ate some sandwiches what Cyrus had picked up from Mrs. Hastings. We tried to be as merry as we could, given the circumstances, and nobody said anything about the case; but none of it seemed to make Clara any easier in her mind. She didn’t eat anything, just sipped on a glass of lemonade what Cyrus gave her; and each time she set the glass down, her one good hand, sticky with lemon juice and sugar, wandered to either Mrs. Weston or the Doctor, who were sitting on either side of her. Not seeming to hear any of the light conversation or strained jokes what floated around the room, she just stared at each of our faces kind of blankly until it was near time for us to return to court; and then, when she thought no one was paying attention, she looked up at the Doctor.

  “Is my mama here?” she asked, very quietly.

  The Doctor nodded, with a gentle smile but a very serious look in his eyes. “Yes. She’s downstairs.”

  Clara began to kick her feet against the legs of her chair and turned her head down to stare into her lap. “This is my Sunday dress,” she said, carefully straightening the flowery, light blue fabric with her good hand. “I just didn’t want to eat so’s it wouldn’t get it messy.”

  Mrs. Weston smiled down at her. “Clara, honey, don’t worry about that. If you’re hungry—”

  But Clara just shook her head, hard enough to bring the big braid in her hair round front and reveal some of the nasty scar on the back of her neck.

  The Doctor lifted a hand to touch the top of her head. “Very sensible. I wish you could teach Stevie to be so sensible. His clothes are an infernal mess most of the time.”

  Clara looked up at me quickly and smiled.

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I’m just a pig in a sty, nothing I can do about it.” By way of emphasis, I let a piece of roast beef from my sandwich fall onto my shirt, a move what got a scratchy little laugh out of our witness. Then she turned away, quickly and shyly.

  By two o’clock we were back in our seats in the main courtroom, while the Westons waited outside with Clara. Mr. Picton had elected to open his case with testimony from the former sheriff, Morton Jones, a grizzled, tough old type who looked like he’d spent the better part of his retirement on a bar seat. Jones told of what he’d found when he’d arrived at the Hatch house on the night of May 31st, 1894, and what steps he’d taken to address the situation, including telephoning Mr. Picton. This summary acquainted the jury with the basic facts of the case, facts what Mr. Darrow did nothing to challenge; when his turn came to cross-examine the witness, he turned the opportunity down.

  Next onto the stand was Dr. Benjamin Lawrence, the sometime coroner. He told about how, when he’d arrived in the Hatch house, he’d found Mrs. Hatch in a state of extreme hysteria and the bloodied children laid out on sofas and a table in the sitting room. He’d given the mother laudanum to quiet her down, then set to work on the kids, quickly determining that Matthew and Thomas were dead. But Clara was still alive, though Libby and the housekeeper, Mrs. Wright, thought otherwise. Testifying that her pulse had been very faint but still detectable, Dr. Lawrence went on to say that he’d given the girl half a nitroglycerin tablet and then injected brandy into her arm to get her heart moving faster. After that, he set to work stopping her bleeding. But the wound itself was beyond his capabilities, and he’d ‘phoned up to Saratoga to ask Dr. Jacob Jenkins, a surgical specialist, to come down as quickly as possible. Jenkins was set to follow Lawrence to the stand, but before he was through with the first medical witness Mr. Picton made sure to ask whether Libby Hatch’s hysterical state had immobilized her in any way. Not at all, Dr. Lawrence answered; when he’d gotten to the house, Mrs. Hatch had been running through each and every room at a high speed.

  “Almost as if she had some purpose, would you say?” Mr. Picton asked.

  Dr. Lawrence was about to agree, but Mr. Darrow shot up. “I must object to that, Your Honor. The question calls for a speculative answer from the witness, who cannot have known what was in or on the former Mrs. Hatch’s mind.”

  “Agreed,” Judge Brown said with a nod. “I’ve warned you, Mr. Picton—no suggestions. The jury will ignore the state’s question.”

  Sitting forward again, I heard Dr. Kreizler mumble, “As if they could.” Then I saw him hide a smile with his hand.

  Mr. Picton had a few final questions for Dr. Lawrence: had he been in attendance at the Hatch house when Mrs. Hatch had given birth to her three children? Dr. Lawrence answered that he had indeed. And what had been Mrs. Hat
ch’s condition after her third labor? Revealing a bit of information designed to prepare the jury for Mr. Picton’s intended claim that Libby in fact resented her kids (and one what also matched our speculations from early in the case), Dr. Lawrence said that young Tommy’s birth had been difficult, and left his mother unable to bear any more children. Mr. Darrow challenged the relevance of this information and by way of reply Mr. Picton sat down, turning the witness over to his opponent. But once again, the counsel for the defense passed up his chance at cross-examination.

  He did the same with Dr. Jenkins: after Mr. Picton had gone over said witness’s recollections of treating Clara Hatch—taking special care to make the jury understand that there was no connection between the bullet wound the girl had received and the fact that she hadn’t spoken in three years—it was time for the defense to take over. But Mr. Darrow just stood briefly, said, “We have no questions at this time, Your Honor,” and then sat back down.