The Angel of Darkness

by Caleb Carr

  “Yes,” the Doctor answered. “It’s not an uncommon action for a court to take under such circumstances. It allows the investigation into what drove the boy to take his own life to be conducted more freely and effectively.”

  “And has the investigation turned up any answers to the question of why the boy took his own life?”

  The Doctor lowered his eyes just a bit. “No. It has not.”

  “That must be particularly frustrating, for a man who’s spent most of his life trying to help children.”

  “I don’t know that it’s frustrating,” the Doctor answered. “Puzzling, certainly. And distressing.”

  “Well, I’m no alienist, Doctor,” Mr. Darrow said, walking over to the jury. “But I’d say that puzzling and distressing, when put together, can add up to frustrating without much trouble. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  The Doctor shrugged. “They might.”

  “And a person who’s frustrated on one front might be tempted to seek satisfaction on another—at least, that’s how it’s always seemed to me.” Returning to his table, Mr. Darrow picked up a book. “Tell me—do you know of a Dr. Adolf Meyer?”

  Nodding, the Doctor said, “Certainly. He’s a colleague of mine. And a friend.”

  “Children seem to be an area of special interest for him, too, to judge by his writings.” The Doctor nodded silently. “I take it you’ve read what he has to say about children with what he calls ‘morbid imaginations’?” After another nod from the Doctor, Mr. Darrow said, “Maybe you could tell the jury just what that refers to.”

  “Morbid imagination,” the Doctor answered, turning to the jury box, “is characteristic of children whose fantasies cannot be controlled, even by conscious exertion. Such children often suffer from nightmares and night terrors, and the condition can even lead, in its most extreme variant, to delusions.”

  Picking up a second book, Mr. Darrow walked toward the witness stand. “How about these two European doctors—Breuer and Freud? Do you know about them?”

  “Yes.”

  “They seem to’ve made quite a study of hysteria and its effects. I confess I didn’t really know what that word meant, until I started in on this volume. I always thought it referred to overexcited ladies.”

  Quiet laughter floated through the galleries at that, and the Doctor waited for it to calm down before he said, “Yes, the word originated with the Greeks, who thought that violent nervous disorders were peculiar to women and originated in the uterus.”

  Mr. Darrow smiled and shook his head, putting the books down. “Well—we’ve learned better, haven’t we? Just about anybody can be hysterical nowadays. I’m afraid I may unintentionally have driven His Honor pretty close to it.” The crowd laughed a little louder this time, but the judge didn’t do anything except give Mr. Darrow an icy stare. “And I do apologize for it,” the counselor said, holding up a hand. Then he looked at the Doctor again. “But I’m interested in what these gentlemen—Breuer and Freud—have to say about hysteria. They seem to think it originates in childhood, like the morbid imagination. Doctor, is there any chance that Clara Hatch suffers from either a morbid imagination or hysteria?”

  I could see the Doctor working hard to keep from scoffing at the question. “No,” he said. “Not in my opinion. As I told the state’s attorney, Clara has experienced what I refer to as ‘protracted hysterical disassociation.’ It’s quite distinct from the kind of hysteria Breuer and Freud discuss.”

  “You seem awfully sure, after spending—how many days with the girl?”

  “Ten in all.”

  “Quick work,” Mr. Darrow judged, playing at being impressed. “How about Paul McPherson—the boy who killed himself at your Institute?”

  The Doctor kept his features very still at the mention of the unfortunate kid. “What about him, specifically?”

  “Did he suffer from those pathologies?”

  “I can’t say. He was only with us a short time, before his death.”

  “Oh? How long?”

  “A few weeks.”

  “A few weeks? Shouldn’t that have been enough time for you to formulate an accurate diagnosis? After all, with Clara Hatch it only took you ten days.”

  The Doctor’s eyes thinned up as he realized where Mr. Darrow was going. “I attend to dozens of children at my Institute. Clara, by contrast, had my undivided attention.”

  “I’m sure she did, Doctor. I’m sure she did. And you told her that the work you were doing together would help her, am I correct?” The Doctor nodded. “And did you tell her it would help her mother, too?”

  “In a child like Clara,” the Doctor explained, “the memory of a terrifying experience causes a division within the psyche. She divorced herself from the reality of it by refusing to communicate with the rest of the world—”

  “That’s very interesting, Doctor,” Mr. Darrow said. “But if you’d answer the question?”

  Pausing and then nodding reluctantly, the Doctor replied, “Yes. I told her that if she could bring herself to speak of what happened it would help her—and her mother.”

  “Helping her mother was very important to her, then?”

  “It was. Clara loves her mother.”

  “Even though she seems to think that her mother tried to kill her? And did kill her brothers?” Without waiting for an answer, Mr. Darrow pressed on: “Tell me, Doctor—when you were working with Clara, who first mentioned the idea that her mother’d been the actual attacker on the Charlton road? Was it you or her?”

  The Doctor reeled back a bit, looking very indignant. “She did, of course.”

  “But you already believed her mother was responsible, is that right?”

  “I—” The Doctor was having trouble finding words: a rare sight. “I wasn’t certain.”

  “You came all the way to Ballston Spa at the request of the assistant district attorney because you weren’t certain? Let’s try the question another way, Doctor: Did you suspect that Clara’s mother was responsible for the attack?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “I see. And so you come to Ballston Spa, and you spend every waking hour with a girl who hasn’t spoken to another soul in three years, and you use all the tricks and techniques of your profession—”

  “I do not use tricks,” the Doctor said, getting riled.

  But Mr. Darrow didn’t pause: “—to get this little girl to trust in you and believe that you’re trying to help her, while all the time you suspect that her mother was in fact the person who shot her. And you honestly ask us to believe that none of your suspicions ever bled over into your handling of the child, at any time during those ten days?”

  The Doctor set his jaw so hard that his next words could barely be made out: “I don’t ask you to believe anything. I’m telling you what happened.”

  But again Mr. Darrow ignored the statement. “Doctor, you’ve described your own mental condition after losing Paul McPherson as ‘puzzled’ and ‘distressed.’ Would it be fair to say that you’re still puzzled and distressed about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Puzzled, distressed—and potentially disgraced in the eyes of your colleagues, I’d think, if the investigation shows that Paul McPherson died because he didn’t get the amount of care, the amount of time, he needed at your Institute. For, as you say, you couldn’t give that boy your ‘undivided attention.’ And so he died. And then you come up here, full of guilt about the dead boy and suspicions about the defendant. And you find yourself faced with a young girl whom you can give your ‘undivided attention’ to—whom you can save from the fate that befell Paul McPherson. But only, only if there’s an answer to the mystery that’s kept the girl silent all these years. And so—you create an answer.”

  “I created nothing!” the Doctor protested, grabbing at his left arm without realizing it.

  “Are you so sure, Doctor?” Mr. Darrow asked, his own voice rising. “Are you certain that you didn’t plant the idea in Clara Hatch’s mind, as only a clever alienis
t could, that it was her mother, not some lunatic who’d disappeared and could never be caught, who was responsible—all so that she can talk and enjoy a happy life again?!”

  “Your Honor!” Mr. Picton called out. “This is blatant badgering of the witness!”

  But Judge Brown only waved him off.

  Seeing that, Mr. Darrow kept going: “There’s just one problem, though, Doctor, one thing that gets in the way. For your scheme, your and the state’s scheme, to work, my client has to go to the electrical chair! But then, what does that matter to you? You’ll be vindicated—in your own mind and in the eyes of your colleagues, the McPherson case will be more than balanced out by the Hatch case! Your precious integrity will be restored, and the state can close the books on an unsolved murder! Well, forgive me, Doctor, but I’m not willing to make that trade. There are tragedies in this life that don’t have answers!”

  Suddenly, in a move what caused Miss Howard, Mr. Moore, Cyrus, and me to gasp, Mr. Darrow grabbed his own left arm, mirroring what the Doctor was doing; then he held it out, making it clear that he knew, he somehow knew, the secret of the Doctor’s past.

  “Yes—tragedies without answers, Doctor, as you well know! And trying to balance the books isn’t going to change that! Tying the guilt for this, case around my client’s neck won’t put movement back into Clara Hatch’s paralyzed arm, and it won’t bring Paul McPherson back to life. Things just aren’t that neat, Doctor, not that explicable. A madman committed a crime and disappeared. A boy walked into a washroom and hanged himself. Horrifying, inexplicable events—but I won’t let you and the state nail my client to the cross, just because you can’t live without explanations! No, sir—I will not do it!” Turning to the jury, Mr. Darrow lifted a thick finger toward the heavens, then let it fall, as if he were suddenly completely exhausted. “And I hope—maybe I even pray—that you gentlemen won’t do it, either.” He took a deep breath and wandered back to his seat. “I have no further questions.”

  It seemed like a very long time since Mr. Darrow had started talking, and I don’t think I ever felt more sympathy for the Doctor than I did when he was excused from the witness stand and had to make the long walk back over to where the rest of us were sitting. I knew how he felt, how deeply Mr. Darrow’s words had cut into him; and so when he didn’t pause at his seat, but just kept moving on toward the mahogany doors, I wasn’t at all surprised. I didn’t make any move to follow just yet, knowing he’d want to be alone for a few minutes; but as soon as the judge had ordered court recessed until ten o’clock the next morning I bolted for the exit, Cyrus and Mr. Moore following close behind me.

  We found the Doctor across the street, standing under a tree and smoking a cigarette. He made no move at all when we approached, just kept staring at the court house with narrow, squinting eyes. Cyrus and I each stood to one side, while Mr. Moore faced him head-on.

  “Well, Laszlo,” he said, gently but with a smile. “I guess you’ve got more to learn from him than you thought.”

  The Doctor just blew out a smoky sigh, and smiled ever-so-slightly back at his childhood friend. “Yes, John. I suppose so …”

  Then we heard Mr. Picton’s voice calling and saw him appear on the court house steps with Miss Howard, the Isaacsons, and El Niño. When they caught sight of us, they rushed on over, Mr. Picton smoking his pipe and swinging one fist at empty air.

  “Damn the man!” he said, once he was sure that the Doctor was okay. “Of all the blasted cheek! I am sorry, Doctor. He was wrong—terribly wrong.”

  The Doctor’s eyes moved to Mr. Picton, while his head remained still. “Wrong?” he said quietly. “Yes, he was wrong—about Libby Hatch. And this case. But about me?”

  Shrugging just once, the Doctor threw his cigarette into the gutter and began to walk down High Street alone.

  CHAPTER 48

  By midnight on that Thursday the odds against our convicting Libby Hatch had risen to a hundred to one at Canfield’s Casino, and it wasn’t hard to understand why: Mr. Darrow’d managed to plant doubts in the jury’s minds about Lucius’s ballistic testimony even before his own “expert,” Albert Hamilton, had taken the stand, while Mrs. Louisa Wright’s thoughts about a possible romantic motive for the killings had been reduced to unprovable by the sudden and shocking “accident” what had befallen the Reverend Clayton Parker that morning at Grand Central. Mr. Darrow’s very effective questions about the Doctor’s motivations and techniques had been the icing on this bleak cake, and it was plain to all of us that if things kept going the way they were, defeat was just around the corner.

  It was no wonder, then, that the atmosphere at Mr. Picton’s house that night moved past gloomy, until it almost seemed like there was a wake going on. Feeling what you might call resigned about the legal case as such, we began to focus our energies not on what remained to be done in court (which was just about nothing, so far as our side was concerned, except for Mr. Picton’s official announcement that the state was resting its case) but on what steps we’d need to take to try to get Ana Linares out of the Dusters’ place before Libby made her way back to New York. This meant getting word to Kat by way of the go-between Mr. Moore’d engaged: Kat’s pal Betty, who was supposedly waiting for us to send a wire to Frankie’s joint as soon as we knew it was time for Kat to make her move. Just talking about this possibility played hell with my nerves again, and for a few minutes I actually toyed with the idea of heading down to New York and making sure everything was set and in place; but the sight of me hanging around would, I knew, only make Kat’s situation even more dicey. So I stayed put, waiting with the others for what looked like it was going to be the dismal end of our business in Ballston Spa.

  “And so the new century will bring a new kind of law,” was how Mr. Picton summed things up, as we all sat out on the front porch of his house late that night. “Proceedings where victims and witnesses are put on trial instead of defendants, where a murderer is identified as ‘a woman’ instead of an individual… ah, Doctor, it’s no step forward, that I can tell you, and I don’t think I want to be party to it. If things go on like this, we’ll find ourselves in some shadow world, where lawyers use the ignorance of the average citizen to manipulate justice the way priests did in the Middle Ages. No, if we lose this case—when we lose this case—it’ll be my last, I suspect.”

  “I wish I could find some aspect of the affair that might offer you solace,” the Doctor answered quietly. “But I’m afraid I see none. Darrow is the legal man of the future, that much is indeed clear.”

  “And I’m a relic,” Mr. Picton agreed with a nod; then he laughed once. “A relic at forty-one! Hardly seems fair, does it? Ah, well—such are the fortunes of the new age.”

  You had to hand it to the man: unlike many other sporting bloods I’ve known, he was a genuinely graceful loser, and I don’t think there was one of us who failed to appreciate his ability to receive the head what’d been handed to him (his own) in court and still come up philosophical—except, of course, for Miss Howard, who was always the last member of our company to accept failure or defeat of any kind.

  “You two can just stop acting like the whole thing’s over,” she said, sitting on the steps of the porch with a small kerosene lamp and a large map of New York State. “Darrow hasn’t even opened his case yet, for God’s sake—we’ve still got time to come up with something.”

  “Oh? And what would that be?” Mr. Moore asked.

  “Face it, Sara—you can’t fight the prejudices of an entire society, and a woman who’s as lethally cunning as this one, and one of the most vicious gangs in New York, and a legal wizard like Darrow, all at one and the same time, and expect to survive.” He turned to Mr Picton, lowering his eyes. “No offense intended, Rupert.”

  But Mr. Picton only saluted his friend with his pipe. “None taken, John, I assure you. You’re absolutely right—the man’s turned what should have been a disaster into a triumph. My hat’s off to him.”

  “Yes, well, before you fal
l all over each other lining up to pay homage to that legal snake,” Miss Howard shot back, “do you mind if I suggest some further efforts to salvage our cause?” She looked back down at her map. “We’re still missing the one big piece—somebody who knows something about Libby Hatch’s family.”

  “Sara,” Marcus said, pointing toward the court house, “that jury is not going to be very receptive to a psychological examination of Libby Hatch’s childhood context, just at the moment.”

  “No,” Miss Howard answered, “arid that’s not what I’m proposing. Don’t forget, she went to the Muhlenbergs as a wet nurse. She had to’ve had a child, and that child has got to be somewhere, either above or below the ground.”

  “But you looked for days, Sara,” Lucius said. “You covered practically every inch of Washington County—”

  “And that may be just where I went wrong,” Miss Howard replied. “Think about it, Lucius—if you were Libby, and you’d landed yourself the kind of job she had at the Muhlenbergs’, would you give them any way to check on the actual facts of your past?”

  Before Lucius could answer, the Doctor asked, “What are you saying, Sara?”

  “That she’s too smart for that,” Miss Howard answered. “If she left some secret behind in her hometown, or even if she only left her family behind, that family would probably have known things that Libby wouldn’t have wanted to get out, especially not to people who might hire her as a wet nurse. You’ve said it yourself, Doctor, the woman’s characteristic behaviors must extend back into her childhood. So Libby had to make sure that no one ever knew where she actually came from. On the other hand, she had to say she came from someplace that she could actually describe, someplace that she knew at least something about, to make her story hold water.”

  “That’s true,” Cyrus said, considering it. “She would have covered herself, at least that far.”