Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

“Oh, my hands will be full,” Miss Howard answered, smiling as she picked up another pile of books and files. “Fortunately for these people.”

“It’s all very well to joke,” Lucius said, wiping his forehead, which was shining bright in the hot morning sun. “But you will be careful, Doctor? The girl is the key to our case, after all.”

“Yes, Detective Sergeant,” the Doctor answered. “And a good deal more than that. No harm will come to her or to anyone else, I pledge you that.”

“And so does El Niño!” declared the aborigine, at which I smiled to the detective sergeant.

“And so does El Niño,” I said, clicking my tongue at Mr. Picton’s horse and starting us slowly on our way.

As we drove, we turned to keep an eye on the other four as they made their way through the crowd in front of the court house, Mr. Picton’s pipe still blazing like the smokestack of a forge as he greeted faces he recognized with a cheeriness what couldn’t have been more phony. “Ah, Mr. Grose, I am relieved to see a representative of our Weekly Journal -and the editor himself! This is truly gratifying! A man in my line of work rarely experiences such an exhibition of support!”

We began to drift out of earshot just as an irritated voice replied to Mr. Picton, “The Ballston Weekly Journal most definitely does not intend to support you, sir, if you are truly seeking an indictment against the unfortunate Mrs. Hatch!”

The last piece of this conversation we heard was Mr. Picton’s reply: “Ah! What a pity! Sheriff Dunning, you will remind these people-including friend Grose, here-that these proceedings are closed to the public, won’t you? Good man…”

A heavy sigh came out of the Doctor, and I turned to him. “Bloody hell,” he whispered, turning away from the scene in front of the court house and then rubbing his bad arm with his right hand. “It begins already…”

When we reached the Westons’ farm, we found the whole family out in front of the house and gathered around their carriage, a simple but dignified rig what bore a shiny new coat of black paint. They looked like they were ready for church, scrubbed and dressed in the kind of somber, formal clothing what they most likely only brought out for Sundays, weddings, and funerals. The Doctor boarded the carriage with them, sitting next to Clara on one seat while Mr. and Mrs. Weston took the other and Kate climbed onto the driver’s bench with Peter, who had the reins.

Clara was a picture of nervousness and confusion, of course, her golden eyes as round and skittish as a spooked Thoroughbred’s. Almost as soon as the Doctor was in the carriage, he got her to open her sketch pad and start working with her pencils: the best way, he obviously figured, to keep her mind off where she was going and why. As Peter started down the drive, I pulled the surrey in behind him, and all the way back to town Cyrus, El Niño, and I kept a careful lookout for any curious or hostile faces what might appear by the road.

We didn’t catch sight of any ’til we were back on the edge of Ballston Spa; but the cold stares we started to receive at that point indicated that word about what was going on at the court house had spread all through the village. The general reaction seemed to be the same as the one exhibited by those brave souls who’d marched up to the court house steps in a pack. It wasn’t exactly a mob mentality-I’d seen mobs at work, and this was something different. The citizens of Ballston Spa seemed mostly bewildered: their faces were disturbed and furrowed and plainly displayed the wish that we would disappear back to the evil city what had disgorged us.

“It is strange, Señorito Stevie,” El Niño remarked at one point. “These people-they do not wish for baby Ana to be found?”

“They don’t really get the connection,” I answered, as we rolled by the Eagle Hotel and netted a whole slew of new glares. “And we can’t tell them, because the señor says so. It’s a secret, if you get my meaning.”

“So,” El Niño answered with a nod, “that is why they look this way. If they know the story of baby Ana, they feel different. Sure.”

I hoped like hell that the aborigine was right.

Back up at the court house the scene hadn’t changed much; and as our two rigs moved along High Street, one heavyset man with a thick gray mustache, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and a badge on the lapel of his jacket, approached us.

“Josiah,” he said in a polite but serious tone of voice, signaling to Mr. Weston.

“Sheriff Dunning,” Mr. Weston answered with a nod, his voice betraying no emotion. “A few folks here.”

“Yessir,” Sheriff Dunning answered, looking a little uneasily at the crowd. “Nothing serious-but you’ll want to take your rig around back, maybe. Come in through the ground floor. Be easier on everybody.” He glanced once at Clara. “Hello, there, little miss,” he said with a smile. “Come to visit the court house, have you?” As an answer Clara hid herself behind the Doctor’s arm, at which point the sheriff turned his gaze up to meet the Doctor’s. The man’s smile vanished in the process. “Anyway, Josiah,” Sheriff Dunning said. “I just figure that’ll be the easier way to go about it.”

Mr. Weston nodded, then turned his rig onto Bath Street and rolled down the hill toward the back entrance to the court house. I made a move to follow with the surrey, but Cyrus reached up to grab my arm.

“No, Stevie,” he said. “The front door. Let’s make sure those folks don’t follow them down.”

I knew what he meant: between Cyrus and El Niño the focus of the crowd’s attention was likely to stay on our carriage, wherever it went; and if we just pulled up in front of the court house and brassed it out by heading in at the main entrance, we were likely to make certain that Clara and the Westons would get inside without any trouble.

So I slapped Mr. Picton’s horse into a nice high step and made as much of a deal as I could out of the half block that we had left to cover. True to Cyrus’s reasoning, every eye in the crowd turned on us as we got down off the surrey and made our way toward the steps. There were a few laughs, but more clicks of the tongue and mild curses; and of course, the occasional mumbling of “damned niggers” and the like were heard, all of them designed to get some kind of a reaction out of Cyrus and El Niño. But those bright souls what gave voice to the slurs didn’t know who they were dealing with; for El Niño, if he heard them, didn’t register any awareness of what they meant, while Cyrus had long since learned to hold his emotions down when such labels were flung at him.

At the front door we came face to face with the guard Henry, who, seeming to care quite a bit about what the crowd would think of his next move, took to biting at the nails of one hand.

“What’s this, Henry?” said one pompous-looking man in a suit, whose voice I recognized as belonging to the editor of the Ballston Weekly Journal , Mr. Grose. “Are respected citizens of this community and members of the press to be denied entry to these proceedings, while children and-well”-Mr. Grose’s eyes went from Cyrus to El Niño-“ savages are to be allowed in?”

Plainly not knowing what to do, Henry obeyed the instincts of the true follower: he crossed his arms, widened his stance, and then looked Cyrus in the eye. “Sorry,” he said, “the grand jury’s de-the de-”

“ ‘Deliberations,’ ” Cyrus supplied with a straight face.

The guard’s eyes filled with resentment. “The deliberations are closed to the public.”

“Sir,” Cyrus answered quietly. “You know that we’re investigators in the employ of Assistant District Attorney Picton. And we know you know it. So you can either let us through now-or you can play up to this crowd and explain your decision to Mr. Picton later. He’s your superior.” Cyrus nodded toward the general area behind him. “These people aren’t.”