Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

“What about them, sir?” Cyrus asked, puzzled.

“Well, Cyrus,” Mr. Picton answered, fastening his case and then looking up. “If Darrow should get here before the arraignment, there’s always the possibility that he’ll try to balance his personal books by entering another insanity plea-redress the wrong of the Prendergast case by getting Libby Hatch freed on the basis of mental incompetence, that sort of thing. Lawyers carry grudges like everyone else-maybe even more. I’m not worried about my end of the matter, so far as that goes-I have enough motives and scheming on Libby’s part to demonstrate cold premeditation. But it’s another area where he might go after you , Doctor. Can you successfully argue that a woman who has killed her own children can nonetheless be mentally sound?”

The Doctor breathed deeply. “I should feel more confident, of course, if we’d discovered more details of her youth-on a hypothetical basis, it becomes much harder. Still, there are precedents-and as you say, Mr. Picton, the presence of cold, even clever, premeditation eliminates the possibility of any clearly demonstrable mental pathology, such as dementia praecox , or of any sufficiently severe brain trauma. To argue that she was mad, Darrow would have to return to the idea of ‘moral insanity’-the notion that a person can be morally but not intellectually deranged. It’s a concept that has been almost universally repudiated. Then, too, there’s always the chance that our diligent workers”-here he gave my hair a tousle-“will manage to find out more about the woman’s past before the trial begins.”

“Well, then!” Mr. Picton said, snatching up his briefcase. “We have cause for cautious optimism. Particularly, I will say, when you consider our position at the moment: the woman’s in custody, she’s on her way here, and she’s going to stand trial. I confess that I wasn’t at all sure we’d ever get this far! So let’s not sink into pessimism-it’s bad for the appetite, and Mrs. Hastings will have been cooking all afternoon. Mustn’t disappoint her!”

With our host continuing to encourage us, we wandered out into the hallway, there joining the others for the walk down the marble stairs to the first floor of the court house. Mr. Picton paused to make sure that the guard Henry had prepared one of the cells in the basement: Libby Hatch would be spending at least one night in jail, since her arraignment wasn’t scheduled to take place ’til the next day. The guard said that yes, one of the cells was ready, and then we all began to file outside for the walk down High Street.

Just before passing through the front door, I stopped and looked around at the big stone chamber, what was lit up by the soft, straw-colored light of a July evening.

“What is it, Stevie?” Mr. Picton said, noticing me pause.

I shrugged. “Last time we’ll see it this quiet for a while, I guess,” I said. “Gonna be a lot of action after tomorrow.”

“And, provided we can get bail denied,” Mr. Picton answered with a nod, “there’ll be a new tenant-for the next couple of weeks, at any rate. Henry won’t like that. None of the guards will, eh, Henry?” Mr. Picton smiled as he taunted the man. “You boys’ll actually have something to do for a change!”

Chuckling to himself, Mr. Picton clamped his pipe in his mouth and headed outside; and just as I followed, I saw a gleam of resentment enter the guard’s eyes.

We all talked and laughed a lot at dinner, though not much was said about the case. It was as if, knowing what was scheduled to happen later that night, we didn’t want to put a hex on things by acting as if Libby Hatch was already safely arrived and locked up in her cell. Mr. Moore went into a bit of a fit halfway through the meal when he realized the date: July 27th, which meant that he’d missed the opening day of the season at the Saratoga Racing Association. In an attempt to make him feel better, Miss Howard suggested a game of poker after dinner. This seemed to fill the bill not only for the purposes of getting Mr. Moore to stop whining, but also for taking our minds off of more pressing concerns.

Heading into the reception room after we’d laid waste to one of Mrs. Hastings’s excellent pies, everyone except Cyrus and Lucius gathered around the card table. The younger Isaacson brother was too nervous to sit still for cards, while Cyrus preferred to pass the time playing Mr. Picton’s piano. The rest of us, though, threw ourselves into our small-stakes gambling with genuine enthusiasm. The contest grew pretty heated as the evening wore on, and it wasn’t until Mrs. Hastings came down from her room to tell us that we needed to get going if we wanted to be sure of meeting the midnight train that we realized how late it’d gotten. When we did, I think everybody’s heart did a kind of fluttering jig; at least, there was a lot of pointless running around what preceded our actually getting out the door, the kind of activity that generally marks people who’ve reached some long-dreamed-of but still, in a way, unexpected point.

Our walk down to the depot was quiet enough, but I marked that there were a lot of faces at a lot of dimly lit windows watching as we passed, a very unusual state of affairs in a town that, as I’ve said, generally bedded down early. It wasn’t hard to explain the unusual behavior: the feeling that the whole community was on the eve of something that might change the way they thought about a lot of things-not least themselves-was thicker than it had been at any point during the previous five days; thicker, even, than when Mr. Picton had announced the indictment; and when we first heard the distant whistle of the midnight train echoing up from many miles to the southeast, I was sure that we couldn’t have been the only people in town who felt our bodies shiver mightily.

There were only a few other people on the train platform when we got there: the guard Henry, who’d been told by Sheriff Dunning to meet the train, along with Mr. Grose of the Ballston Weekly Journal and a couple of his employees. As for the mayor of the town, he’d been on vacation since before we came to the place, and after hearing about the indictment, he’d decided to extend his holiday: like District Attorney Pearson, he figured there was no political gain to be had from this case, only damage, and maybe considerable damage. Mr. Grose didn’t say much to any of our party, and Mr. Picton didn’t offer him anything fresh for his newspaper. Not that Mr. Grose would’ve printed such; in fact, I think he was just there on the off-chance that Dunning would show up empty-handed, or that a calamity of some kind might take place at the depot. My bet was that if everything went smoothly, the evening’s activities wouldn’t get more than a few lines in the following Saturday’s edition of the weekly paper.

Midnight came and went, causing Mr. Picton to remark that he hoped the Spanish government and people were even worse at keeping to timetables than Americans were, if our country really intended to go to war with Madrid. Finally, at about 12:15, the train’s whistle sounded again, much closer this time. El Niño hopped down and did the old Indian trick of putting his ear to the tracks, then nodded eagerly as he rejoined us on the platform. The actual noise of the train’s engine reached our ears just as a light flashed through a break in the buildings beyond the depot; and in a few more seconds the steaming locomotive and its four nearly empty cars stormed in, causing us all to take a few steps back toward the station.

Sheriff Dunning was the first man off the forward car, and even in the near darkness his face looked plainly exhausted. One of his deputies followed, and then there was a long pause. Finally, she appeared.