Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

But weren’t there differences, Mr. Picton asked, between women and men, so far as these things went? Only in the eyes of society, the Doctor answered. The world at large didn’t want to accept the idea that what most people considered the only truly reliable blood relationship in the world-that between a mother and her children-was in fact anything but sacred. Not done giving voice to the questions he was sure were in the jury’s minds, Mr. Picton proceeded to ask why Libby hadn’t just abandoned the kids and disappeared to start a new existence somewhere else, the way other women often did. Was it just the money that she expected to get from her husband’s estate when they died that’d driven her to bloodshed? These questions were designed to let the Doctor repeat the main theme of his testimony, to hammer it into the jury’s thinking-and the Doctor took the opportunity to pound away. Stronger even than Libby’s desire for wealth, he said, was the desire to be accepted by the world as a good mother. Every human being, he explained, wants to believe-and wants the rest of the world to believe-that he (or she) can perform life’s most primitive functions. For women trained by American society, this was especially true-the message to young girls (and here the Doctor borrowed from Miss Howard, who had, after all, been responsible for his own realization of the fact) was that if you couldn’t attend to the propagation of the species, nothing else you did would really make up for the failure. Libby Hatch had been especially “indoctrinated” with this belief, probably by her own family. She just could not tolerate being seen as the sort of person who wouldn’t or couldn’t care for her children adequately; in her mind, it was better that they die than that she be tarred with that particular brush. But, said Mr. Picton, such thinking might be interpreted by some people as insanity-and wasn’t it insanity, really, of some kind? No, answered the Doctor, it was intolerance. Of a raging, vengeful variety, true; but intolerance had not yet-and, to his way of thinking, never would be-classified as a mental disorder.

Those of us in the first two rows had, of course, heard all this many times, in recent weeks; but the Doctor and Mr. Picton managed to pump enough new blood into the discussion so that even we became wrapped up in the talk. The effect that it had on the jury was even stronger, from the look of them-and that, I guess, is why Mr. Darrow went straight for the throat once Mr. Picton sat down.

“Dr. Kreizler,” he said, moving toward the witness box with a hard look on his face, “isn’t it true that you and your associates have recently been trying to prove that the defendant is responsible for the unexplained deaths of a number of children in New York City?”

Mr. Picton didn’t even need to get up: before he could register an objection, Judge Brown slammed down his gavel, silencing the loud chatter that the question had sparked in both the galleries and the jury box. “ Mr . Darrow !”he hollered. “I’ve had just about enough of this kind of irresponsible questioning, from both sides! I want to see you and Mr. Picton in my chambers- now !” As he got up, the judge turned to the jury box. “And you gentlemen will ignore that last question, which will be stricken from the record!” Turning again, the judge looked down at the Doctor. “The witness may feel free to move about-but you’ll still be under oath, Doctor, when we get back under way. Let’s go, gentlemen!”

Moving so fast that he didn’t look like much more than a black blur, Judge Brown disappeared through the back door of the courtroom, followed quickly by Mr. Darrow and Mr. Picton. As soon as they’d gone, the crowd came alive with animated conversation. The Doctor, not wanting to look shocked, slowly rose and drifted over to where we were all sitting.

“So, Doctor,” Lucius said. “I guess this is when the real trial begins.”

“He’s laying the groundwork for his experts,” Marcus added, looking across the room to Mrs. Cady Stanton, Dr. White, and “Dr.” Hamilton. “He knows he can’t come at you with incompetence, so he’ll go for the ulterior motive. But I didn’t think he’d do it so fast.”

“It was his only choice,” the Doctor answered. “If he’d gradually led up to the accusation, the judge never would have allowed him to reach it. This way, he at least makes sure that the jury hears his charge. It’s worth a lecture in chambers.”

“Speaking of his witnesses, it looks like there’s more bad doings over there,” Cyrus said, pointing to the defense table. Libby Hatch had gotten up to introduce herself to Mrs. Cady Stan ton, and as they shook hands I could make out the old girl saying, “Thank you, thank you,” in answer to what were almost certainly some very flattering comments from the defendant-the same sort of comments she’d made to the Doctor on first meeting him.

“Maybe I should try to break that up,” Miss Howard said, as she watched the pair continue to chat. “Now that the subject’s been broached, so to speak, I’m sure Mrs. Cady Stanton will understand-”

“I wouldn’t, Sara,” the Doctor said. “Let’s not give Darrow any more ammunition by attempting to fraternize with his witnesses.” His black eyes wandered to the back door of the courtroom, and he smiled as he said, “I can only imagine what’s going on in there…”

What was going on in there, we later learned from Mr. Picton, was a full accounting to the judge by the assistant district attorney of just what had brought all of us to Ballston Spa. It seemed that Mr. Darrow’s private detectives (who, it turned out, were actually Mr. Vanderbilt’s private detectives), with help from the Bureau of Detectives in New York and various employees of both the Lying-in and St. Luke’s Hospitals, had put together a pretty good picture of our recent moves with regard to Libby Hatch. The only thing that Mr. Darrow didn’t seem to know about was the Linares case, and Mr. Picton made sure he didn’t let any information slip, on that score. Judge Brown received all this news in an air of exasperation, and though it didn’t make him any better disposed toward Mr. Picton or the rest of us, it did make him all the more determined to keep any unrelated matters out of the record of the case currently being tried. He was very firm with Mr. Darrow about that: the defense could say whatever it wanted to about the Doctor’s personal or professional motives and methods, but it could not bring up the subject of other allegations or investigations. Mr. Darrow argued that it would be tough to paint an accurate picture of the Doctor’s true motivations without bringing up those other investigations, but the judge stuck to his guns, as Mr. Picton had predicted he would, and said that the Hatch case had to be tried on its own merits. He warned Mr. Darrow against trying to poison the jury’s ears with any more surprise questions what would have to be stricken from the record (but could never, of course, truly be stricken from the jury’s memories), and then the three men returned to the courtroom, where the defense’s examination of the Doctor continued.

“Dr. Kreizler,” Mr. Darrow said, once the galleries had gotten themselves resettled. “What exactly is your occupation, sir?”

“I am an alienist and a psychologist,” the Doctor answered. “I work in most of the hospitals in New York in that capacity. In addition, I perform mental competency assessments for the city, when asked, and I appear as an expert witness at trials such as this one. Most of my time, however, is spent at an institute for children which I founded several years ago.” Mr. Darrow, looking eager, was about to ask another question, when the Doctor showed just what he’d meant when he said he’d learned a few lessons from the counsel for the defense: “I should add, however, that I am not currently serving as the active director of the Institute, due to a court investigation into its affairs which was initiated following the suicide of a young boy we recently took in.”