Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

If the Hunters still lived in the house but were not at home, on the other hand, the Isaacsons would question the neighbors on when the couple were likely to get back, while the rest of us kept an eye out for their approach. Finally, if the Hunters had moved on to another address, Lucius and Marcus again said that it would be best to let them flash their badges and frighten the new tenants or owners into saying where their predecessors had gone.

As there wouldn’t be room for four of us to hide in the carriage while the detective sergeants and the Doctor approached the house, it was decided that Mr. Moore, too, would go along. Miss Howard was sort of miffed, at first, that she wasn’t going to be in the door-knocking delegation. But the Doctor explained that, given the type of woman we were speculating that Nurse Hunter was, the presence of another female was only likely to throw sand into the wheels of progress. This was especially true given what the woman had been through with the other nurses at the Lying-in Hospital. There was no real way for Miss Howard to argue with this reasoning, so she let the matter go. By way of consolation, I told her that I’d be sure to park the calash right up close to the entrance of the house, so that even though she, Cyrus, and I would be out of sight behind the raised cover, we’d be able to monitor whatever went on when and if Nurse Hunter came to greet the others.

All in all, the thing seemed pretty straightforward; and I began to wonder, as we turned off of Greenwich Street onto Bethune and once again came within sight of the waters of the Hudson, why all the philosophical conversation had even been necessary. It seemed like the detective sergeants were just going to go in, get the kid if she was there, and then quietly return her to her mother. Open and shut, you might say.

That, I soon discovered, was what alienists meant when they talked about “delusions.”

Number 39 Bethune was a three-story, red brick job, l with a few window boxes full of what looked like they were trying hard to be flowers. That should’ve tipped me off to the whole thing right away: it’d been a cool, moist June, but there’d been days of warmth and sun, too, and there was no reason for the plants in those boxes to look so sorry-unless, of course, somebody didn’t know how to tend to them. Anyway, I drew the calash around and in front of the building, which was on the south side of the street, then pulled to a halt just past the two or three small steps that led to the front door. Mr. Moore and Marcus jumped down from their perches, allowing the Doctor and Lucius to get out. Then Cyrus and I took their places inside and, together with Miss Howard, peered out through the small plate of glass that was stitched into the back of the carriage’s cover. On the sidewalk, the two detective sergeants buttoned up their jackets, got their badges ready, and tried to look their most businesslike, while the Doctor and Mr. Moore followed directly behind.

They all stepped up to the door, and Marcus gave it a sharp rap.

“Here we go…” Miss Howard whispered.

A few minutes went by. Marcus knocked again. We could hear the sound of a voice yelling from an upper floor: a rasping, plaintive sort of sound, which I’d’ve said was being made by a man somewhere in his fifties. The voice stopped; Marcus knocked again.

In a sudden, harsh sort of motion the door opened, and into its frame stepped a shapely female figure in a red patterned dress, with a gray apron tied around the neck and waist. The red of the dress ran right up to a black lace collar at the neck, and above the neck was a face we’d all come to know well:

It was the woman in Miss Beaux’s sketch; it was the woman whose history we already knew peculiarly well; it was Nurse Elspeth Hunter herself.

“My Lord,” Cyrus whispered next to me. I turned for an instant to see his face full of troubled wonder. “Can it really be this easy…?”

Up on the small stoop, which wasn’t but ten feet from us, Nurse Hunter’s brilliant golden eyes flitted from face to face, taking in the men before her with a look what said her brain was working hard at a whole set of problems. She started wiping her wet hands on the lap of her apron, and just as I expected her to give out with some expression of shock or alarm, she smiled: gently, slowly, and very, very coyly.

“ Well …” she said quietly, in a complicated tone what matched the face. Then her hands went up to neaten her thick, attractive chestnut hair. “ I’m very popular all of a sudden. Is there something I can do for you- gentlemen ?” The accent wasn’t what I’d expected: there was no New England drawl, yet there was still a hint of the countryside.

Marcus stepped to the fore. “Good afternoon. Am I right in supposing that you are Mrs. Elspeth Hunter?”

“Yes,” she answered slowly, eyeing Marcus up and down and curling her lips. “You suppose correctly, Mister-”

He held up his badge. “Detective Sergeant Marcus Isaacson. New York Police Department.”

Nurse Hunter took in the badge without a blink; if she was who we were looking for, then she was as cool as any con I’d ever seen during my years in the trade.

“I see,” she answered, never losing the lightly coquettish smile. “And are these your troops, Detective Sergeant?” she asked, turning the smile to Lucius and broadening it.

It was as if she knew that Lucius would start to squirm under the flirtation, as indeed he did. “I’m, uh”-he held up his badge-“I’m Detective Sergeant Lucius Isaacson. Also of the New York Police Department.”

“You’re not brothers ?” Nurse Hunter said, the golden eyes dancing from one to the other. “How wonderful-and they let you work together, too! But you’re not at all what I’d expect-I thought that New York policemen were all named Mahoney, and had great handlebar mustaches.” The Isaacsons laughed just a little at that; it was exactly the right kind of joke to get to them with.

Nurse Hunter’s manner became far less playful as she looked beyond the detective sergeants to Mr. Moore and the Doctor. “And these gentlemen?” she said. “They can’t be police.”

“No,” Marcus answered. “They are-assisting us on a case. Mr. John Schuyler Moore and Dr. Laszlo Kreizler.”

Her face straightening with what appeared to be genuine awe and humility, Nurse Hunter directed her sunlit stare into Dr. Kreizler’s black eyes. “I-don’t know what to say…” Her words seemed to come with genuine difficulty. “I know of your work, of course, Doctor. I used to be a nurse, you see, at the Lying-in Hospital, just down the street from your-”

“Yes, I know,” the Doctor answered coldly, looking disturbed that the conversation was going on so long.

“I hope you won’t hold that fact against me,” Nurse Hunter continued. “I know that Dr. Markoe thought-well, I read some of your monographs myself, and I thought they were extremely interesting.”

The Doctor only bowed a bit, and that with just his head; but even if it was plain that he knew she was trying to touch something in him, it was also plain that she’d in fact touched it.

As Nurse Hunter turned to Mr. Moore, her face stayed straight for a few seconds; then she displayed another flirtatious look, one that soon grew into positive ogling. “And Mr. Moore…?”

He smiled back at her, then showed his cards like an amateur of the sort what he definitely was not. “ New York Times ,” he said, extending his hand.

Back inside the calash, Miss Howard let out a hiss of amazement. “I’ll be damned,” she whispered. “Four out of four… she’s sharp, all right.”

“What’s that accent?” I said quietly. “I can’t quite make it-it ain’t New England, but it ain’t local, either.”