Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

“St. Ignatius bean,” Miss Howard answered, as if the first mug what you might’ve buttonholed on the sidewalk outside the terrace would’ve known what she meant. “It’s one of the plants in which strychnine occurs naturally.”

“That’s it!” the Doctor said with a snap of his fingers. “Strychnine! I was certain I recognized it.”

“It’s soluble in water, sparingly soluble in alcohol, and very soluble in chloroform,” Lucius said. “Presuming the intent here was to disable and not to kill, our man knew exactly what proportions to use. And that’s no mean trick.”

“How come?” I asked, tearing into my steak and gulping down my root beer.

“Because strychnine’s more powerful than other drugs used for similar purposes,” Marcus said, handing the stick to Miss Howard and finally starting in on his chicken. “Curare, for instance, is a blend of ingredients-strychnine’s one of them-and that blending makes it easier to control. But in its pure form, strychnine is very tricky stuff. That’s why people use it when they’ve got severe vermin problems. Better than arsenic, really.”

“But can you really be so sure that it is pure strychnine?” the Doctor asked.

“The odor’s fairly distinctive,” Lucius answered. “And the presence of chloroform as a solvent would seem to confirm it. But I’ll take it home if you like, and run some tests. Fairly simple. Little sulfuric acid, some potassium dichromate-”

“Oh, sure,” Mr. Moore said, now devouring his trout. “I do it all the time…”

“Very well,” the Doctor said. “But let us, for the moment, assume you are correct, Detective Sergeant. Can you say who would possess such knowledge, offhand?”

“Well,” Lucius answered, “the stick appears to be some sort of aboriginal dart or arrow.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “That was my thought.”

“But as for who uses pure strychnine in hunting, or even warfare-there you’ve got me.”

“And there,” the Doctor said, setting to work on a plate of crab cakes, “I also find my own assignment for tomorrow.”

“Ah-ha!” Mr. Moore said, holding up his fork. “At last, a cryptic comment that I can decipher-you’re going to see Boas!”

“Exactly, Moore. Boas. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to render his services once again.”

Dr. Franz Boas was another of the Doctor’s close scientific friends, the head of the Department of Anthropology at the Museum of Natural History and a man who’d helped our team gain some important tips at a crucial point during the Beecham investigation the year before. Like Dr. Kreizler, Boas was a German by birth, though he’d come to this country later in life than the Doctor. He’d studied psychology before moving on to anthropology and the United States, so he and the Doctor had no trouble communicating on a whole batch of levels; and whenever he came to the house the dining room was pretty certain to be the scene of lively talks and occasional arguments, during which Dr. Boas would sometimes slip into German and Dr. Kreizler would fall right in with him, making it impossible for me to tell what in the world they were hollering about. But he was a kindly man, was Dr. Boas, and like most of your genuine geniuses he didn’t let his brains turn him into what you might call an intellectual snob.

“I shall take him both the knife and this projectile,” Dr. Kreizler said, “and tell him the story of the child or children that we have spotted on the occasions that the weapons have been used. It may be that he can supply some insight, or that someone on his staff can. I confess, the entire matter mystifies me.”

A general noise of chewing agreement came out of the rest of us, showing that we’d pretty much reached the limits of what we could make out of the morning’s activities. For a while we just ate and drank, letting our nerves and our spirits piece themselves back together. But the silence was eventually broken by Miss Howard.

“For a woman whose original action seems to have been so impulsive,” she said slowly, sipping her wine and playing with a dish of fresh strawberries and hot chocolate sauce that had arrived for dessert, “this one seems to have planned how to elude capture awfully well.” She gently bit into a dripping strawberry. “Another paradox, I suppose, Doctor?”

“Indeed, Sara,” the Doctor answered, rolling a strawberry of his own in the chocolate. “But remember-all of you, remember-these paradoxes must not be considered contradictory. They are part of a single process. As a snake propels itself forward by pushing sideways across the sand, first to the left and then to the right, so does Nurse Hunter pursue her desperate goals. She is impulsive, then calculating. Flattering and promiscuous, then suddenly and mortally threatening. An apparently respectable woman with a bedridden husband, who nonetheless seems to have some important connection to one of the most degenerate, senselessly violent gangs in the city. By comparison, more outwardly excessive criminal behavior seems quite comprehensible. Even so obsessive a murderer as John Beecham moved along a course that almost appears linear and coherent-even though it was fatal-when held up against this woman. We find ourselves, in many ways, in an even stranger land when we face Elspeth Hunter. And with fewer maps…”

The meal soon came to an end, and-it being Sunday and all the places what Dr. Kreizler had mentioned as possible sources of information being closed-everyone agreed to go home, take care of what few details they could, and try to get some rest. As we left the Café Lafayette the Isaacsons hailed a hansom, while the Doctor offered to drop Mr. Moore and Miss Howard off. Then it was back to Seventeenth Street and, for me, into the carriage house, to take care of the calash and put a little balm on the spot on Frederick ’s haunch where he’d been struck by Ding Dong.

The blow hadn’t left much of a mark, but I could tell as I applied the balm that it still stung Frederick a bit, and I made some calming noises and fed him a bit of sugar as I rubbed the medicine in. It made me all the madder to think that a man I’d always counted as one of the worst I knew-and, since visiting Kat the night before, had come to hate even more-had caused Frederick such pain and confusion, and as I worked on the animal’s haunch I quietly assured him that I’d see that the wound was taken back out of Ding Dong’s hide, one day. With interest, too…

Caught up in these bitter thoughts, I barely noticed Cyrus slipping into the carriage house. He came over and stroked Frederick ’s neck, looking straight into the gelding’s eyes and giving him some words of sympathy. Then he spoke to me:

“He okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, holding up Frederick ’s left hind leg and scraping some hard mud out of his shoe. “Not much of a welt. Scared him worse than anything.”

“He’s a tough old boy,” Cyrus said, patting the horse’s snout lightly. Then he came round and stood by me. I got the feeling he had something on his mind.

“Miss Howard didn’t hear. What Ding Dong said about Kat, I mean.”

My heart jumped a little, but I kept on scraping. “No?”

“She was too far away. And she had her hands full.” Cyrus crouched down beside me. In a quick glance I saw some inquisitiveness in his broad face, but more sympathy. “ I heard it, though.”

“Oh,” was all I could answer.

“You want to talk about it, Stevie?”

I tried to summon up a light, dismissive kind of a laugh, but came up far short. “Not much to say. She’s gone to be his girl.” I almost choked on the words. “I told her-you know, about the idea of her working here. But you were right. She’s got other plans…”

Cyrus just made a small sound that said he got the picture. Then he put a hand on my shoulder. “You need anything?”