Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

As Cyrus said all of this, the Doctor grabbed the newspapers hungrily and began to scan them. “And the last paper?” he asked.

“A copy of the Times ,”Cyrus answered. “Two months later. It lists a death notice-for Jonathan Hatch. Age, eighteen months. Survived by his loving mother…”

“ Libby ,”the Doctor finished. Then he waved an arm at Lucius. “Detective Sergeant-on those forms there should be a physical description of the child-”

Lucius ran over and picked up the hospital forms. “Description, description…” he mumbled, going through the things. “Here we are, description.”

“What do you have for hair and eye coloring?” the Doctor asked.

“Let me see-length-weight-ah! yes. Eyes: Blue. Hair: Blond.”

“Typical Scandinavian coloring,” the Doctor murmured. “Not that it’s conclusive, at such an age, but-” He slapped his hand down. “ Why does she keep these? As trophies? Or as mementos?”

Holding a little more raw beef in front of Mike’s mouth and watching him grab it away and then rip into it, I said quietly, “She’s got his picture…”

The Doctor looked my way. “Indeed, Stevie?”

I turned to him and nodded. “It was in the secretary. Little blond boy. Blue eyes. Picture looked pretty recent. I mean, compared to-”

I stopped, suddenly realizing what you might call the implications of what I was about to say.

“Yes, Stevie?” the Doctor asked quietly.

“Compared to the others,” I answered, looking out the window to the dark churchyard below and suddenly feeling cold. “She’s got more. A couple of individual kids-babies, like the Linares girl and this one. Then there’s a picture of three other kids, all together. They were older.”

Again, there was silence for a second; then Mr. Moore mumbled, “You don’t think-not all of them…”

“I don’t think anything,” the Doctor answered, walking to the chalkboard.

“But that-” Mr. Moore went for another drink. “I mean, the whole idea, it’s-”

“Unnatural.” Marcus had said the word, and I turned to find him looking at me. He was remembering, I was sure, that moment when we’d first found ourselves in the dead, dismal yard at Number 39 Bethune Street.

“I really do urge you to dispense with that word,” the Doctor replied quietly. “All of you. It isn’t worth the breath its utterance requires, and it distracts us from the more important result of this encounter. We have opened one door, only to find ourselves faced with many more.” Picking up a piece of chalk, the Doctor set to work on the board. “We have a host of new leads-and, quite probably, new crimes-to pursue. The worst of this business, I fear, lies ahead of us.”

Everybody’s appetite seemed to slack off quite a bit with that realization-everybody’s but Mike’s. Slowly becoming aware of his noisy chewing, I looked down to see him sitting in my lap, gnawing away, happy as he probably knew how to be. I put my finger behind his ear and scratched at his soft fur.

“Next time you get to feeling sorry you’re a ferret and not a person, Mike,” I muttered, “I want you to remember all this…”

The Doctor turned around to find a collection of blank, depressed faces, and, sensing that motivation was dwindling away, he marched back over to his plate of food and his wine and picked them up.

“Come, come,” he said, maybe more cheerfully than he felt. “This meal is entirely too good to waste, and none of you will be able to work on an empty stomach.”

Mr. Moore looked up in bleary confusion. “Work?”

“Certainly, Moore,” the Doctor answered, eating a bit of foie gras on a toast point and taking a sip of wine. “We have now catalogued the information we gained from this little escapade. It remains to be interpreted. When our adversary returns home, she will doubtless realize what we have been about and adjust her movements and actions to it. Time therefore presses, now more than ever.”

“But, Kreizler,” Mr. Moore said, unconvinced. “What’s there to interpret? We can’t get the Linares kid out, not without tearing the house apart. We still can’t go to the cops. And once this woman, whatever the hell name she’s using, tells Goo Goo Knox what’s happened, we’ll all have to spend our nights ducking attacks from the damned Hudson Dusters! Now, what the hell do you think we’re going to do that’s going to change any of that?”

Lucius was holding his face in his hands, and it was sinking between them. “The woman has covered herself awfully well, Doctor. Just as Sara said the other day.” He lifted his head and pulled out a handkerchief, starting to wipe sweat from his brow but soon giving up. “I realize this point’s been made before, but… the Beecham case was so much more- direct . He was challenging us, and there were things that we could grab on to, points that we could proceed to and from, with some kind of logic. But this… every time you think you’re getting somewhere, you find out something new that changes the entire picture.”

“I know, Detective Sergeant, I know,” the Doctor answered quickly. “But remember one essential difference between this case and our last: some hidden part of Beecham desperately wanted to be stopped.”

“The sane part of him,” Mr. Moore said. “So are you saying this Libby Hatch is insane? Because if she is-”

“Not insane, John.” The Doctor went to the board and wrote the word SANE under the woman’s names, then underlined it. “But characterized by so severe a lack of self-knowledge, of self-awareness, that her behavior becomes incoherent enough to seem insane, sometimes. On the other hand, she can often be quite coherent-as you have all pointed out, this time she has managed to shield her actions very well.”

Marcus looked up. “ This time?” he echoed.

“Mmm, yes,” the Doctor answered as he sipped his wine. “ This time.” He drew a large box under the section of the board labeled THE WOMAN ON THE TRAIN and proceeded to label the box PAST CRIMES. Then he wrote the numbers 1 through 6 underneath the label. Next to the number 1 he scratched PETER JOHANNSEN, 1895: KIDNAPPED, MAY, BECAME JONATHAN HATCH; DIED ST. LUKE’S HOSPITAL, JULY. SUFFOCATED. “And indeed,” the Doctor went on, stepping back, “why should she not have been ready this time? She has certainly had enough practice. If we are interpreting the elements presented to us correctly, I think we can assume that all of the children that Stevie saw in the photographs-at least six, by my count, and perhaps more-were believed by the Hatch woman to be her own-either because they in fact were, or by way of still more kidnappings. And we can be just as certain that they were her victims.”

“She keeps pictures of children she’s murdered in her house ?”Mr. Moore said.

“Don’t sound so shocked, Moore. After all, we have already posited that she does not hold herself responsible for their deaths-her mind will not allow it. In her view, they die despite her, not because of her-they are wanton, imperfect, defective children who defy her tireless maternal efforts to nurture them.”

“We’ve granted all that, Doctor,” Miss Howard said, herself sounding a little downcast; and she was always the last person to show flagging spirits. “But how can it help us here? I mean, practically speaking? How can we use it to rescue a child whose father has no interest in rescuing her-who, in fact, dispatches his macabre family servant to warn us against rescuing her?”

The Doctor turned to her quickly. “And so what should we do, Sara? Drop the case? When we know that the girl will die, and soon? And when we have no idea what the political repercussions of that death may be?”