I heard the sound of a door opening, and then a careful little voice said, “Excuse me, sir, but the missus says it’s time for you to rest.”
“Yes,” Mr. Vanderbilt answered, “I’m coming. Well, gentlemen. I must obey the orders of my physician. I hope you will be able to locate Mrs. Hatch—although I suppose her name must have changed.”
“Yes,” Mr. Moore said. “Thank you, Mr. Vanderbilt, for seeing us. You have been exceptionally gracious—and helpful. Will you be leaving for Newport soon?”
“Tomorrow, in fact. Which is why I must gather my strength. I’ll have someone show you out.”
“Please, sir,” the Doctor said, “do not trouble yourself. We are quite capable. And thank you, once again.”
There were some general sounds of movement, and that was my cue: waiting ’til just a few people were passing by on the avenue, I ran full out for the iron fence, threw myself up and over it, then landed on the sidewalk and walked breezily away, ignoring the stares of a couple what were strolling by and trying to look like I jumped millionaires’ fences every day, twice on Sundays.
I got back to the calash a few seconds after the Doctor and Mr. Moore had reached it, making it necessary for me to explain where I’d been. This had the advantage of making it unnecessary for them to tell me about their conversation with Mr. Vanderbilt, though my second act of trespassing in a week didn’t please the Doctor much. But the shock of what they’d heard inside overrode any other considerations.
“I hate this!” Mr. Moore said as we started the drive back downtown. “I hate it! It’s exactly as Lucius said: every time we think we’re getting somewhere, slap!, some new piece of information crops up that changes the whole picture.”
“And what makes you so sure that the picture has changed, Moore?” the Doctor asked.
“You heard what he said, Kreizler!” Mr. Moore shouted in frustration. “The woman’s children were ‘shot down in front of her by a madman’! What the hell was that all about?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Any number of things. It may be true. It may also have been a fantasy she created.”
“Kreizler,” Mr. Moore answered, banging one hand against the door of the calash in annoyance, “he said he was told about it by friends. What’s she doing, going all over the state making up stories about dead children to gain people’s sympathy?”
“Not all over the state. The event occurred near the town where she was born, apparently. So if there’s any truth to it at all, your friend in the district attorney’s office should be able to tell us about it. Have you been able to contact him yet?”
“I wrote on Monday,” Mr. Moore answered glumly, settling into a mood that matched the hot, humid weather. “And sent a telegram on Tuesday. But I suppose now I’d better wire him again, or try to get him on the telephone. Let him know about this.” He roused himself just once more. “And what did he mean about her ‘nephew’ being left in her care, anyway?”
“That,” the Doctor said, “was almost certainly a fantasy. Or, to be more explicit, a lie. She had to create some story to explain the sudden appearance of the Johannsen boy in her life.”
“Oh. Yes.” Mr. Moore’s understanding of this detail didn’t cheer him up any. “Christ, it’s like trying to keep up with the machinations of three different people.”
“True,” the Doctor replied. “Layers upon layers …”
On hearing that statement, Mr. Moore gave up on trying to make any more sense out of the strange things Mr. Vanderbilt had said and just took to smoking cigarettes and knocking his feet against the wall of the carriage every few minutes, saying “I hate this!” over and over, like we hadn’t gotten the point. Dr. Kreizler tried to get his friend’s mind off the thing by going over the front page of the Times. But the news there wasn’t such as would cheer any of us up. The police had finally captured Martin Thorn, the suspected culprit in the “mystery of the headless body,” and, true to Detective Sergeant Lucius’s prediction, he’d never left the city during the whole time the manhunt for him had been going on. We had some reason to believe that the distraction of the case would continue a bit longer—though a confession had been gotten out of Thorn, it conflicted with all the “evidence” and theories the police had assembled—but at best the case would be resolved in a matter of days. An even greater worry was the fact that Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Mr. Roosevelt’s closest friend and political ally in Washington, was openly urging President McKinley to take stronger action against the Spanish Empire in all contested matters: the American war party was getting impatient, and though we didn’t know just what that would mean for our investigation, it didn’t seem to indicate anything good. Finally, there was a report of more personal importance to both the Doctor and Mr. Moore: Madame Lillian Nordica, one of their favorite singers from the Metropolitan Opera, was critically ill in London. The Times made it seem like she was at death’s door, though we eventually found out that the report was exaggerated; but even the possibility of such a loss was enough to cause the Doctor to join Mr. Moore in downhearted silence.
The rain didn’t let up much as we drove downtown, and neither did the stench on the street, which was a very bad sign: weather of that variety, coming at that time of year, could take quite a while to blow on out of town. As it turned out, that day did indeed mark the start of the first really dangerous period of the summer, the kind of natural phenomenon what the papers had taken to calling a “heat wave.” For the next week, average temperatures would not fall below the eighties; and even at night, the humid air and lack of wind would make sleep just about impossible. This situation was not helped by the fact that our investigation soon narrowed down to the tedious business of continuing the search for a talkative member of the group of women whose kids had been under Nurse Hunter’s care at the Lying-in Hospital (a job what had me driving the detective sergeants and Miss Howard to dismal parts of the city or, worse yet, out to the suburbs, over the next few days), as well as waiting for Mr. Moore to hear from his old pal up in Ballston Spa. By the following Monday, some of us were beginning to doubt the existence of this person. Mr. Moore had sent not one but two cables to the man, telling him what we were up to, but he’d had no reply. Such didn’t necessarily mean anything, one way or the other; but it was, given our circumstances and the weather, cause for much frustration.
Add fear to that mix, and you had a truly rocky time. This last emotion came first in the form of occasional appearances in the Stuyvesant Park area by members of the Hudson Dusters. They made no threatening moves, being as they weren’t interested in getting into a scrape so far outside their territory; but it was clear that they wanted to remind us that they were around, and that—cops or no cops—we’d, be better off minding our own business. Unsettling as these visits were, they didn’t compare to the several sightings by some members of our team—including me—of El Niño, the Filipino pygmy employed by Señor Linares. Like the Dusters, this little man made no attempt to attack or even threaten any of us; but he was there and watching, knives and arrows at the ready should our investigation actually start to move forward in some kind of dramatic way.
As all of this was happening, the detective sergeants also had to pursue their investigation of affairs at the Doctor’s Institute. They hadn’t reported their progress on this matter to anyone in our group; hadn’t said anything about it at all, in fact, excepting the time they’d requested information from Cyrus concerning the staff of the place, and another occasion when they’d asked me if I’d seen anything in Paulie McPherson’s behavior that might help explain his suicide. I’d told them I hadn’t; and from the disappointed way they nodded at me in reply, I took it that they hadn’t been having much better luck digging information up anywhere else.
Then, on Monday the twelfth, the detective sergeants showed up at Seventeenth Street looking pretty grim. It was late in the afternoon, and the heat wave was still going strong: in fact, the weather claimed its first victim that day, a small child who was struck down
by sunstroke and taken to the Hudson Street Hospital (not far, I immediately thought when I heard the news, from the house where Libby Hatch lived her life as Nurse Elspeth Hunter). The Doctor was in his study working, Cyrus was out in the carriage house tending to the horses, and I was in the kitchen, helping Mrs. Leshko clean up half a dozen plates what she’d smashed to bits with the end of a mop during a moment of typically vigorous but destructive cleaning.
When the doorbell rang, I ran to answer it, leaving a wailing Mrs. Leshko to the last of the sweeping up. The detective sergeants were all business when they came in, immediately asking where the Doctor was. I told them he was in his study, and they marched right upstairs, looking like they’d been hoping to avoid this moment but were now resigned to it. There wasn’t any way I was going to miss what came next: I let them get a floor or so ahead of me, then followed on up at the same distance, finally dashing to the study door when I heard it close. Creeping carefully, I made my way to the thing, then lay on the carpeted floor and peered through the narrow crack underneath it, seeing several pairs of feet along with the bottoms of many piles of books and papers.
“We’re sorry to bother you, Doctor,” I heard Marcus say, as his feet came to rest in front of the legs of one of the chairs near the Doctor’s desk. “But we thought we’d better let you know what’s going on with the—other matter.”
There was a pause, and Lucius’s feet started tapping nervously between the legs of the sofa. “The news isn’t bad, exactly—but we can’t really say it’s good, either.”
The Doctor drew a heavy breath. “Well, gentlemen?”
“So far as we can tell,” Marcus said, “there’s no reason to believe that the McPherson boy’s suicide was prompted by anything or anyone at your Institute. We’ve questioned and requestioned the entire staff, and put together a general chronology of events from the time the boy arrived to the time he died. There’s simply nothing that suggests he was treated in a way that would have sparked self-destructive tendencies.”
“Even members of the staff who don’t particularly like each other,” Lucius added carefully, “—not that there are more than two or three of them—can’t find fault with each other’s behavior toward the boy. As for family—assuming he was going by his right name, we really can’t find any relations at all.”
“I tried myself,” the Doctor added quietly. “Without success.”
“We checked out the cord he used,” Marcus said, trying to sound more optimistic, “and it doesn’t match the materials found in any of the drapery or curtain mechanisms in the building. Which means he must’ve brought it in with him—”
“Which suggests that he’d been contemplating the act before he got there,” Lucius said.
“And that,” Marcus continued, “will be useful in court, I think. Now—about that court date …” There was another pause before Marcus went on. “Judge Reinhart, who was in charge of your initial hearing, neglected to inform anyone that he’s retiring at the end of this month. His caseload has been farmed out to a series of other magistrates. You, I’m afraid, have drawn Judge Samuel Welles.” I heard a hiss come out of the Doctor. “Yes. You’ve crossed paths with him before, we understand,” Marcus said.
“Several times,” the Doctor answered quietly.
“We don’t know him,” Lucius said, “but we hear that he’s fairly stern.”
“That’s not my main concern,” replied the Doctor. “He can be stern, yes, but I’ve seen him be lenient, as well. And that is the difficulty. He is utterly unpredictable. I’ve never been able to anticipate his reactions precisely enough to structure my testimony accordingly. In addition, he is not a man who requires extensive evidence of wrongdoing in matters such as these. If the state chooses to make a case that throws serious moral opprobrium on the Institute—”
“Which it will almost certainly do,” Marcus said.
“—then the mere fact that the McPherson boy died while in my care may be enough for Welles.”
“Yes.” Lucius’s voice was a strange mixture of hope and gloominess. “That’s why we thought we’d better come—to let you know that it’s really going to ride on the hearing itself. It’s been delayed a bit, by the way. Apparently, Welles will be on vacation until the first week of September, and—”
The sudden sound of people entering the house and loud voices echoing up the staircase made me stop listening and jerk my head around; then, realizing that the Doctor and the detective sergeants could probably hear it, too, I got to my feet and started downstairs, not wanting to get caught eavesdropping. Looking down between the banisters, I could just see Mr. Moore, Miss Howard, and Cyrus pounding up the stairs.
“Well, then, where the hell is he?” Mr. Moore was asking, in a loud, breathless voice.
“I believe that the Doctor is in his study, Mr. Moore,” Cyrus explained in a baffled and not altogether pleased tone. “If you’ll just tell me—”
“No, no,” Mr. Moore answered. “We’ll tell him—we’ll all tell him! Come on, Cyrus, you’re part of this, too, you’d better hear about it!”
They kept on coming up at the same fast pace, Mr. Moore taking the stairs two at a time and, when he saw me, just about falling in a faint at my feet.
“Stevie!” he breathed. “Is he up there? My God, I’ve run across half the damned city—”
“Oh, really, John,” Miss Howard said. She was a little out of breath, too, but nothing to match Mr. Moore. “From your house to my house to Seventeenth Street hardly constitutes half the city. If you’d just get some blasted exercise occasionally—”
“It is—a well-known fact,” Mr. Moore panted, “that—too much exercise—is not good for you. And I’m living proof, just at the moment…. Well, Stevie?”
I indicated the study with a nod. “He’s in there. With the detective sergeants.”
That got Mr. Moore right back up. “Excellent,” he said. “Saves any more running around.” He made for the study door, the rest of us behind him; and I was surprised when he didn’t bother knocking, but just burst on in.
The Doctor looked up from his desk, a little shocked and, like Cyrus, a little miffed at the lack of courtesy. The detective sergeants got to their feet, also looking surprised, as Mr. Moore leaned on the doorknob and kept on panting.
Then he held up an envelope. “This just arrived … special delivery… from Rupert Picton.” He took another deep breath. “I really do hate this case …”
CHAPTER 26
Mr. Moore opened the envelope as Cyrus, Miss Howard, and I filed into the study with the others. Unfolding the letter inside, our exhausted friend took a deep breath and tried to start reading it; but he’d only gotten as far as the salutation—“Moore, you swine!”—before he fell to his knees, still trying to catch his breath. Handing the letter to Miss Howard, he said, “Sara, you read it,” then crawled over to the sofa and pulled himself up onto it.”
“What the devil’s the matter with him, Sara?” the Doctor asked. “Is he drunk, or has he merely been shot?”
“Worse,” Miss Howard answered. “He’s been running. But he’s right about the letter, Doctor. Listen to this, it’s dated yesterday: ‘Moore, you swine! I would take the time to elaborate on what a mud-dwelling, feculent—‘”
“You don’t have to read that part!” Mr. Moore protested from the sofa.
Miss Howard only smiled and went on: “‘—but the communications from you which I found heaped on my desk when I returned from the Adirondacks today actually must take precedence. All joking aside, John, listen to me—if you have indeed, in your infinite wisdom, managed to get yourself mixed up in a private investigation that is directed at the woman who was known in this town as Libby Hatch, then be as careful as you know how to be. The story you heard from Mr. Vanderbilt is indeed true, or rather, is the commonly accepted explanation of a horrendous crime that occurred here just over three years ago. Her three children were shot, supposedly by an itinerant Negro lunatic—who was never seen by anyone but
Mrs. Hatch. Two of the children died. The third survived but has been mute ever since. An extensive search failed to produce any sign of the Negro, or of anyone who’d even gotten so much as a glimpse of the man—nevertheless, the case never got past a coroner’s inquest, so effective was Mrs. Hatch’s inventiveness, and so scarce the support for any other interpretation. I had my own ideas—and having been through what you have, I’m sure you can guess what they were.
“‘As to the other matters you say you are looking into, I am appalled but not surprised to learn of them. The woman is, I believe, one of the most dangerous persons alive. It’s a pity I couldn’t ever convince anyone else of that. You indicate that your investigation in New York is at a bit of a standstill. If this is true, I advise you to take it as a sign. Make no more direct moves against Libby Hatch yourself, and, if the people you’re working with are even semicapable investigators, waste no time getting up here with them. Dr. Kreizler I of course know by his writings and reputation, and I should be delighted to make his acquaintance.
“‘Wire me if and when you’re coming. I am in deadly earnest, John—don’t try to beat this woman with an informal investigation. Even if you had the entire Police Department on it with you, I should worry—she’d find a way to con them all and kill you, if it came to that. Either leave the thing be, or get up here and we’ll see what we can do together. Any other course will be disastrous.
“‘Your friend, Rupert Picton.’”
Miss Howard folded up the sheet of paper and replaced it in the envelope. “That’s all,” she said.
The Doctor just sat still for a moment, then looked over to the sofa, where Mr. Moore appeared to have recovered. “He seems quite a colorful fellow, this friend of yours, Moore.”