The Angel Of Darkness

CHAPTER 47

Coming back into the courtroom that afternoon, I took note of a change in the positioning of the guards in the place, one what didn’t make much of an impression on me at the time. The big man who’d usually stood behind Iphegeneia Blaylock was now at the door, while Henry, our old friend with the narrow head and the slow brain, was standing inside the oak railing, near the defense table. Writing the switch off to each man wanting a change of pace, I didn’t, like I say, think much of it; but now, looking back, I can see that it was the first indication of something much more sinister, something that would eventually result in an unexpected and terrible conclusion to the trial. It would’ve saved a lot of heartache if I could’ve seen what the shift really signaled, if any of our group could have; but the only one who might’ve logically been expected to read it correctly was the Doctor, and he was much too focused on his coming showdown with Mr. Darrow to pay attention to those kind of seemingly small details.

Taking the stand at just past two, the Doctor spent most of the next hour answering Mr. Picton’s questions about the work he’d done with Clara Hatch, proceeding from there into a discussion of his assessment of Libby Hatch’s mental condition. The jury, like the people in the galleries around them, were pretty obviously disposed to view the Doctor’s statements with what you might call skepticism, when he first began to speak; but as was so often the case when he appeared in court, he slowly began to win at least some of them over with his clear and compassionate statements, especially when it came to the subject of Clara. Making it clear that while treating the girl he’d simply followed his standard procedure for dealing with such cases-and also making it clear just how many similar cases he had dealt with-the Doctor painted a picture of a very bright, very sensitive girl, one whose mind had been terribly jumbled but not broken by the events what’d occurred on the night of May 31st, 1894. His description of Clara had the effect of softening the jury up to the point where they became interested in the details of his medical diagnosis, instead of being put off by them; and as he talked about spending long days sitting and drawing with her, making it clear that he’d neither tried to force her to speak nor put words in her mouth once she did begin to communicate, those twelve men became more and more what you might call receptive, so that by the time Mr. Picton began to inquire about Libby Hatch, they were ready to hear whatever the Doctor had to say. There was no clever maneuvering involved in all this: the simple fact was that for all the Doctor’s unusual appearance, his accent, and the strange nature of much of his work, when he talked about children his attitude was so honest and caring that even the most skeptical types couldn’t question that he honestly cared about what was best for his young charges.

Mr. Picton’s queries about Libby Hatch were all designed for one basic purpose: to show that the woman was calculating, not insane, and that she was very capable of using a variety of methods to get what she wanted. The Doctor told about the three different approaches she’d employed to try to gain his sympathy-playing the victim, the seductress, and finally the wrathful punisher-and he explained how none of them was what he called “pathological” by nature. They were, in fact, methods what were very commonly used by many different sorts of women when they were trying to get the upper hand in a given situation-especially a situation what involved men. Playing Devil’s advocate for a moment, Mr. Picton asked if a woman’s murdering her own kids could really be included as part of such efforts-if it could actually be looked at as her trying to gain greater control over her life and her world. Here the Doctor launched into a long recital of similar cases he’d seen and read about over the years, cases where women had indeed done away with their offspring when said kids stood in the way of what their mothers perceived as their own basic needs.

Part of this conversation was a long examination of a case we’d all come to know well: the life and killings of Lydia Sherman, “Queen Poisoner.” The Doctor noted some very interesting similarities between that murderess and Libby Hatch: Lydia Sherman had been what the Doctor referred to as “temperamentally as well as constitutionally unsuited to either marriage or motherhood,” but that hadn’t stopped her from going hunting for husbands and bearing children over and over. Whenever things’d gotten intolerable-as they were always bound to do, given her personality-she just killed each family off, instead of accepting that the problem might lie inside herself. The same sort of “dynamic,” the Doctor said, controlled Libby Hatch’s behavior: for whatever reason (and he made sure to mention the fact that Libby never would discuss her childhood with him) the defendant just couldn’t tolerate the gap between what she wanted and what she thought society expected of a woman. Headstrong and absorbed with her own needs and desires as she was, Libby couldn’t let even children stand in the way of her plans; but she also felt a desperate need to have people perceive her as a good woman, a caring mother, a loving wife. Looked at from this angle, the strange story about the phantom Negro on the Charlton road really wasn’t so odd: only a tale so fantastic could make her look like a hero to the people in her town, instead of a woman who’d murdered three kids what were in her way. But there was nothing, the Doctor emphasized, insane in any of this: members of the male sex very often went to the gallows for similar crimes, without anybody ever suggesting that they were crazy.

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.”

Looking disappointed at not getting a chance to force this last information out of the Doctor, Mr. Darrow asked, “You were, in fact, ordered not to return to your Institute for a period of sixty days, were you not?”

“Yes,” the Doctor answered. “It’s not an uncommon action for a court to take under such circumstances. It allows the investigation into what drove the boy to take his own life to be conducted more freely and effectively.”

“And has the investigation turned up any answers to the question of why the boy took his own life?”

The Doctor lowered his eyes just a bit. “No. It has not.”

“That must be particularly frustrating, for a man who’s spent most of his life trying to help children.”

“I don’t know that it’s frustrating,” the Doctor answered. “Puzzling, certainly. And distressing.”

“Well, I’m no alienist, Doctor,” Mr. Darrow said, walking over to the jury. “But I’d say that puzzling and distressing, when put together, can add up to frustrating without much trouble. Wouldn’t you agree?”

The Doctor shrugged. “They might.”

“And a person who’s frustrated on one front might be tempted to seek satisfaction on another-at least, that’s how it’s always seemed to me.” Returning to his table, Mr. Darrow picked up a book. “Tell me-do you know of a Dr. Adolf Meyer?”

Nodding, the Doctor said, “Certainly. He’s a colleague of mine. And a friend.”

“Children seem to be an area of special interest for him, too, to judge by his writings.” The Doctor nodded silently. “I take it you’ve read what he has to say about children with what he calls ‘morbid imaginations’?” After another nod from the Doctor, Mr. Darrow said, “Maybe you could tell the jury just what that refers to.”

“Morbid imagination,” the Doctor answered, turning to the jury box, “is characteristic of children whose fantasies cannot be controlled, even by conscious exertion. Such children often suffer from nightmares and night terrors, and the condition can even lead, in its most extreme variant, to delusions.”

Picking up a second book, Mr. Darrow walked toward the witness stand. “How about these two European doctors-Breuer and Freud? Do you know about them?”

“Yes.”

“They seem to’ve made quite a study of hysteria and its effects. I confess I didn’t really know what that word meant, until I started in on this volume. I always thought it referred to overexcited ladies.”

Quiet laughter floated through the galleries at that, and the Doctor waited for it to calm down before he said, “Yes, the word originated with the Greeks, who thought that violent nervous disorders were peculiar to women and originated in the uterus.”

Mr. Darrow smiled and shook his head, putting the books down. “Well-we’ve learned better, haven’t we? Just about anybody can be hysterical nowadays. I’m afraid I may unintentionally have driven His Honor pretty close to it.” The crowd laughed a little louder this time, but the judge didn’t do anything except give Mr. Darrow an icy stare. “And I do apologize for it,” the counselor said, holding up a hand. Then he looked at the Doctor again. “But I’m interested in what these gentlemen-Breuer and Freud-have to say about hysteria. They seem to think it originates in childhood, like the morbid imagination. Doctor, is there any chance that Clara Hatch suffers from either a morbid imagination or hysteria?”

I could see the Doctor working hard to keep from scoffing at the question. “No,” he said. “Not in my opinion. As I told the state’s attorney, Clara has experienced what I refer to as ‘protracted hysterical disassociation.’ It’s quite distinct from the kind of hysteria Breuer and Freud discuss.”

“You seem awfully sure, after spending-how many days with the girl?”

“Ten in all.”

“Quick work,” Mr. Darrow judged, playing at being impressed. “How about Paul McPherson-the boy who killed himself at your Institute?”

The Doctor kept his features very still at the mention of the unfortunate kid. “What about him, specifically?”

“Did he suffer from those pathologies?”

“I can’t say. He was only with us a short time, before his death.”

“Oh? How long?”

“A few weeks.”

“A few weeks? Shouldn’t that have been enough time for you to formulate an accurate diagnosis? After all, with Clara Hatch it only took you ten days.”

The Doctor’s eyes thinned up as he realized where Mr. Darrow was going. “I attend to dozens of children at my Institute. Clara, by contrast, had my undivided attention.”

“I’m sure she did, Doctor. I’m sure she did. And you told her that the work you were doing together would help her, am I correct?” The Doctor nodded. “And did you tell her it would help her mother, too?”

“In a child like Clara,” the Doctor explained, “the memory of a terrifying experience causes a division within the psyche. She divorced herself from the reality of it by refusing to communicate with the rest of the world-”

“That’s very interesting, Doctor,” Mr. Darrow said. “But if you’d answer the question?”

Pausing and then nodding reluctantly, the Doctor replied, “Yes. I told her that if she could bring herself to speak of what happened it would help her-and her mother.”

“Helping her mother was very important to her, then?”

“It was. Clara loves her mother.”

“Even though she seems to think that her mother tried to kill her? And did kill her brothers?” Without waiting for an answer, Mr. Darrow pressed on: “Tell me, Doctor-when you were working with Clara, who first mentioned the idea that her mother’d been the actual attacker on the Charlton road? Was it you or her?”

The Doctor reeled back a bit, looking very indignant. “She did, of course.”

“But you already believed her mother was responsible, is that right?”

“I-” The Doctor was having trouble finding words: a rare sight. “I wasn’t certain.”

“You came all the way to Ballston Spa at the request of the assistant district attorney because you weren’t certain? Let’s try the question another way, Doctor: Did you suspect that Clara’s mother was responsible for the attack?”

“Yes. I did.”

“I see. And so you come to Ballston Spa, and you spend every waking hour with a girl who hasn’t spoken to another soul in three years, and you use all the tricks and techniques of your profession-”

“I do not use tricks,” the Doctor said, getting riled.

But Mr. Darrow didn’t pause: “-to get this little girl to trust in you and believe that you’re trying to help her, while all the time you suspect that her mother was in fact the person who shot her. And you honestly ask us to believe that none of your suspicions ever bled over into your handling of the child, at any time during those ten days?”

The Doctor set his jaw so hard that his next words could barely be made out: “I don’t ask you to believe anything. I’m telling you what happened.”

But again Mr. Darrow ignored the statement. “Doctor, you’ve described your own mental condition after losing Paul McPherson as ‘puzzled’ and ‘distressed.’ Would it be fair to say that you’re still puzzled and distressed aboutit?”

“Yes.”

“Puzzled, distressed-and potentially disgraced in the eyes of your colleagues, I’d think, if the investigation shows that Paul McPherson died because he didn’t get the amount of care, the amount of time, he needed at your Institute. For, as you say, you couldn’t give that boy your ‘undivided attention.’ And so he died. And then you come up here, full of guilt about the dead boy and suspicions about the defendant. And you find yourself faced with a young girl whom you can give your ‘undivided attention’ to-whom you can save from the fate that befell Paul McPherson. But only, only if there’s an answer to the mystery that’s kept the girl silent all these years. And so-you create an answer.”

“I created nothing!” the Doctor protested, grabbing at his left arm without realizing it.

“Are you so sure, Doctor?” Mr. Darrow asked, his own voice rising. “Are you certain that you didn’t plant the idea in Clara Hatch’s mind, as only a clever alienist could, that it was her mother, not some lunatic who’d disappeared and could never be caught, who was responsible-all so that she can talk and enjoy a happy life again?!”

“Your Honor!” Mr. Picton called out. “This is blatant badgering of the witness!”

But Judge Brown only waved him off.

Seeing that, Mr. Darrow kept going: “There’s just one problem, though, Doctor, one thing that gets in the way. For your scheme, your and the state’s scheme, to work, my client has to go to the electrical chair! But then, what does that matter to you? You’ll be vindicated-in your own mind and in the eyes of your colleagues, the McPherson case will be more than balanced out by the Hatch case! Your precious integrity will be restored, and the state can close the books on an unsolved murder! Well, forgive me, Doctor, but I’m not willing to make that trade. There are tragedies in this life that don’t have answers!”

Suddenly, in a move what caused Miss Howard, Mr. Moore, Cyrus, and me to gasp, Mr. Darrow grabbed his own left arm, mirroring what the Doctor was doing; then he held it out, making it clear that he knew, he somehow knew, the secret of the Doctor’s past.

“Yes-tragedies without answers, Doctor, as you well know! And trying to balance the books isn’t going to change that! Tying the guilt for this case around my client’s neck won’t put movement back into Clara Hatch’s paralyzed arm, and it won’t bring Paul McPherson back to life. Things just aren’t that neat, Doctor, not that explicable. A madman committed a crime and disappeared. A boy walked into a washroom and hanged himself. Horrifying, inexplicable events-but I won’t let you and the state nail my client to the cross, just because you can’t live without explanations! No, sir-I will not do it!” Turning to the jury, Mr. Darrow lifted a thick finger toward the heavens, then let it fall, as if he were suddenly completely exhausted. “And I hope-maybe I even pray-that you gentlemen won’t do it, either.” He took a deep breath and wandered back to his seat. “I have no further questions.”

It seemed like a very long time since Mr. Darrow had started talking, and I don’t think I ever felt more sympathy for the Doctor than I did when he was excused from the witness stand and had to make the long walk back over to where the rest of us were sitting. I knew how he felt, how deeply Mr. Darrow’s words had cut into him; and so when he didn’t pause at his seat, but just kept moving on toward the mahogany doors, I wasn’t at all surprised. I didn’t make any move to follow just yet, knowing he’d want to be alone for a few minutes; but as soon as the judge had ordered court recessed until ten o’clock the next morning I bolted for the exit, Cyrus and Mr. Moore following close behind me.

We found the Doctor across the street, standing under a tree and smoking a cigarette. He made no move at all when we approached, just kept staring at the court house with narrow, squinting eyes. Cyrus and I each stood to one side, while Mr. Moore faced him head-on.

“Well, Laszlo,” he said, gently but with a smile. “I guess you’ve got more to learn from him than you thought.”

The Doctor just blew out a smoky sigh, and smiled ever-so-slightly back at his childhood friend. “Yes, John. I suppose so…”

Then we heard Mr. Picton’s voice calling and saw him appear on the court house steps with Miss Howard, the Isaacsons, and El Niño. When they caught sight of us, they rushed on over, Mr. Picton smoking his pipe and swinging one fist at empty air.

“Damn the man!” he said, once he was sure that the Doctor was okay. “Of all the blasted cheek! I am sorry, Doctor. He was wrong-terribly wrong.”

The Doctor’s eyes moved to Mr. Picton, while his head remained still. “Wrong?” he said quietly. “Yes, he was wrong-about Libby Hatch. And this case. But about me?”

Shrugging just once, the Doctor threw his cigarette into the gutter and began to walk down High Street alone.