The Alienist - Caleb Carr [202]
And so Japheth Dury had become John Beecham, who, according to the assessments of his doctors at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, was highly sensitive to scrutiny of any kind, and also harbored at least strong feelings (if not outright delusions) of persecution. It was unlikely that these traits of personality had been much ameliorated after his release from St. Elizabeth’s in the late summer of 1886, since that release had been secured through the exploitation of a legal technicality and against the doctors’ wishes; and if indeed John Beecham was our killer, then, in fact, his suspicion, hostility, and violence had only worsened over the years. Sara and I determined that in order for Beecham to have gained the thorough familiarity with New York that he evidently had, he must have come to the city very soon after his release from St. Elizabeth’s, and stayed in it ever since. There was cause for hope in this supposition, because he’d probably had contact with a good many people over the course of ten years, and become, in some neighborhood or walk of life, a familiar character. Of course, we didn’t know precisely what he looked like; but, starting with the physical characteristics that we’d theorized early on, and then refining them by using Adam Dury as a physical model, we believed we could concoct a description that, in conjunction with the name John Beecham, would make identification a fairly easy matter. Of course, there was no guarantee that he was still using the name John Beecham; but both Sara and I believed that, given what the name meant to him, he had continued and would continue to do so, until forced to stop.
That was about all the hypothesizing we could do, pending the Isaacsons’ return. Wednesday evening arrived, however, without our having had any word from the detective sergeants, and so Sara and I decided to attend to another unpleasant task: that of convincing Theodore to allow us to go on with the investigation in spite of Kreizler’s departure. We both suspected that this wasn’t going to be easy. It had only been Roosevelt’s great respect for Kreizler that had allowed him to consider the idea in the first place (that, and his propensity for unorthodox solutions). Having spent the beginning of the week searching for Connor, as well as attending to the ongoing battle between the forces of reform and corruption at Police Headquarters, Roosevelt remained unapprised of developments within our investigation as of Wednesday evening; but, knowing that he would learn the truth from either Kreizler or the Isaacsons eventually, Sara and I decided to take the bear by the ears and tell him ourselves.
Anxious to avoid stirring up a potentially dangerous new round of speculation among the journalists and detectives at headquarters, we elected to visit Theodore at his home. He and his wife, Edith, had recently rented a town house at 689 Madison Avenue that belonged to Theodore’s sister, Bamie, a comfortable, well-furnished home that was nonetheless inadequate to the task of containing the antics of the five Roosevelt children. (It must be remembered, in fairness, that the White House itself would soon prove similarly inadequate.) Knowing that Theodore generally made sure to be home for dinner with his brood, Sara and I took a hansom up Madison Avenue to Sixty-third Street at about six o’clock, mounting the steps of Number 689 at sunset.
Before I’d even rapped on the door the sounds of youthful mayhem became audible from