The Alienist - Caleb Carr [56]
“Excuse my asking, Doctor,” Lucius said in continuing confusion, “but…is there actually a conclusion to this meal, or do we just work our way into breakfast?”
“So long as you are full of useful information, Detective Sergeants, the food will continue coming.”
“Well, then…” Marcus took a big bite of duck, closing his eyes in appreciation. “We’d better stay interesting. Now, as I was about to say, the Bertillon system offers no physical evidence of criminal commission. It can’t put a man at the scene of the crime. But it can help us shorten the list of known criminals who may be responsible. We’re betting that the man who killed the Zweig children was somewhere in the neighborhood of six-foot-two. That’ll produce relatively few candidates, even from the files of the New York police. It’s an advantageous starting point. And the better news is that, with so many cities now adopting the system, we can make our check nationwide—even to Europe, if we want to.”
“And if the man has no prior criminal record?” Kreizler asked.
“Then, as I say,” Marcus answered with a shrug, “we’re out of luck.” Kreizler looked disappointed at this, and Marcus—eyeing, it seemed to me, his plate, and wondering if the food would really stop coming when we reached a dead end—cleared his throat. “That is, Doctor, out of luck so far as official departmental methods go. However, I’m a student of some other techniques that might prove useful in that eventuality.”
Lucius looked worried. “Marcus,” he mumbled. “I’m still not sure, it’s not accepted, yet—”
Marcus answered quietly but quickly: “Not in court. But it would still make sense in an investigation. We discussed this.”
“Gentlemen?” Kreizler said. “Will you share your secret?”
Lucius gulped his Chambertin nervously. “It’s still theoretical, Doctor, and is not accepted anywhere in the world as legal evidence, but…” He looked to Marcus, seemingly worried that his brother had cost him dessert. “Oh, all right. Go ahead.”
Marcus spoke confidentially. “It’s called dactyloscopy.”
“Oh,” I said. “You mean fingerprinting.”
“Yes,” Marcus replied, “that’s the colloquial term.”
“But—” Sara broke in. “I mean no offense, Detective Sergeant, but dactyloscopy has been rejected by every police department in the world. Its scientific basis hasn’t even been proven, and no actual case has ever been solved by using it.”
“I take no offense at that, Miss Howard,” Marcus answered. “And I hope you won’t take any when I say that you’re mistaken. The scientific basis has been proven, and several cases have been solved using the technique—though not in a part of the world that you’re likely to have heard much about.”
“Moore,” Kreizler interrupted, his voice snapping a bit, “I’m beginning to understand how you must often feel—once again, gentlemen and lady, I’m lost.”
Sara started to explain the subject to Laszlo, but after that last little quip of his I had to jump in and take over. Dactyloscopy, or fingerprinting (I explained in what I hoped was a very condescending voice), had been argued for decades as a method of identifying all human beings, criminals included. The scientific premise was that fingerprints do not change throughout a person’s lifetime—but there were a great many anthropologists and physicians who didn’t yet accept that fact, despite overwhelming supporting evidence and occasional practical demonstrations. In Argentina, for example—a place that, as Marcus Isaacson said, not many people in America or Europe thought much about (or of )—fingerprinting had gotten its first practical test when a provincial police officer in Buenos Aires named Vucetich used the method to solve a murder case that involved the brutal bludgeoning of two small children.
“And so,” Kreizler said, as our waiters appeared yet again,