The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [166]
It was pretty apparent from the size of the houses on Ballston Spa’s High Street that it had been favored by the gentry of the town for many generations. There were joints that were even bigger than Mr. Picton’s place; and those what were smaller generally made up for the deficiency by being very old and bringing to mind, with their simpler but still refined styles, the days when white men had first put the power of the Kayaderosseras behind their moneymaking schemes. Some of the trees around the newer houses were young, but there were enough thick, shady old-timers to give testimony to the age of the land that the town was built on; and as I studied those stout maples, oaks, and elms, I again began to feel very sorry that what must’ve once been a beautiful stretch of landscape should’ve been turned into a homely little mill town. Yet that same feeling of sadness and waste made the place a peculiarly fitting spot in which to be talking about a woman like Libby Hatch.
“Until shortly before the birth of her second child,” Mr. Picton said as we left his front yard, “Libby was the same mercurial woman the town had come to know over time. But then, suddenly, she changed—drastically. She seemed to become nothing short of a loving mother and doting wife, happy in a situation that most women wouldn’t have wished on their worst enemy.”
“Isn’t it possible,” Miss Howard said, “that she might have been just what she seemed, Mr. Picton? No one ever knows the intimate facts of a marriage except the couple themselves, after all. Perhaps she really had learned to care for the old man.”
“Don’t listen to her, Rupert,” Mr. Moore threw in. “She’s just trying to rationalize her pal Nellie Bly’s marriage to that old fossil Seaman.”
If we’d all known Mr. Picton a little better, I’m sure that Miss Howard would’ve belted Mr. Moore right then; as it was, she gave him one of her more deadly looks.
Mr. Picton chuckled a bit. “To tell you the truth, there’s a part of me that would like to agree with you, Miss Howard.”
“Sara,” Miss Howard said, her look changing with typical speed to a very engaging smile. “Please.”
Though caught up in his story, Mr. Picton flushed and stuttered a bit. “Why, I—I’m honored!” he said. “And you must call me Rupert, Sara—unless of course you dislike the name. Some people do. I’ll answer to almost anything, as Moore will confirm. However, I digress! Yes, Sara, if I could believe that Libby Hatch had ever actually cared, on the deepest level, about either her husband or her children, I would be far less haunted by this case. But you tell me what you think of the facts that follow. About two and a half years after her second son was born, Libby’s mood again changed overnight. One day she was the same pleasant, engaging citizen whom people had gradually grown to accept; the next, she had reverted to her old self. Worse, really: she became a scowling, seemingly desperate ball of nerves. No one could explain it—until word got around that Daniel Hatch was mortally ill.”
“Did that come as a surprise?” the Doctor asked. “He must have been close to eighty by then.”
“True,” Mr. Picton answered. “And as a result, it did not come as a surprise, but rather served to explain why Libby’s behavior had become so agitated. She was, apparently, deeply distressed over the fate of the old miser that she and she alone had found a way to love.”
“If anybody feels a little moist,” Mr. Moore said, “that’ll be Rupert’s sarcasm.”
Laughing once, Mr. Picton nodded. “All right, I confess, I was and remain utterly skeptical. But I later learned that I had reason to be. You see, old Hatch suffered through a prolonged illness, punctuated by two severe attacks. Yet when I came to assemble a chronology of the period, I discovered that Libby’s pronounced change in mood had preceded the onset of the illness. So it was not concern