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By Root 3098 0

Thomas and Matthew were dead and that Clara was in a desperate state. He informed Mrs. Hatch of all this, sending her off into an even greater fit. She told Dr. Lawrence—and I’d like the detectives to note this, particularly—that her husband had kept a revolver under his pillow all his life, and that she had never removed it after his death. But now, she said, she was afraid that she might seize the gun and do herself harm, so great was her grief and guilt at allowing her children to be attacked. Lawrence immediately administered laudanum to get the woman under some kind of control, and told the housekeeper—Mrs. Louisa Wright, a widow woman who’d taken on the housekeeping chores after Libby and Daniel Hatch were married—to retrieve the gun from Mr. Hatch’s room and dispose of it. He then did what he could for Clara and sent to Saratoga for a surgical specialist.”

“And did he make a report on the particulars of the wounds themselves?” Lucius asked, still scribbling away.

“He did,” Mr. Picton answered, handing over another file. “Each child had been shot in the chest. The boys’ bullets had struck their hearts, while Clara’s, again, had passed at an angle through the upper chest and neck, grazing the spine as it exited.”

“And the range,” Marcus said. “Did he hazard a guess at that?”

“Yes,” Mr. Picton answered, again pleased that the right questions were being asked. “Point-blank. There were powder burns on both the clothing and the skin.”

“And where exactly were the children when the attack occurred?” Miss Howard said.

“That, Lawrence did not bother to ask,” Mr. Picton replied, picking up another file. “Nor did Sheriff Jones. They were, you see, accepting the story completely at face value. But Jones had telephoned me at home, and asked me to come out—thoroughly expecting that I, too, would buy into Mrs. Hatch’s tale.”

“And you did not?” the Doctor asked.

“No, no,” Mr. Picton said. “You see, I had—encountered Libby Hatch several times since my return to Ballston Spa. That’s the Presbyterian Church you can see across Bath Street, there”—he pointed to his window, and we all looked out to get a glimpse of a fair-sized, steepled structure, older and less luxurious than the other churches along High Street—“where she and Hatch were married and attended services. I would sometimes go walking on Sunday morning when church let out, and eventually we were introduced by mutual acquaintances.” Mr. Picton paused, looking to the men in the room. “I don’t have to tell you what meeting Libby is like.”

“No, you do not,” Mr. Moore answered, a shiver running through his body. “But what could she have wanted from you, Rupert?”

“I shall ignore the insult implied in that question, John,” Mr. Picton answered, “and say only that I was baffled by her flirtatious, seductive manner myself. But looking back, I realize that she was hoping to buy herself some safety when the inevitable crisis came.”

“Crisis?” Marcus asked.

“Hatch’s death. She was planning, I think, even then to kill him, and she was covering her bets—trying to cultivate a friendly ear in the district attorney’s office, aware that we would have to at least look into the death, when it happened. And her method was, I’m bound to say, well conceived—at least objectively. She divided her conversation with me between inquiries about affairs in the district attorney’s office and those coy, seductive remarks with which she attempted to charm you gentlemen.” Mr. Picton paused, staring out his window and down at the church. “But she’d miscalculated, in my case …”

“Had she?” the Doctor asked, sensing that he was about to get a useful little nugget of information concerning Mr. Picton. “And why is that?”

“Well, Doctor,” Mr. Picton said, turning back to us, “I’m quite beyond such things, you see. Quite beyond them.” For just an instant, his attention seemed to wander. “Seen a lot of such behavior …” He shook himself hard. “As has anyone who’s ever worked in the New York City office. Yes, I’m afraid that I was in a position to detect Libby Hatch’s true nature from the beginning!”

I could