The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [173]
CHAPTER 30
After getting back to Mr. Picton’s house and aboard his surrey, we began our trip to the Westons’ form by heading over to the east side of town, where Cyrus (who’d volunteered to do the driving) followed Mr. Picton’s directions and steered us onto Malta Avenue, so named because it eventually turned into a road what led to a town of the same name. Just as soon as we were safely on this thoroughfare, Mr. Picton started asking for details about the Linares case and all the things we’d been through during the past few weeks in New York. It was all the Doctor could do to keep up with this rush of questions, especially as, in spite of their mad pace, they all cut right to the heart of the case.
Once we got back out of town, farms and woods took over the countryside around us again; and as I watched them go by in the late-afternoon light, I tried to imagine the scene of robbery and murder that Libby Hatch claimed had taken place on a road what couldn’t have been much different than the one we were traveling along. It was a beautiful setting, one what glowed gold and green the way the Hudson Valley will do during July; but all the same, it wasn’t hard to imagine violence scarring such a place, for they were lonely roads, those dirt tracks that led from small town to small town, with nothing but the occasional farmhouse for civilization. A clever criminal could’ve made quite a living off of them. Yet there were details of Libby Hatch’s story that just didn’t fit with the idea of a clever criminal. Even granting the isolated quality of the setting, things about the supposed attack just didn’t make sense, particularly not to anybody who’d spent time around murderers, thieves, and rapists, as I had.
Why did the “attacker” give up his assault, for instance, once he knew Mrs. Hatch didn’t actually have a weapon? And why kill the kids, but not the woman who could’ve identified him? And if he was so stupid or deranged as to be capable of such things, how could he suddenly become smart enough to escape a whole series of search parties what’d kept after him for days on end? No, it was obvious even to me that Libby Hatch had been banking on emotions and not reason taking over when her fellow townspeople heard her tale; and she’d been right, too, so far. But so far was only so far …
The Westons’ farm was a humble but successful enterprise located right off the Malta road about a mile and a half from Ballston Spa. They kept dairy cows and chickens, and grew vegetables to sell during the summer and fall. Mr. Picton told us that the couple’d never been able to have children of their own, and that when a pair of tragedies in town—one a train wreck, the other an illegitimate birth—had left two kids without families, the Westons’d taken them in. They’d done such a good and kindly job of raising them that Mr. Picton’d thought of a similar solution right away when it began to look like Libby Hatch wasn’t going to stick around to take care of little Clara. As we drew closer to the drive that led off the main road and up to the Westons’ rectangular, clap-boarded farmhouse, Mr. Picton told us that while we could speak freely around Mr. and Mrs. Weston, we’d have to be careful what we said in front of their kids: they weren’t aware of all of Mr. Picton’s suspicions concerning the Hatch case, and, given the nature of how rumors and news traveled in so small a town, we couldn’t risk them finding anything out until we were ready for it to become common knowledge.
Following this warning, Mr. Picton anxiously inquired as to why the Doctor’d been so determined to have me come along on the visit. “You’ll forgive my asking, I hope, Doctor,” he said. “And you, too, Stevie. I understand, of course, how crucial Clara’s reactions to Mr. Montrose may be—”
“Provided,” the