The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [175]
The smell of manure started to hit us about fifty yards from the house, which was set close to a big brick-red barn. When they saw our rig drawing up, all five of the residents came ambling in from their chores, the little girl moving the slowest and most cautiously and needing to be nudged along by the woman. As they got closer, I could see that the Westons themselves looked to be in their forties or fifties, the deep creases in their leathery skin and the greying of their hair making any more exact guess impossible. They had broad, kindly faces, but that didn’t mean much to me: some of the worst people I’d. ever come across in my life had been kindly looking foster parents—not a few of them farmers—who took in poor kids from the city and treated them like slaves, or even worse. But the two teenage kids looked happy and healthy enough, so I wasn’t too suspicious to start out with.
As Mr. Weston—Josiah, we discovered his name was—approached Mr. Picton, he glanced at me and Cyrus with a kind of concern that caused the pair of us to hang back a bit, away from the others.
“I took it as understood that there weren’t to be but one visitor, Mr. Picton, sir,” he said.
“Yes, Josiah,” Mr. Picton answered. “That being Dr. Kreizler, here.” Mr. Weston wiped his hand to shake the Doctor’s. “But the other gentleman and the boy are associates of his, and he feels that he may need them in order to accurately assess the situation.”
Josiah Weston nodded, not happily, exactly, but not in a hostile way, either. Then his wife spoke up: “I’m Ruth Weston, Doctor, and these are our children, Peter and Kate. And hiding somewhere around here,” she went on, pretending to search the area behind her skirt where Clara was hiding, “is another young lady …”
Clara didn’t make any move to reveal herself yet; and seeing this, Peter smiled and said, “We’ll get what we can finished while there’s light, Papa. Come on, Katie, and give me a hand.”
The pair of them went back off to the chore of mending the wire fence. They looked pretty cheerful as they did, and from this I figured that they had in fact been treated well during their years with Josiah and Ruth Weston. Once they were gone, little Clara started to appear from behind Mrs. Weston slowly, her pad of paper and doll tucked under her left arm and a bunch of pencils held tight in her left hand.
” Well!” Mr. Picton said, merrily but gently. He’d caught sight of Clara, but was glancing around as if he hadn’t. “Where is my little girl? I’d hate to think I came all the way out here only to find that she’s disappeared … no sign of her? All right, then—thank you, anyway, Ruth, but I suppose we’ll just have to head back to town.”
Mr. Picton started to walk back toward the surrey, and then Clara rushed out from her hiding place to tug at the tail of his jacket with those parts of her thumb and forefinger what weren’t engaged in holding the pencils. As she did, I got my first really good look at her (though in fact it was my second overall, since I’d seen her likeness in the group photograph hidden in the secretary at Number 39 Bethune Street); she was a skinny little thing, with light brown hair gathered into one big, wide braid at the back of her head; eyes of a color similar to the hair (though, I noted uneasily, a touch more golden); and pale skin with very rosy cheeks. Like most kids who’ve seen things at an early age that nobody should ever have to, Clara’s skittish movements were echoed by the pitiable nervousness of her silent face.
Turning around in mock surprise, Mr. Picton smiled wide. “Why, there she is! She appears put of nowhere, does this one,