The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [247]
Once up in his office Mr. Picton told the rest of us that his main concern at that point in the affair was to figure out just what kind of citizens would make the best jurors for the case, and to assemble a set of questions what would separate such people from the rest of the candidates who would be called in. He asked the Doctor’s opinion on this matter, and got a quick answer: poor men, the Doctor advised, preferably farmers, would be the best prospects—men who led tough lives, and whose families were well acquainted with hard times. Such characters would best know just how easily personal conflicts and money concerns can lead to violence, even in a family what seems happy and peaceful on the outside: they likely would’ve seen or at least heard of women going after their own kids when things got especially discouraging or frustrating, and wouldn’t have your more well-to-do man’s opinions about the purity of female motives and actions. Mr. Picton said that he was relieved to hear all this, as it matched his own opinions perfectly; the trick now would be to find ways to identify such men without tipping Mr. Darrow off to the fact that he was doing it.
As for the Doctor, his main concern was still preparing Clara Hatch for what was to come: now that we’d actually met Mr. Darrow, it was easy to see that he’d be clever enough to find many ways to trip Clara up and make her seem not so much a liar as a confused little girl who didn’t actually remember the real facts of what’d happened to her, but had been fed a story by the prosecution. It was likely, the Doctor said, that Mr. Darrow would make this attempt in the kindest and friendliest manner possible, and that Clara would be tempted to play along with him as a result. So she would have to be carefully taught that even a person who seems pleasant and respectful might be out to lay traps for you: a fact what she certainly knew from experience, but might not have fully developed in what the Doctor called her “conscious mind.”
The Doctor would be doing double duty through the weekend and on into Monday, for while he’d spend his days getting Clara ready, he’d spend his nights interviewing Libby Hatch and assessing her mental condition. Having been through this procedure with the Doctor myself, and having watched him perform it on others, I knew generally what would take place in Libby’s basement cell: there’d be few or no straight inquiries about the murders, just a series of random questions about the woman’s childhood, her family, and her personal life. Libby was required by law to cooperate with him, though such didn’t mean that she couldn’t at least try to manipulate her answers so as to confuse the Doctor. But I’d seen much more hardened criminals try the same thing with him and fail pretty badly: it didn’t seem that Libby’d stand much of a chance, even with all her cleverness. Still, I knew it would be a pretty interesting little set of encounters, and I hoped that I’d have time to listen in on some of it.
Such seemed unlikely, though, seeing as the rest of us weren’t going to be exactly idle in the few days left before the start of the trial. The Isaacsons—joined, now, by Mr. Moore, who’d use any excuse to get back up to the gaming tables in Saratoga—put themselves to the job of finding out what witnesses and experts Mr. Darrow was planning on calling, along with trying to predict as much of his trial strategy as they could. Miss Howard was still determined to find somebody who, if not