The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [250]
“A problem?” Mr. Picton asked.
The Doctor’s black eyes turned to the window and stared out into the night. “A mystery, certainly. White …” Giving the matter a few more seconds thought, the Doctor finally shook himself and came back to the conversation. “He’s one of the best of the younger generation—a brilliant mind, and highly imaginative. He’s been working at the State Hospital at Binghamton and has done some fascinating work concerning the criminal mind—the criminal unconscious, in particular. He’s become a skilled expert witness, too, despite his comparative youth.”
“Is he an enemy of yours?” Marcus asked.
“Quite the contrary,” the Doctor replied. “We’ve met many times, and correspond frequently.”
“That’s strange,” Miss Howard said. “You’d think that Darrow would want to get someone openly hostile to your theories, if he’s bothering to bring in anybody at all.”
“Yes,” the Doctor answered with a nod, “but that’s not the strangest part, Sara. White and I do tend to share low opinions about this country’s penal system and its methods of discouraging crime and caring for the mentally diseased. But we generally disagree on the definition of mental disease itself. His classifications tend to be far broader than mine, and he includes more criminal behavior in his categorization of ‘insane acts’ than I could ever do. Because of this, when he serves as an expert witness it is almost always for the purpose of demonstrating that a given defendant is somehow unbalanced, and therefore not legally responsible for his—or her—actions.”
“Hmm,” Mr. Picton noised. “Which would seem to lead back to the idea that Darrow may be holding on to some sort of an insanity card, in case he needs to play it later. Although I wouldn’t think him so stupid.”
“Nor would I,” the Doctor agreed. “The insanity defense, when introduced midway through a trial, is rarely effective—few juries fail to recognize a change in plea as an act of desperation.”
“Well, then,” Mr. Moore said, looking blankly from the Doctor to Mr. Picton, “what do you suppose Darrow’s up to?”
The Doctor just shook his head slowly. “I don’t know—and that fact disturbs me. Indeed, there is much about our opponent that disturbs me.” Pacing by the window, the Doctor rolled his wineglass in his hands. “Did you discover when White is to arrive?”
“Tuesday night,” Lucius said. “After the trial’s begun.”
“Leaving me little time to confer with him,” the Doctor answered, nodding again. “Yes, it’s the smart move. But what in God’s name is it that Darrow wants him to say?”
We’d learn the answer to that question soon enough; and it, like almost everything else about Mr. Darrow, made it easy to understand just why he would one day become the greatest criminal defense lawyer the country has ever seen.
CHAPTER 43
Our education began on Tuesday morning, when men called in from fields, shop counters, and parlor rooms all over Saratoga County crowded into the Ballston Spa court house to find out whether they’d spend the next couple of weeks as jury members in what was becoming popularly known as “the Hatch trial.”
From the beginning of this process, Mr. Darrow showed that he knew exactly what Mr. Picton was up to, and that he intended to frustrate him at every turn. Both sides were given twenty of what they called “peremptory challenges”—the right to refuse a jury candidate for no stated reason—and the first ten of Mr. Darrow’s were exercised on men who couldn’t have fit the Doctor’s and Mr. Picton’s description of an ideal juror any better. Each man was poor but sharp, with a kind of wisdom about the world what didn’t seem to fit with the fact that most of them had never been out of the county, much less the state. When his turn came to question these fellows, Mr. Darrow was nice enough to them—he cared too much about working the crowd in the galleries not to be. He’d strike up a pleasant conversation about the state of business in town or about how the wet, cool weather that summer was affecting the local crops; but the minute