The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [270]
“And Darrow’s engaged him?” Mr. Picton asked.
Marcus nodded. “My guess is, you’ll get a request for the gun and the bullets first thing in the morning, so Hamilton can run his own ‘tests’ on them.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” Lucius said. “Hamilton will say anything the people paying him want him to say!”
“Which is the easiest way to become a successful expert witness,” Mr. Picton grunted. “Anybody else?”
“Yes,” Mr. Moore answered. “And I do not like the possibilities involved with this one. Darrow wants somebody he can present as an expert on feminine psychology and character—someone fairly local, who the crowd’ll be familiar with and maybe even sympathetic to.” He turned to Miss Howard. “It’s your friend Mrs. Cady Stanton, Sara.”
“Mrs. Cady Stanton?” Miss Howard repeated.
“But she was there,” Cyrus commented, looking worried. “When we had the sketch made—she knows we’ve been after the woman.”
“Exactly why Darrow wants her, I suspect,” Marcus said. “He’ll try to paint this as a witch-hunt on the Doctor’s part.”
“He won’t get far,” Mr. Picton pledged firmly. “Your earlier meeting with Mrs. Cady Stanton relates to another case, an unproved case that has yet to be officially investigated, and I can use that to our advantage here. If Darrow evens hints at what you were up to in New York, I’ll get Judge Brown to slap him down for going outside the merits of this case.”
“Yes,” Miss Howard said, “but the fact that she knows we’ve been after Libby for so long is likely to make Mrs. Cady Stanton hostile—and she can be very persuasive when her blood’s up.” Considering the possibility, Miss Howard kicked at one of the posts that held up the roof of the porch. “Damn it, that man’s clever.”
The Doctor had heard all of this, but hadn’t commented on it: he was too busy reading his note from Dr. White, which seemed to cause him much concern.
“More good news, Kreizler?” Mr. Moore asked, seeing the worried look on the Doctor’s face.
“It’s certainly not what I was hoping for,” the Doctor answered with a shrug. “White says that, given the circumstances, he doesn’t think it would be a good idea for us to meet before he’s given his testimony. It’s not the sort of attitude he would typically take.”
“Maybe not,” Mr. Picton said. “But it’s consistent—Darrow’s keeping a tight lid on everything and everyone connected to his case. I think he’s been a little surprised by how prepared we’ve been, and wants to make sure he can offer some surprises of his own in return. That’s certainly what we saw today.”
“Well, surprisingly enough, it seems that we don’t need to overreact to what happened today,” Marcus advised, heading inside. “At least, not according to the betting line at Canfield’s.”
“Where does it stand now?” Cyrus asked, following Marcus into the house.
“No change,” Mr. Moore called after them. “Still sixty to one against a conviction—and Canfield’s finding a lot of takers, even at those odds.”
Without moving his eyes from the note he’d received, the Doctor asked, “And how much did you lose while ascertaining that information, Moore?”
Mr. Moore headed for the screen door. “It could’ve been worse,” he said as he entered the house, in an embarrassed way what led me to believe that it couldn’t have been very much worse.
Still, expensive as it might’ve been, the news that them what were paying the most attention to the case—the heavy gamblers—didn’t think our cause had been hurt by Mr. Darrow’s antics of the afternoon was encouraging, and we were all able to sleep a little sounder, I think, because of it. Lucius was the last to turn in: he was due on the stand to talk about the circumstantial case against Libby Hatch the next morning, and he wanted to make sure he had all his ducks in a row before he let himself drift off. He was up early, too, and when I came downstairs I found him neatly dressed and pacing around the backyard, mumbling to himself and already sweating. Always cool as ice when it came to the business of investigation and scientific testing, he