The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [277]
“Mr. Darrow?” the judge asked. “Do you have questions for this witness?”
Finally showing some movement, but only in his eyes, Mr. Darrow mumbled, “Just one or two, Your Honor.” Then, after another pause, he stood up. “Mrs. Wright, did you ever observe anything in the defendant’s behavior that would’ve led you to believe that she might’ve been capable of murdering her own children?”
Mr. Picton, who’d only just settled into his chair, got right back up. “I must object to that, Your Honor. The witness is not qualified to speak to such matters. We have alienists who will tell us what the defendant might or might not have been capable of.”
“Yes,” the judge replied, “and no doubt they’ll contradict each other and get us absolutely nowhere. The witness is a woman of uncommon good sense, it seems to me, Mr. Picton—and it was you, after all, who argued to have her impressions included in the record. I’ll let her answer.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Mr. Darrow said. “Well, Mrs. Wright?”
Taking a moment to think it over, and stealing another look at Libby as she did, Mrs. Wright said, “I—hadn’t counted on being asked that question.”
“Oh?” Mr. Darrow said. “Well, I’m sorry to surprise you. But try to come up with an answer, all the same. Did you ever, during all the years that you were in her employ, suspect that Mrs. Hatch was capable of murdering her own children?”
Mrs. Wright looked to Mr. Picton, and the struggle what was going on in her mind was plain to see in her face.
“What the hell’s Darrow doing?” Mr. Moore whispered. “I thought that was supposed to be one of our questions!”
“He’s seen what the jury’s inferring from her testimony,” the Doctor answered. “He wants to rattle her by attempting to force her to make an outright accusation.” He leaned forward anxiously. “But will she be rattled …?”
Mr. Darrow folded his arms. “I’m still here, Mrs. Wright.”
“It—” Louisa Wright wrung her hands for a few seconds. “It’s not the kind of thing to bandy around—”
“Really?” Mr. Darrow replied. “It seems to me you’ve done an awful lot of ‘bandying’ already. I wouldn’t think this would give you any pause. But let me make it easier for you. You claim that Mrs. Hatch was engaged in what sounds like it was a pretty torrid affair with the Reverend Parker. Don’t you think it would’ve been easier for her to run off with him, once her husband was dead, if she didn’t have three children to drag along?”
“That’s a hard way to put it,” Mrs. Wright answered, glancing at Libby again.
“If you can think of an easy way to put such accusations,” Mr. Darrow said, “you just let me know. Well, Mrs. Wright?”
“You don’t understand,” the woman said, a little more defiantly.
“And what don’t I understand?”
Mrs. Wright leaned forward, eyeing Mr. Darrow. “I have children, sir. My husband and I had two, before he was killed in the war. I can’t imagine what would drive a woman to do something like that. It isn’t natural. For a mother to end any life that she brought into the world—it just isn’t natural.”
“Your Honor, I’m forced to ask for your help here,” Mr. Darrow said. “The question was, I think, pretty close to clear.”
“Mrs. Wright,” Judge Brown said, “you’re only being asked for your opinion.”
“But it’s a terrible thing, Your Honor, to accuse someone of!” Mrs. Wright said.
Mr. Darrow, smelling her fear, moved in closer to the witness stand. “But the state is accusing her, Mrs. Wright, and you’re a witness for the state. Come, now, you knew that Mrs. Hatch had been written out of her husband’s will—that the only way she could inherit his money was if the children died. Didn’t that make you at all suspicious?”
“All right, then!” the woman finally hollered. “It does make me suspicious—but it’s still an awful thing to accuse someone of!”
“It does make you suspicious, Mrs. Wright?” Mr. Darrow asked quietly. “Or it did? Let me see if I follow you. You say that Mrs. Hatch had a violent temper sometimes. You say that she was romantically involved