The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [284]
“You seem awfully sure, after spending—how many days with the girl?”
“Ten in all.”
“Quick work,” Mr. Darrow judged, playing at being impressed. “How about Paul McPherson—the boy who killed himself at your Institute?”
The Doctor kept his features very still at the mention of the unfortunate kid. “What about him, specifically?”
“Did he suffer from those pathologies?”
“I can’t say. He was only with us a short time, before his death.”
“Oh? How long?”
“A few weeks.”
“A few weeks? Shouldn’t that have been enough time for you to formulate an accurate diagnosis? After all, with Clara Hatch it only took you ten days.”
The Doctor’s eyes thinned up as he realized where Mr. Darrow was going. “I attend to dozens of children at my Institute. Clara, by contrast, had my undivided attention.”
“I’m sure she did, Doctor. I’m sure she did. And you told her that the work you were doing together would help her, am I correct?” The Doctor nodded. “And did you tell her it would help her mother, too?”
“In a child like Clara,” the Doctor explained, “the memory of a terrifying experience causes a division within the psyche. She divorced herself from the reality of it by refusing to communicate with the rest of the world—”
“That’s very interesting, Doctor,” Mr. Darrow said. “But if you’d answer the question?”
Pausing and then nodding reluctantly, the Doctor replied, “Yes. I told her that if she could bring herself to speak of what happened it would help her—and her mother.”
“Helping her mother was very important to her, then?”
“It was. Clara loves her mother.”
“Even though she seems to think that her mother tried to kill her? And did kill her brothers?” Without waiting for an answer, Mr. Darrow pressed on: “Tell me, Doctor—when you were working with Clara, who first mentioned the idea that her mother’d been the actual attacker on the Charlton road? Was it you or her?”
The Doctor reeled back a bit, looking very indignant. “She did, of course.”
“But you already believed her mother was responsible, is that right?”
“I—” The Doctor was having trouble finding words: a rare sight. “I wasn’t certain.”
“You came all the way to Ballston Spa at the request of the assistant district attorney because you weren’t certain? Let’s try the question another way, Doctor: Did you suspect that Clara’s mother was responsible for the attack?”
“Yes. I did.”
“I see. And so you come to Ballston Spa, and you spend every waking hour with a girl who hasn’t spoken to another soul in three years, and you use all the tricks and techniques of your profession—”
“I do not use tricks,” the Doctor said, getting riled.
But Mr. Darrow didn’t pause: “—to get this little girl to trust in you and believe that you’re trying to help her, while all the time you suspect that her mother was in fact the person who shot her. And you honestly ask us to believe that none of your suspicions ever bled over into your handling of the child, at any time during those ten days?”
The Doctor set his jaw so hard that his next words could barely be made out: “I don’t ask you to believe anything. I’m telling you what happened.”
But again Mr. Darrow ignored the statement. “Doctor, you’ve described your own mental condition after losing Paul McPherson as ‘puzzled’ and ‘distressed.’ Would it be fair to say that you’re still puzzled and distressed about it?”
“Yes.”
“Puzzled, distressed—and potentially disgraced in the eyes of your colleagues, I’d think, if the investigation shows that Paul McPherson died because he didn’t get the amount of care, the amount of time, he needed at your Institute. For, as you say, you couldn’t give that boy your ‘undivided attention.’ And so he died. And then you come up here, full of guilt about the dead boy and suspicions about the defendant. And you find yourself faced with a young girl whom you can give your ‘undivided attention’ to—whom you can save from the fate that befell Paul McPherson. But only, only if there’s an answer