The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [305]
“They are speaking of the girl, Clara, now,” El Niño whispered as I came in.
“What about her?” Miss Howard asked.
“Something—something—” El Niño shook his head in frustration. “The Señor Doctor is saying things I do not understand—some things about sickness, and about the mother—she who is the killer …”
“Oh, this is useless,” Mr. Moore said in frustration. Then he signaled to me. “Stevie, trade places with your friend. I want to know what the hell’s happening in there.”
I was about to follow the order when there came a knock at the outer door. Waiting for El Niño to get down off of Cyrus’s shoulders, I opened the thing, and found myself facing the guard Henry and Libby Hatch. Better than a week in jail hadn’t done anything to damage the way the woman carried herself—her black dress looked as crisp as it had on the night she got off the train—or to dull the devilish gleam in her golden eyes. I’d never been so close to those eyes, before, nor had them focused directly on me; and I found that their general effect was to cause me to back up, slowly and silently, until I near fell over the unused secretary’s desk what sat in that outer office. This reaction caused Libby to smile at me in a way what I hope never to see in another person, a way what brought Mr. Moore’s earthy language at the Café Lafayette back into my mind: you really couldn’t tell, from the look in her face, just what this woman might have in store for you. Love, hate, life, death—all of them, it seemed like, were very possible, so long as they served her purposes.
And from the proud way that she moved through the others to get to the thick door to the inner office, it was pretty clear that Libby Hatch felt like her purposes were being very well served, just at that juncture. She glanced at each of the silent faces before her and kept smiling, then started to shake her head, as if to say that we’d all been terribly foolish to even think about taking her on. Henry kept one hand on her arm (she wasn’t wearing any manacles, another fact what should’ve struck me as odd but didn’t) as he knocked on the inner office door and Mr. Picton told him to enter. He opened the door and indicated to Libby that she should go on in. He did this by way of a single look, the kind of quick, meaningful glance what only people who know each other very well use to communicate.
“Come in, Mrs. Hunter,” I heard Mr. Picton call. “Thank you, Henry. I’ll send someone down when we’re finished.”
“You don’t want me to wait?” the guard asked.
Mr. Picton just sighed. “Henry, am I speaking Greek? If I wanted you to wait, I’d ask you to wait. Go back downstairs, and I’ll send someone when we’re finished, thank you very much!”
Looking the way he always did when Mr. Picton gave him a hard time—like some kind of injured animal—the guard glanced at Libby again, and she nodded at him once. Only at that signal did Henry turn around to storm moodily out of the room. As for Libby, she went on in and took a seat before Mr. Picton’s desk next to Mr. Darrow, while Mr. Maxon closed the door on the rest of us.
“All right, Stevie,” Mr. Moore whispered. “Up you go!”
In a quick move I stepped into a cradle what Marcus made with his hands, then grabbed Cyrus’s hands and let him pull me onto his shoulders. Once comfortably seated, with Cyrus holding on to my legs, I carefully moved my face up to the transom, which was open just far enough for me to see all the players in the room, along with a swatch of Mr. Picton’s desk. Whispering down to the others at regular intervals, I witnessed and narrated the following scene:
“Why’ve I been called up here at this hour?” Libby asked softly and sadly. Her expression, what I could only see in profile, looked much more timid than it had