The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [77]
An amazing set of coincidences, some might say; but the born New Yorker knows what a small town this truly is, and that such things happen fairly frequently. So while it did take a good thirty seconds for the Doctor to absorb all this information, it took no longer, and he soon had his mind back on practicalities. “You say she worked there last year.” His eyes focused on Marcus. “I assume, then, that she was released or resigned?”
“A bit of both,” Marcus answered. “And under what might kindly be called a cloud.” From the stack of papers in his hand Marcus pulled a single sheet. “Dr. Markoe wasn’t at the hospital this morning, and when we contacted him at home he refused to give us any help. We could’ve pressed it and visited him in an official capacity, but our feeling was that a little cash spread around to the other nurses at the hospital would be more effective. It was—and here’s what we found out.” He indicated the paper, which was covered with notes. “To start with, every one of the nurses who was working at the hospital last year was absolutely certain of the identity of the woman in the sketch. Her name is Elspeth Hunter.”
Marcus paused for a second—but it was a long second, the kind I’d come to recognize from the Beecham case. When an unknown, unnamed person you’ve been pursuing—without even knowing for one hundred percent sure if they exist—stops being a bundle of descriptions and theories and becomes a living individual, it produces an eerie, frightening feeling: you’re suddenly certain that you’re in a very-high-stakes race, and that you can’t quit until you either win or get whipped.
“Any more of a background?” the Doctor asked.
“The nurses didn’t know anything,” Marcus answered, “but we were able to fill in some holes from her file.”
Lucius looked at the Doctor with meaning: “Her file—at headquarters.”
“So …” the Doctor breathed. “A criminal background, in fact?”
“Not so much a background as accusations,” Marcus continued. Before he could go on, though, a swarm of children herded by several governesses came flying into the room, making a racket as they bolted over to look at the mummy cases.
Glancing around at them, the Doctor said, “Upstairs,” quickly, at which we all made for one of the central cast-iron staircases and walked quickly up to the picture galleries. Moving through the rooms at the same fast pace, we reached one that was devoted to American paintings—and was deserted.
“All right,” the Doctor said, quickly moving across the plain wood floor and taking a seat on a viewing bench in front of Mr. Leutze’s enormous painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” He glanced back the way we’d come when he heard someone approaching, but it was only the still clucking Mr. Moore. “Go ahead, Marcus,” the Doctor said.
Marcus pulled out several other papers from his pile. “We—borrowed the file from Mulberry Street. It seems that Dr. Markoe reported Mrs. Hunter—she’s married, by the way—after several of the other nurses voiced disturbing suspicions concerning the patients she’d been attending.”
Mr. Moore now pulled up to us and, having heard Marcus’s last words, straightened up, so quickly that it was disturbing: for a man to shift moods that fast, it seemed that something dire must be coming. “You’d better prepare yourself for this, Kreizler,” he said, breathing out the last of his humor and relief in a heavy sigh.
The Doctor only held a hand up to him. “Patients?” he said. “Do you mean the mothers she