“Well,” he said, “as you suspected, Doctor, we’ll have no disturbances-yet.”

The Doctor nodded. “The sinister phenomena implied by this crime resonate far deeper in the human soul than anyone can immediately grasp. You’ve been struggling with them for years now, Mr. Picton-the rest of us, for weeks. And the townspeople? Simple anger wasn’t to be expected, at this point. Confusion will dominate for a time-perhaps a great deal of time. That will work to our advantage. For there is much to do before our antagonist arrives. And when she does, we may find that popular confusion will give way to something distinctly uglier…”

The Doctor led us over to join the Westons, and then we set out as a group-minus only Mr. Picton, who had a lot of paperwork to take care of-to make sure that the family got home safe.

On our drive back to town from the Westons’ farm, the Doctor told us about what had happened during the grand jury’s proceedings. Though an emotional tale, it wasn’t a particularly complicated one: Mr. Picton had carefully laid out most of the physical evidence we’d assembled, and then gone on to paint, with Mrs. Louisa Wright’s help, a picture of Libby Hatch as a fortune hunter and a libertine, a willful, wanton character who, if she hadn’t been directly responsible for her husband’s death, had certainly expected that she was going to profit by it. When it had become clear that her children stood in the way of that profit, Mr. Picton’d stated flatly, Libby had attempted to eliminate them. The Doctor told us that Mr. Picton’s language had been so persuasive-and, true to Mr. Moore’s prediction, so fast and overwhelming-that it’d seemed like many members of the jury were convinced of his argument even before Clara Hatch had been called to testify. And when the girl had taken the stand, Mr. Picton’d asked her only four questions:

“Were you in your family’s wagon with your mother and your brothers on the night of May thirty-first, 1894?” The answer had been a not-so-easy “Yes.”

“Did you see anyone else during your ride home?” Answer: a firm “No.”

“Then you were shot by someone in the wagon?” To this Clara’d just nodded.

“Clara, was that person your mother?” A good minute had gone by before the girl could cope with that one; but steady looks of reassurance from the Doctor, and of love and support from Josiah and Ruth Weston, had given her courage, and finally she’d whispered, “Yes.”

No one in the hearing room had made a sound as the girl stepped down. The members of the jury, the Doctor said, had looked just the same as the crowd outside the court house had when they’d gotten the news about the indictment: as if they’d all been hit with one enormous brick. Mr. Picton had wrapped up his business pretty quickly after that, and the jury’s assent to an indictment on two counts of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder had been very quick.

It wasn’t the kind of story what would make anybody overjoyed or triumphant; and to be sure, all of us in the surrey-having seen what the day had done to little Clara-felt a deep sense of regret and sadness as we clattered back to Mr. Picton’s house. But underneath said emotions of the moment, for all of us, was something what maybe went even deeper: what you might call an unspoken feeling that we were, as a group, finally on something what my dice-throwing pals downtown would’ve called “a roll.” Our investigation, it appeared, had been transformed into a sort of quiet locomotive-and that locomotive was bearing down unstoppably, it seemed, on the woman who’d been committing so much mayhem for so many years. Evidence and testimony-hard won by hard work-were the ropes we were using to strap the golden-eyed killer onto the tracks. True, our responsibilities to Clara, to the Westons, to little Ana, and to our own safety were considerable-but our responsibility to keeping our engine running was the most important of all. And on that Friday evening, we appeared to have a full head of steam, and the way ahead looked good and clear.

That was before Marcus came back from Chicago.

CHAPTER 41

The Doctor’d been right in supposing that the general state of what he called “moral confusion” what took hold of Ballston Spa during the days after the indictment of Libby Hatch would make our work easier. It wasn’t that we were suddenly looked on any kindlier by the townsfolk; it was just that they were too busy trying to make sense of the affair-and its long, horrible history-to pay us much mind. The fact that people like Sheriff Dunning had been so convinced of Libby’s guilt by what they’d heard during the grand jury hearing made it impossible for those vexed citizens to just write the upcoming trial off as the work of ungodly troublemakers from New York City; and it was hard for even them what hung on most stubbornly to the tale of the mysterious Negro to get around the fact that an eight-year-old girl who’d suffered years of physical pain and spiritual torment had stood up before a panel of adults and stated flat out that it’d been her own mother who’d in fact been the agent of it all.

Libby Hatch-or, as she was labeled in the grand jury indictment, Mrs. Elspeth Hunter-was arrested at Number 39 Bethune Street in New York on Tuesday afternoon. Sheriff Dunning had gotten in touch with the New York City police on Friday, and had been referred to the Bureau of Detectives. Together with officers of the Ninth Precinct, the bureau had put Mrs. Hunter under surveillance right away, and reported that she didn’t seem to be making any moves toward beating it out of town. (During the time they were watching her, the city cops apparently didn’t experience any interference from the Dusters, which we took as a further demonstration that Libby didn’t intend to avoid capture.) Sheriff Dunning directed the Ninth’s detectives not to make any moves toward actually arresting the woman before his arrival, unless it suddenly started to look like she was going to bolt; then, on Monday, he took the train down to the city with two of his deputies.

This slightly leisurely way of going about capturing a murderess had those of us on the Doctor’s team a little confused; but Mr. Picton explained that the longer we delayed Libby Hatch’s arrival in Ballston Spa, the longer we could take advantage of the eerie, spooked calm what’d descended on the town. So when he saw Sheriff Dunning and his boys off at the train depot, he didn’t urge them to go about their business too hastily, an instruction what Dunning took to mean that he and his deputies were free to enjoy a night in the big city before returning home with their prisoner. They were met at Grand Central Terminal by a couple of the detectives from the bureau, who proceeded to take them down to the Ninth Precinct’s station house on Charles Street. (Being unaware that any New York City detectives had been involved in Mr. Picton’s investigation, Sheriff Dunning spared himself the cold reception he almost definitely would’ve received if he’d dropped the Isaacsons’ names.) Together the lawmen decided to wait until Tuesday morning to actually clap the irons on Mrs. Hunter; and we were left to imagine what the sheriff and his deputies got up to that night, since it would’ve been tough to come up with anybody better suited to showing them a good time in the big city than the men of the Ninth. The fact that Dunning waited until Tuesday afternoon to pinch Mrs. Hunter seemed proof positive that he and his boys had taken full advantage of the cultural “resources” of New York. But as things worked out, a hangover wouldn’t have been much of a disadvantage to them on Tuesday: when they arrived at Bethune Street, they found Mrs. Hunter packed and ready to go-almost, Sheriff Dunning told Mr. Picton when he called from Grand Central Terminal before boarding the train north, like she was anxious for the trial to begin. Dunning went on to report that, barring delays, he and his deputies would be arriving with their prisoner at midnight.