CHAPTER 48

By midnight on that Thursday the odds against our convicting Libby Hatch had risen to a hundred to one at Canfield’s Casino, and it wasn’t hard to understand why: Mr. Darrow’d managed to plant doubts in the jury’s minds about Lucius’s ballistic testimony even before his own “expert,” Albert Hamilton, had taken the stand, while Mrs. Louisa Wright’s thoughts about a possible romantic motive for the killings had been reduced to unprovable by the sudden and shocking “accident” what had befallen the Reverend Clayton Parker that morning at Grand Central. Mr. Darrow’s very effective questions about the Doctor’s motivations and techniques had been the icing on this bleak cake, and it was plain to all of us that if things kept going the way they were, defeat was just around the corner.

It was no wonder, then, that the atmosphere at Mr. Picton’s house that night moved past gloomy, until it almost seemed like there was a wake going on. Feeling what you might call resigned about the legal case as such, we began to focus our energies not on what remained to be done in court (which was just about nothing, so far as our side was concerned, except for Mr. Picton’s official announcement that the state was resting its case) but on what steps we’d need to take to try to get Ana Linares out of the Dusters’ place before Libby made her way back to New York. This meant getting word to Kat by way of the go-between Mr. Moore’d engaged: Kat’s pal Betty, who was supposedly waiting for us to send a wire to Frankie’s joint as soon as we knew it was time for Kat to make her move. Just talking about this possibility played hell with my nerves again, and for a few minutes I actually toyed with the idea of heading down to New York and making sure everything was set and in place; but the sight of me hanging around would, I knew, only make Kat’s situation even more dicey. So I stayed put, waiting with the others for what looked like it was going to be the dismal end of our business in Ballston Spa.

“And so the new century will bring a new kind of law,” was how Mr. Picton summed things up, as we all sat out on the front porch of his house late that night. “Proceedings where victims and witnesses are put on trial instead of defendants, where a murderer is identified as ‘a woman’ instead of an individual… ah, Doctor, it’s no step forward, that I can tell you, and I don’t think I want to be party to it. If things go on like this, we’ll find ourselves in some shadow world, where lawyers use the ignorance of the average citizen to manipulate justice the way priests did in the Middle Ages. No, if we lose this case-when we lose this case-it’ll be my last, I suspect.”

“I wish I could find some aspect of the affair that might offer you solace,” the Doctor answered quietly. “But I’m afraid I see none. Darrow is the legal man of the future, that much is indeed clear.”

“And I’m a relic,” Mr. Picton agreed with a nod; then he laughed once. “A relic at forty-one! Hardly seems fair, does it? Ah, well-such are the fortunes of the new age.”

You had to hand it to the man: unlike many other sporting bloods I’ve known, he was a genuinely graceful loser, and I don’t think there was one of us who failed to appreciate his ability to receive the head what’d been handed to him (his own) in court and still come up philosophical-except, of course, for Miss Howard, who was always the last member of our company to accept failure or defeat of any kind.

“You two can just stop acting like the whole thing’s over,” she said, sitting on the steps of the porch with a small kerosene lamp and a large map of New York State. “Darrow hasn’t even opened his case yet, for God’s sake-we’ve still got time to come up with something.”

“Oh? And what would that be?” Mr. Moore asked.

“Face it, Sara-you can’t fight the prejudices of an entire society, and a woman who’s as lethally cunning as this one, and one of the most vicious gangs in New York, and a legal wizard like Darrow, all at one and the same time, and expect to survive.” He turned to Mr. Picton, lowering his eyes. “No offense intended, Rupert.”

But Mr. Picton only saluted his friend with his pipe. “None taken, John, I assure you. You’re absolutely right-the man’s turned what should have been a disaster into a triumph. My hat’s off to him.”

“Yes, well, before you fall all over each other lining up to pay homage to that legal snake,” Miss Howard shot back, “do you mind if I suggest some further efforts to salvage our cause?” She looked back down at her map. “We’re still missing the one big piece-somebody who knows something about Libby Hatch’s family.”

“Sara,” Marcus said, pointing toward the court house, “that jury is not going to be very receptive to a psychological examination of Libby Hatch’s childhood context, just at the moment.”

“No,” Miss Howard answered, “and that’s not what I’m proposing. Don’t forget, she went to the Muhlenbergs as a wet nurse. She had to’ve had a child, and that child has got to be somewhere, either above or below the ground.”

“But you looked for days, Sara,” Lucius said. “You covered practically every inch of Washington County-”

“And that may be just where I went wrong,” Miss Howard replied. “Think about it, Lucius-if you were Libby, and you’d landed yourself the kind of job she had at the Muhlenbergs’, would you give them any way to check on the actual facts of your past?”

Before Lucius could answer, the Doctor asked, “What are you saying, Sara?”

“That she’s too smart for that,” Miss Howard answered. “If she left some secret behind in her hometown, or even if she only left her family behind, that family would probably have known things that Libby wouldn’t have wanted to get out, especially not to people who might hire her as a wet nurse. You’ve said it yourself, Doctor, the woman’s characteristic behaviors must extend back into her childhood. So Libby had to make sure that no one ever knew where she actually came from. On the other hand, she had to say she came from someplace that she could actually describe, someplace that she knew at least something about, to make her story hold water.”

“That’s true,” Cyrus said, considering it. “She would have covered herself, at least that far.”

“But she could’ve come from anywhere!” Mr. Moore protested.

“John, do try to listen for more than thirty seconds running,” Miss Howard spat back. “She couldn’t have come from anywhere. She was a woman who learned that the Muhlenbergs needed a wet nurse from an advertisement-that makes her local. She talked a lot about towns in Washington County-so she must have spent some time there. But if she was trying to conceal her roots, she didn’t actually come from Washington County-which means-”

Mr. Picton snapped his fingers. “Which means you may want to get back down to Troy, Sara. It’s the seat of Rensselaer County, which is to the south of Washington County-on the east bank of the river. And Stillwater sits directly across the water from the line that separates the two counties.”

Miss Howard slapped her map hard and set the kerosene lamp down. “Which is exactly what I realized five minutes ago,” she said, with a big, satisfied smile.

“It’s still a long shot,” Marcus said, shaking his head wearily. “And you’ll have to go tomorrow, which means missing-”

“Which means missing what?” Miss Howard cut in. “Darrow’s ‘experts’? Mrs. Cady Stanton? I know what they’re going to say, Marcus, and so do you. It’s obvious-maybe even gratuitous, at this point. But we do have to work fast. Cyrus, I could use you, if you’ll come-Stevie, too.”

“And El Niño to protect you!” the aborigine near shouted, getting caught up in Miss Howard’s enthusiasm.

“Naturally,” she answered, rubbing his bushy head. Then she looked to the Doctor and Mr. Picton. “Well?”