We stayed at Pinkie’s for another hour or so, everyone having a very pleasant time amidst those piles of relics, trash, and waste. A funny kind of life, that-the old boy lived just for his pictures, and was quite happy to have that much. Give him a little good, humble food, a room to work in, and the ability to take his long walks, and he was fine. Simple, you might say; to which I’d answer, yeah-so simple that only one in a million can manage it.
CHAPTER 11
The next morning Miss Howard called on the telephone to say that she’d contacted Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the famous old crusader who’d been pushing women’s rights for half a century. Miss Howard, it seemed, had known and admired Mrs. Cady Stanton (who always insisted on using her maiden name in addition to her husband’s) ever since childhood; and as Mrs. Cady Stanton had blue-blood relatives in the Hudson Valley, not far from where the Howard family estate was, Miss Howard had been able to make her acquaintance early on through mutual friends. Miss Howard had warned the Doctor that there were bound to be complications with Mrs. Cady Stanton being the agent of our meeting Miss Cecilia Beaux, as the sharp old bird was well aware of Miss Howard’s personal and professional connections. She’d know full well, for instance, that Miss Howard didn’t have any recently deceased relative, if Miss Howard even tried to float that lie. This left our friend with the job of trying to make her hiring of a portrait painter look thoroughly innocent. But Mrs. Cady Stanton also knew that Miss Howard was a private detective, and she instantly became fascinated by what she was sure was some kind of intrigue-so much so that she flat-out asked to be present for the sketching session what Miss Howard scheduled for Thursday evening at Number 808 Broadway. Left without a graceful way to tell Mrs. Cady Stanton to mind her own business, Miss Howard was forced to agree. So it looked as if we were going to have an additional guest for the occasion.
Señora Linares, meanwhile, sent a note along to Miss Howard saying that her husband was definitely getting suspicious about her absences and that this was probably the last time she’d be able to get away: whatever we needed, we’d have to get it Thursday evening. As for the detective sergeants, their rousting of the Cubans had produced nothing except a lot of bad feeling, and they came away from the encounter convinced that nobody in the Cuban Revolutionary Party had the brains or the organizing skill to pull off anything like the kidnapping of Ana Linares. This little confirmation of his theory that the abductor was a woman acting alone sent the Doctor back into his study Wednesday afternoon, and by the following morning he still hadn’t emerged; his food was taken in on trays, and he left strict orders not to be disturbed. Mr. Moore and Miss Howard dropped by at around two on Thursday to plan strategy for the sketching session. On finding the Doctor still closeted away, they asked me what was going on, to which I answered that I really didn’t know, being as I hadn’t seen him for twenty-four hours. It was time, however, to get things prepared for the evening to come, so together the three of us decided to go on up to the study and find out what was happening.
Mr. Moore knocked on the door and got a sharp “Go away, please!” in return. He looked to me, but all I could do was shrug.
“Kreizler?” Mr. Moore said. “What the hell’s going on, you’ve been in there for two days-and it’s time to get ready for the portrait!”
A long, exasperated groan came from inside the study, and then the door unlocked from within. The Doctor, dressed in a smoking jacket and slippers, pulled it open, his face in a book. “Yes, and I could be in here for two years before I’d find anything really useful.” He looked up at us blankly, then, with a tilt of his head, signaled that we should follow him in.
The study was lined on three sides with mahogany shelves and paneling, while the Doctor’s large desk sat in front of the window in the fourth wall. There were piles of open books everywhere, along with journals and monographs, also open. Some looked as though they’d been placed where they lay; some had clearly been thrown.
“I have been attempting,” the Doctor announced, “to assemble some research with which we can make ourselves acquainted with the psychological peculiarities inherent in the woman-child relationship. And I have, not for the first time, been disappointed by my colleagues.”
Mr. Moore grinned and cleared some journals off of a sofa, then plopped down onto it. “Well, that’s good news,” he said. “Then we don’t have to do any lessons this time around, eh?”
He was referring to the Beecham case, during which the Doctor’d made everyone on the team read not only the basic psychological works of the day but also articles written by specialists what had particular application to the investigation. Cyrus and I had done most of the reading, too, just to keep up; and it had been, I don’t mind saying, tough going. There can’t be many people in the world what can blow wind like your average psychologists and alienists.
The Doctor just frowned at Mr. Moore. “Assuming that you have retained even a portion of what you learned last year,” he said in some disgust, “then no, I don’t know that there’s a great deal more to be done. It’s idiotic. Perfectly sound, rational men, when they reach one specific instinct-the maternal-begin to blather like idiots! Listen to the august Herr G. H. Schneider-one of James’s favorites, John.” (Mr. Moore had been at Harvard with the Doctor and had also studied, though very briefly, with Professor James.) “ ‘As soon as a wife becomes a mother her whole thought and feeling, her whole being, is altered. Until then she had only thought of her own well-being, of the satisfaction of her vanity; the whole world appeared made only for her; everything that went on about her was only noticed so far as it had personal reference to herself-now, however’ ”-and here a wicked kind of sarcasm came into the Doctor’s voice-“ ‘the centre of the world is no longer herself, but her child. She does not think of her own hunger, she must first be sure that the child is fed-now, she has the greatest patience with the ugly, piping crybaby, whereas until now every discordant sound, every slightly unpleasant noise, made her nervous.’ I ask you, Sara, have you ever heard such utter rot?”
Miss Howard’s face took on a resigned sort of look. “That is the common perception, I’m afraid.”
The Doctor kept ranting. “Yes, but listen to what he goes on to say: ‘Thus, at least, it is in all unspoiled, naturally bred mothers, who, alas!, seem to be growing rarer.’ But does he go on to discuss the mental composition of those increasingly numerous ‘un-naturally bred’ mothers? He does not!” The Doctor set the book aside.
The wheels in Miss Howard’s head had started to spin during this tirade: her brow wrinkled with an idea. “Doctor-” she started.
But he wasn’t finished. Picking up another book, he bellowed, “And listen to James himself: ‘Parental love is an instinct stronger in woman than in man-the passionate devotion of a mother to a sick or dying child is perhaps the most simply beautiful moral spectacle that human life affords.’ And there ends the discussion! How would such men react, I should like to know, were I to show them the dozens of case studies I have compiled over the years of women beating their children, starving them, throwing them into lit ovens, or simply killing them outright? It’s unbelievable!”
“Yes, Doctor,” Miss Howard tried again, “but I wonder-is there some usefulness in all this prejudicial thinking?”
“Only by inference, Sara,” the Doctor scoffed, tossing the book he was holding onto a pile of others and then picking up the first volume again. “Just one brief comment of Schneider’s offers anything like illumination: ‘She’-meaning the mother-‘has, in one word, transferred her entire egotism to the child.’ ”