The Alienist

CHAPTER 9

I got to Kreizler’s house, at 283 East Seventeenth Street, a few minutes early, white-tied and caped and not at all sure of the conspiracy I’d entered into with Sara—a conspiracy that for better or worse would now play out. The snow had deepened to several inches, forming a quiet, pleasant layer over the bare shrubs and iron fences of Stuyvesant Park, across the street from Laszlo’s house. Opening the small gate to his similarly small front yard, I walked to the door and gently rapped the brass knocker. The French windows of the parlor, one story up, were slightly ajar, and I could hear Cyrus at the piano, giving forth with “Pari siamo” from Rigoletto—Kreizler was warming his ears up for the evening.

The door opened, bringing me face-to-face with the skittish, uniformed figure of Mary Palmer, Laszlo’s maid and housekeeper. Mary rounded out the list of former patients who had entered Kreizler’s service, and she was yet another who made the visitor who knew her full story a bit uneasy. Beautifully built, with a bewitching face and sky-blue eyes, Mary had been considered idiotic by her family since birth. She could not speak coherently, putting words and syllables together in unintelligible jumbles, and so was never taught to read or write. Her mother and father, the latter a respected schoolmaster in Brooklyn, had trained her to perform menial household functions, and seemed to care for her adequately; but one day in 1884, when she was seventeen, Mary chained her father to his brass bed while the rest of the family was out, and then set fire to the house. The father died a horrible death; and since there was no apparent reason for the attack, Mary was involuntarily committed to the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwells Island.

There she was discovered by Kreizler, who occasionally did consulting work on the island where he had found his first employment. Laszlo was struck by the fact that Mary lacked most, if not all, of the symptoms of dementia praecox, the only condition that, in his opinion, constituted true insanity. (The term is currently being supplanted, Laszlo says quite rightly, by Dr. Eugene Bleuler’s label “schizophrenia”; as I understand it, the word denotes a pathological inability to either recognize or interact with the reality around one.) Kreizler began to try to communicate with the girl, and soon discovered that in fact she suffered from classic motor aphasia, complicated by agraphia: she could understand words and think in clear sentences, but those parts of her mind that controlled speech and writing were badly damaged. Like most such unfortunates, Mary was bitterly aware of her difficulty, but lacked the ability to explain it (or anything else) to others. Kreizler was able to communicate by asking questions that Mary could answer with the simplest of statements—often just “yes” or “no”—and he taught her as much of rudimentary writing as her condition would permit. Weeks of work brought him to a new and shocking understanding of her history: apparently, her own father had been sexually violating her for years before the killing, but she, of course, had been unable to relate this fact to anyone.

Kreizler had demanded a legal review of the case, and Mary was eventually freed. Afterwards, she managed to convey to Laszlo the idea that she would make an ideal house servant. Knowing that the girl’s chances of an independent life were otherwise slim, Kreizler had taken her on, and now she not only maintained but jealously guarded his home. The effect of her presence, combined with those of Cyrus Montrose and Stevie Taggert, was to temper my mood whenever I visited that elegant house on Seventeenth Street. Despite the place’s collection of contemporary and classic art and splendid French furniture, as well as the grand piano out of which Cyrus perpetually coaxed fine music, I had never been able when there to fully elude the awareness that I was surrounded by thieves and killers, each of whom had a very good explanation for his or her acts but none of whom gave the impression of being willing to put up with questionable behavior from anyone else ever again.

“Hello, Mary,” I said, handling her my cape. She gave me a small dip on one knee in reply, looking at the floor. “I’m early. Is Dr. Kreizler dressed?”

“No, sir,” she said with deliberate effort. Her face filled with the simultaneous relief and frustration that were characteristic when her words came out correctly: relief at having succeeded, frustration at not being able to say more. She opened an arm sheathed in billowy blue linen toward the stairs, and then moved to hang my cape on a nearby rack.

“Well, then, I guess I’ll have a drink and enjoy Cyrus’s exceptional singing,” I said.

I took the stairs two at a time, feeling a bit confined in my evening clothes, then entered the parlor. Cyrus nodded to me and kept singing, while I anxiously fetched a silver cigarette box off the marble mantel over the very warm fireplace. Removing one of the tasty blends of Virginia and Russian black tobacco, I drew a match from a smaller silver case on the mantel and lit it.

Kreizler came trotting down the stairs from above, in a set of white tie and tails that were impeccably cut. “No sign of Roosevelt’s man?” he said, just as Mary appeared with a silver tray. On it were four ounces of sevruga caviar, some thin slices of toast, a bottle of ice-cold vodka, and several small, frosted glasses: a thoroughly admirable habit Kreizler had picked up during a trip to St. Petersburg.

“None,” I answered, stubbing out my cigarette and eagerly attacking the tray.

“Well, I’ll want punctuality from everyone involved,” he pronounced, checking the time. “And if he doesn’t…”

At that the door knocker downstairs clicked several times, and the sounds of entrance filtered up the stairs. Kreizler nodded. “That, at least, is a good sign. Cyrus—something a little less grim, I think. ‘Di provenza il mar.’”

Cyrus followed the instruction, launching softly into the gentle Verdi tune. I swallowed my caviar in an anxious gulp, and then Mary entered again. Her aspect was somewhat uncertain, even mildly agitated, and she tried but failed to announce our guest. As she hustled away to the back of the house with another small bend of her knee, a figure strode out of the dark stairway and into the parlor: Sara.

“Good evening, Dr. Kreizler,” she said, the folds of her emerald-green and peacock-blue evening dress making small whispering sounds as she came into the room.

Kreizler was somewhat taken aback. “Miss Howard,” he said, his eyes clearly delighted but his voice perplexed. “This is a pleasant surprise. Have you brought our liaison?” There was a long pause. Kreizler looked from Sara to me and then back at Sara. His expression did not change as he began to nod. “Ah. You are our liaison—correct?”

For a moment Sara looked unsure of herself. “I don’t want you to think that I simply badgered the commissioner into this. We discussed it thoroughly.”

“I was there, too,” I said quickly, though a bit unsteadily. “And when you hear the story of our afternoon, Kreizler, you’ll have no doubt that Sara’s the right person for the job.”

“It does make practical sense, Doctor,” Sara added. “No one will notice my activities when I’m at Mulberry Street, and my absences will be even less of a cause for curiosity. There aren’t many other people at headquarters who could say the same. I have a decent background in criminology, and I have access to places and people you and John might not—as we saw today.”

“It seems I missed a great deal today,” Kreizler said, in an ambiguous tone.

“Finally,” Sara continued, hesitant in the face of Laszlo’s coolness, “in the event of trouble…” She quickly pulled a small Colt Number One Derringer from a large muff she wore on her left hand and pointed it at the fireplace. “You’ll find that I’m a better shot than John.”

I took a quick step away from the gun, prompting Kreizler to chuckle once abruptly; Sara apparently thought he was laughing at her, and bridled a bit.

“I assure you, I’m quite serious, Doctor. My father was an expert marksman. My mother, however, was an invalid, and I had no siblings. I therefore became my father’s hunting and trapshooting partner.” All of which was perfectly true. Stephen Hamilton Howard had lived the life of a true country squire on his estate near Rhinebeck, and had trained his only child to ride, shoot, gamble, and drink with any Hudson Valley gentleman—which meant that Sara could do all those things well, and in volume. She indicated the small, delicately engraved pistol in her hand. “Most people consider the derringer a weak weapon; but this one holds a forty-one-caliber bullet, and could knock your man at the piano through the window behind him.”

Kreizler turned toward Cyrus, as if expecting the man to register some sort of alarm—but there was no break in his gentle rendition of “Di provenza il mar.” Laszlo took note of that.

“Not that I prefer this kind of gun,” Sara finished, putting it back in the muff. “But…” She took a deep breath, swelling the pale, bare flesh above the low neckline of her dress. “We are going to the opera.” She touched the lovely emerald necklace she was wearing and smiled for the first time. Vintage Sara, I thought, and then I swallowed an entire glass of vodka.

There was another long pause, during which Kreizler’s and Sara’s eyes stayed locked. Then Laszlo looked away, becoming his usual frenetic self. “Indeed we are,” he said, picking up a bit of caviar and a glass and handing them to Sara. “And if we don’t hurry, we shall miss the ‘Questa o quella.’ Cyrus, will you see if Stevie has the barouche ready?” At that, Cyrus was up and making for the stairs, but Kreizler caught him. “And, Cyrus—this is Miss Howard.”

“Yes, sir, Doctor,” Cyrus answered. “We’ve met.”

“Ah,” Kreizler said. “Then it will come as no surprise to learn that she will be working with us?”

“No, sir.” Cyrus gave Sara a slight bow. “Miss Howard,” he said. She nodded and smiled back, and then Cyrus continued his progress to the stairs.

“So Cyrus was involved, as well,” Kreizler said, as Sara drank her vodka quickly yet gracefully. “I confess my interest is piqued. On our way uptown you two must tell me all about this mysterious expedition to—where did you go?”

“The Santorellis’,” I answered, taking a last mouthful of caviar. “And we have come away loaded with useful information.”

“The Santo—” Kreizler was genuinely impressed, and suddenly much more serious. “But…where? How? You must tell me everything, everything—the keys will be in the details!”

Sara and Laszlo walked in front of me down the staircase, chatting as if this development had been expected all along. I breathed deeply in relief, for I hadn’t known how Kreizler would react to Sara’s proposal, and then put another cigarette to my mouth. Before I could light it, however, I was momentarily unnerved again, this time by the unexpected sight of Mary Palmer’s face, which appeared through a crack in the dining room door as I passed. Her wide, pretty eyes were locked on Sara apprehensively, and she seemed to be trembling.

“Things,” I whispered to the girl reassuringly, “are likely to be a little unusual around here, Mary. For the foreseeable future.” She didn’t seem to hear me, but made a small sound and then ran away from the door.

Outside the snow was still falling. The larger of Kreizler’s two carriages, a burgundy barouche with black trim, was waiting. Stevie Taggert had hitched up Frederick and another, matching gelding. Sara, pulling the hood of her cowl up, moved through the front yard and accepted Cyrus’s help getting into the vehicle. Kreizler held me back at the front door.

“An extraordinary woman, Moore,” he whispered matter-of-factly.

I nodded. “Just don’t cross her,” I murmured back. “Her nerves are strung like piano wire.”

“Yes, that’s apparent,” he said. “The father she speaks of—he’s dead.”

“Hunting accident. Eight years ago. They were very close—in fact, she spent some time in a sanatorium afterwards.” I didn’t know whether I should divulge all, but given our situation it seemed advisable. “Some people said it was suicide, but she denies it. Hotly. So that’s a subject you might want to stay away from.”

Kreizler nodded and pulled on his gloves, watching Sara all the while. “Women of such temperament,” he said as we moved to the carriage, “do not seem fated for happiness in our society. But her capabilities are obvious.”

We got inside the barouche, and Sara began to eagerly relate the details of our interview with Mrs. Santorelli. As we made our way through the snow-quieted streets south of Gramercy Park toward Broadway, Kreizler listened without comment, his fidgeting hands the only evidence of his excitement; but by the time we reached Herald Square, where the sounds of human bustling became much louder around the elevated train station, he was full of detailed questions that tested our memories to the utmost. Laszlo’s curiosity was roused by the strange tale of the two ex-cops and the two priests who had accompanied Roosevelt’s detectives, but he had far more interest (as I had suspected he would) in young Giorgio’s sexual behavior and in the boy’s character more generally. “One of the first ways in which we can know our quarry is to know his victims,” Kreizler said, and as we pulled up under the large electric globes that lit the porte-cochere awning of the Metropolitan Opera House he asked Sara and me what sense of the boy we had formed. Each of us needed to think about that one for a bit, and we grew quiet and pensive as Stevie drove off with the barouche and Cyrus accompanied us through the doors of the porte-cochere entrance.

To the old guard of New York society, the Metropolitan Opera was “that yellow brewery uptown.” This terse dismissal was prompted, on the most obvious level, by the boxiness of the building’s Early Renaissance architecture and the color of the bricks used in its construction; but the attitude behind the comment was sparked by the Metropolitan’s upstart history. Occupying the block bounded by Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and Thirty-ninth and Fortieth streets, the Metropolitan, which opened in 1883, had been paid for by seventy-five of New York’s most famous (and infamous) nouveaux riches: men with names like Morgan, Gould, Whitney, and Vanderbilt, none of whom were deemed by the old Knickerbocker clans to be socially acceptable enough to warrant selling them boxes at the venerable Academy of Music on Fourteenth Street. In reply to this unstated yet very apparent assessment of their worth, the founders of the Metropolitan had ordered not one or two tiers of boxes for their new house, but three; and the social wars that were waged in them before, during, and after performances were as vicious as anything that occurred downtown. In spite of all this backbiting, however, the impresarios who managed the Metropolitan, Henry Abbey and Maurice Grau, had brought together some of the best operatic talents in the world; and an evening at the “yellow brewery” was, by 1896, fast becoming a musical experience that no other house or company in the world could surpass.

As we entered the relatively small main vestibule, which had none of the opulence of its various European counterparts, we got the usual stares from several broad-minded souls who were not happy to see Kreizler accompanied by a black man. Most, however, had seen Cyrus before and endured his presence with weary familiarity. We moved up the tight, angular main staircase at a quick pace, and were among the last people to enter the auditorium. Kreizler’s box was on the left-hand side of the second tier of the “Diamond Horseshoe” (as the boxes were known), and we rushed through the red velvet saloon to get to our seats. As we settled in, the houselights began to fade. I pulled out a small set of foldable glasses, and just had time to check the boxes around and across from us for familiar faces. I got a quick glimpse of Theodore and Mayor Strong having what seemed a very grave conversation in the Roosevelt box, and then I cast my eyes on the dead center of the horseshoe, box 35, where that formidable financial octopus with the malignant nose—J. Pierpont Morgan—sat amid shadows. There were several ladies with him, but before I could ascertain who they were, the house went black.

Victor Maurel, the great Gascon baritone and actor for whom Verdi had written some of his most memorable parts, was in rare form that night, though I fear that we in Kreizler’s box—with the possible exception of Cyrus—were too preoccupied with other matters to fully appreciate the performance. During the first intermission our conversation turned quickly from music back to the Santorelli case. Sara wondered at the fact that the beatings Giorgio received from his father actually seemed to increase the boy’s desire to pursue his sexual irregularities. Kreizler, too, remarked on this irony, saying that if Santorelli had only been able to talk to his son and explore the roots of his peculiar behavior, he might have been able to change it. But by employing violence he turned the affair into a battle, one in which Giorgio’s very psychic survival became associated, in the boy’s mind, with the actions his father objected to. Sara and I puzzled with that concept all the way through Act II; but by the second intermission we were beginning to get it, to understand that a boy who made his living allowing himself to be used in the worst possible ways was, in his own view, asserting himself by doing so.

The same thing could in all probability have been said of the Zweig children, Kreizler remarked, vindicating my assumption that he would not write off to coincidence the similarity between those two victims and Giorgio Santorelli. Laszlo went on to say that we could not overemphasize the importance of this new information: we now had the beginnings of a pattern, something on which to build a general picture of what qualities inspired violence in our killer. We owed that knowledge to Sara’s determination to visit the Santorellis, as well as to her ability to make Mrs. Santorelli trust her. Laszlo expressed his indebtedness somewhat awkwardly, but nonetheless genuinely; and the look of fulfillment on Sara’s face was worth all the trials of the day.

Things were fairly chummy, in other words, when Theodore entered our box with Mayor Strong during that same intermission. In an instant the atmosphere in the little enclosure was transformed. For all his use of the rank “colonel” and his reputation as a reformer, William L. Strong was much like any other well-to-do, middle-aged New York businessman—meaning that he had no use for Kreizler. His Honor said nothing in reply to our greetings, just sat in one of the free seats in the box and waited for the lights to go down. It was left to Theodore to awkwardly explain that Strong had something important he wished to say. Talking during a performance at the Metropolitan was not generally considered a barbarity—indeed, some of the city’s most noteworthy personal and business affairs were conducted at such times—but neither Kreizler nor I shared this disrespect for the efforts of those onstage. We did not, in other words, provide a friendly audience when Strong began his lecture during the ominous opening of Act III.

“Doctor,” the mayor said without looking at him, “Commissioner Roosevelt assures me that your recent visit to Police Headquarters was entirely social. I trust that is true.” Kreizler didn’t answer, which irked Strong a bit. “I am surprised, however, to see you attending the opera with an employee of the Police Department.” He nodded rather rudely in Sara’s direction.

“If you’d like to see my entire social calendar, Mayor Strong,” Sara said bravely, “I can arrange that.”

Theodore clutched his forehead quietly but vigorously, and Strong’s anger grew, though he did not acknowledge Sara’s remark. “Doctor, you are perhaps unaware that we are engaged in a great crusade to root out corruption and degeneracy in our city.” Again, Kreizler would not reply, but kept his eyes on Victor Maurel and Frances Saville as they sang together. “In this battle we have many enemies,” Strong continued. “If they can find any way to embarrass or discredit us, they will use it. Am I clear, sir?”

“Clear, sir?” Kreizler finally answered, still not looking at Strong. “Certainly you are ill-mannered, but as to clear…” He shrugged.

Strong stood up. “Then let me be plain. If you were to associate yourself with the Police Department in any capacity, Doctor, it would constitute just such a way for our enemies to discredit us. Decent people have no use for your work, sir, for your abominable opinions of the American family, or for your obscene probing into the minds of American children. Such matters are the province of parents and their spiritual advisors. If I were you, I should limit my work to the lunatic asylums, where it belongs. At any rate, no one associated with this administration has any use for such filth. Kindly remember that.” The mayor stood up and made for the exit, pausing to turn briefly on Sara. “And you, young lady, would do well to remember that hiring women to work at headquarters was an experiment—and that experiments often fail!”

With that, Strong disappeared. Theodore lingered behind just long enough to whisper that future public appearances by the three of us might not be wise, and then he took off after the mayor. It was an outrageous but nonetheless typical incident: there were undoubtedly many people in the audience that night who would have said very similar things to Kreizler, given the chance. Laszlo, Cyrus, and I, having heard it all before, didn’t take it as hard as Sara, who was a newcomer to this kind of intolerance. For much of the remaining performance, she looked as though she might be preparing to blow Strong’s brains out with her derringer; but Maurel and Saville’s final duet was so superbly heartrending that even angry Sara put the real world aside. When the lights went up for the last time we all stood and bellowed bravos and bravas, getting a small wave from Maurel in return. As soon as Sara caught a glimpse of Theodore and Strong in their box, however, her indignation was back in force.

“Honestly, Doctor, how can you tolerate it?” she said, as we made our way out. “The man is an idiot!”

“As you will soon discover, Sara,” Kreizler said calmly, “one cannot afford to pay the slightest attention to such statements. Although there is one aspect of the mayor’s interest in this matter that does concern me.”

I didn’t even have to think about it—the idea had occurred to me while Strong was talking: “The two priests,” I said.

Laszlo nodded to me. “Indeed, Moore. Those two troublesome priests—one wonders who arranged for such ‘spiritual advisors’ to accompany the detectives today. For the moment, however, that must remain a mystery.” He checked his silver watch. “Good. We should arrive exactly on time. I hope our guests will do the same.”

“Guests?” Sara said. “But where are we going?”

“To dinner,” Kreizler answered simply. “And to what I hope will be a most illuminating conference.”