The Alienist

CHAPTER 36

Our train, a local to begin with, made abominably poor time, so that when we stumbled out of the Grand Central Depot the first hints of dawn were beginning to show in the eastern sky. After agreeing that the long job of interpreting the information we’d gotten from Adam Dury could wait until that afternoon, Kreizler and I got into separate cabs and headed for our respective homes to get some sleep. All seemed quiet at my grandmother’s house when I reached Washington Square, and it was my hope that I’d be able to slip into bed before the morning’s activities began. I almost made it, too; but just as I was preparing to undress, having successfully navigated the stairs without making a sound, a light knocking came at my bedroom door. Before I’d given any reply, Harriet’s head poked into the room.

“Oh, Mr. John, sir,” she said, clearly very upset. “Thank heavens.” She came fully into the room, pulling her robe tighter around herself. “It’s Miss Howard, sir—she was calling all yesterday evening, and last night, as well.”

“Sara?” I said, alarmed at the look on Harriet’s usually cheerful face. “Where is she?”

“At Dr. Kreizler’s—she said you’d find her there. There’s been some sort of—well, I don’t know, sir, she didn’t explain much of anything, but something terrible’s happened, I could tell it from her voice.”

I jammed my feet back into my shoes in a rush. “Dr. Kreizler’s?” I said, my heart beginning to race. “What in the world’s she doing there?”

Harriet wrung her hands vigorously. “Like I say, sir, she didn’t tell me—but please hurry, she’s called more than a dozen times!”

Like a shot I was back out onto the street. Knowing that I wouldn’t find a cab any closer than Sixth Avenue at that hour, I bolted west at the fastest pace I could manage and didn’t come to a halt till I’d jumped into a hansom that was parked underneath the El tracks. I gave the driver Kreizler’s address and told him the matter was urgent, at which he grabbed his whip and put it to work. As we charged uptown—myself in a kind of fearful daze, too tired and mystified to make sense out of Harriet’s statement—I began to feel an occasional splash against my face and leaned out of the cab to look at the sky: heavy clouds had rolled in over the city, staving off the light of daybreak and moistening the streets with a steady rain.

My driver didn’t let up for a moment during the trip to Stuyvesant Square, and in a remarkably short time I was standing on the sidewalk in front of Kreizler’s house. I gave the cabbie a generous amount of money without asking for change, to which he announced that he would wait for me at the curb, suspecting that I would need another ride soon and not wanting to lose so openhanded a fare at such a slow hour of the morning. I moved cautiously but quickly to the front door of the house, which was pulled open by Sara.

She looked uninjured, for which I was grateful enough to give her a big embrace. “Thank God,” I said. “From the way Harriet sounded I was afraid that—” I suddenly pulled back when I caught sight of a man standing behind Sara: white-haired, distinguished, wearing a frock coat and carrying a Gladstone bag. I glanced at Sara again, and noticed that her face was full of an exhausted sadness.

“This is Dr. Osborne, John,” Sara said quietly. “An associate of Dr. Kreizler’s. He lives nearby.”

“How do you do?” Dr. Osborne said to me, without waiting for a reply. “Now, then, Miss Howard, I hope I’ve been clear—the boy is not to be moved or disturbed in any way. The next twenty-four hours will be crucial.”

Sara nodded wearily. “Yes, Doctor. And thank you for being so attentive. If you hadn’t been here—”

“I only wish that there was more I could have done,” Osborne answered quietly. Then he put his tall hat on his head, nodded to me, and set off. Sara pulled me inside.

“What in hell’s happened?” I said, as I followed her up the stairs. “Where’s Kreizler? And what’s this about a boy? Has Stevie been hurt?”

“Shush, John,” Sara answered, quietly but urgently. “We’ve got to keep things quiet in this house.” She resumed the climb to the parlor. “Dr. Kreizler’s—gone.”

“Gone?” I echoed. “Gone where?”

Walking into the dark parlor, Sara made a move toward a lamp, but then decided with a wave of her hand to leave it alone. She collapsed onto a sofa, and took a cigarette out of a case on a nearby table.

“Sit down, John,” she said; and something about the range of emotions contained in those few words—resignation, sorrow, anger—made me comply instantly. I held out a match for her cigarette and waited for her to go on. “Dr. Kreizler’s at the morgue,” she finally said, in a smoky breath.

I took in air quickly. “The morgue? Sara, what is it, what’s happened? Is Stevie all right?”

She nodded. “He will be. He’s upstairs, along with Cyrus. We’ve got two cracked skulls to care for now.”

“Cracked skulls?” I parroted again. “How in—” A sudden, sickening rush swept through my gut, as I glanced around the parlor and the adjacent hallway. “Wait a minute. Why are you here? And why are you letting people in and out? Where’s Mary?”

Sara didn’t answer, at first, just rubbed her eyes slowly and then drew in some more smoke. Her voice, when it reemerged, was curiously faint. “Connor was here. Saturday night, with two of his thugs.” The twisting in my stomach became more extreme. “Apparently they’d lost track of you and Dr. Kreizler—and they must have been taking a lot of heat from their superiors, based on the way they were acting.” Standing up slowly, Sara strode to the French windows and opened one just a crack. “They forced their way into the house, and shut Mary in the kitchen. Cyrus was in bed, which left Stevie. They asked him where you and Dr. Kreizler were, but—well, you know Stevie. He wouldn’t say.”

I nodded, and mumbled, “‘Go chase yourselves,’” softly.

“Yes,” Sara answered. “So—they started in on him. Along with his skull he’s got a few broken ribs, and his face is a mess. But it’s the head that—well, he’ll live, but we don’t know yet just what sort of shape he’ll live in. Things ought to be clearer by tomorrow. Cyrus tried to get out of bed to help, but he only collapsed in the hallway upstairs and bumped his head again.”

Though afraid to ask, I did: “And Mary?”

Sara’s arms went up in resignation. “She must’ve heard Stevie screaming. I can’t imagine what else would have made her act so—rashly. She got hold of a knife, and managed to get out of the kitchen. I don’t know what she thought she was going to do, but…The knife ended up in Connor’s side. Mary ended up at the bottom of the stairs. Her neck was…” Sara’s voice trailed off.

“Broken,” I finished for her, in a horrified whisper. “She was dead?”

Sara nodded, and then cleared her throat to speak again. “Stevie got to the telephone, and called Dr. Osborne. I came by when I got back from New Paltz last night, and everything was—well, taken care of. Stevie did manage to say that it was an accident. That Connor didn’t mean to do it. But when Mary stabbed him he spun around and…”

For long seconds my vision faded, everything around me blending into a kind of vague grayness; then I heard a sound that I’d last detected on the Williamsburg Bridge anchor the night Giorgio Santorelli was killed—the powerful churning of my own blood. My head began to shake, and when I put my hands up to hold it still I noticed that my cheeks were moist. The kinds of memories that usually accompany news of such tragedy—quick, out of sequence, and in some cases silly—flashed through my mind, and when I heard my own voice again I didn’t really know where it was coming from.

“It’s not possible,” I was saying. “It isn’t. The coincidence, it doesn’t make—Sara, Laszlo was just telling me—”

“Yes,” she said. “He told me, too.”

I got up, feeling awfully unsteady on my feet, and went to stand by the window with Sara. The dark clouds in the dawn sky were continuing to prevent daybreak from really taking hold of the city. “The sons of bitches,” I whispered. “The lousy sons of…Have they got Connor?”

Sara threw the stub of her cigarette out the window, shaking her head. “Theodore’s out now, with some detectives. They’re searching the hospitals, and all of Connor’s known haunts. I’m guessing they won’t find him, though. How Connor’s men found out you were in Boston is still a bit of a mystery, though it’s probably safe to say they checked the ticket sellers at the depot.” Sara touched my shoulder as she continued to stare out the window. “You know,” she murmured, “from the very first time I walked into this house, Mary was afraid that something would happen to take him away from her. I tried to help her understand that that something wouldn’t be me. But she never seemed to lose the fear.” Sara turned and went back across the room to sit down. “Perhaps she was smarter than the rest of us.”

I put a hand to my forehead. “It can’t be…” I breathed again; but on a deeper level I knew that, in fact, it could easily be, given who we were dealing with, and that I’d better start adjusting to the reality of this nightmare. “Kreizler,” I said, forcing some kind of strength into my voice. “Kreizler’s at the morgue?”

“Yes,” Sara answered, taking out another cigarette. “I couldn’t tell him what happened—Dr. Osborne did it. He said he’s had practice.”

I gnashed a new surge of remorse away with my teeth, tightened my fist, and headed for the stairs. “I’ve got to get over there.”

Sara caught my arm. “John. Be careful.”

I nodded quickly. “I will.”

“No. I mean really careful. With him. If I’m right, the effects of this are going to be a lot worse than you may be expecting. Cut him a wide path.”

I tried to smile, and put a hand on hers; then I kept on moving, down the stairs and out the door.

My cabbie was still waiting at the curb, and when I appeared he jumped back up onto his hansom smartly. I told him to get me to Bellevue in a hurry, and we sped off at the same lively pace. The rain was beginning to pick up, blown by a strong, warm, westerly wind, and as we bounced up First Avenue I pulled off my cap and tried to use it to shield my face from the water that was spraying off the roof of the cab. I don’t remember having any thoughts, as such, during that ride; there were just more quick images of Mary Palmer, the quiet, pretty girl with the remarkable blue eyes who, in the space of just a few hours, had evolved in my mind from housemaid to future wife of a dear friend to no more. There was no sense in what had happened, no sense at all, and even less in trying to create any; I just sat there and let the images fly by.

When I reached the morgue I found Laszlo outside the large iron door in the back that we’d used to enter the building when we’d examined Ernst Lohmann’s body. He was leaning against the building, his eyes as wide, vacant, and black as the gaping holes our killer had left in the heads of his victims. Rain was cascading down off a gutter on the edge of the roof above and drenching him, and I tried to pull him away from it. But his body was stiff and intractable.

“Laszlo,” I said quietly. “Come on. Get in the cab.” I tugged at him a few more times without achieving anything, and then he finally spoke, in a hoarse monotone:

“I will not leave her.”

I nodded. “All right. Then let’s just stand in the doorway here, you’re getting soaked.”

His eyes alone moved as he glanced at his clothes; then he nodded once, and stumbled with me into the minimal shelter of the doorway. We stood there for quite some time until, finally, he spoke in the same lifeless voice:

“Did you know—my father—”

I looked at him, my own heart ready to burst at the pain that was in his face, and then nodded. “Yes. I knew him, Laszlo.”

Kreizler shook his head in a stiff jerk. “No. Do you know what my—father always said to me, when I was—a boy?”

“No. What?”

“That—” The voice was still scraping terribly, as if it were a labor to produce it, but the words began to come faster: “That I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. That I thought I knew how people should behave, that I thought I was a better person than he was. But one day—one day, he said, I would know that I wasn’t. Until then, I’d be nothing more than an—impostor…”

Once again, I couldn’t find a way to tell Laszlo how fully I understood, in light of Sara’s discovery, what he was saying; so I simply put a hand to his uninjured shoulder as he began to straighten his clothes absentmindedly. “I have—made arrangements. The mortician will be here soon. Then I’ve got to get home. Stevie and Cyrus…”

“Sara’s looking after them.”

His voice became suddenly strong, even somewhat violent: “I’ve got to look after them, John!” He shook a fist before him. “I’ve got to. I brought these people into my house. I was responsible for their safety. Look at them now—look! Two near dead, and one—one…” He gasped and looked at the iron door, as if he could see right through it to the rusted metal table on which now lay the girl who had embodied his hope of a new life.

Gripping him tighter, I said, “Theodore’s out looking—”

“I’m no longer interested in what the commissioner of police is doing,” Kreizler answered, quickly and sharply. “Nor in the activities of anyone else in that department.” He paused, and then, wincing as he moved his right arm, took my hand from his shoulder and looked away from me. “It’s over, John. This wretched, bloody business, this…investigation. Over.”

I was at something of a loss for words. He seemed perfectly serious. “Kreizler,” I finally said, “give yourself a couple of days before you—”

“Before I what?” he answered quickly. “Before I get one of you killed, too?”

“You’re not responsible for—”

“Don’t tell me I’m not responsible for it!” he raged. “Who, then, if not me? It’s my own vanity, just as Comstock said. I’ve been in a blind fury, trying to prove my precious points, oblivious of any danger it might pose. And what have they wanted? Comstock? Connor? Byrnes, those men on the train? They’ve wanted to stop me. But I thought that what I was doing was too important for me to take any note—I thought I knew better! We’ve been hunting a killer, John, but the killer isn’t the real danger—I am!” He hissed suddenly and clenched his teeth. “Well, I’ve seen enough. If I’m the danger then I shall remove myself. Let this man keep killing. It’s what they want. He’s a part of their order, their precious social order—without such creatures they’ve no scapegoats for their own wretched brutality! Who am I to interfere?”

“Kreizler,” I said, ever more worried, for there was no question now that he meant what he was saying. “Listen to yourself, you’re going against everything—”

“No!” he answered. “I’m going along! I’ll go back to my Institute and my dead, empty house, and forget this case. I’ll see to it that Stevie and Cyrus heal and never again face unknown attackers because of my vain schemes. And this bloody society that they’ve built for themselves can go down the path they have planned for it, and rot!”

I stood back a couple of steps, knowing in some part of myself that it was useless to argue with him, but stung by his attitude nonetheless. “All right, then. If self-pity’s going to be your solution—”

He swung at me hard with his left arm, but missed badly. “Damn you, Moore!” he seethed, breathing in short, quick contractions. “Damn you and damn them!” He grabbed the iron door and drew it open, then paused to get his breathing under control. Eyes again wide with horror, he stared into the dark, miserable hallway before him. “And damn me, too,” he added quietly. The heaving in his chest finally began to subside. “I’m going to wait inside. I would appreciate it if you’d go. I’ll arrange to have my things removed from Number 808. I—I’m sorry, John.” He entered the morgue, the iron door swinging shut with a crash as he went.

I stood there for a moment, my sodden clothes now starting to cling to my body and limbs. I looked up at the square, feelingless brick buildings around me, and then at the sky. More clouds were being blown in by the westerly wind, which was only picking up pace. In a sudden movement I reached down, tore a bit of grass and earth from the ground beneath me, and then threw it at the black door.

“Damn you all, then!” I shouted, holding up my muddy fist; but there was no relief in the exclamation. I let the hand fall slowly, then wiped rainwater from my face and stumbled back to my cab.