The Alienist Part 22

"It's possible, I suppose. You're thinking about the missing brother?"

"Yes. j.a.pheth Dury."

"But why would anyone show such things to a child?"

Kreizler answered in a distracted tone: "'Dirtier than a Red Injun...'"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I'm not certain, John. Perhaps he stumbled on them. Or perhaps they were used as a disciplinary tool. More answers to be found in Newton, I hope."

I thought the matter over for a moment, then felt my head bobbing back down toward the seat that I was lying on. "Well," I finally said, giving in to the bob, "if you don't get some rest you won't be fit to talk to anyone, in Newton or anywhere else."

"I know," Kreizler answered. Then I could hear him s.h.i.+fting on his seat. "But the thought struck me..."

The next thing I knew we were in the Grand Central Depot, being rudely awakened by the slams of compartment doors and the b.u.mps of bags against the wall of our compartment. Looking none the better for our eventful night, Kreizler and I stumbled off the train and out of the station into an overcast, gloomy morning. Since Sara would not yet be at our headquarters, we decided to make stops at our respective homes, then rendezvous at Number 808 when we were feeling (and hopefully looking) a bit more human. I got another two hours' sleep and a splendid bath at Was.h.i.+ngton Square, then breakfasted with my grandmother. The mental ease that had so thankfully settled on her following the execution of Dr. H. H. Holmes was, I noticed during the meal, beginning to wear thin: she scanned the back pages of the Times Times nervously, looking for the next deadly threat with which to preoccupy her evening hours. I took the liberty of pointing out the futility of such a course to her, only to be told rather curtly that it was not her intention to take advice from someone who found it appropriate to commit social suicide in not one but two cities by being seen in public with "that Dr. Kreizler." nervously, looking for the next deadly threat with which to preoccupy her evening hours. I took the liberty of pointing out the futility of such a course to her, only to be told rather curtly that it was not her intention to take advice from someone who found it appropriate to commit social suicide in not one but two cities by being seen in public with "that Dr. Kreizler."

Harriet packed me a fresh overnight bag for the trip to Newton, and by nine o'clock I was in the caged elevator at Number 808 Broadway, full of coffee and feeling remarkably game. Now that I was back, it seemed as though I'd been away from our headquarters far longer than four days, and I looked forward to seeing Sara again with unabashed enthusiasm. When I reached the sixth floor I found her in close conversation with Kreizler, but, determined now to utterly ignore whatever it was that was going on between them, I dashed over and gave her a big, spinning hug.

"John, you a.s.s!" she said with a smile. "I don't care if it is is spring-you know what happened the last time you were fresh with me!" spring-you know what happened the last time you were fresh with me!"

"Oh, no," I said, dropping her quickly. "Once in that river is enough for any lifetime. Well? Has Laszlo brought you up to date?"

"Yes," Sara answered, tightening the bun on the back of her head and flas.h.i.+ng defiance in her green eyes. "You two have had all the fun, and I've just told Dr. Kreizler that if you think I'm going to sit around here for one more minute while you barrel off to yet another adventure, you're very much mistaken."

I brightened up a bit. "You're coming to Newton?"

"I said I wanted adventure," she answered, swiping at my nose with a sheet of paper. "And being locked up on a train with you two does not, I'm afraid, fill that bill. No, Dr. Kreizler says someone's got to go to New Paltz."

"Roosevelt telephoned a few minutes ago," Laszlo said to me. "Apparently the name Beecham does appear in various records in that town."

"Ah," I said. "Then it would appear that j.a.pheth Dury did not not become John Beecham." become John Beecham."

Kreizler shrugged. "It's a further complication, that's all we can be sure of, and it requires investigation. You and I, however, must get to Newton as soon as possible. And with the detective sergeants still gone, that leaves Sara. It's her territory, after all-she grew up in the region and doubtless knows how to ingratiate herself with the local officials."

"Oh, doubtless," I said. "What about coordinating things here?"

"An overrated job, if ever there was one," Sara answered. "Let Stevie do it, until Cyrus is out of bed. Besides, I shouldn't be gone more than a day."

I turned a lecherous glance on the girl. "And how valuable is my support in this scheme?"

Sara spun away. "John, you really are a pig. Dr. Kreizler's already agreed."

"I see," I answered. "Well, then-that's that, I suppose. My opinion not being worth the air it takes to express it."

And in such fas.h.i.+on was Stevie Taggert set loose to ransack our headquarters for cigarettes. As of high noon that day the youth was left in charge of the place, his face as we departed giving me the impression that he'd smoke the upholstery from the Marchese Carcano's chairs if he couldn't find anything better. Stevie paid careful attention to Laszlo's instructions about how to contact us while we were gone, but when those instructions led into a warning speech concerning the evils of nicotine addiction, the boy seemed suddenly to go deaf. Laszlo, Sara, and I had barely started downstairs in the elevator when the sounds of drawers and cupboards opening and closing became audible from above. Kreizler only sighed, aware that for the moment we had bigger fish to fry; but I knew that once our case was settled there would be many long lectures on clean living to be heard at the house on Seventeenth Street.

The three of us stopped briefly at Gramercy Park so that Sara could pick up a few things (in case her visit to New Paltz lasted longer than antic.i.p.ated), following which we engaged in another bit of subterfuge with the same set of decoys that Laszlo had hired prior to our trip to Was.h.i.+ngton. Then it was back to the Grand Central Depot. Sara split off to buy a ticket for the Hudson River Line, while Kreizler and I made purchases at the New Haven Line windows. Goodbyes were, as they had been on Monday, brief and unrevealing of any connection between Sara and Kreizler; I was beginning to think I was as wrong about them as I'd been about a rogue priest being responsible for the murders. Our Boston train departed on time, and before long we'd pa.s.sed through the eastern portions of Westchester County and into Connecticut.

The difference between Laszlo's and my trip to Was.h.i.+ngton earlier in the week and our present journey to Boston, on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, was roughly the difference between the two respective landscapes surrounding us, as well as that between the kinds of people who inhabited the regions. Gone, on Sat.u.r.day, were the verdant, rolling fields of New Jersey and Maryland: all around us the scraggly countryside of Connecticut and Ma.s.sachusetts crept awkwardly down to Long Island Sound and the sea beyond, bringing to mind the hard life that had made such mean, contentious people out of the farmers and merchants of New England. Not that one needed such an indirect indication of what life in that quarter of the country was like; human exemplars were sitting all around us. Kreizler hadn't purchased first-cla.s.s seats, a mistake whose gravity only became fully evident when the train reached top speed and our fellow travelers raised their grating, complaining drawls to overcome the rattle of the cars. For hours Kreizler and I endured loud conversations about fis.h.i.+ng, local politics, and the shameful economic condition of the United States. Despite the din, however, we did manage to formulate a sound plan for dealing with Adam Dury if and when we found him.

We detrained at Boston's Back Bay Station, outside of which were collected a group of drivers who had rigs for hire. One man in the group, a tall, gaunt fellow with vicious little eyes, stepped toward us as we approached with our bags.

"Newton?" Laszlo said to him.

The man c.o.c.ked his head and stuck out his lower lip. "Good ten miles," he judged. "I won't be back 'fore midnight."

"Then double your price," Laszlo answered peremptorily, throwing his bag into the front seat of the man's rather battered old surrey. Although the driver looked a bit disappointed at losing the chance to quibble over the cost of the trip, he responded to Laszlo's offer with alacrity, jumping up onto the rig and grabbing his whip. I rushed to climb aboard, and then we drove off to the sound of the other rig drivers groaning about what kind of interloping fool would offer double the going rate for a ride to Newton. After that, all was silence for quite a while.

A troubled sunset that seemed to promise rain reached out over eastern Ma.s.sachusetts, as the fringes of Boston slowly gave way to mile after mile of monotonous, rocky farmland. We didn't reach Newton until well past dark, whereupon our driver offered to take us to an inn that he said was the best in town. Both Kreizler and I knew that this probably meant the place was operated by some member of the man's family, but we were tired, hungry, and on terra incognita: there was little to do but acquiesce. Rolling through the impossibly quaint streets of Newton, as numbingly picturesque a community as one could hope to find even in New England, I began to get the disturbingly familiar feeling of being trapped by narrow lanes and narrow minds, a kind of anxiety that had often consumed me during my time at Harvard. The "best inn in Newton" did nothing to relieve this uneasiness: sure enough, it was a loosely clapboarded building, with spare furnis.h.i.+ngs and a menu that ran to things boiled. The only bright moment occurred during supper, when the innkeeper (our driver's second cousin) said that he could provide directions to the farm of Adam Dury; and, hearing that Kreizler and I would need a ride in the morning, the man who'd brought us offered to spend the night and perform the service. Such details taken care of, we retired to our low, dark rooms and hard little beds to allow our stomachs to do their best with the boiled mutton and potatoes we'd dined on.

Rising early the next day, Laszlo and I tried but failed to avoid the innkeeper's breakfast offering of thick, tough flapjacks and coffee. The sky had cleared, evidently without shedding any rain, and outside the inn stood the old surrey, with our driver aboard and ready to depart. Traveling north, we saw little sign of any human activity for nearly half an hour; then a herd of dairy cattle came into view, grazing in a pitted, rock-strewn pasture, beyond which a small group of buildings stood amid a stand of oaks. As we approached these structures-a farmhouse and two barns-I made out the figure of a man standing ankle deep in barnyard manure and trying with difficulty to shoe a tired old horse.

The man, I noted quickly, had thinning hair, and his scalp glistened in the morning sun.

CHAPTER 34.

To judge by the dilapidated state of his barns, fences, and wagons, as well as the absence of any a.s.sistants or particularly healthy-looking animals, Adam Dury had not made much of a go of his little dairy cattle enterprise. Few people live in closer proximity to life's grimmer realities than do poor farmers, and the atmosphere of such places is inevitably sobering: Kreizler's and my excitement at actually laying eyes on the man we'd traveled a fairly long way to find was immediately tempered by appreciation of his circ.u.mstances, and after getting down from the surrey and telling our driver to wait, we approached him slowly and carefully.

"Excuse me-Mr. Dury?" I said, as the fellow continued to struggle with the old horse's left foreleg. The fly-ridden brown beast, its hide bare in several spots where a yolk would have rested, appeared to have absolutely no interest in making its master's task any easier.

"Yes," the man answered sharply, still showing us nothing more than the back of his balding head.

"Mr. Adam Dury?" I inquired further, trying to induce him to turn around.

"You must know that, if you've come to see me," Dury answered, finally dropping the horse's leg with a grunt. He stood up, rising to a height of well over six feet and then slapped the horse's neck, half in anger and half affectionately. "This one thinks he'll die before me, anyway," he mumbled, still facing the horse, "so why should he be cooperative? But we've both got many more years of this to go, you old..." Dury finally turned round, revealing a head whose skin was so tightly drawn that it appeared little more than a flesh-colored skull. Large yellow teeth filled the mouth, and the almond-shaped eyes were of a lifeless blue tint. His arms were powerfully developed, and the fingers of his hands as he wiped them on his worn overalls seemed remarkably long and thick. He took our measures with a squinting grimace that was neither friendly nor hostile. "Well? What can I do for you two gentlemen?"

I moved directly-and, if I may say so, gracefully-into the bit of subterfuge that Laszlo and I had worked out on the Boston train. "This is Dr. Laszlo Kreizler," I said, "and my name is John Schuyler Moore. I'm a reporter for The New York Times. The New York Times." I found my billfold and revealed some professional identification. "A police reporter, actually. My editors have a.s.signed me to investigate some of the more-well, to come to the point, some of the more outstanding unsolved cases of recent decades."

Dury nodded, a bit suspiciously. "You've come to ask about my parents."

"Indeed," I answered. "You've no doubt heard, Mr. Dury, of the recent investigations into the conduct of the New York City Police Department."

Dury's thin eyes went even thinner. "The case was none of their affair."

"True. But my editors are concerned with the fact that so many noteworthy cases are never pursued or solved by law enforcement agencies throughout throughout the state of New York. We've decided to review several and see what's happened in the years since their occurrence. I wonder if you'd mind just going over the basic facts of your parents' death with us?" the state of New York. We've decided to review several and see what's happened in the years since their occurrence. I wonder if you'd mind just going over the basic facts of your parents' death with us?"

All the features of Dury's face seemed to s.h.i.+ft and resettle in a kind of wave, as if a shudder of pain had rippled through him quickly. When he spoke again, the tone of distrust had vanished from his voice, to be replaced only by resignation and sorrow. "Who could have any interest now? It's been more than fifteen years."

I attempted sympathy, as well as moral indignation: "Does time justify the lack of a solution, Mr. Dury? And you are not alone, remember-others have seen murderous acts go unsolved and unavenged, and they'd like to know why."

Dury weighed the matter for another moment, then shook his head. "That's their business. I've got no desire to talk about it."

He began to move away; knowing New Englanders as well as I did, however, I'd antic.i.p.ated this reaction. "There would, of course," I announced calmly, "be a fee."

That got him: he paused, turned, and eyed me again. "Fee?"

I gave him a friendly smile. "A consulting fee," I said. "Nothing excessive, mind you-say, one hundred dollars?"

Aware that such a sum would, in fact, mean a great deal to a man in his straits, I was not surprised to see Dury's almond eyes jump. "One hundred dollars?" he echoed in quiet disbelief. "For talking talking?"

"That's right, sir," I answered, producing the sum from my billfold.

Thinking it all over just a bit more, Dury finally took the money. Then he turned to his horse, swatted its rump, and sent it off to graze on a few patches of gra.s.s that grew near the edge of the yard. "We'll talk in the barn," he said. "I've got work to do, and I can't ignore it for the sake of"-he took heavy steps away from us through the sea of manure-"ghost stories."

Kreizler and I followed, much relieved at the apparent success of the bribe. Concern returned, however, when Dury spun round at the barn door.

"Just a minute," he said. "You say this man's a doctor? What's his interest?"

"I make a study of criminal behavior, Mr. Dury," Laszlo answered smoothly, "as well as of police methods. Mr. Moore has asked me to provide expert advice for his article."

Dury accepted that, though it seemed that he didn't much like Kreizler's accent. "You're German," he said. "Or maybe Swiss."

"My father was German," Kreizler answered. "But I was raised in this country."

Dury seemed ill satisfied by Kreizler's explanation, and silently walked on into the barn.

Inside that creaky structure the stench of manure grew stronger, softened only by the sweet aroma of hay, a store of which was visible in the loft above us. The bare plank walls of the building had once been whitewashed, but most of the paint had fallen away to reveal roughly grained wood. A chicken coop was visible through one four-foot doorway, the gurgles and clucks of its occupants floating out toward us. Harnesses, scythes, shovels, picks, mauls, and buckets were everywhere, hanging from the walls and the low roof or lying on the earthen floor. Dury went directly over to a very old manure spreader, the axle of which was propped up on a pile of rocks. Taking up a mallet and slamming away at the wheel that faced us, our host eventually forced it from its mount. Dury then hissed in disgust and began to fuss with the end of the axle.

"All right," he said, grabbing a bucket of heavy grease and never looking our way. "Ask your questions."

Kreizler nodded to me, indicating that it might be best if I took the lead in the questioning. "We've read the newspaper accounts that appeared at the time," I said. "I wonder if you might tell us-"

"Newspaper accounts!" Dury grunted. "I suppose you've also read, then, that the fools suspected me me for a time." for a time."

"We've read that there was gossip," I answered. "But the police said that they never-"

"Believed it? Not much, they didn't. Only enough to send two of their men all the way over here to hara.s.s my wife and myself for three days!"

"You're married, Mr. Dury?" Kreizler asked quietly.

For just a second or two, Dury eyed Laszlo, again resentfully. "I am. Nineteen years, not that it's any business of yours."

"Children?" Kreizler asked, in the same cautious tone.

"No," came the hard answer. "We-that is, my wife-I-no. We have no children."

"But I take it," I said, "that your wife was able to attest to your being here when the-the terrible incident occurred?"

"That didn't mean much to those idiots," Dury answered. "A wife's testimony counts for little or nothing in a court of law. I had to ask a neighbor of mine, a man who lives nearly ten miles away, to come and verify that we were pulling a stump together on the very day my parents were murdered."

"Do you know why the police should have been so hard to convince?" Kreizler asked.

Dury slammed his mallet down on the ground. "I'm sure you read about that, that, too. too. Doctor. Doctor. It was no secret. There'd been bad blood between my parents and myself for many years." It was no secret. There'd been bad blood between my parents and myself for many years."

I held a hand up to Kreizler. "Yes, we saw some mention of such," I said, trying to coax more details out of Dury. "But the police accounts were very vague and confused, and it was difficult to draw any conclusions. Which seems remarkable, given that the question was vital to the investigation. Maybe you could make it a little clearer for us?"

Lifting the manure spreader's wheel onto a workbench, Dury began to pound at it again. "My parents were hard people, Mr. Moore. They had to be, to make the trip to this country and survive the life they chose for themselves. But while I can say that now, such explanations are quite beyond a small boy who-" A blast of pa.s.sionate language seemed about to escape the man, but he held it down with obvious effort. "Who only hears a cold voice. And only feels a thick strap."

"Then you were were beaten," I said, thinking back to Kreizler's and my original speculations after first reading of the Dury murders in Was.h.i.+ngton. beaten," I said, thinking back to Kreizler's and my original speculations after first reading of the Dury murders in Was.h.i.+ngton.

"I wasn't referring to myself, Mr. Moore," Dury answered. "Though G.o.d knows neither my father nor my mother ever shrank from punis.h.i.+ng me when I misbehaved. But that was not what caused our-estrangement." He looked out a small, filthy window for a moment, then pounded at the wheel again. "I had a brother. j.a.pheth."

Kreizler nodded as I said, "Yes, we read about him. Tragic. You have our sympathy."

"Sympathy? I suppose. But I'll tell you this, Mr. Moore-whatever those savages did to him was no more tragic than what he endured at the hands of his own parents."

"He suffered cruelties?"

Dury shrugged. "Some might not call them such. But I did, and do still. Oh, he was a strange lad, in some respects, and the ways in which my parents reacted to his behavior might have seemed-natural, to an outsider. But it wasn't. No, sir, there was the devil in it all, somewhere..." Dury's attention wandered for a moment, but then he shook it off. "I'm sorry. You wanted to know about the case."

I spent the next half hour asking Dury some obvious questions about what had happened on that day in 1880, requesting clarification of details that we were not, in fact, confused about, as a method of concealing our true interests. Then I managed, by asking him why any Indians should have wanted to kill his parents, to lead him into a more detailed discussion of what life in his home during the Minnesota years had been like. From there, it was no great job to expand the discussion to a history of the family's private dealings more generally. As Dury related these, Laszlo stealthily withdrew his small notebook and began to silently scribble a record of the account: Though born in New Paltz in 1856, Adam Dury's earliest memories dated back only as far as his fourth year, when his family had relocated to Fort Ridgely, Minnesota, a military post inside that state's Lower Sioux Agency. The Durys lived in a one-room log house about a mile outside the fort, the kind of residence that afforded young Adam an excellent vantage point from which to study his parents and their relations.h.i.+p. His father, as Kreizler and I already knew, was a strictly religious man, who made no attempt to sugarcoat the sermons he delivered to those curious Sioux who came to hear him speak. Yet Laszlo and I were both surprised to learn that, despite this vocational rigidity, the Reverend Victor Dury had not been especially cruel or violent to his older son; rather, Adam said that his earliest memories of his father were happy ones. True, the reverend could deliver painful punishments when required; but it was usually Mrs. Dury who called for such action.

As he spoke of his mother, Adam Dury's aspect grew darker and his voice became far more hesitant, as if even her memory held some tremendous threatening power over him. Cold and strict, Mrs. Dury had apparently not offered her son much in the way of comfort or nurturing during his youth; indeed, as I listened to his description of the woman, I couldn't help but think back to Jesse Pomeroy.

"Much as it pained me to be shunned by her," Dury said, as he attempted to fit the now-repaired wheel back onto the manure spreader, "I believe her remote spirit hurt my father even more-for she was no real wife to him. Oh, she performed all the menial domestic duties, and kept a very tidy home, despite our meager circ.u.mstances. But when your family lives in one small room, gentlemen, you cannot help but be aware of the-the more intimate dimension of your parents' marriage. Or the lack thereof."

"You're saying they weren't close?" I asked.

"I'm saying that I don't know why she married him," Dury answered gruffly, making the axle and wheel before him bear the brunt of his sadness and anger. "She could scarcely abide his slightest touch, much less his-his attempts to build a family. My father, you see, wanted children. He had ideas-dreams, really-of sending his sons and daughters out into the western wilderness to expand and carry on his work. But my mother...Their every attempt was an ordeal for her. Some of these she suffered through, and some she-resisted. I honestly do not know why she ever took the vow. Except-when he preached...My father was quite an orator, in his way, and my mother attended nearly every service he ever held. She did seem to enjoy that part of his life, strangely enough."

"And after you returned from Minnesota?"

Dury shook his head bitterly. "After we returned from Minnesota things deteriorated completely. When my father lost his post he lost the only human connection he had to my mother. They rarely spoke in the years after that, and never touched, not that I can recall." He looked up at the filthy window. "Except once..."

He paused for several seconds, and to urge him on I murmured: "j.a.pheth?"

Dury nodded, slowly rousing himself from his sad reverie. "I'd taken to sleeping outdoors when it was warm enough. Near the mountains-the Shaw.a.n.gunks. My father had learned the sport of mountaineering in Switzerland from his own father, and the Shaw.a.n.gunks were an ideal spot to keep his hand in, as well as to pa.s.s the techniques on to me. Though I was never very good at it, I always went along with him, because they were happier times-away from the house and that woman."

If the words had been explosives I don't think their concussion could have hit Kreizler and me any harder. Laszlo's weak left arm shot out, and his hand grabbed my shoulder with surprising force. Dury saw none of it and, unaware of the effect his words were having on us, continued: "But during the coldest months there was no avoiding the indoors, not unless I wanted to die of exposure. And I remember one February night when my father...he may have been drinking, though he rarely did. But, sober or no, he began to finally rebel against my mother's inhuman behavior. He spoke of the duties of a wife, and the needs of a husband, and he began to grab at her. Well...My mother screamed in protest, of course, and told him he was acting like the savages we'd left behind in Minnesota. But my father wouldn't be stopped that night-and despite the cold I fled the house through a window, and slept in an old barn that belonged to a neighbor of ours. Even from that distance I could hear my mother's cries and sobs." Once again, Dury seemed to lose all awareness of his present surroundings and spoke in a detached, almost lifeless voice: "And I wish I could say that those sounds horrified me. But they didn't. In fact, I distinctly remember urging my father on..." His presence of mind returned, and, somewhat embarra.s.sed, he picked up his hammer and began pounding at the wheel once more. "No doubt I've shocked you, gentlemen. If so, I apologize."

"No, no," I answered quickly. "You're only giving us a better understanding of the background, we quite understand that."

Dury shot Laszlo another quick, skeptical look. "And you, Doctor? Do you quite understand, too? You haven't had much to say."

Kreizler kept very cool under Dury's scrutiny. There was, I knew, little chance that this man of the earth was going to make so seasoned a madhouse campaigner as Kreizler uneasy. "I have been too absorbed to comment," Laszlo said. "If you'll allow me to say so, Mr. Dury, you are very well-spoken."

Dury laughed once humorlessly. "For a farmer, you mean? Yes, that was my mother's doing. She made us work at our school lessons for hours every night. I could both read and write before the age of five."

Kreizler c.o.c.ked his head in appreciation. "Laudable."