Something flickered in Constance’s eyes. “Proceed?”
“With overturning your involuntary commitment. And getting the murder charges dropped.” Felder moved a little closer. “Constance, you were sent here on my recommendation. I see now that was a mistake. You’re not insane. And you didn’t murder your child—that was a smokescreen. If you tell me where your child is, I will have it duly verified by the authorities. And then we can begin the process of obtaining your release.”
Constance hesitated. “I…” she said, before stopping. She seemed uncharacteristically at a loss.
Felder had brooded, planned, dreamed about this moment. But now that it was actually happening, it seemed to take him by as much surprise as it took Constance. “I took a terrible risk obtaining that lock.” He touched his scar. “This is the least of it.”
He let that sink in.
“I had to know. It’s not your fault, of course, but now that it’s done, I want you to know that I’d do it again. I’d walk through fire for you, Constance. No—no, let me speak, please. I’d do it again because of… of my feelings for you. And it’s not just because I’ve wronged you, by putting you in here. It’s because of the way I’ve grown to feel about you. I want to undo the wrong and get you out of here, because it’s my hope that by setting you free, by putting us on an equal basis, in time you can come to look at me, not as a doctor, but as… as…” He hesitated, more confused than ever. “And naturally at that point, because of professional ethics, I’ll have to recuse myself as your doctor… if, of course…”
He finally fell silent, overwhelmed, and then, tentatively, reached out and took her hand. With trepidation, he looked up to meet her gaze. One glance was all it took. He looked down again and released her hand, feeling ill.
“Doctor,” Constance said gently. “John. I’m touched—I am, truly, deeply. Your belief in me means more than I could put into words. But the truth is that I could never return the feelings you seem to have for me—for the reason that my heart belongs to another.”
Felder did not look up. As Constance spoke, her voice had grown increasingly soft and troubled, until the final five words were just barely audible.
He thought back to that day in the Mount Mercy library, when Constance had first mentioned the existence of the lock; when she’d implied that his finding it, bringing it to light, would do more than simply vindicate her—for him it would be a lover’s test, a way to prove the depth of his feelings, to wipe out the past with all its false steps and dubious medical observations. But he realized now it was all in his head, that she had implied no such thing. He had projected his own hopes onto what she’d been offering him: simply an opportunity to satisfy himself about the truth of her age. And only because he demanded it.
He felt Constance take his hand. He looked up to see her smiling at him. She had fully recovered, and her smile held its usual suspension of cool amusement and benevolent distance.
“I can’t return your feelings, Doctor,” she said, giving his hand a gentle pressure. “But there’s something else I can do. I can tell you my story. It is a story I’ve not told to anyone else, at least not in its entirety.”
Felder blinked. Her words were slow to settle in.
She went on. “I fear this story must remain between us. Are you interested?”
“Interested?” Felder repeated. “My God. Of course.”
“Good. Then please consider this my gift to you.” Constance paused. “After all—it is Christmas Eve.”
86
THEY SAT, QUITE STILL, IN THE PROFUSION OF DAPPLED light. Constance looked over Felder’s shoulder, out into the main body of the chapel. The two envelopes, one old, one new, lay on the pew between them.
Constance began. “I was born at Sixteen Water Street, New York City, in the 1870s. Most likely it was in the summer of 1873. By the time I was five, both my parents were dead of tuberculosis. In 1878, my older sister, Mary, was confined to a workhouse—the Five Points Mission—and ultimately vanished. My brother, Joseph, died in 1880. This much you know.
“What you may not know is that my sister, Mary, was the victim of a doctor attached to the Five Points Mission, a surgeon of great skill who called himself Enoch Leng. Dr. Leng was a man with a singular ambition—to extend his own life span far beyond that of a normal human being. Before you judge him, however, I should explain that Dr. Leng was not trying to extend his life for selfish reasons. He was working on a scientific project—one that would take longer than a normal life span to complete.”
“What scientific project?” Felder asked.
“The details of the project aren’t necessary for my own story.” Constance paused. “Now, here we come to the first of several grotesqueries. Dr. Leng’s theories were unorthodox, as was his sense of medical ethics. His research led him to believe it would be possible to create a medical treatment—a formula or arcanum—for greatly prolonging life. The ingredients could be procured only from living human tissue, taken from a healthy young person.”
“Good Lord,” Felder murmured.
“As a specialist at a children’s workhouse in the Five Points section of Manhattan, then New York’s most notorious slum, Dr. Leng had no paucity of raw material. My own sister fell victim to his experiments—her mutilated corpse, along with dozens of others, was discovered in a mass grave about three years ago in Lower Manhattan.”
Felder recalled coming across an article describing this discovery on one of his visits to the public library. It had been in the New York Times, written by that reporter—Smithback—the one who was later murdered. So Mary Greene was Constance’s sister, he thought.
“I’m afraid a great many people fell victim to Dr. Leng while he was refining his technique. Suffice it to say that—in 1885—he succeeded in perfecting his arcanum.”
“He found a way to prolong his life?”
“His technique centered on the bundle of nerves known as the cauda equina—I have no need of further anatomical explanation, you being a doctor. But yes: by increasingly subtle refinements, he did in fact succeed in creating an arcanum that would dramatically slow the aging process of the human body. By that time, I was a ward, living in his house.”
“You—?” Felder began.
“After my sister vanished, I became—in the parlance of the day—a ‘guttersnipe.’ I had no family and lived in the streets, doing whatever it took to stay alive. I begged, I did cartwheels or swept the sidewalks free of filth for pedestrians, hoping for a penny. More than once I very nearly froze or starved to death. Many nights I slept within the shadow of the Five Points Mission, where Dr. Leng donated his services. One day the doctor stopped and asked my name. When I told him, I think he realized he was responsible for my situation—and for some unknown reason he took pity on me. Or perhaps not. At any rate, he took me into his mansion on Riverside Drive and used me as a guinea pig, administering the perfected arcanum, probably to test for side effects. And over time, strangely enough, he became fond of me. Why, I shall never know. He fed me, clothed me, educated me, and… continued to administer to me that same elixir that he gave himself.”
Constance had been slow to utter these last words. For some minutes, the chapel fell into silence. The story was incredible, but Felder knew it was the truth.
At last, Constance resumed. “For many, many years, we lived a solitary, reclusive life in that mansion. I continued my courses of study in literature, philosophy, art, music, history, and languages, partly with the doctor’s help and partly on my own, making free use of his library and scientific collections. Meanwhile, Dr. Leng continued his work. Around 1935, he achieved his second success. Using various chemicals and compounds that had been previously unavailable, he managed to synthesize an arcanum that no longer required… human factors.”