The Anatomy of Deception (20 page)

Haggens rubbed his hand across his chin. Apparently, agreeing to speak with me about illicit activities was not the same as actually doing so. “All right,” he said finally, more to himself than me. “Don’t know the gent’s name. Been in here once or twice before. Always for Turk. Must have money though … good clothes … expensive. What they was fighting
about? Well, Turk was no stranger to artificial stimulation, if you know what I mean.”

“You mean the man came here to ask Turk for drugs. What kind of drugs?”

“People down here don’t mix in each other’s business, Doc. Not good for the health. Turk was supposed to have something new … special. It ain’t from here. Comes in by boat, I think.” Haggens eyed me. “Understand, this is just guesswork. I don’t know none of this personally.”

“Of course,” I replied.

Haggens regarded me skeptically, then went on. “Anyways, this gent come in last Thursday all in a lather. Said I was to get Turk right away or there’d be bedlam. So I went and got him away from you and the ladies. As soon as Turk got there, this fella starts screaming at him, wanting to know what was the big idea about something or another.”

“The man wanted drugs?”

“Not sure. Looked more to me like a deal gone bad.” Haggens downed his whiskey and poured himself another. “I seen a lotta fellas in need, so to speak, but this gent didn’t have the right attitude for that. Talked more like an equal than a customer.”

“What exactly did he say?”

“Nothing all that clear. The gent told Turk that he’d better do right by him. Turk warned the gent to watch who he talked nasty to, especially down here, ’cause folks end up dead on the docks all the time. That seemed to take the old boy’s steam out.”

“There was someone else, wasn’t there? Someone who came for the other man.”

“Yeah. Popped in just for a minute. Stayed by the front door. Never saw him before or since. Little fella with a big mustache in a bowler.”

Since Haggens had proved so amenable to imparting information, I resolved to get all I could. “Turk had other
businesses going, didn’t he? Something more in the ‘getting rid of description?”

Haggens eyed me. “You sure know a lot about a lot. He helped women who got themselves in trouble.”

“Helped?”

“Best help there is, Doc. Can make quite a bit of cash that way. Maybe you want to consider taking up where he left off?”

So it was true. Turk, you evil man, preying upon desperate women in crisis and amassing five thousand dollars doing it. You deserved to die. I felt for a moment that I would vomit. But I had learned enough of Haggens to maintain a composed demeanor at all cost.

“No, thank you,” I replied, as casually as I could. “Where did he do all of this? Not here?”

“
Here?”
Haggens looked genuinely aghast. “You looked like a pretty smart fella until that, Doc.
Here?”

“Where, then? He must have had some base of operations for all this commerce.”

“He had a place, sure. Down on Wharf Lane somewhere, I think. Never knew exactly. Didn’t want to know.”

“I’ve never heard of Wharf Lane.”

“No reason you should have. Only one block long and not a block you’d ever wanna be on.”

“One last thing,” I said. I withdrew the picture from my coat and asked Haggens if he had ever seen the woman in the photograph before. Although there were still substantial gaps in the hypothesis, I was now convinced that I would eventually find a link between Turk and Rebecca Lachtmann. I could only hope that the link did not stretch to Dr. Osler. Haggens stared at the picture for an extremely long time.

“I’m not sure. Maybe. Got a name?”

I told him that I did not. Haggens’ brow furrowed as he continued to examine the photograph. “I’m really not sure. Could be though. She got a friend? Tall one with dark hair?”

“Possibly,” I said, feeling my skin prickle. “She might.”

“Maybe. One night. About a month ago. Two like that are unusual in here.”

“Were they alone?”

“Don’t remember no one with ‘em, but I figure there must have been. Two like that alone …”

“Were they with Turk? Or was Turk here that night?”

“Don’t remember. Truly.”

“All right, Haggens,” I said. “Thank you for your help.”

“Why, you’re very welcome.” I rose and turned for the door. “Oh, Doc,” Haggens said, “one more thing. Did you see Mike out front?”

I assured him I had.

“Looks like a pretty rough customer, huh?”

I agreed he did.

“Well,” said Haggens, “he don’t look half as mean as he is. Long as you keep to your deal, old Mike out there’ll help keep a watch on you whenever you’re down here. I get a whiff that you’re going back on it, Mike won’t be your friend no more. Get me?”

I got him. I was about to leave when one final thought occurred to me. “Tell me, Haggens, do you think Mike might remember either of the two women or the little fellow in the bowler?”

He snorted. “Mike don’t know what day it is. He ain’t out there for his memory.”

I spent the carriage ride home pondering whether, when Reverend Powers spoke of Christian conscience, he had allowed for running afoul of the police, investigating abortion and murder, and making bargains with thugs along the way.

When I arrived, Mrs. Mooney had already gone to bed, but I found a small envelope addressed to me on a table in the vestibule. When I opened it, inside was a note written on fine, cream-colored stationery.
Dear Dr. Carroll
, it read,
I need to see you urgently about the matter we discussed. Please make arrangements to call on me tomorrow evening
. It was signed,
Affectionately, Abigail
.

T
HE NEXT MORNING, WHEN
I arrived at the hospital, I learned that little Annie had died during the night.

Death tears at a doctor. Although each of us knows that a certain percentage of our patients will not survive, no physician ever becomes inured. Inevitably, there are some patients who take on an almost symbolic quality, who epitomize the struggle in which we continually engage against fate and inevitability. It is often, as was the case with Annie, those very patients whose survival is least likely who engender the most personal reaction.

When I arrived at the Professor’s office, I had never seen him so despairing.

“She had no hope, of course,” he said as I entered. “Her lungs, I’m sure, were virtually destroyed.” When he looked up, I saw that his eyes were red. “She was sent to work when she was five, did you know that? Running errands in a paint factory. Twelve hours a day. By the time she was eight, she was mixing paint. After she got sick, they threw her out. She lived on the street for more than a year before she was finally put into an orphanage. She had no memory of her parents. She wasn’t even sure how old she was. What a sad, wasted life.”

“It’s a great tragedy,” I agreed. “Her spirit was so light.”

“Yes,” said the Professor, seizing on the term. “It was light, wasn’t it? If we could have saved her, Ephraim, we could have helped her salvage her remaining years. You could see that
she was intelligent. She could have gone to school….” The Professor slumped in his chair. “What a terrible business this can be.”

“I’m truly sorry, Dr. Osler,” I said softly.

He dismissed the sentiment with a short wave of his hand.

“Do you know the actual cause of death?” I asked.

The Professor shook his head. “Not precisely, although I suspect toxicity in the environment in which she worked contributed greatly.”

“When will you conduct the postmortem?”

The Professor looked up. “I won’t. Couldn’t bear it, Carroll. I’ve arranged for her to be buried in a private cemetery.”

I nodded, relieved at the remarks despite the horrible circumstances. Dr. Osler’s behavior with the female cadaver might have an innocent explanation after all. There were indeed, it seemed, cadavers that even he could not cut into.

When we met for rounds, it was clear that everyone had been as deeply affected as had been the Professor. Corrigan’s face was ashen and Farnshaw appeared similarly. The death of one doomed little girl had pointed up to us the limits of our powers to heal and the fragility of our profession. Only Simpson preserved control, almost certainly because she had been forced to prove every day that she was not susceptible to female emotion.

I took her aside when rounds had been completed. “Perhaps you would be willing to step out with me for a moment,” I said to her. “I need air.”

Simpson’s face was set, as if in stone. But at my request, a thin smile appeared briefly on her lips.
“You
need air, Ephraim? Of course. Thank you for asking.”

We left the hospital and walked to the pathway along the river and turned south, away from the Blockley.

“I cannot bear cruelty to children,” she remarked after we had gone a few paces.

“There is something particularly execrable about those who would abuse the helpless,” I agreed.

“That girl … such extraordinary will …”

“She certainly brightened everyone who came near her. I will miss her as well.”

“Do you like children, then?” she asked. “Many men do not.”

“I liked Annie,” I replied, but then considered the larger question. “Yes,” I said finally. “I believe I do like children.”

“It is the principal reason that I became a doctor,” Simpson confided.

A nobler reason than mine, to be sure.

We walked a bit farther, watching the boats on the Schuylkill. A small private sailboat had caught the wind and was racing across the path of a steam packet boat heading upriver. As the sailboat came closer to view, it was possible to make out a young man at the tiller and a woman in the bow, both obviously of means, enjoying the maneuver, although an officer on the packet, leaning over the rail shaking his fist, did not share their amusement. Imagining the carefree woman to be Abigail Benedict was not difficult … but could I have been the man?

Simpson broke into my reverie. “If you’re not busy this evening, Ephraim, perhaps you could come by the settlement house. There’s something I want to show you.”

“I’m sorry, Mary,” I replied, not able to completely tear my eyes from the sailboat, “I cannot.” In reply to Abigail’s note, I had sent a boy to the Benedict home to leave word that I would arrive at eight. “Perhaps another evening.”

“Of course,” she answered, but her voice had gone distant. Her eyes were now on the sailboat as well. “We should be getting back now, I think.”

When I knocked on the Benedicts’ door at the appointed hour, opening it was not a servant but rather Albert Benedict.
“Dr. Carroll,” he effused, shaking my hand warmly, dripping
noblesse oblige
, “it’s a pleasure to see you again. Do come in.”

Benedict ushered me into a parlor, where we sat on either side of a brilliantly polished tea table on which sat a crystal decanter.

“It’s a Hennessey, 1825,” he told me. “Privately bottled. The family owns a vineyard in Jarnac. Hennessey will blend and bottle every vintage for anyone who sells them grapes. This one is quite good.”

The cognac was indeed superb; smooth, without any bite at all.

“You are here to see my sister?” Albert asked after a moment.

“At her request,” I replied.

“So she mentioned. Tell me, Dr. Carroll, what are your intentions?”

“I am not sure that I know your sister well enough to have intentions, Mr. Benedict, although this seems a question more for your father to be asking.”

Benedict sipped his cognac. “Well, Dr. Carroll, as my sister pointed out, I’ve been ordained to take his place and have therefore been delegated certain tasks with which I might gain experience.”

“And I am one of your tasks?”

“Not you specifically. Abigail is one of my tasks.”

“Abigail seems more than able to fend for herself.”

Benedict removed his spectacles and polished them with a silk handkerchief that he took from his vest. “You might be surprised,” he replied. “In any event, we take a dim view in our family of those who attempt to prey upon the weakness of women.”

“I don’t find women to be particularly weak,” I rejoined, wondering how he could make such a statement with Abigail as a sister. “Certainly no more so than men.”

“Women are gullible and naïve,” insisted Benedict. “They
are easily swayed by flattery or pleasing prevarication. It is the natural order of things.”

I was stunned. These were sentiments that I associated with Elias Schoonmaker’s generation. “I’m not sure Darwin would agree,” I replied simply.

“Darwin dealt with physical traits. I am speaking of essential character.” Benedict leaned back in his chair in studied relaxation. “Dr. Carroll, I will be blunt. We have quite a bit of money, as you know, and as such my family is an appealing target for some who wish to improve their circumstances at our expense.”

I was supposed to be insulted, of course, to rise to the bait, to point out that it was his sister who had pursued me and not the other way round, and that I was not even sure of her motives. Protestations of innocence, however, were what people as rich as the Benedicts doubtless heard every day. Instead, I remained silent and, after a moment, he continued.