The Anatomy of Deception (16 page)

“Nothing,” I said with finality. “But if I do not get in touch with him and he finds out that you withheld his whereabouts,
I believe he will be none too pleased. In that case, I think you will have the opportunity to ask the same question of him.”

Monique nodded. “Well, well, you’re sure a surprise … Ephraim.”

“Why? Because I did not allow you to ruin me?”

“Ruin you?” she sneered. “Ha! That’s a laugh. That’s what you men always think. You got it backward. It ain’t women like me who ruin you, it’s men like you that ruined me.”

“Whatever you say,” I replied. “Are you going to tell me where George resides or not?”

“I don’t know,” she said sourly. “Suzette might.” She ducked back into the dressing room and emerged a minute or two later. “She’s never been to his place either, but she said one night she heard him tell a coachman to take him to the Barchester Hotel.”

“One last thing,” I asked. “George’s ‘getting rid of’ services … were they well known around town?” Perhaps it was he who had disposed of the body.

“No more than they had to be, I expect, although anyone interested enough could find out. And lots of us girls were plenty interested.”

Abortion! Not disposal. Not drugs or venereal disease. Detestable! If this was true, Turk was a more monstrous character than anyone had suspected. None of this was demonstrably connected to either the cadaver or to Rebecca Lachtmann, of course. If only we had performed that autopsy.

“Thank you,” I said to her, endeavoring not to give anything away.

Monique and I stood for a moment, looking at one another. The woman before me had ceased to be either the object of desire of the previous Thursday or the object of contempt of a few minutes before. Instead, I saw her for what she truly was—a pitiful creature, forced to scratch out subsistence plying the scant resources Providence had granted her, and even they were fast becoming exhausted. Five years from now, perhaps a good deal sooner, they would have deserted
her entirely and her life would turn increasingly bleak. I realized that one of my greatest achievements since leaving Ohio, the most important product of all my study and self-betterment, had been to procure the means to a comfortable, even prosperous, middle age.

Monique seemed to sense the honesty between us as well. She smiled ruefully and said, “It’s all right, Ephie. You take care. Be careful of Georgie. He’s a bad one to cross.” She patted me on the cheek. “And remember, if you ever get tired of society women, pop on down here.”

“I will,” I promised, although we both knew that we would never see each other again.

I arrived at the Barchester Hotel at about nine-fifteen. It was on East Cumberland Street, about one half mile northeast of Temple University, in a neighborhood that was neither seedy nor prosperous, prominent nor notorious. The hotel’s anonymity seemed ideally suited to a man who wished to keep even the most fundamental details of his life hidden.

I entered the small lobby and strode across an aging black and white tile floor. The clerk, an indifferent, scowling lout, awaited me, arms braced on the front desk, aware that I was not there to take a room. I asked for George Turk and described him, lest he used an alias even here, but the clerk claimed that no one of that name or description was registered. When I attempted to pursue my inquiries, he shrugged and turned away.

I had succeeded first with bribery, and then with bluff. This man, I thought, would be far more susceptible to the latter. “Before I go, sir,” I said, “I will simply inform you that I am a doctor. I am attempting to locate Mr. Turk on an extremely grave matter involving a prominent family in this city. If death results from my inability to contact him, the police are certain to become involved and they may reasonably be expected to take a dim view of anyone who impeded my inquiries.”

The clerk turned about. He stood gazing at me with
rodentlike eyes, his expression stolid. I feared my gambit had failed, but then he asked, “Prominent family? Which prominent family?”

“I am not at liberty to say, and you’d best hope that you do not have cause to find out.”

The clerk’s forehead wrinkled and I could see that the turn in the conversation was taxing his limited reason. “Turk’s in trouble then?” he asked. Hearing him use the name told me that I was getting closer.

“Not as yet, but he will be if I cannot locate him quickly. I might add that I believe he will be none too pleased to learn that you prevented me from contacting him. As I suspect you know, he is a dangerous man.”

I had no specific evidence, of course, that Turk was dangerous, short of Monique’s assertion, but when the clerk began to nod involuntarily, I knew that she had not been speaking idly.

“He doesn’t stay here,” the clerk said, “but I take messages and deliver them to his rooms. Nothing out of sorts, mind you, but Mr. Turk is a man who likes his privacy.”

“You are paid for this service, of course,” I said.

“He ain’t my kin,” the clerk replied, by way of explanation.

“And where do you take the messages?” I asked. When the clerk hesitated, I slammed the flat of my hand upon the counter. “Hurry up, man, or no one will have any privacy to value, least of all you.”

“All right,” he grunted. “Mr. Turk has rooms on Bodine Street … that’s three blocks east of here and two north, just this side of the railroad tracks. He rents from a Mrs. Fasanti. She’s a widow. It’s not a rooming house proper, but this way Turk figures no one will come looking there.”

“Thank you.” I nodded curtly. “I do not believe I need to tell you that if word of this gets out, it will go badly for you.”

“Don’t worry, Doc,” said the man with a vinegary smile. “I’m not about to go bragging about talking to you.”

I followed the clerk’s directions and in ten minutes found myself in front of Mrs. Fasanti’s, a brick-fronted row house that was scarcely more impressive than Mrs. Mooney’s. I was surprised that Turk’s lodgings, even in this part of town, were not more generously appointed.

I walked up the steps and knocked on an aging wooden door, upon which the varnish had raised up and begun to peel. It swung open almost instantly to reveal a haggard woman with graying hair, thick glasses, and an expression that showed both suspicion and fear. She did not offer a greeting or ask what was my purpose in calling, but stood silently, waiting for me to speak.

“I am looking for George Turk,” I told her.

“Who are you?” the woman replied coldly.

“My name is Carroll. I am a doctor and a friend of Turk’s and I need to see him. Is he in?”

“Friend?” she said, suddenly excited. “A doctor? Come on, then. Quick. He’s up here.” She beckoned me inside, gesturing with urgency, and then turned and led me to a flight of stairs. “He’s in a mighty bad way, Doctor,” she said over her shoulder, “but George didn’t let me call no one.”

We reached the second-floor landing and, as we turned left and walked down a narrow hall, I was hit by a distinctive acrid odor. “How long has he been ill?” I asked.

“Three days,” she told me. “It’s been hell.”

The smell got stronger as we neared the end of the hall. She had placed a rolled towel on the floor in front of the door to Turk’s rooms in an attempt to keep the odor from permeating the rest of the house. As soon as the woman opened the door, the stench hit me.

As accustomed as I was to dealing with the sick and the terminally ill, at the sight of Turk lying motionless on his bed, I recoiled. In four days, he had aged decades. His eyes were vacant; his skin hung on a shrunken body. His mouth drooped open, and he seemed insensible, with breathing extremely
labored. His appearance, coupled with the overpowering odor of diarrhea, made diagnosis simple—here were the classic symptoms of cholera.

I spun on Mrs. Fasanti. “Why is this man not in a hospital?”

She shook her head quickly, looking terrified. “Do you think I wanted to keep him here … cleaning up and emptying chamber pots? He wouldn’t let me call no doctors. He told me they was gonna kill him.”

“Kill him? Who? The doctors? Whatever are you talking about?”

“I don’t
know,”
she insisted. “But he wouldn’t let me call no doctor. He wouldn’t let me tell nobody.”

“But he paid you well,” I said harshly.

“Of course,” she answered. “Do you think I was gonna do this for free? I was scared of catching it myself, but he told me as long as I got rid of everything and kept my hands clean, that I’d be all right.”

“And you believed him?”

She stared at me hard. “Well, he is a doctor hisself, isn’t he?”

At that, I heard a sound and turned to the bed. Turk was calling, “Carroll,” but in a voice so soft and grating that I could hardly recognize my own name. I went to the bed and could see he was trying to speak, but his tongue was swollen and his lips cracked and peeling from advanced dehydration. Without warning, his arm flashed out and I felt a clawlike grip on my wrist. “Carroll,” he groaned once, but as he tried to form another word, he stiffened and then fell back to the pillow. I knew at once that he was dead.

E
VERY SUSPECTED CASE OF CHOLERA
had to be reported, so after confirming the lack of pulse or breathing and covering poor Turk’s face, I had no choice but to inform the police.

Once a scourge that killed millions across the civilized world, cholera had largely been brought to heel by modern science. Although much of the public still blindly feared contagion, since Robert Koch identified the
Vibrio cholerae
bacillus in Egypt six years before, doctors had learned that the disease is transmitted only by consuming food or water contaminated with high concentrations of the bacteria. A high concentration is required since
Vibrio cholerae
is acid-sensitive and most of the organisms are destroyed in the stomach before reaching the intestines. Little are most people aware that they ingest small amounts of
Vibrio cholerae
almost every day. Transmission can be prevented through proper sanitation. Washing thoroughly with carbolic soap after handling contaminated material also eliminates any possibility of acquiring or transmitting the disease.

As such, I knew Mrs. Fasanti was no threat to others, so I instructed the woman to report Turk’s death to the nearest precinct house personally. With respect to Turk’s assertion to his landlady that someone had been out to do him in, I assured her that it was likely delirium brought on by his illness and, in any case, there was no reason to introduce the notion of foul play into the proceedings. She readily agreed, more than willing to keep the story as bald as possible.

Before I allowed Mrs. Fasanti to leave, however, I required some information. “How much did he pay you not to call the authorities?”

“I won’t give it back,” she sputtered indignantly. “Not with what I had to do these past three days.”

“If you do as I say,” I replied, “no one will ask for your money, and the police will leave you alone. Now, how much did he give you?”

Mrs. Fasanti looked to the floor. “Two hundred.”

“Two hundred dollars?” A fortune. Any lingering doubt that Turk was involved in illicit activity was dispelled. “Did he ever have visitors here? Anyone at all?”

“Almost never,” Mrs. Fasanti replied. “He didn’t want nobody to know where he lived. I’m surprised he told you.”

“‘Almost never’? Who came here?”

“There was an elderly gent who came once.”

“Elderly?” I asked. “How elderly? What did he look like?”

“He wasn’t
real
old. Had a mustache and a beard. Funny kind o’ glasses.” She gestured across her hair. “Kinda thin on top.”

It occurred to me that the description, cursory as it was, corresponded to the man with whom I had seen Turk argue at The Fatted Calf.

“Anyone else come here?”

“A couple of girls,” admitted Mrs. Fasanti.

I showed her the picture of Rebecca Lachtmann, but the woman shook her head. I tried one last question. “Tell me, Mrs. Fasanti, did Turk send word to the hospital last Friday that he was ill?” If he had not, how could the professor have known of his “gastrointestinal ailment”? Although it was likely delirium, Turk had, after all, told her that a doctor was out to kill him and, had Dr. Osler been in my place, he would certainly have asked the same question.

She thought for a moment and then nodded. “Yeah. He had me send a boy.”

“When? What time of day? Was it early?”

“Real early,” she confirmed to my relief, although I had not seriously suspected the answer would be otherwise. “He didn’t get home until after three the night before,” the woman went on, “and he was already sick. Woke me up comin’ in. Told me to send someone first thing.”

Three? Turk had dropped me at Mrs. Mooney’s no later than one. I sent Mrs. Fasanti on her way to the local precinct house and, as soon as she had gone, I pulled back the sheet and conducted a cursory postmortem examination on my former colleague. Poor Turk had been ravaged, the agony of his last days etched on his face. The immediate cause of death certainly appeared to be extreme dehydration. For the condition to become sufficiently acute to kill in such short time, cholera was the most obvious culprit.

As far as I was aware, there had been few cases of the disease in recent months, and those that had occurred were largely confined to the waterfront district, where Turk, I knew, was no stranger. Still, with cholera now a far less prevalent threat, what if Turk’s pronouncement to his landlady had
not
been delirium? It certainly no longer came as a surprise that Turk might have made enemies fierce enough to want him dead. But a doctor? It would be a simple matter to determine whether the death was as it seemed with an autopsy. Formad, pathologist or no, might be squeamish at dissecting a possible cholera case, but the Professor would leap at the opportunity. I completed my examination, scrubbed my hands in the basin with the bar of carbolic soap that Mrs. Fasanti had purchased at Turk’s direction, and then turned my attention to his possessions.

I was not sure what I was looking for—a notebook, perhaps, or other material to indicate the source of his extensive funds, or perhaps some piece of trivia that would establish a link with Rebecca Lachtmann. I had never had cause to search anyone’s rooms before, and I feared to be too obvious in my rummaging with the police on the way. I looked briefly through his desk and the large oak armoire that held an extensive and
costly wardrobe, but could discover nothing untoward. In the sitting area was a bookcase filled with the works of Greek philosophers, particularly Plato. There were also an impressive number of medical books, as well as Bancroft’s ten-volume history of the United States. Here, away from the fleshpots, Turk apparently engaged in intellectual pursuits. As with Monique, I felt a melancholy that came with intimate revelations, in this case the portrait of a talented, highly intelligent, and in many ways admirable man, done in by bitterness and greed.