The Anatomy of Deception (36 page)

We were in front of the Fifth Street station house, although it took a few moments in the glare to determine that it was the same building I had visited the night I had left the Wharf Lane key for Borst. Farnshaw moved in misery toward the building. As I followed, Borst was at my shoulder.

“Enjoy the trip?”

I didn’t wish to make matters worse for poor Farnshaw, but the blatant sadism of the man finally overwhelmed me. “You are a bastard,” I growled, looking him in the eye.

Instead of taking umbrage, Borst merely smiled. “I am that, Doc. I am that. But just remember: Any time you wish to help your friend in there, all you have to do is to distract my interest. A little truth should do the trick.”

“And what if there is no truth to tell?” I retorted. “Have you thought of that? I know you think that I have the secrets of the crime at my fingertips, but what if you are wrong?”

The policeman shrugged. “Then, if you don’t know nothing else, I’ll just have to figure that I got the right guy.”

“Even if you send the wrong man to the gallows?”

“Won’t be the first time,” the sergeant said placidly. “Now, Doc. Want to come inside?”

But I wasn’t finished yet. “Jonas Lachtmann put you up to this, didn’t he? He called you to that fancy home of his to tell you that he had found the body of his daughter and that he knew that Turk had an accomplice in her murder and that you had better make an arrest quickly. I notice that Farnshaw has not been arrested for performing abortions, just for poisoning Turk. The part about Miss Lachtmann will be kept out of all this, won’t it? How did he convince you? Threats? Or did he take a more friendly approach?”

Borst never stopped smiling, but he spoke to me through clenched teeth. “Next time you say anything like that, your friend Farnshaw’s gonna have company. Nobody tells me what to do, not Jonas Lachtmann or anyone else. The reason his daughter’s being kept out of this is ‘cause of respect to a grieving family. I’d do that for anybody. Now you wanna come inside or not?”

I did, of course, so I said no more and let Borst lead me into the station. The ferocity of his denial, however, convinced me that I was correct: Jonas Lachtmann had pressed him for an arrest and so he had made one. It also meant that it would be that much more difficult to force him to admit
that he had made a mistake—assuming that I could succeed at all in mustering the evidence with which to confront him.

The tumult inside surrounding the big arrest had begun. Borst was obviously quite popular with his fellows, many coming up and clapping him on the back, congratulating him on such an impressive display of police work. More than once, I heard the word “promotion.” A few of the policemen cast curious glances at me, but most were too busy eyeing the archcriminal Farnshaw to care much about another civilian in their presence. As to Farnshaw, he was forced to stand before a high desk, while a thick-necked police sergeant with waxed hair asked him questions and laboriously recorded the answers.

Soon, a young man—even younger than Farnshaw—sidled up to me. He wore a cheap checked suit and a low derby set just over his eyebrows, and his face was hairless. Had I encountered him on the street, I’d have feared he was a pickpocket. “Hi, Doc,” he said.

“Do I know you?”

“No. But I know you. You work with Farnshaw, right?”

“I thought you said you knew me,” I replied.

“Not personally, Doc.” The young man lifted his hat a few inches off his head. “Ben Taylor. Police reporter for
The Inquirer.”

A reporter! If this was how a genuine reporter appeared, my impersonation at the Germantown Mission was indeed lacking. I had been fortunate then that Reverend Squires was such a willing and enthusiastic subject.

When I did not further the conversation, young Taylor did. “I’m told you know more than a bit about this. How’s about you give me an exclusive?”

“Whoever told you that was mistaken,” I replied, wondering if it had been Borst himself. “All I can say is there is no man on earth less likely to have committed these crimes—this crime—than George Farnshaw.”

“That’s not what I hear,” Taylor said. It occurred to
me that he was employing the same technique as I had with Reverend Squires—pretending to knowledge to entice the other party to give information.

“You hear wrong,” I said tersely.

“Well, he’s in for it, in any case,” Taylor said.

“What do you mean?”

The youngster eyed me as if I were mentally deficient. “You joking? A doc accused of poisoning another doc? The whole city’ll turn out for the hanging.” He glanced about, then said, “Unless there’s more to it. Cops talk to cops, you know. You can hear a lot in a police station. Nobody’s coming out and saying it, but there’s some mumbling about rich birds and strange goings-on down at the docks.”

“I’m sure you are mistaken,” I said. “About everything.”

I saw that Farnshaw was being marched back outside toward the wagon, despondent in a sea of happy, raucous police and hangers-on. Without excusing myself from the reporter, who deserved no such courtesy, I hustled forward. But Borst stepped between us before I could reach Farnshaw.

“End of the line, Doc. He’s official now. It’s off to Moko.”

“Moko?”

“Moyamensing Prison, Doc. That’s where we take prisoners to wait for trial.”

“Come on, Borst,” I said. “Couldn’t you let me ride with him?”

Borst considered this. “Well, it’s against the rules and we know what a bastard I am, but sure. Why not? I don’t figure you’re gonna try and slip him a pistol on the way.” He smiled. “Maybe when we get to Moko, they’ll think there’s supposed to be two for the lockup.”

“Yes. Perhaps. Thank you, Borst.”

“Don’t thank me. The more you see, the more likely you are to tell me the truth, Doc.”

The trip to Moyamensing Prison, where Tenth and Reed Streets were intersected by Passyunk Avenue, was not a long one. I noted that the jail was not far from Mary Simpson’s home
and the Croskey Street Settlement. Once again, Farnshaw and I didn’t speak during the ride. When we emerged, hunched and blinking in the sunlight, we saw before us what appeared to be a medieval fortress, more suited to repelling an attack by chain-mailed knights than housing felons. The building, in three sections of tan limestone, was set back sufficiently from the avenue to accommodate a moat. Its center section was three stories high, crowned with a huge battlement tower, and the top floor was ringed with a cornice. The two wings each featured a battle turret on the end. I was told that the wing on the right was the county jail, housing petty criminals of all stripes. The wing on the left would be Farnshaw’s temporary home, a holding facility for those awaiting trial. A twenty-foot-high stone wall extended out from either end turret, the full length of the street.

The wagon had pulled up to the door in the center wing, which was part prison, part residence for the county sheriff, and part administration area. Once more, Farnshaw was led roughly from the wagon. Inside, the Moko was grim and forbidding. A uniformed prison attendant, exuding a mixture of boredom and cruelty, asked Farnshaw a number of questions, to which he did not seem to care if he got answers. He then perfunctorily nodded to another uniformed man, obviously a jailer, to come and take the prisoner away.

That was when Farnshaw lost control. He spun around. “Carroll!” he yelled. “Don’t let them take me! I’m innocent. Oh, God!”

I ran to him, but two other prison attendants jumped in and held me back. Guards began to drag Farnshaw off. His face was wan and strangled, the most pathetic sight I have ever seen.

“I’ll help you,” I yelled to him. “I promise!” I doubted he heard the words as he was half-dragged through the door and off to be placed in a cage.

I felt perilously close to tears as I pushed my way outside, determined to keep my promise to poor Farnshaw, but still
unsure how. I was not even certain how to get back to the center of the city. Before I could decide on any course of action, however, I was intercepted by Keuhn.

“I got a message for you,” the Pinkerton man said softly. “Mr. Lachtmann says that you two are square. He thanks you for your help. He wants me to tell you that he don’t want no more of it.”

“I don’t take orders from Jonas Lachtmann,” I replied.

“You do now,” Keuhn said, and walked off.

I
T TOOK THREE STREETCARS FOR
me to make my way back to the hospital. I needed to tell the Professor what had transpired. If I thought that Keuhn had ceased to dog my footsteps, I was mistaken. When I arrived, the Pinkerton man was already inside the front door, waiting for me.

I started for the stairs to the Professor’s office, but abruptly changed my mind. Instead, I went to the women’s ward. There I found Simpson, at the bedside of an elderly patient with wispy white hair done in a single thin braid, her veins showing blue through almost translucent skin. Just from the rale of breath I heard as I neared her bed, I knew that the woman would not last out the day.

“Do you have a moment?” I asked Simpson softly.

“Now, Polly, you rest and I’ll be back soon.” Simpson nodded at me, then waited, but Polly gave no sign that she had heard.

We moved away from the dying woman’s bedside and I recounted the ghastly tale of Farnshaw’s incarceration. Simpson listened, tight-lipped. “We must try and help him,” she said resolutely.

“I agree,” I said, “but I’m not sure how to go about it.”

“I have some thoughts,” she said, “but I need information before we can proceed.”

“Anything. I appreciate any assistance you can provide. Lord knows, I don’t deserve it.”

“Perhaps not,” she said. “But Farnshaw does.” Then she
added, “But from this moment on, Ephraim, we must be honest with each other.”

I agreed gratefully, but not without embarrassment. I had never specifically lied to Simpson. But nor had I ever told her the complete truth. Perhaps that was the most insidious brand of lie of all.

“Let us begin with this notion of an accomplice,” she said. “Perhaps we can work our way backward from there and find something with which to prove Farnshaw’s innocence.”

In the doctors’ lounge, I beckoned her to the same chairs in the corner at which we had had tea. I recounted the events, omitting nothing, not my discovery of Turk’s journal, not my visit to St. Barnabas, not the previous evening’s dinner with Halsted and its shattering revelations. She listened attentively, digesting all I had to say. Only when I told her of my romance with Abigail Benedict did even the slightest tightness pass over her face, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

When I had finished, she asked, “You are certain that Dr. Osler and Dr. Halsted were involved only by coincidence? We’ve been taught by Dr. Osler himself to distrust coincidence.”

“I agree,” I said, “although, after sitting with Halsted, it seems persuasive enough in this case.”

“Our first step, then, it seems to me, is to try to make sense of Turk’s journal. The one you discovered.”

“Our
first step?”

“Together, we can make faster progress, Ephraim. You said you have the materials on cryptography from the library at your rooms? I’ll meet you there this evening, after rounds.”

“At my rooms?”

“Why not? We can sit in the parlor. I’ll keep both feet on the floor, just like in billiards.”

I felt myself smile—after this day’s events, I would not have thought it possible. “Very well. I have an errand to run first, but I will meet you at eight.”

We made to get up but Simpson placed her hand on my arm to stop me. “We agreed to be honest with each other, did we not?”

I assured her that I remembered.

“Good.” She smiled. It was the warmest I had ever seen her look, and for a moment she appeared … pretty.

After checking through most of the hospital, I finally ran down the Professor in the pathology lab. He was alone in the room, so I spilled out my tale of the abominable conditions under which Farnshaw was being held.

“We must delay our departure to Baltimore,” I urged. “We must stay here and help.”

“I’m not sure that will be possible,” the Professor replied. He was busying himself with papers on his desk, straightening and tidying. His movements seemed stiff and forced. “Gilman is expecting us and arrangements have been made. Besides, I was successful in contacting Farnshaw’s parents in Boston. They will be here tonight. They are quite well-to-do, as you know, and I am sure they will do what is necessary to secure his release. I cannot see how our remaining in Philadelphia will achieve anything but add to the chaos.”

“But, Dr. Osler, we know so much more about this than they do. Surely a few days won’t matter, especially in such a just cause? Gilman could not object to our taking some time to prove that our colleague—our friend—has been falsely accused.”

The Professor stopped tidying. He tugged at the end of his mustache in silence, then sighed. “Ephraim, what if the accusation is not false?”

“Impossible!” I exclaimed.

“You were too quick to declare Halsted guilty. Is it possible that you are now being too quick to declare Farnshaw innocent?”

“Halsted was a different case entirely,” I retorted.

“Was he, now?” the Professor said. “The two cases seem remarkably similar to me. In the first, you leapt to a conclusion
supported by little but the scandalous past and abrasive personality of one man. Now, in the second, you seem to be likewise jumping to a conclusion supported by little but the youth and pleasing personality of another.”

“Perhaps,” I conceded, “but a man is innocent until proven guilty.”

“And Borst seems to be well on his way to proving it.” The Professor shook his head. “No, Ephraim, we were betrayed by Turk and I do not intend to let it happen a second time. We will do all we can for Farnshaw while we’re here, but we leave as planned.”

I was stunned. I had never anticipated the Professor to be so embittered or so heartless. The wound that Turk had left must have been deeper than I realized. I too felt betrayed by Turk, but I had no intention of allowing Farnshaw to suffer for the sins of another—or my own.