The Anatomy of Deception (38 page)

I agreed. Inference would be vital in forming working hypotheses. We began with a page of the journal containing a number of entries. For the next hours, we tried substitutions, transpositions, the Caesar cipher, transliteral cipher, and polyalphabetic ciphers. We performed elementary frequency analysis, and tried some obvious keys for the Vigenère code. Once or twice, we seemed to be on the verge of a breakthrough, only to have our edifice crumble and collapse. At one point, Mrs. Mooney poked her head into the room to report that Samuel was asleep in her spare room.

By midnight I was deeply fatigued of the effort, despite Mrs. Mooney’s indulgence with a large pot of coffee, but Simpson seemed unruffled. Finally, however, she put down the book.

“Ephraim,” she said. “I do believe we may be wasting our time.”

“Is it unbreakable, then?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, but it certainly seems so to us. Not every puzzle can be solved.”

“But if this book holds the secret of Farnshaw’s innocence …”

“I’m as frustrated as you, Ephraim, be we cannot simply divine a solution. I’m beginning to suspect another possibility, however. Have you considered that this journal may be nothing more than an elaborate hoax?”

“A hoax? I had suspected that myself with the journal Borst unearthed, but there is no such obvious direction here. If it were not to implicate another, why would Turk go to all that trouble just to create a specious clue?”

“I’m starting to know Turk,” she said. “He might well have
done it for the very purpose of setting a couple of fools like us to frustration.

“We have been examining this book as if it were a heart or a liver. Cut it open and its secrets will be revealed. But this is not the Dead House. The character of the person is as important as the artifact. I have come to see that, despite all his pretensions to wealth, Turk did not do all of this just for the money. Turk needed to
get even
. He needed to
get away with it
, to laugh at everyone who he thought had laughed at him his whole life … motivation each of us can understand, I warrant. Perhaps Turk did not blackmail Dr. Halsted, but he would have. Gleefully. Halsted was rich, from a good family. He went to Yale. Turk would have done anything to bring him down, to prove that he was the smarter man, that it was only accident of birth that had prevented him from attaining similar heights. All of those silly precautions—hiding where he lived, that room on Wharf Lane—everything had to be so
complicated
. Leaving a key in a
book
. How silly. The best place to hide a key was with his other keys.

“Don’t you see, Ephraim? There were no real practical advantages to his intrigues … he left plenty of hints that anyone interested could follow … he wanted things complicated because he had decided complicated meant clever. I can just see him, hunched over his desk at night, chortling to himself as he created his fakes. ‘Let them try and figure
this
out,’ he would have thought. He was
so
desperate to show everyone how smart he was. Well, he wasn’t smarter than you and he definitely wasn’t smarter than whoever killed him.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “I believe you’re correct about the man. But to sit down and pen a meaningless journal and then hide it? That surely is too much trouble to go to.”

“Approach the question from the other end. Ask yourself, why would he keep a journal? He would have known it could sink him. For money? How was a journal possibly going to make him money? Anyone Turk was blackmailing was not
going to be more likely to pay just because Turk had written his name in cipher in a book.”

“Why hide it, then?”

“Maybe he had plans to use it as a red herring in one of his schemes. Who knows? Maybe he simply did it for fun, telling himself that one day he would use it to have the inferior minds with whom he matched wits—like us—chase their own tails.”

“But what about the journal in his rooms? The one Borst uncovered?”

“That was different. That one had an obvious purpose. You were correct. If he ever needed to bargain with the police or anyone else, he could point to the journal and use it as proof that it was not he who had done the deed. Then he could trade the identity of ‘GF’ for a better deal.”

“So it is your contention that both books were fraudulent.”

“Everything about Turk was fraudulent. He told you so himself. Didn’t he say that he was a creation only of himself? You could not have known at the time just how true that was.”

I should have known precisely, of course, being of similar creation myself, but I had missed the significance. “But how does this help Farnshaw?”

“It helps a great deal,” she replied. “Don’t you remember what Dr. Osler said to Turk, after we autopsied the carpenter who had died of hypertrophy? ‘We have chronicled a case that does not correspond to accepted data. It is an enigma therefore open to the first who deciphers it.’ The journals are just such an enigma.

“Think for a moment about Borst’s case against Farnshaw. It rests on the assumption that the journal with ‘GF’ is genuine. But the existence of this second journal casts doubt on the legitimacy of the first. If it is authentic and eventually deciphered, it will likely contain the names of Turk’s true associates and prove Farnshaw’s innocence. In the more likely case that it is not deciphered, it will be dismissed as a hoax. If that
comes to pass, it becomes difficult to assert that the ‘GF’ journal is not a hoax as well.”

“We must get it into the right hands, then,” I said. “I don’t trust giving it to Borst.”

“No. If Borst is under Lachtmann’s sway, I am confident the journal would vanish before anyone could be made aware of its existence. What about Dr. Osler?”

“Of course,” I agreed but, although I felt a sharp pang of guilt, I was not sure.

Simpson noted my ambivalence. “Yes,” she agreed, “that is the conundrum. We cannot underestimate how well it suits everyone to have Farnshaw accused of this crime. No one will want him to
be
innocent, let alone be
proved
innocent. If Farnshaw is guilty, Lachtmann will have his revenge, the Pinkertons will have a success, the newspapers will have a juicy scandal, and the policeman who arrested him will have a triumph. Even Dr. Osler benefits—he can continue his career with neither scandal nor professional acrimony dogging his footsteps. I think it is important that we understand that in pursuing this matter, we do so against the interests of everyone involved, even those we admire and respect.”

“Does it not disturb you to include Dr. Osler?”

“Of course. You are disturbed as well. But it is his own doing, really. It was he who trained us to be scientists, to follow the evidence wherever it might lead, no matter the consequence. I fully expect that he will be found to have no part in this, but we must account for every hypothesis. We cannot allow Farnshaw to hang for crimes in which he had no part. I think we must hold on to the journal and wait for the proper moment.”

I agreed, and she stood and emitted a deep sigh. “That’s all we can do for tonight.”

“Thanks to you, we have made some significant progress.”

“I’m sorry for the circumstances,” she told me, “but it has been a pleasure working with you.”

“Yes,” I agreed, getting out of my chair. “I have enjoyed working with you as well.”

“I suppose I had better be going,” she said.

“You must stay here,” I replied. “It’s too late for you to be out alone with Samuel. It will be difficult to locate a hansom at this hour. Please stay in the spare room with your son. Mrs. Mooney will be delighted.”

Simpson smiled. “All right. Thank you, Ephraim.”

As I expected, Mrs. Mooney, who had waited up, was eager for a guest. As she went upstairs to prepare the room, Mary and I were left alone in the parlor. We turned and faced each other. For a few seconds, neither of us moved. Then the moment passed.

“Good night, Mary,” I said. “And thank you.”

“Good night, Ephraim.” She remained for another second, and then followed Mrs. Mooney upstairs.

I awoke at six the next morning, but when I came downstairs for breakfast, I learned that Mary and Samuel had already gone.

A
S SOON AS I ENTERED
the main wing of Moyamensing Prison three hours later, I spied an unsmiling, well-dressed couple in their forties sitting on a bench. The man appeared determined, the woman distressed. The resemblance was unmistakable.

“Are you George’s parents?” I asked them. “I’m Ephraim Carroll. I work with George at the hospital.”

The man was of my height, with glasses and a gray-flecked beard, dressed in a dark blue suit and top hat. “Dr. Carroll, I’m Mortimer Farnshaw. George has told us about you. We are greatly in your debt for your kindness to our son. May I present my wife, Thelma?” Despite the environment, he spoke with the absolute propriety that good breeding instills. We might have been meeting at a charity banquet.

I nodded to Mrs. Farnshaw, an attractive woman with rust-colored hair who seemed to be trying to blot out both where she was and the circumstances under which she’d been brought here.

“Have you seen George?” I asked, directing my question to Mr. Farnshaw.

He nodded. “It was extremely disturbing.”

A ferretlike man appeared at the elder Farnshaw’s side and excused himself for the interruption. He whispered something in Farnshaw’s ear, which elicited a quick nod in reply.

“Dr. Carroll,” said Farnshaw, “may I present Mr. Franklin.
Mr. Franklin is the attorney I have engaged to put this atrocious episode right.”

The lawyer shook my hand. “Benjamin Franklin,” he said, “at your service.” He waited for the name to register, a regular party trick, it seemed, and then said, “No relation, but it certainly doesn’t hurt in this city to evoke my namesake.”

“Mr. Franklin was recommended by an associate. He assures me that he will have George out of here in a matter of days,” Farnshaw informed me.

“Without question,” the lawyer agreed. “Just a matter of approaching the right people in the right way.” Then he actually winked.

“Excellent,” I replied. Franklin’s casual optimism confirmed my first impression. No matter who he was named for, he must have been aware that it would not be at all simple to free Farnshaw. The Farnshaws’ money might talk in Boston, but it was the Lachtmann money that spoke here, and Jonas Lachtmann was every bit as anxious to keep Farnshaw behind bars in Moko as Mortimer Farnshaw was to get him out.

If I had been favorably impressed with Franklin, he would have been the perfect repository for the journal. Who better than a well-connected lawyer to make the right use of it? As it was, however, Franklin struck me as unctuous and potentially unreliable, so I decided to keep the matter to myself for the present.

While Franklin excused himself to “see about some things,” I spoke with Mr. Farnshaw, telling him what a fine physician his son was and how, when this was over, George would claim a place at the very top of his profession. Mr. Farnshaw listened gratefully but, no fool, understood full well his son’s limitations.

When decency had been satisfied, I asked, “Might I see George now, do you think?”

“He would like that a great deal,” his father replied. “I think one makes arrangements at the desk.”

It was, I was surprised to learn, remarkably easy to visit a prisoner who had not yet been brought up for trial. One could visit in a cell or have the prisoner brought to a common area. I chose the latter, assuming that the more time Farnshaw spent outside his cell, the happier he would be. Within ten minutes after making my request at the desk and following directions to the common area, Farnshaw was brought out.

I was appalled. My young colleague seemed to have aged ten years in one night. He smiled dispiritedly when he saw me. “Hello, Carroll. Nice of you to come by.”

“It’s my pleasure,” I replied, trying to exude confidence. “I spoke to your father. He has retained a fine lawyer and you will soon be out of here.”

Farnshaw nodded slowly. “Yes. A couple of fellows inside said that Franklin was just the man to have if one didn’t care about niceties of the law.” His eyes darted this way and that to see if we were being overheard. “Carroll,” he said, terror in his voice, “I didn’t tell my parents, they’re so worried already, but you’ve got to see that I get out of here right away. I’ve already had my watch taken and they said they were going to kill me.”

“Who said they would kill you, Farnshaw?”

“Everyone. The guards said the prisoners will kill me and the prisoners said the guards will kill me.”

“They’re just trying to frighten you, that’s all,” I said soothingly. Borst knew the man was probably innocent, and I hoped he was decent enough to have given instructions that his well-being be assured. Then, too, his promotion would not come to much if the innocent scion of a prominent Boston family was murdered as a result of his erroneous arrest. “You’re not one of them and they’re making sport of you,” I went on. “No one would dare harm someone whose family could raise a public howl.”

“Do you really think so?” Hope flared briefly in Farnshaw’s eyes.

“Of course. In a day or two, you will be out and you and I will go to celebrate. I know just the place where we can each get a first-rate porterhouse.”

“That would be nice. But they did not seem to be speaking in jest. Someone really is going to murder me.”

“Farnshaw,” I said sharply, “you must keep up your spirits. You will be free in a matter of days. Your father will move heaven and earth for you; Franklin, as you said, is adept at this sort of thing, and I am not without resources as well. I know Turk’s haunts. I will not rest until I have found evidence to prove you innocent.”

“Thank you, Carroll,” he replied, his eyes still darting about as if the room itself could be his executioner. “That’s very decent of you.”

“Not a bit of it,” I replied. “It is a pleasure to be able to help.”

Some are more fit to tolerate such circumstances than others and, while I could not be certain how I would fare, it was hard to imagine someone less equipped to cope than Farnshaw. It really was imperative to free him, if not for his physical well-being, then for his sanity.