The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [105]
“Did his sister know?”
Lucy shook her head. “No, sir. Only the three of us—Miss Rebecca, Mr. Albert, and me. She couldn’t have anyone else know. She was so ashamed.”
Lachtmann took a moment, digesting the information. “All right, Lucy. You can go now.”
After the girl was gone, Lachtmann looked to Eakins, then to me, then back to Eakins. “It seems as though I may have misjudged you … may have. In any case, may I suggest that after you leave here, I never have occasion to set eyes on you again.”
Eakins said nothing, but was doubtless thrilled to consent.
“As for you, Doctor,” Lachtmann said, “our business is not yet done. Your offer to help me find the butcher who killed my daughter still stands. Whoever this mysterious accomplice is, I expect you to help me find him in every way you can.”
“I said I would,” I replied.
“If you don’t,” Lachtmann went on, still speaking as matter-of-factly as if we were at luncheon, “I will have an additional chore for Keuhn. You understand my meaning, do you not?”
I had told my tale and now, it seemed, I would be forced to make it true.
“One more thing,” Lachtmann said. “Nothing you have heard here leaves this room.”
With that, Eakins and I were dismissed. Keuhn led us to the door, leering in the way bullies have in the presence of an intimidated foe. As he opened the door to let us out, he said, “Be seeing you again, Doc, I’m sure.”
Eakins waited until we had reached the end of the street before he breathed. “Thank God.” Then he exclaimed, “Albert Benedict! The worm!” He mused for a moment. “If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t give two bits for his life, but a Benedict …”
“I wouldn’t give two bits for his life in any case,” I said.
“Perhaps,” Eakins agreed. “If there is any justice.”
“Someone must tell Abigail,” I said. “She must be forewarned.”
“It’s three A.M., Carroll. I don’t think it would be wise to go pounding on her door now.”
“I’ll go in the morning,” I said.
“Better wait until the old man has left for the bank.”
After I agreed, Eakins asked, “All that palaver about an accomplice. Another bluff or was it true?”
“I’m not positive,” I replied, “but, yes, I think it’s true.”
I was, in fact, reasonably certain that Turk would never have risked performing Rebecca Lachtmann’s abortion personally. While abortion, as I had said to Lachtmann, was uncomplicated—essentially a progressive dilation of the cervix with a series of sounds, each one bigger than the last until the opening of the cervix is a centimeter or slightly larger, allowing for the insertion of a curette to scrape out the lining of the uterus—there was some delicacy required and accidents were common. Still, the perforation I had seen in Rebecca Lachtmann could only have been produced by a novice or an incompetent—or by an extremely skilled surgeon working while under the influence of diacetylmorphine. Perhaps that was the “deal gone bad” to which Haggens had referred when I asked him about the argument in The Fatted Calf.
“And do you really know who it is?”
“Perhaps.”
“Can you tell me?”
“No,” I said.
“Just as well,” Eakins said. He turned up the street without saying good-bye. His animal intensity was gone, replaced by the slouch of a prematurely old man. He had survived all manner of attacks on his work and his person, but I was not sure he would survive this. He turned the corner and disappeared. I would never see him again.
December 22, 1888
SHE WAS BETTER NOW. SHE still shivered, but the blanket and the fire had finally warmed her. When she had first stumbled into her bedroom, she had been so terribly cold and weak, and the raw ache would not cease. She had tried to undo her dress, but her hands trembled so. It was only then that she realized she was bleeding. She knew not to cry out, but she must have whimpered, because suddenly her maid was there.
Lucy had taken off her torn dress and soiled undergarments and fetched one of her own dressing gowns, so that there would be no evidence