The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [115]
“Yes,” I was forced to admit, “that is what I thought.”
“In your version, was I complicit in these crimes? Or simply aware of them and covering up?”
“The latter,” I confessed weakly.
“Very well,” the Professor said. “Not an unreasonable conclusion, as I said. But how did you account for a surgeon of Dr. Halsted’s talents perforating the bowel during a routine procedure, even granting that the environment was challenging?”
“I assumed that the drug had rendered his hand unsteady.”
“I’m afraid that won’t do at all, Dr. Carroll,” said Halsted. “I’ve performed hundreds, if not thousands, of operations under the influence of drugs and have never … not once … botched any of them.”
“That is what I wanted to tell you, once again trusting in your confidence,” interjected the Professor. “Dr. Halsted is too valuable to society—too many lives are at stake—for us to take a risk on his incapacitation. Dr. Halsted’s efforts to shake free of drug addiction have been Herculean and, one day, might well have resulted in a freedom from dependence. For the time being, however, Welch and I have convinced Dr. Halsted that, rather than continue to compromise both his health and his abilities, he should instead maintain himself on morphia. He can do so at minimal levels, which will allow him to continue to work.”
“Is it possible to attain such an equilibrium?” I asked, skeptical.
“Most definitely,” avowed Halsted. “Once I had freed myself from a need to eliminate morphia entirely, I found that I could control the cravings with judicious administration. Would that I had done so before I encountered Turk.”
I had a final question. “Dr. Osler, why did you refuse to autopsy Rebecca Lachtmann if you had no idea who she was or how she died?”
The Professor’s expression grew serious, almost sad. “In that, Ephraim, Turk was correct. While in Montréal, I fell in love with a young woman named Elise Légér. She was a remarkable beauty, but her father was a clergyman who disapproved of my profession, or at least the manner in which I conducted it. He refused to give his consent to my proposal of marriage. Elise and I were heartbroken. We even discussed elopement. In the end, however, she simply could not disobey her father and we never saw each other again. But she is in my thoughts often.”
The Professor’s eyes drifted away, into his youth. “When I swung open the cover of the ice chest, the resemblance was remarkable. It was as if I were staring at Elise. I knew after a few seconds that it could not have been, of course. I had not seen her in over fifteen years, and she would by now be thirty-five, far older than the woman we saw. But it was quite a shock all the same. It is not every day that one sees a ghost of one’s past, eh?
“It seems,” he went on, “that this was another occasion where you took a set of symptoms and extrapolated into a reasonable diagnosis that turned out to be incorrect. Turk reacted because he knew it was Rebecca Lachtmann, and it must have given him quite a fright to believe that I was reacting for the same reason. So, knowing that I often confided in you, he asked you to join him for the evening, gave you too much to drink, and then, I am sure, tried to persuade you to divulge anything that I might have said that would have put him at risk.”
“Yes, he did try to get me to talk about you,” I admitted. “This all seems plausible, certainly, but then who poisoned him?”
“We may never know. I am sure Turk had any number of enemies.”
“Despite what you seem to think, Doctor,” interjected Halsted, “it does not take a scientist or a physician to administer arsenic in an appropriate quantity to replicate cholera. Poisoning has been a time-honored means of murder for centuries, and there are countless cases in which poison was confused for some other malady. In its storied history, arsenic was