The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [117]
As I stepped outside, Simpson came running up to me. “Ephraim,” she said with atypical agitation, “we’ve been looking all over the hospital for you. Dr. Osler needs you in his office immediately.”
I hurried with her down the hall and then up the stairs. When we arrived at the Professor’s office, the door was closed, an unusual occurrence in itself, and there was a uniformed policeman outside. Reflexively, I glanced down the hall before entering, expecting my Pinkerton doppelganger to be in sight, but Keuhn was not there.
As I opened the door, I saw Sergeant Borst in the center of the room, rocking forward and back on the balls of his feet, his hands clasped behind him, a thin smile stretched across his face. Seated next to the Professor’s desk, looking ashen and forlorn, was Farnshaw.
The Professor gazed up somberly as we entered the room and motioned me to close the door behind us. I could tell instantly that he was making a huge effort at self-control.
“Sergeant Borst has come to arrest Farnshaw,” he said. His voice wavered in anger.
“What? Farnshaw? For what?”
Borst was enjoying himself far too much to allow the Professor to steal the initiative. “Complicity in murder.”
“Murder?” I exclaimed. “Farnshaw? Absurd. Who is he supposed to have murdered?”
“George Turk. Death by arsenic poisoning.”
“Farnshaw kill Turk? That’s absurd.” I might have laughed had the circumstances not been so obviously dire.
“That’s what we told him,” Simpson said.
“Absurd, is it?” Borst replied, not the least bit put out. “Not nearly as absurd as a bunch of doctors trying to cover for one of their own. That is what you people do, isn’t it?”
“We people do nothing of the sort,” muttered the Professor. “It is you people who want to make an arrest without caring very much about whether the person is guilty or innocent.”
“Is that so?” exulted Borst.
“Farnshaw?” I repeated. “You can’t be serious. Farnshaw is … as … as likely a culprit as President Harrison,” I stuttered, unable to find words to question such idiocy. “You can’t possibly have any evidence.”
“That’s what I told him,” murmured Farnshaw from the chair. It was the first he had opened his mouth since I’d walked in.
“No evidence, huh?” said Borst.
“Must you keep speaking in the interrogative?” snapped the Professor.
“The interrogative?” Borst replied. “Bet you think I don’t know what that means. Well, I do. And I’ll tell you something else I know. I know that we’ve got plenty of proof—evidence. Your friend Farnshaw here was the one who messed up Rebecca Lachtmann’s abortion … although in respect to the family, we ain’t made that part public, but you all know all about it, don’t you? Then, to cover his crime, he fed the arsenic to Turk.”
“I’ve never performed an operation in my life,” bleated Farnshaw. “I’m no surgeon.”
“So the results would say,” Borst retorted.
“Wait a minute, Sergeant,” I said. “Where could you possibly have gotten the idea that Farnshaw was involved with Turk?”
“Actually, Dr. Carroll,” the policeman replied, favoring me with an especially broad grin, “we got it from you.”
“From me?” I shook my head violently. “I never …”
“It’s funny … sometimes you don’t find something that’s right under your nose until you look for it. We weren’t thinking about an accomplice until you told Mr. Lachtmann about one. Once we started to look for an accomplice, we worked backward from what we had and from there, it was pretty easy to figure out it was George Farnshaw.”
I felt the Professor’s eyes on me. Simpson’s and Farnshaw’s as well. What could I say? That I had deliberately misled Lachtmann? That I had since spoken with poor, pathetic Halsted and realized that he was innocent? Borst would never believe me. He would pursue Halsted regardless, on the chance that he might uncover enough to arrest a prominent physician.
“Whether there was an accomplice or not,” I said, doing my best to make