The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [31]
The morgue was windowless so, as soon as I shut the door, I could move about with impunity. I walked to the receptacle that held the young girl and swung open the lid.
It was empty. I checked the other four chests that held yesterday’s subjects. Two were empty as well. Two held cadavers that had obviously been brought in since.
I was puzzled. Generally, three or four days at least were required to make arrangements with the city authorities for public burial, and Charlie had assured the Professor that each of the cadavers had arrived just the day before. Why had these cadavers been removed so rapidly? Charlie could have been mistaken, of course. Still, he had never made such an error in the past.
I remembered that Dr. Osler had remained behind when the rest of us had left the autopsy session to return to the hospital. Could the Professor have been responsible for the disappearance of the bodies? Unlikely, I decided. He was hardly intimate enough with Charlie to join with him in a conspiracy. The mystery of the young girl in the ice chest, it seemed, would remain, at least for the moment, just that.
Disappointed that I had risked this nocturnal visit for naught, I blew out the candle, replaced the matches, and was on my way, my departure not nearly so eerie as my arrival. I crossed back to University Hospital to discharge my second errand.
As I reached the third floor, I hoped that this visit would be for naught as well, that Annie, the sad girl with the pulmonary infection, would be asleep, since rest came so sporadically to her because of the inability to take in sufficient oxygen. But if she was not, I intended to sit with her at her bedside.
As I got to the door of the children’s ward, I heard the sound of low conversation inside, odd at such an hour. I pushed open the door only a crack and peeked in. There was the Professor, sitting at Annie’s bedside, reading to her.
March 7, 1889
SOMETIMES IN LIFE, SHE REALIZED, no choice is a good one. Still, it was surely better to take action, to make your own decision, than to have your life ruled by others. Now that she had elected a course of action, as distasteful and fraught with danger as it was, she felt stronger.
She had astonished herself just to get this far. Who would have imagined that she, who never so much as purchased her own eggs and bacon for breakfast, had planned and executed an elaborate conspiracy, and then arranged through an intermediary to meet a complete stranger in a waterfront saloon? Her heart had been in her throat since she slipped into the carriage that she had hired surreptitiously earlier in the day. What if she was observed? No matter, though. This had to be done.
Within seconds of meeting him, she knew he could not be trusted but, again, she had no alternative. She had planned to offer only half the agreed amount until the job was finished, but he had insisted on the entire sum in advance. She prayed it was sufficient to ensure, if not his loyalty, at least his competence. And his silence.
CHAPTER 6
BOTH THE PROFESSOR AND I left the hospital at four the following day in order to prepare for our dinner engagement at the Benedict home. On rounds, Simpson and I, in unspoken agreement, had conducted ourselves as before, neither of us acknowledging that we had met away from the hospital. We had, however, passed a look between us when Turk for a second day failed to appear for rounds.
At six-thirty, Dr. Osler’s carriage came for me at Mrs. Mooney’s. The Professor’s consulting practice, which he ran out of a small office on South Fifteenth Street, had begun to thrive, and with the supplement to his university salary, he had been