Doctor Death Read online

  “You probably know better than I,” rebuked the Commissioner. “Varbourg is not Paris, of course, but even here there must be researchers and certain institutes of higher learning that have a hard time procuring sufficient . . . materials.”

  “Marot has read too many lurid scandal sheets,” said my father. “As far as I know, there are no doctors in Varbourg who pay people to dig up corpses.”

  “But there must still be those who would pay for a cadaver for dissection purposes?”

  My father’s lips tightened, but he admitted the point. “Yes. About ten francs. Not a princely sum, but . . .”

  “But seven or eight times more than a factory worker makes in a week. So if someone found an ownerless corpse, then . . .” The Commissioner said no more.

  My father sighed. “I’ll ask around.”

  And when the Commissioner had gone, he asked me to go see Doctor Lanier.

  Saint Bernardine’s gray façade had been undergoing repairs in the fall, and the luxurious ivy that had covered it had been cut down. I was still not used to this new stark exterior. It looked peculiarly bald, like a novitiate who had had his hair shorn but had not yet received his habit. A soft vernal rain moistened the gray walls and condensed itself into fat, tear-shaped drops on the windowpanes.

  The concierge recognized me at once.

  “Well, if it isn’t Mademoiselle Karno,” she said and lit up. She was a cheerful, stocky woman who was always referred to as Madame Bonjour, a nickname she had received as a result of the unusual almost twittering way she pronounced this word. “Is your father feeling better?”

  “Yes, thank goodness. Is Doctor Lanier in the hospital?”

  “Yes, he is scheduled to operate at one o’clock. The operation is drawing quite a crowd, in fact—he will be employing a brand-new surgical technique.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “Where?” I exclaimed. If only I could observe . . .

  Madame Bonjour smiled. My eagerness was apparently obvious.

  “Theater A. If you stand in the upper gallery, most likely no one will notice you.” She gave me a conspiratorial wink. It was not the first time she had helped me sneak into this masculine domain, albeit usually to observe one of my father’s operations.

  Theater A was in the old main building’s center wing, and it really was reminiscent of a theater—double balconies along three of the room’s walls, the so-called galleries, allowed up to a hundred onlookers to observe what was happening in the operating theater. As Madame Bonjour had suggested, I made my way discreetly to the uppermost gallery, which was often empty because it was more difficult to observe the details of the operations from up here. But today I was not alone. A small group of medical students had been exiled because of the crowds below. They chatted while they waited for the operation to begin, nonchalantly leaning against the railing. When they saw me, however, all conversation ceased. Then two of them began to giggle, as if someone had said something funny.

  “Madame . . . eh, mademoiselle . . . you must be in the wrong place,” said one of the others, a tall, bespectacled young man who seemed a bit more mature than the rest. “What were you looking for?”

  “Theater A,” I said shortly, leaning against the railing at the opposite end of the gallery.

  “But . . .”

  “Thank you for your kindness, but I am precisely where I wish to be.”

  There was a small, astonished pause.

  “I was only trying to be of assistance,” he finally said, and the whispering voices of his colleagues sounded like the low hissing of a cave of snakes in the darkened room. I focused my gaze on the operating theater—this was why I was here, and the sibilant clique of students was merely an irritating interruption.

  The patient was a boy of twelve or thirteen, and the focus of the operation was his left knee. Even from my elevated perch I could see that it was swollen and discolored, but naturally I was not in a position to determine why. Luckily Doctor Lanier was aware of his audience and began to explain, with a certain dramatic pathos.

  “Tumore albus, gentlemen,” he announced. “A source of intolerable pain for the sufferer. I have heard it described as having glowing hot nails pounded through the joint. The patient cannot walk, and even sitting down, the torment is difficult to endure.”

  The boy was not yet anesthetized. He was following Lanier’s presentation with intense, almost hypnotic attention, and even from a distance the fear in his eyes was unmistakable. I hoped they would soon produce the ether mask.

  “The condition is caused by osteoarticular tuberculosis, and it is irreversible. We can’t return the joint’s original health and painless mobility. But we can, gentlemen, ease the pain and restore the patient’s ability to walk with this new technique, pioneered by my honorable colleague Eduard Albert in Vienna. By fixing the joint with these surgical screws and transplanting tissue from the healthy part of the tibia, we can provoke a fusion of the femur and tibia that will leave the patient with a painless and usable extremity, though the leg will naturally be stiff.” He placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder, but in spite of the gesture he was in fact still speaking to the hall. “In a month, my boy, you will be able to walk again!”

  The boy looked like a paralyzed animal. Only his eyes moved. He was clearly trying to control himself, but although he did not make a sound, tears were trickling down the sides of his face, staining the thin white pillow under his head.

  “The procedure is called arthrodesis, and this is only the third time it has been attempted in France,” announced Lanier. “As my honored colleagues can probably imagine, an antiseptic regimen is critical for a successful result. Everything must be sterile. All linens and all instruments have been boiled, but since we can’t boil the patient”—he paused dramatically so that the audience could politely offer a muted laugh—“we must use Lister’s protocol and spray with carbolic acid, just as I am now washing my hands in a carbolic acid solution. Bacteria are the enemy, gentlemen, and they are everywhere in the air around us. Caution is critical! A good surgeon must be able to see them with the inner vision of his intelligence, just as we see flies and other polluting insects with our actual eyes. Do not for a moment let down your guard, it can cost your patient his life!”

  This was more than the boy could take. He looked around wildly as if he expected “polluting insects” to attack him, and a thin high-pitched sobbing escaped him. It seemed as if Lanier only now sensed the child’s fear. He placed his gloved, carbolic-moistened hand on his shoulder and said something so quietly that I couldn’t hear the words. The boy stopped whimpering. It was hard to tell if he was really calmer, but now they finally brought the ether pump, and a few minutes later the anesthetic took its effect.

  I let go of the breath I unknowingly had been holding. Ether was undoubtedly one of science’s greatest gifts to the surgical patient. But it was a blessing for the surgeon and his assistants, too, who no longer needed to immobilize a screaming, half-crazed human being while they operated.

  The operation began. I leaned out as far as I dared over the balcony railing, but what I could see was limited. Mostly I had to be content with Lanier’s running commentary, which I carefully noted in my little notebook.

  Just as Lanier was transplanting the healthy tissue, I heard a noisy throat clearing behind me. It was one of the students who for reasons best known to himself had elected to leave the pack and join me instead.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “but are you Mademoiselle Karno?”

  “Yes,” I said, without taking my eyes off the procedure.

  “I thought so,” he said.

  He remained at my side even though I ignored him. It was extremely irritating, but there was nothing I could do about it short of leaving myself. Not until the patient was carried away and the quiet hissing of the carbolic pump had ceased did I leave him and the rest of the students to hurry down the narrow staircase and across the room to Doctor Lanier. He was in the middle of an indignant discussion with a white-h
aired gentleman who had kept his gray overcoat on in spite of the humid heat in the room.

  “Bacteria exist,” insisted Lanier. “They can be observed and described by anyone who has a microscope!”

  “My good man, please do not speak to me as though I were dim-witted! Of course they exist; I don’t doubt that. I am just asking how you deduce that it is the bacteria, rather than the air’s miasma, that cause infections? Where is the proof that will overturn the classic science of medicine and throw Hippocrates from his throne? It is lacking, sir. Lacking!”

  Lanier saw me and lit up in a way that was unlikely to have anything to do with me specifically.

  “Excuse me,” he said firmly. “I have an appointment with this young lady. We must resume the discussion another time. Perhaps if you could in the meantime study Pasteur’s simple experiments with the swan-neck flask . . .”

  He didn’t introduce me to the man in the gray coat but grabbed my elbow and led me quickly from the operating theater.

  “Save me, dear Madeleine, from fossils and their ossified worldview. Miasma! Ffffh. This is a bright new era, doesn’t he see that?” The question was apparently rhetorical, and he continued without leaving room for an answer. “How can I help you? How is your father?”

  “Much better,” I said. “The Mathijsen bandages have made a huge difference.”

  “Good, I expected they would. And get him off the laudanum as quickly as possible. I wish I could offer him an anodyne that was less addictive.”

  “He is aware of the dangers. That is not why he sent me.”

  “I see. So how can I help you?”

  I told him about the corpse that had disappeared and Inspector Marot’s theory. “Mademoiselle!” he said. “Saint Bernardine is not in the business of stealing corpses!”

  “Of course not,” I said soothingly. “But who knows if the hospital’s . . . purveyors . . . have fewer scruples? Would you please ask around? My father and the Commissioner are not interested in how the corpse has come into the hospital’s possession . . .”

  “It is not—”

  “But if it were to be found here, they would naturally wish to see the good Father Abigore’s remains returned. Here, I have copies of my father’s detailed description. Would you be so kind as to circulate it among the hospital’s personnel? Especially among the students, perhaps? Say that we are offering a reward that will fully cover the cost of obtaining another corpse.”

  Lanier looked at me with something that seemed close to loathing.

  “I have the greatest respect for your father, Madeleine, and I understand that it can be difficult to raise a daughter without the help of a wife. But this . . . the way he uses you. It is unseemly.”

  The force of his words was so violent that I blinked. I simply did not understand the depth of his outrage. Had he not just stood there talking of a new era? But certain ossified worldviews were apparently still unshakable.

  “Everything I do for my father I do freely,” I said, with the hollow sensation of speaking to deaf ears. “I am just happy I can be of assistance.”

  Lanier sighed. “That is precisely what is wrong,” he said. “He abuses your praiseworthy loyalty, but you can’t tell me that it does not offend your female nature when he forces you to be a witness to all . . . this.” He took the description of the corpse and shook it in the air between us as if it were a papal ban.

  “In no way,” I said, but it was pointless. I wondered what he would have said if I had shown him the detailed notes I had taken during the operation that I had been “forced” to observe. “Will you make inquiries about the missing corpse?”

  He was about to angrily refuse. I could see it. But at that moment inspiration struck and I knew how to convince him. I blinked rapidly a few times to stimulate the tear ducts. Then I placed a pleading hand on his arm.

  “Doctor Lanier, I do hope that you can help us. The poor man was a priest, a pious man of faith. If we don’t get him back, his poor soulless body will never rest in consecrated ground. The thought torments me, can’t you see that?”

  He stared at me. “Oh . . . ,” he said. “Yes. That . . . I am sorry, that was insensitive of me. I shall do what I can, of course.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” I said, and gave his arm a hopeful squeeze. “That would make me feel so much better.”

  When I got home, the house was in an uproar. Madame Vogler was racing around with a broom and a dustpan all the while shouting contradictory orders to Elise.

  “And make sure to buy plenty of petits fours. And get out the nice sherry glasses; they must be washed and polished. And flowers. We must have flowers. See if you can get some white lilies. No, wait. Cherry branches! Cherry branches in the Japanese style, that will be perfect for this time of year . . .”

  She stopped when she saw me. Her cheeks were flushed, and her pale blond hair was frizzy with humidity and in the process of escaping the tidy chignon she normally arranged it in.

  “My goodness,” I said. “What has happened?”

  “A professor is coming!” said Madame Vogler. “All the way from Heidelberg!” And then she hurried on, in a cloud of soap vapors and perspiration. Elise headed out the door without as much as saying hello or goodbye and raced down the street while I stood alone in our narrow hall and felt my own pulse rise. Heidelberg. It could only be Professor Dreyfuss, who apparently had decided to seek me out—or at least my father, just as he had said he would. There must be news about the mite!

  Professor Dreyfuss arrived half an hour later. We could hear him a mile off, partly because of the engine noise from the automobile in which he traveled, but also because of the uproar and shouting from the children on the street. Such a thing had never been seen in our neighborhood—as far as I knew there were only two in all of Varbourg.

  The professor parked in front of our door and stepped out. I had time, just, to draw back from the window when he looked up, so I don’t think I was seen staring in the same openmouthed wonder as the rest of Carmelite Street. Elise ran down to let him in, in a freshly ironed apron and with her hair braided so tightly that her eyes were practically turned to slits.

  He looked only a little less eccentric today, in a long khaki-colored duster and knickerbockers, along with a leather helmet with goggles, which he handed to a somewhat bewildered Elise, who was not quite sure how one handled such things.

  “Mademoiselle Karno,” he said, and kissed my hand just like last time.

  “Professor,” I said. “You have driven all the way from Heidelberg in that?”

  “Not all the way,” he said. “From the family’s country house near Heeringen. A little more than eighty kilometers.” He looked proud.

  “Perhaps you should drive the car into the neighbor’s courtyard? A machine like that is a great temptation for the street’s children.”

  “I paid off two of the most scary-looking,” he said. “I gave them permission to sit in the car and promised them a drive later if they made sure that no one else touched it.”

  That sounded to me like a direct invitation to bloodshed, but the chosen were no doubt ready to fight to the last breath for the privilege he had set before them, so presumably his divide-and-conquer tactic meant that the automobile would make it through the battle unscathed. In any case, there was nothing more I could say without being impolite.

  My father was still forced to spend most of his time in the salon, but in honor of the professor’s visit he had insisted on being helped onto the chaise longue so he did not look like a “damned invalid.”

  Professor Dreyfuss greeted him with an eagerness and a respect that warmed my filial heart.

  “I have read your article about the connection between cotton dust and weaver’s cough,” he said, and shook my father’s hand enthusiastically with both of his. “Pathbreaking!”

  My father smiled. “I am glad you think so. It was not popular reading among Varbourg’s elite.”

  “No, I can well imagine. But science can’t be the
servant of popularity.”

  “You and I have no disagreement there,” said my father. And then he could not wait any longer. “I understand you arrived in an automobile?”

  “Yes, Daimler’s latest invention.”

  “Which motor?”

  “Phoenix 4-cylinder. The same type that won Paris–Rouen.”

  And then they lost themselves in carburetor-injections, fan belts, and drive shafts with a mutual enthusiasm that ended with my father allowing himself to be carried down two flights of stairs, with the help of the professor and one of his tame street urchins, to take a test drive in the wonder. The sherry and Madame Vogler’s dearly bought petits fours remained untouched. And we had not yet even broached the mite question.

  “They will be back soon,” I said, not quite sure whether it was Madame Vogler or myself I wanted to reassure.

  They were gone for about a quarter of an hour. And when I saw the color and the excitement on my father’s face, I forgave the delay.

  “Fabulous machine,” he breathed. “Absolutely fabulous! Believe me, Madeleine, in just a few years the suffering of the carriage horse will be over!”

  I thought of the accident he himself had experienced. That would never have happened if the hearse had been an automobile.

  “Then perhaps it will be safer to walk the streets,” I said.

  “No doubt. We will be released from the whims of brute beasts. Traffic will be regulated by technology’s dependability and man’s ability to reason!”

  Elise served the sherry without knocking anything over, and the glasses shook only a tiny bit on the tray. And then we finally got to the mites.

  The professor placed the slide on the tea table with great care.

  “The past few days have been interesting,” he said. “And I had better begin by saying that unfortunately I do not have a definite identification. This specimen is not identical in every respect to any that we have in our collection at the institute, even though there is one mite type to which it must be closely related.”

  “And which is that?” asked my father.