Read The Doctor Digs a Grave Online

Authors: Robin Hathaway

The Doctor Digs a Grave (19 page)

He paused in midstride.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8
I
t was 4:00 P.M. The last patient had left the office. Mrs. Doyle had also vanished, a new paperback romance tucked under her arm. She was looking forward to an enjoyable evening in the company of Amanda Grey, the beautiful young heiress, and Henry Davenport, the penniless lord who was ruthlessly pursuing Amanda for her money while feigning undying love. Fenimore was surprised at Mrs. Doyle's apparent lack of interest in the Sweet Grass case. It was very unusual. By now, she should have come forward with at least half a dozen useful suggestions. He hoped she wasn't still miffed over his having increased his office staff.
Horatio was still there, affixing stamps to the weekly bills. He had just received his first paycheck from Mrs. Doyle, but he seemed in no hurry to spend it.
Fenimore said, “When you're done, Rat, come with me. I want to show you something.”
He looked up warily, remembering the last time he had accompanied his employer. Unpleasant visions of mice, monkeys,
and security guards flashed through his head. But he finished the bills quickly and followed Fenimore to the door.
“Where are we going?” he asked after they had gone several blocks.
“You'll see.”
Fenimore turned left at Eighteenth Street. Midblock he passed through a pair of wrought-iron gates and led Horatio up the marble steps of an imposing brick building.
The boy halted on the threshold. “This some kind of palace?”
Fenimore saw the scene through his eyes—the acre of parquet floor, the towering classic columns, and the row of “distinguished” personages in gold frames staring down at them. A hush prevailed.
Fenimore shook his head. “But I see what you mean. These fellas,” he waved at the portraits, “take themselves pretty seriously.”
“Who are they?”
“Doctors. But their accomplishments lay more in the realm of politics than science, I'm afraid. Come on.” He hurried him along. “They aren't the reason I brought you here.”
The boy followed him, past the vacant front desk (the receptionist must have left for the day) and over the polished floor.
Click, click, click.
“What's that?” Fenimore turned.
“My cleats.”
He groaned. “They'll throw us out.”
“How come? It's not a gym, is it?”
“Try to keep them quiet.”
They passed between two pillars the size of redwood trees (Horatio on tiptoe), ducked around a majestic staircase, and paused before an ordinary wooden door bearing a small sign: THE WINTERBERRY MUSEUM. HOURS: 9:00 TO 5:00, TUES.–SAT.
“This is it.” Fenimore opened the door, and Horatio wrinkled his nose.
“Formaldehyde,” Fenimore explained the unpleasant odor. “Preserves the specimens. You'll get used to it.”
The room they entered was the opposite of the one they had just left. It was cramped and cluttered. Three walls were lined with glass-fronted wooden cabinets stuffed with medical curiosities—from a fingernail a foot long to a two-headed fetus. More display cases of a similar character occupied the center of the room. At the back, separated from the rest of the room by a frayed rope, was the replica of a doctor's office, vintage 1890.
“Hey, that looks like your office, Doc.”
Fenimore had to acknowledge that there was a resemblance. He too had a microscope with brass attachments that was covered by a bell jar in need of dusting. It had belonged to his grandfather, who had also been a doctor. Occasionally Fenimore used it to examine simple slides. He was rather proud of it. He also had a centrifuge, like the one on the table, which had belonged to his father. He used it now and then to spin down blood and urine samples. Why not, if it still worked? And those antique bottles lining the shelf over the sink did look like some that he had in his own medicine cabinet. He never used them, but he liked to look at them and couldn't bear to throw them away.
“Cool, man.” Horatio had turned from the doctor's office to a tall glass case that contained two human skeletons, one about eight feet tall, the other less than four feet. The placard read, “Giant and Dwarf.”
Then something else drew his attention. “Look here, Doc.” He was peering at the two-headed fetus in ajar. “This is better than that stuff at the circus.”
The comparison drew Fenimore up short. He had never connected the esteemed Winterberry Museum with the circus.
“There is a difference, Horatio. The audience here comes to study and learn, not to laugh and gawk.”
A laugh came from across the room where a group of first-year medical students were gawking at a display of a megacolon. The giant colon (a papier-mâché copy of the original) was six inches in diameter. Its former owner had been a victim of Hirschsprung's disease and, according to the placard, the poor man had been able to defecate only every forty-two days.
“The purpose of this museum,” Fenimore continued huffily, “is to acquaint interns and medical students with unnatural physical phenomena, in order to cure them.” He paused, suddenly aware of his pompous tone. This place did have a way of getting to you.
“Why would that big guy want to be cured?” Horatio nodded at the skeleton of the giant. “The Sixers would've loved to get their hands on him. He'd be rich and famous. And that little dude next to him, he'd make a terrific second-story man. He could rip off any jewelry store in town.” He turned his dark eyes on Fenimore. “Why do we all hafta be alike?”
Fenimore hesitated. “I guess it makes us feel more comfortable.”
“Comfortable, shit! I'd rather be in the Hall of Fame.” He turned back to admire the eight-foot skeleton. “I'll bet that guy could have made Best Basketball Player of All Time.”
Horatio passed quickly by the heart-lung machine invented by a prominent Philadelphian but lingered over the bronchoscope exhibit. He was fascinated by the drawers full of small objects that had been extricated from people's windpipes and lungs. He pulled out drawer after drawer of buttons, fish bones, needles, and pins. There was even a Sunday school pin inscribed, “For Perfect Attendance.” But the most common objects inhaled were jacks, those six-pointed metal toys every girl played with, bouncing a rubber ball on the front steps. Fenimore explained
that it was the practice to hold the jacks in your mouth while playing. And in the heat of the game, sometimes one would slip down the windpipe.
Horatio shook his head, like a disapproving parent.
They had reached a glass case that stretched the full length of one wall. It housed three rows of human skulls. According to the fly-specked card, the collection had been purchased from a European doctor who had obtained them from the graveyards of convicts and paupers in the eighteen hundreds.
“In those days it was hard to get hold of skulls legally,” Fenimore said. “You had to smuggle them out, sometimes in the middle of the night.”
“You mean dig 'em up?”
He nodded. “But it was for a good cause. You could learn a lot from them. Look at that fella.” He pointed to a skull with indentations on the surface of its crown. “Those dents were caused by TB. And that one there belonged to someone who had the sailor's malady, scurvy.”
“How can you tell?”
“See the erosion around the teeth. It develops due to lack of vitamin C. They didn't get enough fruit and vegetables on board ship.”
Sure enough, the placard below read, “Sailor. Died at sea, 1894.”
“No problem telling what finished him off.” Fenimore indicated a skull with a hole in it the size of a Ping-Pong ball. The card beneath read, “Robber. Shot while trying to escape prison. Madrid, 1879.”
Horatio's eyes were wide.
“Shall we go?” asked Fenimore.
The boy, mesmerized by a series of photographs of Siamese twins, didn't answer.
Fenimore looked at his watch. “Tell you what, I have some
work to do upstairs in the library. You stay here and have a look around, and I'll come back for you when I'm done.”
 
The library was the most attractive part of the building. Tall arched windows lined one wall, admitting luminous shafts of light. The other walls were lined with bookshelves and wooden filing cabinets. The rest of the room was occupied by freestanding shelves interspersed with long, polished oak tables. The tables were equipped with freshly sharpened pencils and pads, paper cups, and thermoslike pitchers containing water that was always chilled. And the chairs, unlike those in most libraries, were comfortable. They had rounded backs with arms, and each was supplied with a back pad and seat cushion, proving that the pursuit of scholarship need not be synonymous with a sore bottom.
Fenimore went over to the filing cabinets, pulled out the drawer marked P-O, and fingered through the cards until he came to the category “Poisonous Plants.” A further search produced three titles:
Deadly Plants, Weeds, and Flowers; Herbs That Kill and Cure; and Poisonous Plants of the United States and Canada.
He filled out the call slips and presented them to the librarian. He had barely sat down to wait when the three volumes appeared on the counter. This was the main reason Fenimore retained his membership in the society. After the librarian had verified his membership card, he tucked the books under his arm and went to collect Horatio.
Fenimore found the boy engrossed by a brain floating in a jar. According to the placard, it had once belonged to a murderer hanged in Upper Darby in 1892.
TUESDAY EVENING
I
t was after 10:00 P.M. when Fenimore put the chain on the front door, turned the key in the vestibule lock, and made his way up the steep, narrow stairs to his bedroom. His encounter with the two thugs a few nights ago was already becoming a foggy memory. Sal was way ahead of him, curled at the foot of the bed on the blue comforter, sound asleep (or pretending to be). She looked bigger than usual. She would be having her kittens soon. Before getting undressed, he set his briefcase on the bureau and opened it. Inside lay the three books he had taken out of the PSPS library. He looked at them with the eager anticipation that most people reserved for a good mystery or, in Mrs. Doyle's case, for a romance novel.
He put on his pajamas and his worn tartan bathrobe, but not his slippers (one was still missing), and settled into the chair by his bed with the good reading lamp.
Deadly Plants, Weeds, and Flowers
was profusely illustrated with colored photographs and was obviously written by a layman. (How this had found its way into the PSPS library, he had no idea.) If he had wanted to learn to identify plants for Polly's
garden club, this would be the book for him. He laid it aside.
Herbs That Kill and Cure
was more academic. The first part was filled with dire warnings about everything from toadstools to poison ivy. The second part was devoted to the remedies you should apply if you failed to heed the warnings in the first part. He placed it with the first book.
Poisonous Plants of the United States and Canada,
although bearing the least-intriguing title, was well organized and well written.
The contents were divided into “helpful” and “harmful” plants. The harmful plants were then subdivided into various classes. He scanned the subdivisions, searching for the specific kind of harmful plant he had in mind. It must contain cardiac glycosides like those in digoxin, which, if taken internally, would induce symptoms similar to those induced by digitalis toxicity—nausea, dizziness, blurred vision or yellow halos, tachycardia, arrhythmia, syncope, and—ultimately—death. He found the entry for cardiac glycosides.
POISONOUS PLANTS CONTAINING CARDIAC GLYCOSIDES
There they were, eight of them, taken in easily at a glance. Fenimore tore a piece of paper from the pad on his bedside table (the one he reserved for jotting down bright ideas that come in the night) and copied the list. Next to “foxglove” he wrote “digitoxin
glycosides,” and beside several of the others he wrote “digoxin glycosides.” Mission accomplished, he was now wide-awake. Sal opened one eye, looked at him, made a half-turn on the comforter, and slipped back to sleep. If only he could do the same.

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