A stem-faced woman in a plain but well-tailored dress sat behind a desk guarding the entryway; I judged her to be just the other side of thirty years old. She looked up with a mixture of annoyance and pity as we entered, but when my employer announced himself, she nodded and said, “Oh, yes, Mr. Clemens, the doctor said to show you right in. This way, please.”
One well-padded man with a fringe of white hair around the pink globe of his balding cranium gave us a scathing look as she whisked us past him. I wondered how long he had been waiting for the doctor. In fact, with this many patients to attend to, I wondered how long it would be before the doctor could spare any time for us.
This part of the suite had evidently been Dr. Parkhurst’s personal office, for his framed diplomas (from Cambridge and Edinburgh) were still on the wall behind the desk—itself an impressive expanse of dark polished wood, with only a few tidily arranged piles of paper atop it. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase full of medical tomes filled the wall to our left, while a pair of windows, giving a view of the hospital itself, occupied the right wall. There was a faint whiff of carbolic acid, and some other chemical odor I could not identify. Mr. Clemens and I sank into two overstuffed, leather-covered chairs, and waited for the doctor.
I was just beginning to wish for something to read when the door opened and in walked a short middle-aged man. His face bore a few wrinkles, and his dark brown beard had begun to collect a few silver hairs. His complexion was sallow and his features somewhat coarse, and his shoes needed shining. But his eyes were a warm brown, and his smile as he saw my employer was the genuine article. “I never thought I would find Mark Twain sitting in my office,” he said, shaking hands with both of us. “I gather you’re not here on account of your health.” His hands were long and thin, as I would expect a surgeon’s to be, and there was an unmistakable strength in his grip.
“That’s right, Dr. Ashe. I told you on the phone we wanted to see you about some unusual business,” said Mr. Clemens after we had resumed our seats. The doctor had taken his place behind the big desk, and sat with his fingers steepled in front of his lips.
“You are investigating my partner’s murder,” said Dr. Ashe, his face a blank page. “Naturally, I have a strong interest in seeing justice served. But perhaps you will pardon my asking just how my answering your questions will advance the cause of justice in this particular matter.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, maybe it won’t,” said Mr. Clemens. “The police have a fellow in jail already, and they think he’s going to tell them the answers they want. Except he hasn’t yapped, so far. Anyways, the suspect’s wife asked me to find out the truth, and I reckon I can at least try.”
“So you believe that the police are wrong, and that the man in jail is innocent.” The doctor’s expression did not change.
“I wouldn’t swear to either one,” said Mr. Clemens. “If the murderer had laid for Parkhurst in some back alley and shot him there, I’d probably never even have heard about it. But he didn’t. Instead, he decided to do it right in front of me—and in front of my wife and daughter, too. I can’t help but take that kind of thing personally. I’ll take a certain measure of satisfaction to know I helped catch the killer. It may be petty of me, but I won’t apologize for it. Are you going to help me?”
Dr. Ashe looked my employer in the eye for a long moment, then shrugged and averted his eyes. “Of course, Mr. Clemens. If I weren’t going to help you, I wouldn’t have invited you to my office.” He leaned down and opened a drawer in the desk, and took out a small stack of dossiers. He put them on the desktop between us, leaving his right hand resting atop the stack. “These are patients’ records. I don’t know how much medical terminology you understand, Mr. Clemens. But I think you will find much of what you need in here. I do hope you understand that normally these records would be shown only to another physician, and I trust you to keep anything not relevant to this case in confidence.”
I glanced at the stack, and saw the name on the paper at the top: Richard Boulton. Hannah Boulton’s late husband—yes, of course, he had been one of Parkhurst’s patients. How many of the others who came to that séance had loved ones who had been under the doctor’s care—who had died in his care?
Mr. Clemens must have read my thoughts, for he raised his hand and said, “Dr. Ashe, I appreciate all this. To tell the truth I’m likely to understand the medical lingo in these papers about as well as a Bulgarian sermon. So before I go digging through them, maybe it would make things easier if you could answer a couple of questions for us.”
Dr. Ashe nodded. “I can spare you a few minutes more, Mr. Clemens, but please remember that there are others who have a claim to my attention. Especially now that my partner is gone . . .”
“I understand,” said my employer. “But murder is a matter of life and death, as well as medicine. Especially medicine as practiced by Dr. Parkhurst—I’ve heard hints that his surgical skills were a bit erratic.”
Dr. Ashe grimaced and spread his hands. “That is a delicate way to
