Thoreau in Phantom Bog

by Oak, B. B.

  “And under the bed is yours?” I said.

  My sarcasm escaped her. “You frighten me too,” she said. “I thought you was a burglar.”

  “Nonsense. You just didn’t want to talk to me.”

  “Go away,” she said.

  “I’m staying put right here until you contain your vicious parrot.”

  Edda crawled out from her hiding place, and I heard her cooing to her pet. The screeching stopped, replaced by a stream of crude curses in the parrot’s little girl voice. Roos was cursing in French! And Edda spoke back to her in French, entreating Roos to come to her. But the bird was too riled up to comply and continued to spew out French gutter talk. Her repertoire was quite impressive. Finally, Roos fell silent. When I heard Edda close the wardrobe door, I stuck my head out for a peek. Roos was nowhere to be seen, and Edda was sitting on a chaise longue silently weeping.

  I left my shelter and went over to her. “How long did you work in a French brothel, Edda?” I asked her right off, for I could think of no better place for Roos to have picked up such language.

  Edda did not bother to deny my assumption. “Too long,” she replied.

  “And how well did you know Jacques Pelletier?”

  “I do not even remember him from there. But he remembers me because of my parrot.”

  “Did he threaten to tell your husband of your past?”

  “Yah. He torments me. And I know he will make good his threat. Just to hurt us.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Jacques Pelletier was a very cruel man.”

  “I am not sorry he is dead.”

  “But surely you must be sorry that an innocent man, a good man, is being charged with his murder,” I said.

  She nodded again and looked down at her hands. Tears fell from her eyes onto her lap.

  “Did you poison Pelletier, Edda?”

  She looked up at me with wide, wet eyes. “No.”

  My heart sank. I thought she had been ready to confess. Rather than continue to stand over her like the Grand Inquisitor, I sat down beside her on the chaise and spoke more gently, hoping to slowly lead her into admitting the truth.

  “Wasn’t Pelletier already dead when Adam found him, Edda?”

  She took a deep breath. “Yah.”

  “And didn’t you lie when you testified that you talked to Pelletier at midnight?”

  “Yah. When I come up to his suite with his beefsteak he is asleep.”

  “Asleep? But you just admitted to me that he was dead.”

  “Not yet.” Edda took another deep breath. “He is fast asleep in his bed, and I know this is my only chance to kill him. So I tiptoe into the bedchamber with the steak knife and stab him right in his black heart! And I am not sorry for it. But I do not want to hang for it.”

  “You won’t,” I said after a stunned moment. “You can’t be hanged for stabbing a dead man.”

  Edda looked at me, confused, and I explained to her why Adam was sure Pelletier had died hours before midnight.

  “So I do not kill that bastard after all,” she said. She sounded relieved. But she looked somewhat disappointed.

  ADAM

  Wednesday, May 24

  The afternoon was stifling hot as Henry and I waited at the Concord station for Dr. Holmes. I was glad Pelletier’s body lay in the cold of the Plumford icehouse, for the rate of putrefaction in summer heat can be explosive. An autopsy viewed by my inexperienced fellow townsmen would be hard enough for them to stomach without the stench we doctors are habituated to endure in such weather.

  It was easy to spot my professor as he descended from the cars. He was carrying a black leather medical bag and dressed as the elegant Boston Brahmin he indeed was. His tall, black silk top hat helped to extend his short stature, and beneath the hat’s narrow rim his features looked most patrician. Despite his formality of dress and demeanor, he is much loved by the medical students who attend his stimulating lectures. He is an extraordinary teacher, enthusiastic and original, and students cheer when he steps up to the podium or enters a dissection class. They even laugh at his terrible puns.

  He stopped in surprise at seeing me at Henry’s side. “Did you break out of jail, Adam?” he asked me drolly as he shook my hand.

  “I was released from custody,” I told him, “when the taverner’s wife confessed to stabbing the man I’d been arrested for murdering.”

  “And is this the taverner?” Dr. Holmes asked, gesturing toward Henry.

  “No, this is my friend Henry Thoreau. He wrote to you on my behalf yesterday.”

  “And a most thorough message it was, Mr. Thoreau,” Dr. Holmes said, unable to resist the pun on Henry’s name as they shook hands. “But it appears the situation was not as urgent as you indicated, and I need not have canceled all my appointments to come save Dr. Walker from hanging.”

  “The situation has indeed changed,” Henry said, “but it remains urgent. You can help us save the taverner’s wife from such a fate, Doctor.”

  “A woman I do not even know,” Dr. Holmes pointed out sharply.

  “It should prove to be a most interesting autopsy, sir,” I said and explained how I had found the victim at a stage of rigor mortis that did not correspond to the time Mrs. Ruggles stated she’d stabbed him.

  Although Dr. Holmes must be nearing forty, he still has the curiosity of a first-year medical student, and this trait overcame his pique. “Let us open up the fellow and see what we can see!” he said after hearing me out. “I propose you conduct the autopsy whilst I watch, Dr. Walker. I have always taken pleasure in observing your skill with the scalpel.”

  I readily agreed, for I was most eager to slice into Pelletier.

  We climbed into the gig and headed for Plumford. Though Henry had not studied medicine under Dr. Holmes at Harvard, he was familiar with his work in another field of endeavor—namely poetry—and a good portion of the short trip was taken up with a discussion of the power of words to influence actions. Henry stated that he only hoped that when his latest essay, entitled “Resistance to Civil Government,” was published, it would influence the general population as much as Dr. Holmes’s poem “Old Ironsides” had. Dr. Holmes made it clear he was not in favor of anyone advocating resistance to government, and an argument would have ensued if I had not eased the conversation onto more neutral ground.

  “Did you know, Henry, that it was Dr. Holmes who invented the word anaesthesia for the state of insensibility produced by ether?”

  “From the Greek word anaisthesia,” Holmes added.

  “Which means lack of sensation,” Henry said. “Therefore the patient is said to be in the state of anaesthesia.”

  “That’s correct,” Dr. Holmes said. “It appears you know your Greek, Mr. Thoreau.”

  “Well enough,” Henry said modestly, without mentioning that he too could claim a Harvard education.

  Dr. Holmes turned his attention to me. “When do you plan to return to Boston and take up your career as a surgeon, young man?” He did not wait for me to reply. “I am certain that you have your reasons for planting yourself out here in the countryside, but I am even more certain I will find them entirely inadequate. How can you justify hiding your talents under a farmer’s straw hat, Adam? Your skills would be greatly valued in the Ether Dome of Massachusetts General Hospital. Have I not told you more than once that you have a rare talent for surgery? That was proven by the extraordinary delicacy, I even call it artistry, with which you repaired that young boy’s harelip a few months ago.”

  “I found great satisfaction in performing the surgery you allude to with such kind words, sir,” I replied. “But I also find satisfaction ministering to folks in more humble ways. Besides, I have had obligations to meet over the last few years. I felt duty-bound to take up my Grandfather Walker’s practice when he fell ill, and when he died there came to our small town a Consumption epidemic that I could not just walk away from. Now my Grandmother Tuttle, who raised me up on her farm, is on her deathbed, and I want to see her through t
o the end.”

  “That is all well and good,” Dr. Holmes said. “Yet for one who has such noble intentions, you seem to get yourself into a lot of fine messes, Adam. I recall intervening a year or so ago to prevent a police officer from arresting you on a Boston street.”

  “That was a misunderstanding that can be easily explained.”

  “Well, do not take the time to explain it to me now. What I would like to know is how you managed to get yourself arrested for murder. Who was the victim?”

  “His name was Jacques Pelletier, and he was . . .” I could not very well tell Dr. Holmes that Pelletier was my lover’s husband.

  “He was what?” Holmes pressed.

  “A slave trader,” Henry put in.

  Dr. Holmes’s refined countenance stiffened with revulsion. “Is that why he was murdered?”

  “It would be reason enough, I reckon,” Henry said.

  “I suggest we say nothing more about the victim, Dr. Holmes,” I said. “That way you can observe the autopsy with an objective eye.”

  Holmes nodded. “I am a great proponent of scientific objectivity.”

  “Yet there is no such thing as pure objective observation,” Henry said.

  “I beg to differ,” Holmes said.

  And off they went on a philosophical discussion that I was far too anxious to follow. As we neared the icehouse, situated on the Assabet River, my only concern was proving my hypothesis that Pelletier did not die of a knife thrust to the heart, for I did not want my friend Sam Ruggles to suffer through the trial and execution of his beloved wife. She was being held under house arrest in the Ruggleses’ rooms at the Sun until the Coroner’s Jury determined the cause of Pelletier’s death.

  The owner of that icehouse, Undertaker Jackson, greeted us outside the large wooden structure, and a boy was sent to fetch Coroner Daggett and the six members of his jury awaiting our arrival at Daggett’s store.

  Jackson led us into his storage facility. Hundred-pound blocks of cut ice, covered with sawdust and straw, were stacked almost up to the roof on three sides of the cavernous room. Jackson informed us that it would be a lot colder and more jam-packed inside had not a good portion of the winter ice harvest already been sold off and removed by rail to Boston and from thence by ship to warm climes all over the world.

  It was still plenty cold enough to make us all button up our frock coats, and I appreciated having enough space to conduct the autopsy. Jackson had followed my instructions to the letter. Pelletier’s sheet-shrouded body had been laid upon a yard-high stack of ice blocks covered with canvas. A collection of lanterns had been placed on crates and ice blocks all around.

  “Let us light the lanterns and begin,” I said when the Coroner’s Jury filed in.

  The six men whom Coroner Daggett had selected for his jury, I was relieved to see, were as stalwart a collection of laymen as I could hope for. Along with Jackson the undertaker and Munger the butcher, four stout and hardy farmers arranged themselves around the table. I credited them all with stomachs strong enough to observe an autopsy. Justice Phyfe and Constable Beers were also in attendance.

  “I wager Beers lasts ten minutes before puking,” I told Henry in a low voice.

  “Five,” he replied.

  As Henry and I lit the lanterns, Dr. Holmes arranged the surgical instruments on the improvised operating table. He looked most eager for the procedure to commence. “All is ready for you, Doctor,” he told me and stepped aside.

  I took my place before the body and was about to pull back the sheet when the icehouse door opened. Everyone’s attention was drawn from the body to the towering figure approaching us. Mawuli.

  “You are not allowed in here,” Beers told him.

  “Why shouldn’t he be allowed?” Henry said. “There is no law against it.”

  Beers looked to Phyfe. Phyfe looked up at Mawuli, considering how best to handle the situation.

  “I have come at the request of Madame Pelletier,” Mawuli told Phyfe. “Does she not have a right to know the cause of her husband’s death? If you send me away, I am sure she will come herself.”

  Upon hearing this alternative, Phyfe made his decision. “You may stay,” he told Mawuli.

  Mawuli gave him a slight bow and turned to me. “May I assist you, Doctor?”

  I confess I found his offer presumptuous. “Performing an autopsy requires specific training,” I replied a bit huffily.

  Mawuli smiled. “But holding a lantern does not. My height should be to your advantage.” He took a lantern off a crate and held it directly over the body, providing excellent illumination.

  “I thank you,” I said more humbly. I then introduced Dr. Holmes and provided the jurors with his impressive credentials.

  “We will certainly heed the opinion of such a respected doctor,” Coroner Daggett said. “Do you have anything you would like to tell us beforehand, Dr. Holmes?”

  “Only one thing, which I tell all my first-year medical students. If any of you become nauseated, please step as far away as you can from the proceedings before vomiting. Now, Walker, please proceed.”

  I drew back the sheet. Pelletier was still fully dressed. I’d asked Jackson not to remove his clothes so that the jurors could see how little blood was upon them. I explained that the three small blood spots on the waistcoat had dripped from the knife when I’d extracted it. I then undressed the body. As rigor mortis had long ago faded from it, I had little trouble doing so. Pelletier was now just a corpse, scarcely resembling the man so recently brimful of evil intent. The energy that had animated him had gone elsewhere, be it to hell or some other timeless void. Nonetheless, I covered his face with a handkerchief. I did so out of respect for the living more than the dead, for an autopsy is far easier to view when the corpse’s countenance is hidden.

  I first described how I had seen the knife buried to the hilt in Pelletier’s chest, then pointed out the wound on the body just below the right nipple, where the knife had penetrated between two ribs and angled into the chest cavity.

  I picked up a scalpel and looked at the pale, intense faces around me, and then Mawuli’s dark face a good foot above them. Light from the lanterns bounded off the gleaming ice and gave the scene a dreamlike or painterly quality. I looked back at the corpse and swiftly cut the characteristic Y-shaped incision across the entire front of the body, one cut starting at each shoulder and then both meeting over the sternum and then continuing as one incision down and round the umbilicus, and ending at the pubic bone. I took care to cut only through the skin, subcutaneous tissue, musculature, and the peritoneum but no farther, the intent being simply to open the body cavity to expose the organs. If the abdominal organs are nicked or sliced, then the bloated gas contained escapes, generating not just a powerful stink but a mess of digestive juices and partially digested food. Such gases are the reason so many medical students take up smoking heavy cigars—the powerful tobacco smoke at least partially masks the inevitable stench. I pulled back the flaps of skin on each side, cutting the flesh away to expose the chest, ribs, and lower organs.

  This simple, initial procedure brought gasps of horror, for to perform such a violation of a human body is quite akin to slaughtering an animal. I heard the retreating clomp of boots and then retching. I didn’t bother to look up. I knew it was Beers. The man simply did not have the stomach for his job.

  I picked up a saw and heard a few groans. I used the saw to cut through each rib and the chest plate and pulled them to the side and up and away so as to reveal the organs in all their complex glory. I removed the organ block from tongue down to anus in one group, which brought a nod of approval from Dr. Holmes. I glanced up to see one of the sturdy farmers keel over backwards. Jackson caught him and laid him out behind the group. Justice Phyfe was paler than a ghost but kept his eyes on the body. He is a tough bird. I give him that much.

  “The insides of a man look not so very different from a pig’s, I am sorry to say,” Munger muttered.

  His remark brough
t to my mind the time he was slaughtering a huge boar that had been gored and trampled by a bull and we had shared a fire-seared, crispy pig’s ear together.

  After an examination of the throat and lungs, where I found nothing out of the ordinary, I turned to the heart. I thrust my hand behind the organ of life and cut it loose from its arteries and veins. I felt a rush of relief at what I saw, for Edda Ruggles’s sake.

  “Please observe,” I said, glancing at the jury, “the pericardium, which is this whitish sac that surrounds and holds the heart.” I pointed to the inch-wide opening in the pericardium through which the knife blade had sliced and continued into the heart. “If the heart had been beating at the time the injury was sustained, the pericardium would be swollen with blood, as such an injury would cause the victim’s heart to flood the entire area with blood as it pumped. Doctor Holmes, do you agree with this observation?”

  “I will speak after you have dissected the heart,” Dr. Holmes said.

  I sliced into and then pulled away the pericardium as one would a layer of protective skin. I then cut into the right atrium and pointed to where the blade had cut into and across the atrium and punctured the aorta. This was a slippery business, and I have seen fellow medical students try to hold the heart, lose grip, and send the organ off the table and slithering across the floor. I took care not to have that happen.

  “As you see,” I said, “there is no evidence of any bleeding from the penetration of the knife directly into the heart muscle and tissue. Dr. Holmes?”

  “What we see,” he said, “is irrefutable evidence that the heart was not beating at the time of the attack.”

  He then delivered a somewhat prolonged explanation of what the jury would be seeing if in fact the subject had been alive at the time with a normally beating heart. His description of the amount of blood that would be pumped was near as graphic as the autopsy itself.