Jack studied the man. He had very little to distinguish him beyond a mane of gray hair and an unruly beard. Together they hid almost every inch of skin, while pince-nez spectacles wedged between two lowering brows caught the sun and made it difficult to see the man’s eyes. Jack imagined, very briefly, a barber advancing on that wealth of hair with weapons at the ready.
Hawthorn introduced everyone in the room, starting with two stout, expensively dressed men, the physician Manderston, who had done the postmortem, and someone called Frank Heath, apparently Mrs. Campbell’s physician prior to Sophie. Manderston seemed half-asleep, while Heath was agitated and jumpy. He had nodded at Anna and Sophie with obvious reluctance and something far short of the courtesy professionals owed each other.
Then Hawthorn turned to his left. “And District Attorney Mayo has joined us.”
Conrad Belmont sat up straighter. “This is a simple inquiry, as I understood it. Why is the district attorney here, if I may inquire?”
“I asked him to join us,” the coroner said shortly. “And now I’d like to get started. This is a sad business before us, one that requires some examination before it can be settled. We’ll work backward, I think. Dr. Anna Savard, you were the last physician to treat the deceased. Can you provide some information on your background and training?”
Some of the nervous energy that Anna had been unable to completely govern seemed to disappear, now that the questioning had begun. She simply provided information: what and where and with whom she had studied, her exams and qualifications, hospitals and clinics where she had seen patients, her experiences as a surgeon, organizations that she belonged to, and finally she mentioned her time studying in Vienna, Berlin, and Birmingham, England.
Jack had heard all of this before, and so he concentrated on the faces of the men around the table. There was little to make out about the coroner’s mind-set, hidden as he was behind his beard. The clerks—three of them, Jack counted—wore identical blank expressions as they scratched away. John Mayo gave away only slightly more, but Heath’s and Manderston’s feelings about what they were hearing were plain to see. When Anna mentioned working in England with a Dr. Tait, Manderston sat up straight and pointed at her.
“Your name was familiar to me, and now I realize why. You tried to poach one of my patients. A Mrs. Drexel. You tried to get her to leave my care.”
Jack saw Anna’s brow crease in confusion, and then just as suddenly, clear. “You are mistaken,” she said calmly, but two red spots had appeared on her cheeks. “Dr. Tait referred Mr. Drexel to me, and he wrote asking me to consult on his wife’s case. I replied. I never heard from him again, and I never approached him or his wife. In fact, I suspected that letter to be one of Mr. Comstock’s falsifications designed to entrap doctors.”
Jack wondered if Anna and Sophie would be relieved to know for sure that the referral had not been one of Comstock’s tricks. Instead it had just been a man’s reluctance to let a woman physician treat his wife.
Manderston sat back, arms crossed on his chest. “So you say.”
Hawthorn rapped on the table with his fist. “Dr. Manderston, please remember why we are here. Whatever issues you have to discuss with Dr. Savard must wait. Now Dr. Savard Verhoeven, may we hear from you?”
Sophie’s description of her training and experience met with even less approval from Manderston and Heath, who had begun to shift in their chairs. A question from the coroner changed all that.
“Dr. Heath, you were Mrs. Campbell’s physician of record until recently. How long had you been treating her?”
“She was my patient from the time of her marriage when she first came to this city. I last saw her in February, when she was near to term on her last pregnancy.”
“But you didn’t attend that birth.”
“No,” Heath said. “I had to be out of town. Miss Savard—Mrs. Verhoeven agreed to go in my place.”
“Dr. Verhoeven,” Conrad corrected, his voice carrying sharply.
“Dr. Verhoeven,” Heath echoed with a sour twist of his mouth. “Dr. Verhoeven attended the birth. That was all it was supposed to be. I didn’t think she’d have the gall to steal my patient.”
Belmont said, “Dr. Heath is making unsubstantiated accusations. Unless he has evidence that Mrs. Campbell was somehow coerced into seeing Dr. Verhoeven?”
Heath frowned, but had nothing to say.
“As I thought,” Belmont said. “If I may ask a question, Dr. Heath. How did you find Mrs. Campbell when you last saw her?”
He seemed ready for this question. “She was healthy, no sign or indication of trouble.”
“And her state of mind?”
Now he did look surprised, as if he had never heard such a question before. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s not an unreasonable question,” the coroner said.