Tuesday, February 28, 1882
Montaigne’s Steak House, San Francisco
Nate had chosen to meet Richard Truscott at Montaigne’s Steak House on Market, one of the best restaurants in town, because he knew that being able to get a table at the last minute would impress the man. The restaurant’s cashier and hostess, Miss Pinehurst, was a former boarder in Annie’s boardinghouse. Because Nate had played a small part in helping Annie rescue Miss Pinehurst’s sister from the clutches of a fraudulent medium, he knew Miss Pinehurst would ensure he got a good table and excellent service. He tried not to take advantage of her graciousness too often, but he thought that trying to settle the dispensary’s problems with this man was sufficient cause to send her a note this morning, asking if she could reserve a table for him at seven this evening.
As he had hoped, when Nate ushered Truscott into the restaurant, Miss Pinehurst was there to greet him. She made it clear that he was a valued customer as she ushered them to a prime table. The waiter added to the overall impression by welcoming Nate by name and asking after his “charming wife.”
Richard Truscott practically preened himself under the attention, stroking his mustache and glancing quickly to see who in the restaurant might have noticed his presence. This fit the description of the man that Mr. Stein had given Annie—that he was an amiable young man who enjoyed fine dining, the theatre, and a spot of betting on the horses and who thought a good deal of himself. Mr. Stein, who was very proud of the business acumen of his own sons and sons-in-law, clearly didn’t think much of him. He was especially dismissive of a man who lived on his wife’s income. Nate felt much the same way, but he needed to appear sympathetic to Richard Truscott if he wanted to make any headway with him.
Consequently, Nate kept the talk to pleasantries through the opening round of ordering and eating the first course. Truscott was about four years younger than he was, but he’d gone to Boy’s High, as Nate had, so they shared memories of certain teachers and discovered they had a few acquaintances in common.
Once the main course arrived, Nate’s opening gambit was to remind Truscott that he was meeting with him because his wife, Annie, was the accountant the Pacific Dispensary had hired to audit their books. He added that she had mentioned her concern that there was an outstanding bill for the care of Truscott’s wife. He made it sound like she had turned to him for advice and he had volunteered to look into it, sure that there was some misunderstanding.
Before Truscott could respond, Nate said, “Now, Richard, I know that sometimes we gentlemen get a bit ahead of ourselves in terms of keeping on top of paying our tailors or our wine bills, so there is nothing to be upset about. But I…”
“You’ve got it all wrong,” Truscott burst out. “It’s not that I don’t have the funds to pay the bill. It’s that I won’t pay for bad work. What my old man always said was, ‘Pay top dollar and you’ll get top work, but let someone get away with shoddy work and you will be seen as a pigeon to pluck by every confidence man in town.’”
Nate wondered if Truscott wasn’t protesting just a little too much about it not being a question of money. And he had a little trouble accepting the idea that this man was comparing the health of his wife to something like badly constructed furniture. But he decided to pretend he accepted the man at his word and switched quickly to focusing on the health of his wife.
“So you feel that the dispensary didn’t provide good medical care for your wife? How is she doing?”
“She’s quite ill. That’s how she is doing,” Truscott snapped, his voice rising.
“Oh dear, so the operation wasn’t successful?” Nate said, pointedly keeping his voice quiet.
Truscott took a deep breath while surreptitiously looking to see if his bad manners had been noticed. Then he said, “I’m sorry, but I’m that worried about my Phoebe. That female doctor, Brown, said they had solved the problem, although it took nearly a month for them to decide she was well enough to release her from their care. And I can tell you that care was expensive. I only agreed to have it done at the dispensary rather than at one of the larger hospitals because Dr. Granger assured me she would get more personal treatment in a smaller facility with professionally trained nurses. At the time, she did seem healthier than she had been in a long time.”
“So you felt she got good care after the operation?”
“Yes, yes. The nurses and that young doctor Blair were quite nice; I just don’t know that I couldn’t have gotten the same care for her at a much lower cost if I had brought her home and hired a nurse.”
“And you are saying you saw an improvement in your wife’s health? I mean from before the operation?”
“Yes, I did. Frankly, we were both delighted. She had been in such a bad way before the operation, any change was an improvement. She came home from the dispensary in time for Christmas, and she was her old self again. Maybe not as strong, but in good spirits. Phoebe’s smile can light up a room. She was really looking forward to the holidays. We took a carriage ride to see the store fronts, trimmed the tree, had a few select friends in for a dinner party. Everyone said how good she looked. We even went to a few New Year’s Day festivities. She didn’t feel up to hosting our own ‘at home,’ but she was already talking about next year and how she’d be completely recovered by then. But then…”
“Then what?”
“Then a week later, she had this spell…couldn’t keep any food down. That worried me. You see, before her operation, this was her pattern. Right after one of the procedures, they called them expressions or something, she always felt better. But sure enough, after a month or two, my wife would start to feel bad again. I thought we were going down the same path. Phoebe had me send for Dr. Granger right away, but the old fool didn’t even respond.”
Nate thought this very odd. Surely Dr. Granger would have come or had someone like Dr. Brown check on Mrs. Phoebe? Annie would definitely want to look into this.
What he said was, “This Dr. Granger, why did your wife want him, not one of the doctors from the Pacific Dispensary?”
“Oh, Granger is part of the dispensary. Some sort of consulting doctor. A nice little racket they all have. Granger finds a patient like my wife and convinces her that the only way she can feel better is to go under the knife. Then he sends her to the dispensary. They charge an outrageous price, and he gets a kickback…excuse me…a fee…for standing around the operating room. Probably gets money simply for the referral. Dr. Skerry, the doctor we now use, explained it to me. Said this happens all the time and that the papers would be interested to learn that Pacific Dispensary was up to this sort of trick.”
“Dr. Skerry?” Nate took a bite of his steak, thinking that this pretty much confirmed Annie’s concern that it was this Skerry who was poisoning the Truscotts against the dispensary.
“Skerry’s my aunt’s doctor. Been with her for years. When Granger didn’t show, my aunt Ruby, who loves my Phoebe like she was her own daughter, called Skerry in. Within a day, the vomiting stopped, and Phoebe got a little better.”
“Did this Dr. Skerry say what was wrong with your wife?”
“Something about the operation weakening her digestive system and disordering her nerves. Said the whole operation was completely unnecessary, that she’d cured scores of women with the same sort of problem. With these different homeopathic medicines she’s prescribed. ”
“So she’s not a regular doctor?”
“No, that’s not true! Aunt Ruby assured me Dr. Skerry is certified by the state to practice medicine. She prescribes all sorts of drops, some in the morning and evening, some every two hours, a couple once a day. Can’t keep them all straight. Must be fifteen bottles on the chest of drawers. We get them from a pharmacy, specializes in that sort of thing. But my aunt’s been taking this stuff ever since I can remember, swears by it. Let me tell you, I must’ve swallowed a gallon of her special drops throughout my childhood, and I’m as healthy as a horse.”
“Your aunt raised you?”
“Yes, my mother died at my birth. Aunt Ruby moved in, raised me. Came with us when Father moved to California to make his fortune in the wheat trade. Part owner of the Rogers, Meyers, and Truscott company. Then when my father died, she kept house for me in Oakland so I could go to the university at Berkeley, as I always had wanted to do. That was before the Zeta Phis had their fraternity house and my place became the unofficial club house. I can tell you, my fraternity brothers just adored Aunt Ruby.”
“And you say that this medicine helped your wife? But then why did you say she was still ill?” Nate asked.
“Keeps having these spells. Aunt Ruby says that the damage they did to my Phoebe is going to take a lot of work to undo. I need to be patient. Hard to be patient when my wife is feeling so dispirited, and I feel helpless. You’ve got a wife. How’d you feel if you had to watch her struggle even to get out of bed? I think the worst of it was the fact that the damn doctors at the dispensary raised her hopes so.”
Nate said, “I still don’t understand why you’re so sure that these spells are connected to her earlier problem or the operation itself?”
“Because all I had to do was hint that I might be thinking about suing, and before you know it, that Dr. Granger finally came. Had the effrontery to say he wanted to see my Phoebe. Then that Dr. Blair shows up on Sunday. I can tell you, I put a stop to that. My wife is too tender-hearted for her own good.”
Nate nodded in what he hoped looked like an understanding fashion. He said, “I can see you’re really upset. However, I’ve had a look at the document you and your wife signed that laid out the risks of the operation, and based on that document, you don’t have any legal standing to withhold payment. I would advise you to have a regular doctor, not a homeopath, someone who has no association with your family or the Pacific Dispensary, examine your wife. If they concluded that her current illness is the result of the surgery but wasn’t part of the regular risks detailed in that document, then you might be on stronger legal grounds.”
Truscott frowned. “And why would you be giving me this advice? What’s in it for you or your wife? You did say she was working for the dispensary?”
Nate was surprised it had taken the young man so long to question his motives. Stein was right; he didn’t seem to be all that clever. He was probably being duped by anyone who wanted to sell him a shiny new investment, but in this case, it very well could be his wife’s health that he would end up losing, not some money.
Nate leaned forward and said with real sincerity, “Nothing in it for me, personally, beyond wanting to let my wife know if her audit needs to report that you have failed in your legal obligation to pay your bill. But I do want you to think about what that means. You may have every reason to be upset with the dispensary. I don’t have the medical expertise to make any judgement on that. Nevertheless, I do know that rumors that a man can’t pay his financial obligations can be difficult to refute. And honestly, given the document you signed, I doubt very much if you would win if you did take the issue to court. A failed court case could add substance to any rumors about your financial status. That’s why I thought you might want a second, unbiased opinion on what is causing your wife’s illness before you go down that road.”
Truscott glowered and said, “Well, if someone’s reputation is the issue, Mr. Dawson, I think that the doctors associated with the Pacific Dispensary have a lot more reason to worry than I do.”