Sarah could offer no response. The image rather uncomfortably made her think of Archie and his assurances that she would be provided for once he was gone. A hundred times a day she would enjoy the relief of forgetting, her mind focused upon something else, and then it would be dragged back. Remembering hurt every time.
‘I must be on my way,’ Raven announced, rolling down his sleeves and putting on his coat. He seemed content that the conversation was at an end, his case made irrefutably.
She would have to concede that she had no further arguments with which to present him. She remained suspicious of Mary Dempster and convinced that her sister Martha had not been entirely truthful with them. However, a sense or a feeling did not carry the weight of evidence, and nor could it make up for a lack of answers to the questions Raven had posed. Nonetheless, her instinct was to find the evidence rather than dismiss her theory.
Men often talked about a woman’s intuition. Ostensibly it sounded complimentary and yet its intention was usually patronising and dismissive: a term for irrational flights of fancy that these silly creatures would occasionally dream up from nowhere. Sarah understood the true nature of what they were describing. It was not irrational, and nor was it a mystical sixth sense resultant of a uniquely feminine sensitivity. It was a simple, practical consequence of observation. When you put them in a room, women paid attention to the subtle signs people were sending, while the men concerned themselves only with the impression they were making.
Raven thought he was looking for a new disease. Sarah thought that something more sinister was afoot.
If Mary Dempster had made her own sister afraid, she had made other people afraid before her. Her deeds would have left a trail, and Sarah knew where she might pick it up.
FORTY-TWO
here was frost beneath Raven’s feet as he walked along Princes Street, a glistening unwelcome harbinger of the harsh months ahead. Raven was prompted to think back to the unprecedented heat he had endured during his summer in Berlin, but was grateful not to be there now. He had heard stories about the winter in that city and had no desire to witness it first-hand.
A few yards ahead he saw a smartly dressed gentleman emerge from one of the hotels, and recognised him as Dr Alison, Professor of Medicine at the university, and, more pertinently for Raven’s purposes, the author of an influential pamphlet on the spread of infectious disease.
Fortune was smiling upon Raven, and not before time. It was a chance encounter, but one which Raven decided to put to good use. He approached the man and tipped his hat.
‘Professor Alison, I am Dr Raven, assistant to Dr Simpson.’
It came as a relief to see Professor Alison’s eyes widen in positive affirmation of the name. Given the bad blood emanating from everything that Simpson had become caught up in, it was easy to forget how many of his peers in the city held him in the highest regard. And to Raven’s further delight, it seemed Simpson’s was not the only name familiar to him.
‘Yes, of course. Will, isn’t it? I recall we dined together at Queen Street when you were studying under James as his apprentice.’
‘How kind of you to remember. And what a stroke of luck that I have run into you today. If you have the time, perhaps you would be good enough to bestow upon me the benefit of your wisdom? I have recently had to contend with several cases of what I believe might be a new form of transmissible infection.’
Professor Alison looked intrigued.
‘I have an idle moment right now. Perhaps we might retire somewhere out of the cold and avail ourselves of tea, or something stronger, while we discuss it?’
Raven’s heart surged. Then Professor Alison’s nose suddenly wrinkled, an unpleasant odour in his nostrils. Raven caught it too and turned to see that a cart had pulled to a halt on the road alongside them. It was covered in muck, having been used to transport God knew what, but the most appalling aspect was that the Skeleton sat at the reins, and, inevitably, Gargantua was with him.
Raven felt a rage kindle within him as the giant leapt from the vehicle. On this occasion, it was not the mere annoyance of being summoned once again, but of being thus confronted and his most unsavoury associations laid bare before no less a figure than the Professor of Medicine.
Alison looked Gargantua up and down as he crossed the pavement towards them with his lolloping gait, the professor’s disdain at being imminently importuned not quite disguising his concurrent professional fascination. At that moment, Raven felt his own outrage ameliorated by an unaccustomed feeling of sympathy for Gargantua. The man had probably been subject to cruel and invasive regard most of his days, but Raven knew that he particularly resented the scrutiny and assessment of medical men. He feared what Gargantua might say as a result. The giant was, however, remarkably polite.
‘Pardon the intrusion, sirs, but my employer, Mr Flint, urgently requests the attendance of Dr Raven here.’
Professor Alison’s eyes narrowed at the mention of Flint’s name.
‘Flint?’ he asked with incredulous distaste. ‘He is the money-lender, is he not? Dr Raven, surely you are not in debt to such a man?’
Raven did not know quite how to respond. The words ‘after a fashion’ floated in his mind unspoken, but there seemed no way to describe any arrangement he might have with Flint that would reflect anything other than badly upon him. This would surely tarnish his nascent reputation with not only Professor Alison, but anyone who might learn of this through him, a constituency comprising everyone who was anyone in Edinburgh medicine.
‘Dr Raven is sought on a medical matter,’ Gargantua said. ‘He was good enough to deliver Mrs Flint of her first child and has no qualms about who he is prepared to treat.’
Raven felt an unexpected gratitude towards Gargantua. Though it was his and the Skeleton’s presence that had precipitated this disaster, his careful words were nonetheless a mercy he had not been obliged to extend. He could have played it other. He wondered what lay behind this thawing of the animosity the giant held towards him. Prior to this he would have believed all the salt in the world incapable of melting that ice.
‘Most admirable of you, doctor,’ Alison said, politely but uncomfortably. ‘I will let you away.’
With that the professor swept onwards, visibly relieved to extract himself from their encounter, while Raven was left to get on with whatever Flint wanted of him.
Raven climbed delicately onto the back of the cart and sat himself on the least filthy part he could find. He pulled his collar up and his hat down and counted his blessings such as they were, a voice inside quelling his haughtier instincts. Was he so far above these people? He was, after all, literally a cut-throat, and by now quite possibly a wanted man.
He wondered again at the identity of the man he slew, the unexpected efforts of the police, and the subsequent disappearance of Gabriela, but these were futile musings upon matters far away.
The cart trundled along, Raven oblivious to the route taken until it pulled up at the rear of a building in Fountainbridge. He knew he had been here before but did not recognise it, as he had been ushered in under rain-lashed darkness. Daylight did not flatter the place. It was a five-storey tenement as teeming and overcrowded as any in the city. Raven had no notion who actually owned it, but he knew who it belonged to in every practical sense.
He was all but marched inside and up the stairs to a small third-floor apartment, two storeys above the larger accommodations he had visited before. The man who occupied those was waiting for him in the hallway.
‘I have an injured man in urgent want of treatment,’ Flint said.
‘I am not the only doctor in this city,’ Raven replied. ‘There are many better, and I would wager many nearer, whose attendance would not have occasioned retrieval from Princes Street.’
‘I don’t doubt it. But let’s just say that I trust you in a way that I would not trust others, Mr Raven.’
‘Dr Raven,’ he corrected, not with much conviction. He wasn’t sure Flint heard, or wheth
er he would care.
He was shown into a cramped, gloomy and foul-smelling room, his nose immediately recognising the odours of blood and faecal matter. Upon the bed was something else he recognised with equal distaste.
The Weasel.
‘Alec here is in a bad way,’ Flint said. ‘He is in dire need of a surgeon.’
It was odd to hear his real name. Raven had never been curious as to what it was, and now that he knew, he struggled to associate it with the man lying before him. He was squirming, sweat-lashed and panting in his pain.
‘He’s been shot,’ Gargantua added.
‘Where?’
Flint and Gargantua looked back and forth between each other. Clearly there was something they did not wish to disclose.
‘What does the location matter?’ Flint asked. ‘Just do something.’
‘I meant, where upon his person?’
Gargantua pulled back the covers, causing the smell to instantly worsen. An improvised dressing, none too clean, had been applied across the Weasel’s abdomen and the material was heavily bloodstained, but this was not Raven’s primary concern. The smell alone told Raven the intestines had been breached.
Flint read his expression and did not like what he saw.
‘I have faith in you. Do not prove it ill-judged.’
He winced. These were not words of encouragement so much as an implied threat of retribution should he fail.
Raven knew immediately this would be a far different prospect to digging a bullet from a shallow wound in Henry’s leg, but one didn’t say that to a man like Flint. He thought about protesting his relative lack of experience in the management of gunshot wounds but quickly changed his mind. It would be better to display a supreme confidence in his own abilities in order to forestall any suggestion of incompetence should the worst happen. To that end, he decided it best to inspect the wound, even if only to confirm his suspicions.
Raven took in the room, with its one tiny window giving onto the back court.
‘Can we move him to where there is better light?’
Flint muttered something to Gargantua and withdrew. He returned momentarily with another of his men, the squat individual Raven thought of as Toad. Between them he and Gargantua lifted the bed with the Weasel on it, while Flint led them across the close to an apartment on the other side. A mother was escorting her children out of the way, clearly told to vacate so that Flint could commandeer her home. Her table was moved, and the bed placed down in its stead before a wide, south-facing window.
The Weasel whimpered as Raven approached, recognising him now that there was enough light.
Words of reassurance came to Raven’s mind, but they would not pass his throat.
‘Help me move him,’ Raven said, addressing the giant. When the man seemed reluctant to assist, he explained: ‘I need to look for a second wound, to ascertain whether the bullet has passed through.’
Raven knew it was academic whether the bullet remained inside the Weasel’s abdomen or not, but he felt obliged to provide a convincing performance. It was important to give the impression that he knew what he was about. His own life might very well depend on it.
Gargantua, with an unexpected gentleness, turned the whimpering man onto his side. The image transported Raven back to that alley off the Canongate. There, it had been he who was helpless, gripped in those massive hands while the Weasel looked on, ready to wield a blade. It ought to have felt like a fitting reversal, but as the movement caused the man to cry out Raven felt guilty about inflicting this unnecessary pain.
Suddenly there was no history between them: he was only a doctor dealing with an injured patient.
‘The ball has not passed through,’ he said, indicating that Gargantua should release his hold on the patient.
‘Can you get it out?’ Flint asked.
Raven sighed. He knew it would make no difference if he did.
‘Let me have a look.’
Raven lifted the sodden dressing from the front of the abdomen. There was a small oval wound, the edges torn and blackened, a dark and malodorous fluid oozing out of it over his fingers. To his dismay he was jolted back to a different alley: the one in Berlin. That had been another moment in which he had instantly shed the person he was and become something else, but that night in Prussia the transformation had been driven by something less noble and more primal.
The image passed and he pulled himself back to the here and now.
He replaced the dressing and turned to face Flint and Gargantua.
‘This man was shot last night. One bullet. From a pistol. At close range.’
‘How can you know that from looking at a hole in his belly?’ Flint asked.
‘There are lacerations and bruising around the entrance wound. The edges are blackened as if they had been burnt. This arises from the heat and flame of the gunpowder at the moment of explosion.’
Flint and Gargantua seemed intent upon what he was saying, so he continued.
‘A bullet fired from a moderate distance produces a well-defined round or oval wound without blackening or burning. The feculent matters escaping from the wound indicate that the bowel has been perforated. There are signs of inflammation suggesting some time has elapsed since the injury occurred.’
Raven was relieved that he could recall these details from the Medical Jurisprudence lectures he had attended as a student. Flint looked impressed but that was unlikely to last.
‘What can be done?’
‘Given the fluid leaking from the wound, and the smell … there is no doubt that the intestine has been damaged.’ Raven lowered his voice. ‘Whenever the contents of the stomach or any of the bowels are effused over the surface of the peritoneum, death is the inevitable result.’
Flint and Gargantua looked at him in an uncomprehending silence. Raven sighed. He thought he had been perfectly clear.
‘There is no point in guddling about in this man’s guts. Surgeons only open the abdomen as a last resort, for the patient seldom survives it. In midwifery it is sometimes done to save the baby when there is no hope for the mother. Because once we have opened the belly, the mother will surely die.’
‘Why?’ Flint asked. There was no anger in his voice, only a bleak curiosity.
‘It would seem nature does not tolerate the exposure of organs it has seen fit to keep covered. Infection is the inevitable result. Much like gangrene in a leg, except in this case amputation of the infected part is not an option. However, the situation is immeasurably worse if the bowel itself has been injured. Hence there is no point in attempting to retrieve the bullet. The damage cannot be repaired. There is nothing that I or any surgeon, including Syme himself, can do in a case such as this.’
Flint thought about this for a moment. He looked towards Alec and nodded, accepting what he was being told.
‘I must leave now,’ Raven said. ‘There is nothing more I can do here, and I am needed at the Maternity Hospital.’
Flint put a hand on his arm.
‘There is something you can do,’ he said.
Raven was about to protest when Flint leaned in closer. He could smell stale alcohol and onions on the man’s breath.
‘Give him something for the pain. Ease his passing.’
Having issued his command, the money-lender left the room, leaving Raven with the dying man and the giant, whose presence seemed intended as Flint’s guarantor that Raven would do as he was bid.
He dosed the Weasel liberally with laudanum and then packed up his things, hoping to leave and never darken the door of this place again.
Gargantua blocked his path.
‘You will return,’ he said.
Raven nodded, but it was not good enough. Two huge hands gripped his lapels.
‘Give me your word that you will return.’
‘You have it,’ Raven replied.
FORTY-THREE
arah stopped outside a house on Castle Street and checked the address on the letter she carried. It was the correct
number but seemed rather too grand an establishment to house Dr Simpson’s secretary and his wife. It was considerably larger than the few rooms she shared with Archie on Albany Street.
The door was answered by Mrs Quinton herself, a neat woman, well dressed if not expensively so. Sarah was shown into a bright room at the front of the house, illuminated by large windows that faced onto the street. There was a large black marble fireplace with enamel panels, and several sofas and armchairs upholstered in expensive-looking fabrics. When invited to sit, Sarah was unsure where to put herself. Framed portraits adorned the walls and suspended over it all was a huge crystal gasolier.
‘What a beautiful room,’ Sarah said as she handed over the letter along with a parcel of baby clothes Mrs Simpson had asked her to deliver.
‘Yes. It’s a wonderful house. So well located,’ Mrs Quinton replied. ‘Sir Walter Scott lived at number 39.’
‘An auspicious address, in that case,’ Sarah said.
‘Quite so,’ Mrs Quinton replied, smiling broadly. ‘The house is rather too large for just the three of us,’ she continued. ‘Well, four, if you count the nursemaid.’ Her tone implied that she did not. ‘We took over the lease from a good friend of ours. The furniture belongs to her too. It was left for our use,’ she added, indicating the contents of the room with a wide sweep of her hand. ‘A woman of great taste.’
‘You are very fortunate to have such a friend.’
‘Yes. It is so important in this world to make the right kind of connections, to move in the right circles.’
Sarah wondered how they could afford it. An inheritance or some form of annuity perhaps. She noticed that Mrs Quinton had placed the parcel on a side table but wasted no time in opening the accompanying letter. ‘I was beginning to doubt whether this would ever arrive,’ she said petulantly, scanning the contents. She folded the letter again and placed it on top of the discarded parcel before sitting down beside Sarah and straightening her skirts.
The Art of Dying Page 19