‘Do you truly have no notion where she is, or is it perhaps that you do not wish to say?’
She looked worried, as Sarah had observed: uncertain of what she was permitted to reveal.
‘She left in a hurry. She told me little.’
Little wasn’t nothing.
‘If you hear from her, or you learn where I might find her, please do not delay in contacting me.’
Martha put a hand on his arm.
‘What are you not telling me, Dr Raven?’
He looked her in the eye, trying to gauge what might be hidden behind her fearful face. He could see how she was torn between loyalty to Mary and troubling doubts about what her sister might be keeping from her.
‘I could ask you the same question.’
She withdrew the hand, folding her arms about herself.
‘I do not know what you mean,’ she replied.
‘When first we visited, my associate Mrs Banks thought you seemed afraid of your sister.’
Martha looked meekly at floor.
‘I am not,’ she said, her voice quieter.
Raven stepped through the front door then turned to face her one last time.
‘You should be.’
FIFTY-FIVE
aven walked through the open door into Dr Simpson’s study, where he had been summoned. The professor had just returned from a trip to London and Jarvis was remonstrating with him about various items missing from his luggage.
‘Several woollen vests have disappeared: lost or misplaced, presumably,’ the butler was saying as Raven entered the room.
‘They’re not lost,’ Simpson countered, as if this should be obvious. ‘I’ve got them all on.’ He turned to Raven. ‘Train carriages are ferociously cold this time of year.’
Jarvis left the room muttering and shaking his head.
‘He’s in a mood because I leave again tomorrow,’ Simpson said as the door closed. ‘He’s concerned that I am travelling too often, tiring myself out.’
Raven thought that Jarvis was probably right. The professor did not seem to rest. His burgeoning practice seemed to keep him busy at all hours of the day and night despite Raven’s employment as his assistant. There were so many things that he insisted on doing himself.
As soon as they were alone, Simpson brandished a letter, waving it in front of Raven.
‘Do you know what this is, Dr Raven?’
The use of his formal title made Raven wary. He had evidently done something to provoke Simpson’s ire: not unheard of, but far from a common occurrence. Raven was not afraid of him, not like he had been of his father, but he disliked disappointing the man. His disapproval could be crushing.
‘Perhaps it is a trick question, but it looks very much like a letter to me,’ Raven answered.
Dr Simpson did not smile in response. Another bad sign.
‘It is a letter from Dr Johnstone, whose wife died under my care some time ago.’
‘What does it say?’
‘I think that you know.’
‘I would hope that he has written in support of you, to vindicate your professional character, to defend you against the egregious comments that have been made by your colleagues.’
‘That is a remarkably accurate assessment of what this letter contains. Dr Johnstone delivered it himself, apologising for the delay in supplying it, hoping that it would prove to be enough to put a definitive end to the matter. He told me he had been encouraged to write it after a visit from my assistant.’
From his tone Raven reasoned that gratitude was not about to be forthcoming.
‘Did you visit Dr Johnstone?’ the professor asked.
‘Yes, I did.’
Raven was relieved that Sarah’s name had not been mentioned.
‘I thought I had asked you to leave this matter alone. That I would deal with it in my own way.’
‘With all due respect, Dr Simpson, your own way was proving to be ineffectual.’
‘How I chose to address the issue was up to me. It is my professional reputation that is at stake.’
‘And unjustly so. I couldn’t bear to see their slanderous accusations go unchallenged.’
‘So you disregarded my wishes. I did not want a grieving man dragged into this regrettable affair.’
‘Even if that was precisely what was required to clear your name?’
Dr Simpson sighed. ‘Much as I appreciate the sentiment that spurred you into action, I cannot condone what you have done. You have interfered when I asked you not to. You have added to a grieving man’s burden.’
Raven could find nothing more to say in his own defence. If this was his offence, he was guilty of it.
‘Do not always assume that you know best,’ Dr Simpson said, more gently now. ‘An over-inflated sense of your own capabilities will lead you to trouble. Guard against complacency, Dr Raven. Or there will be hell to pay.’
FIFTY-SIX
aven could feel the sweat cooling on his skin as he reluctantly shed his coat. The room was surprisingly cold for somewhere so small, particularly a chamber in which an expectant young mother had laboured so long. She was in her first confinement, its extended duration causing a neighbour sufficient worry that she had sent out for help.
As Assistant Medical Officer to the Maternity Hospital, the majority of deliveries Raven attended were ‘outdoor’ patients: assistance provided by the hospital, but the patients delivered in their own homes. Often these outdoor cases could prove challenging, even when obstetrically straightforward, given the lack of heat and poor lighting in the crowded dwellings to be found here in the Old Town. Raven often wondered whether he should start carrying coal and paraffin in his bag in addition to his forceps.
The effort of his ascent to the fifth floor of the West Port tenement had warmed him, but it would not last against the coldness of the room. As he climbed, he thought of how often he had heard Dr Simpson stating cheerily, ‘It’s always the top.’ Raven wondered about the truth of this, reasoning that it seemed that way because only the occasions that affirmed it brought the notion to mind. Those cases on the lower floors did not, so their plenitude was forgotten. He wondered again at his folly in pursuing his imagined new disease.
Louis XIV of France said that only the small man desires always to be right. It struck Raven that the route to discovery and knowledge lay not in the desire to be right, but in one’s preparedness to be wrong. Perhaps seeking proof that tested one’s contention was as important as garnering proof to support it. Only if the latter outweighed the former could one be certain of its soundness.
Raven cast an eye over the suffering woman before him. Alone, with no one to support her in her time of trial but her neighbour.
‘Her husband died six months ago, poor thing,’ the neighbour told him. ‘He caught a fever. A decent man.’
His thoughts turned to Sarah. She would not be left to labour alone, not with him and Dr Simpson keeping an eye on her, but she too was faced with raising her child without its father.
Archie had asked for his help in that matter, an easier request than the other intercession he sought. Of course, Raven would gladly assist, but what he offered would not be – could never be – the help of a husband, the help of the child’s true father. He wondered, in fact, how much assistance he would be permitted to give: how close Sarah would allow him to be, to her or her child.
Raven looked in his bag for the chloroform bottle and couldn’t find it. The prospect of attempting a delivery like this without it was not in any way appealing. He recalled giving a bottle to Archie and panicked briefly, but his fingers grasped what they sought just as he remembered where he had got that one. He thought then of Quinton, that supercilious cadaver of a man, but perhaps he was wrong about him too.
There was something to be said for bringing order to Dr Simpson’s chaos. Perhaps simple book-keeping might yet cast an unexpected light upon his practice. He wondered what knowledge might be found were he to look back at a definitive tally of how much
of each medicine they went through over the course of a week, a month or a year; what patterns and tendencies might reveal themselves.
Raven administered the chloroform to the woman with practised ease and made a preliminary examination. He had become so accustomed to this work that he felt a sudden alarm when he couldn’t fathom what he was feeling. It was something boggy and swollen, and after poking about for a bit he realised that the presenting part was not the head but the breech. It was not usually so difficult to make a distinction between the two, but the mother’s pelvis was too narrow to allow the breech to descend into it and as a result it had become impacted and grossly swollen.
He glanced up at the exhausted and sweat-soaked young woman, rendered oblivious for now by the chloroform. For all she had gone through, he felt it unlikely that she would be presented with a living child when she came around.
With a considerable amount of manoeuvring, he managed to pull down the legs and then the arms but significant force was required to deliver the after-coming head. Under other circumstances Raven would have been concerned about the resultant compression of the skull, but he was in no doubt that the death of the infant had preceded all of his efforts.
As anticipated, the infant was well beyond any attempt at resuscitation when finally delivered, but with a bit of luck (and the fact that he had washed his hands) the mother may yet survive her ordeal. He would have to be content with that.
As he lay the infant upon the bed, the neighbour knelt down beside it, said a short prayer then got to her feet and made for the fireplace.
‘Flora put some coins aside in case she needed the doctor,’ she said.
Raven told her to leave the money where it was.
‘She’ll want to hold the bairn,’ the neighbour said.
‘Of course.’
There was still some warmth in the infant’s tiny body. He wrapped it in a blanket and held it to his chest, hoping it would not be entirely cold by the time the mother woke.
As he cradled the dead child, something in him changed.
There were so many children he had delivered into poverty, a new burden to those who already had nothing, and yet it was a burden that they ached to bear.
A burden he ached to bear.
What might a child who was raised by someone as special as Sarah be like, imbued with the values and perspective she would give?
He felt a pang of angst and regret, initially thinking it was on behalf of Archie, who would not get to witness these things, but then realising it came from his own heart. The role Archie had offered him would not be enough. He wanted it to be his child that was raised by Sarah. Raised with Sarah.
Then, to his surprise, he realised he did not care that the child was the fruit of another man’s loins. After all, there had been times when he took solace in the possibility that his mother had secretly lain with someone other than his father: that he had not inherited the man’s brutish and destructive nature. (Unfortunately, all subsequent evidence pointed to her fidelity.)
He had made one terrible mistake with Sarah, and it had cost him dear, but perhaps there was redemption to be had yet. Archie had shown him the error of his judgment, of his cowardice. Archie’s offspring would therefore be a permanent reminder of what truly mattered in this life. Raven would be proud to raise that child as his own.
FIFTY-SEVEN
t was raining when he came back out onto the street, and there was a bite in the wind. Raven pulled his coat tighter about him, grateful for its heft and warmth. He had many vivid memories of being on these same Old Town streets when he could not afford such a garment. He had felt particularly cold and vulnerable during his days at George Heriot’s school, scurrying between buildings to minimise his exposure. As a student at the university, though he had been no better clothed, there had been many nights when a skinful of ale at least made him heedless of the weather. He had never been heedless of all the elements, however, for on these streets there lurked more brutal things to assail you than wind and rain.
When he was a child, he used to look forward to being a man, because he believed that when such a time came, he would no longer feel so much fear. Now he understood that to be a man was to feel fear and to proceed nonetheless. As Sarah had told him and Archie had shown him, he would rob himself of the life he ought to live if he let fear restrain him. That obtained whether it be fear of violence from men such as Flint and Gargantua, or fear of disdain from men such as James Matthews Duncan and Professor Miller.
Such fortitude was easier preached than practised, for he felt the hand of caution upon him as he observed that he was approaching Lady Lawson Wynd and recognised the alley where Flint had his business premises. A tingle in his scar was telling him to take a different route, in wariness of figures who continued to loom large in his mind. He realised that it was purely a reflexive response, for he was on good terms with the money-lender for now. He had even less to fear from the man he now forced himself to think of as Alec, yet his pulse still quickened at the thought of his sneering face and his grotty knife. This was the true nature of what people called ghosts: being haunted by a presence when there was nothing physical left to fear.
In defiance of this, Raven made himself walk down that lane, but his courage faltered as he heard a creak ahead indicating that Flint’s door was opening. He pressed himself tight to the wall, heart thumping as he waited to see who would appear. He half expected to see Alec emerge, with his wrecked mouth and rodent-like features. But it was not he who came through the door, nor Gargantua or Flint himself.
Flattened against the brickwork, it took Raven a moment to recognise who he was looking at, confused by the sheer incongruity. It was like finding a face he knew in Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights: familiar but jarringly out of place and unexpected in this underworld realm. He watched Quinton walk out into the street and swiftly on his way. There was something furtive in his stride, as though trying to give the impression he was merely passing and had never been inside that building.
Many things slotted into place, but Raven had learned not to draw conclusions from limited evidence.
He waited for Quinton to disappear from sight then rattled at the door. It was answered by another of Flint’s henchmen, the squat one who looked like a toad.
‘I want to speak to your boss.’
‘He’s not to be disturbed just now,’ Toad replied curtly. ‘Come back another time.’
‘I’m here now. So why don’t you go and ask if he’ll indulge an interruption to discuss the correct use of chloroform?’
Toad shut the door in his face, but Raven knew he would relay his remark, and that Flint would infer its significance. He returned forthwith and showed him in.
Flint was standing next to his desk, a strongbox sitting on the floor beneath it. Raven made a point of staring at it. Flint glanced down too, perhaps checking that the lid was closed. He didn’t want Raven seeing what was inside.
There was a pistol on the desk, a far more modern piece than the one he had faced in Berlin. That Flint definitely wanted him to see.
‘Dr Raven. Always a pleasure. To what do I owe this unannounced visit?’
He spoke flatly but Raven detected a wariness.
‘Yes, apologies for the unheralded nature of my call. Normally I prefer to be conveyed to you against my will, but I happened to be passing and I saw Mr James Quinton leaving here with the look of a man not keen that anyone should know his business. I am curious as to the nature of your relationship with him.’
‘That’s what we respectable men of business refer to as confidential,’ Flint stated with barely contained aggression, a warning to back off. ‘A matter between me and him.’
Raven did not flinch from his gaze.
‘I might suggest it was a matter between you, him and some stolen stock certificates.’
Flint reached for the pistol, but before he had it cocked, Raven had his knife resting on the money-lender’s throat.
Their eyes were locke
d upon each other, Raven pressing gently with the blade, Flint’s weapon an inch from Raven’s belly.
‘This pistol has a Forsyth percussion lock,’ Flint stated. ‘It uses fulminate of mercury instead of priming powder. So there is no delay between my pulling this trigger and the charge firing. You saw what a lesser weapon did to poor Alec.’
‘And this is a Liston knife. The man could take a leg off through the thighbone with such a blade in twenty-eight seconds. Imagine what it would do to the soft flesh of your throat should my wrist twitch in response to you pulling that trigger.’
Flint pointed the gun away. He backed off a step, putting the pistol back down on the desk.
Raven lowered the knife, though he kept it in his hand.
He knew there could be no winning such a stand-off. The same applied to the discussion he wished to have. With a man such as Flint, you had to make him believe he had the upper hand, or you would remain in stalemate.
‘We had an agreement. I honoured my side of the bargain in supplying you with chloroform. I am asking you to reciprocate by supplying information. What is Quinton doing for you?’
Flint laughed. ‘Primarily he is doing precisely what he does for your Dr Simpson. He is keeping my books.’
‘And what else?’
Flint glanced at the strongbox. They both understood that Raven wouldn’t be asking this question if he didn’t already know the answer. This wasn’t the part he was most interested in.
‘His skills as a calligrapher and his knowledge of the stock market are also proving useful.’
‘Why did he need to borrow money from the likes of you?’
Flint gave an amused shrug. ‘I never ask,’ he said. ‘But I always collect. And sometimes I take payment in kind, as you well know. Services rendered.’
The Art of Dying Page 26