A Corruption of Blood

by Ambrose Parry

  She started shaping the dough, then put it in a baking tin ready for the oven.

  ‘He’s a lost young man,’ she said. ‘Lost and angry, and just because he’s now lost and angry and rich doesn’t change the first two things.’ She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Anyway, how can I help you?’

  ‘I’ve been sent to look for something. Some fruit that Gideon brought back from Tobago.’

  ‘You mean yon spikey thing you tasted last time you were here?’

  ‘No. This would be something smaller, in a hessian bag.’

  ‘I’ll have a look,’ she said, heading for the pantry.

  Sarah followed her in, Meg peering curiously at the doorway. As at Queen Street, she was struck by how much cooler the food store was, a place that admitted no natural light.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve seen such a thing, but to be honest I’ve not needed to hunt through the darker reaches of late. Not since the master died and young Gideon was hauled off to jail. Barely had call to cook anything, except for us staff, never mind replenish supplies with anything exotic or unusual. Normally there would be all manner of people passing through and needing fed: politicians, churchmen, businessmen, doctors.’

  She pulled a crate forward on a shelf. Sarah could see jagged green leaves sticking over the top.

  ‘Still a few of those pineapples left,’ the cook said with a marked lack of enthusiasm. ‘No, I don’t recall . . . Oh here, hold on a wee minute. Here’s the very thing.’

  The cook reached into the pineapple crate and retrieved the bag that Amelia had described. She held it out to Sarah, who took it back through to the kitchen.

  Placing it on the table, she turned the bag over and shook out a small and slightly desiccated green fruit.

  ‘Does this resemble what you cleared from Sir Ainsley’s plate on the morning he was found?’ she asked Meg.

  ‘Aye. Two or three of them, cut into halves.’

  The cook’s eyebrows knitted together, her expression defensive.

  ‘I’ve never seen these before, and I certainly never put such a thing on the master’s supper tray. I set out a slice of pie and some cheese, that’s all. Always food he could eat cold because we never knew what time he would go to bed. Someone would take the tray up and leave it on the table in his room.’

  ‘Who took him the tray that night?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ insisted Meg, looking worried.

  ‘Could have been anybody,’ said the cook. ‘There was extra staff here for the party.’

  ‘What is it anyway?’ Meg asked. She was about to poke it with her finger but changed her mind.

  ‘I have no notion,’ Sarah said. ‘But I know a man who might.’

  FIFTY

  aven walked out of the Maternity Hospital into the late morning sunshine having hauled another reluctant child safely into the world. It was a blessing of the job that he could so lose himself in it and banish all other cares while dealing with the problem before him: ultimately someone else’s problem, for the patient was the one with the disease. However, as soon as each case was over, the immediate issue dealt with, his other problems came flooding back in, as though to fill the space vacated.

  Chief among them, bustling its way to the front and demanding precedence like McLevy at the scene of a crime, was his concern over his mentor’s illness. The professor’s fever showed no signs of abating and before being summoned to the Maternity Hospital, Raven had insisted on a brief examination to try and establish the root of the problem. It did not take long. There was suppuration in the hand as a result of the splinter (long since removed) and an inflamed mass in the corresponding armpit. Raven had prescribed a febrifuge and dressed the hand himself but was worried that this would not be enough. He feared it might be appropriate to call in reinforcements, however much the professor might object.

  At such times it was difficult to separate his perspective as a physician from his perspective as a friend; as a relative even, as he was coming to consider himself a member of the family. Sometimes family members were full of worry despite a physician’s reassurance, and sometimes the physician was full of worry while the family failed to appreciate how dire was the situation their beloved relative faced. Raven’s problem was that right now both the physician and the relative in him were concerned.

  Dr Simpson was not well.

  He was not an old man – forty or thereabouts – but even those who enjoyed robust good health could be quickly felled by disease. Raven had witnessed it often enough to be at least a little apprehensive. Fate could be cruel. Being a person of value was no defence.

  Raven could not bear the thought of losing Dr Simpson now. He had plans to marry and had hoped the Simpson family would remain close, that the professor would still have a role in his life. He wanted his children to know him. The man had given him so much. He had not merely been like a father to him, he had shown Raven how to be a father.

  Perhaps this was how it went when it was time to move on, to set up one’s own practice and start one’s own family. But if this was the cycle of life he heard spoken of, then it seemed an unnecessarily brutal trade. Edinburgh without Simpson seemed inconceivable. He loomed too large in the city’s landscape to even imagine it. But Raven knew that the same had been thought of many men before. Two weeks ago, most people would have found it impossible to imagine a world without Ainsley Douglas.

  Though perhaps there was one person who had been imagining it vividly.

  Was it possible that Sir Ainsley’s death had indeed been parricide, an act of vengeance and a means to rapidly obtain an inheritance? And had he and indeed Sarah been unwittingly instrumental in achieving that? Raven’s elation at Sarah’s findings being corroborated by Christison proved short-lived. The sheen had come off Gideon’s exoneration troublingly quickly.

  Raven was still caught between two visions of Gideon: one mercilessly kicking the man lying on the ground in that alley, and one who was tearful and contrite before him in the jail cell. One who was crushed and broken by the loss of the woman he loved, a lowly housemaid, and one who had barged past Eugenie as though she meant nothing.

  His thoughts turned next to Eugenie. He had worried about her learning of the Bonnington Mill babies and assuming the worst about her own daughter. However, this was still Edinburgh, and she would be protected by its latest self-deception. The word spreading around the city was that the victims were merely the unwanted children of prostitutes. There was some truth to that, but it only formed the basis of a larger, comforting lie for people to tell themselves. It was not your baby parcelled up at the bottom of the river. The respectable woman you had paid all that money to would never have done that, unlike the monster these desperate whores had resorted to.

  But Raven knew there were those who could not lie to themselves, those who knew too much to do so, and one of them was Eugenie’s father. Cameron Todd must have known – or at least been aware of the possibility – that his own granddaughter lay at the bottom of the Water of Leith.

  The thought prompted Raven to wonder what Gideon had spoken to Todd about, grabbing him so hard that he ripped the buttons from his shirt.

  And then he saw it.

  Todd had been Sir Ainsley’s physician. When it emerged that Gideon had got a housemaid pregnant, Todd had proposed a solution. He knew a woman who could deal with it: the one he had paid to take his unwanted granddaughter.

  Sir Ainsley Douglas knew about Simpson’s fostering, but in those cases Mrs Simpson kept the mothers informed of who their children were with and how they were faring. The purpose here was for the child to disappear without trace, and like Todd, Sir Ainsley did not want anybody knowing about his connection to the child. Todd would have functioned as a go-between, a further remove between the Douglas family and the baby-farmer. He was the one who had arranged for Christina to have her confinement with Mrs King, and may even have delivered the child himself.

  Gideon must have deduced this, and now he was searching fo
r his child. Or rather, having learned the grim news from Bonnington Mills, he was searching for whoever was responsible for his child’s death. And he had guessed that Todd knew where she could be found.

  As he reached the top of the High Street, Raven remembered that the funeral was taking place this morning. He checked his watch, wondering if he had missed it. Wondering if Gideon would be there. Curiosity got the better of him and he decided to take a look himself, though only briefly. He knew he had to get back to Queen Street to see if his treatment had had any effect on the professor. It was always possible that things had improved, that his worst fears were unfounded.

  He turned onto George IV Bridge, walking briskly towards the main gate at Greyfriars. As he approached, he passed many people in sombre dress proceeding in the opposite direction. It occurred to Raven to ponder whether Simpson’s failure to attend had been noted in certain quarters. He knew that there were those who would make mischief of this apparent show of disrespect.

  He entered the churchyard unsure which direction he should be heading. The place seemed deserted and he suspected he was too late. He noticed a man emerging from the kirk and asked him if he knew where Sir Ainsley’s final resting place was to be.

  ‘I think most of the mourners have already gone, but if you wish to pay your respects, the grave is up at the far end, beside the Martyrs’ Monument.’

  ‘The Martyr’s Monument?’

  Raven did not know it, even though he had been in this graveyard many times before.

  ‘Yes, down at the end. You can’t miss it.’

  Raven was not so sure. Greyfriars was replete with monuments.

  ‘Which martyr does the monument commemorate?’

  ‘Not one but many. There are about a hundred Covenanters buried there. Or what was left of them.’

  The Covenanters’ Memorial, the one he and Sarah could not find.

  Raven thanked the man and headed off down the pathway he had indicated, now less interested in paying his respects at the graveside than finding the monument they had failed to discover before. Mrs Mackay had not been lying to get rid of them. She said she had cut through the kirkyard on her way to the Grassmarket when she saw Mrs King going into a haberdasher’s.

  He passed what he assumed to be Sir Ainsley’s grave. The last of the mourners had indeed departed, leaving a gaping hole that a pair of gravediggers were preparing to fill. Extravagant floral arrangements surrounded it, infusing the air with the intense fragrance of lilies.

  The monument was at the far end of the graveyard. There was a gate set in the wall to the right of it, steps leading down to the street.

  Raven quickened his stride as though there were hands at his back, then was brought up sharp as he emerged between the gateposts. Directly across the road was a haberdashery. A young woman was arranging a display in the window, laying out spools of coloured thread beside a large drum of dressmaker’s tape. White dressmaker’s tape.

  He looked along the street. Signs hung from above several of the doorways. Engraver. Picture-frame maker. Bookseller.

  Remembering what McLevy had told him, Raven noted that the bookseller’s shop was immediately next to the haberdashery.

  Reckon the perpetrator lifted the paper from a common midden.

  That was when he realised which street he was standing on.

  It was Candlemaker Row.

  FIFTY-ONE

  arah entered through the main gate of the Royal Botanic Garden wondering why she had never thought to visit before. She passed the museum and the classroom, empty during summer months, and made her way to the gardeners’ cottages, hoping to find someone who might point her in the right direction. If time permitted, she planned to visit the area reserved for medicinal plants on her way out.

  She spotted a gardener wheeling a barrow full of manure and asked him where she could find the gentleman she was seeking.

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but I haven’t seen him today.’

  He called out to another fellow who was kneeling beside a flower bed, digging out weeds with a trowel.

  ‘Last saw him up by the Palm House,’ the kneeling man said.

  The man with the barrow indicated a glass dome rising between the trees.

  ‘Old Woody’s pride and joy, that is,’ he said.

  ‘Woody?’

  ‘Woody Fibre. The professor’s nickname. Though I don’t recommend you call him that.’

  Sarah smiled, thanked the man and proceeded towards the Palm House, thinking that she was unlikely to forget herself and use such an informal style of address. The man she hoped to speak to was John Hutton Balfour, Professor of Medicine and Botany at Edinburgh University. She had decided to seek him out having consulted his Manual of Botany and failed to identify the small green fruit that had been found in the pantry at Crossford.

  She knew that she was taking a risk in simply turning up and asking the man himself. Some did not like women asking questions, thinking that scientific curiosity was solely within the male purview.

  She opened the door to the Palm House and was greeted by a gust of hot, humid air, the change in temperature noticeable despite the warmth of the day outside. Sarah stepped across the threshold into another world, somewhere equatorial and exotic, full of strange flora. There was a cloying smell of wet soil and mouldering vegetation. She looked up to the glass panels in the domed roof, condensation clouding the view of the sky beyond. The fronds of an enormous palm tree reached towards the top of it.

  She had nearly made a complete circuit of the building before she found what she was looking for. The man was bent over examining some foliage with a magnifying glass. She watched him for a moment, so intent on what he was doing that he failed to notice her standing there.

  She cleared her throat and he looked up, mildly startled but offering a smile as he noticed it was a lady before him.

  ‘Are you lost?’ he asked.

  ‘Not at all, sir. I was looking for someone to help me identify an unusual specimen.’

  ‘Were you indeed. And are you a student of botany, madam?’

  ‘I have an interest in medicinal plants.’

  ‘A utilitarian phytologist, eh? But there is so much more to the study of plants than that. They are endlessly diverse and fascinating.’

  Sarah smiled, relieved. True enthusiasts were happy to share their knowledge with anyone who expressed an interest, meaning he was unlikely to interpret her questions as impertinent.

  ‘You have something to show me?’ he asked, indicating the small hessian bag that she was carrying.

  She opened the neck of the bag to let him see what lay inside.

  He took it from her, placing it on his palm so that the hessian fell partially away to reveal the item inside. Then for good measure he took a deep sniff.

  ‘Hmm. I think I know what this is. Come with me.’

  Professor Balfour led her through the forest of potted palms to a small office where a desk lay strewn with papers, illustrations, containers and plant pots. He gently moved some papers aside, clearing a space. Opening a drawer, he pulled out a pair of gloves and donned them before gingerly removing the specimen from the bag. He turned it around in his hand, scrutinizing it from every angle.

  ‘I think I am correct in saying that this is the fruit of the manchineel tree. Hippomane mancinella. Native to the West Indies. Looks like a small crab apple but with a sweeter smell. May I ask how you came to be in possession of it?’

  ‘An acquaintance brought it back from his travels to Tobago.’

  ‘Bit of a dangerous souvenir.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Simply standing beneath the manchineel tree during rainfall can cause the skin to blister. The sap itself is corrosive. And as for the fruit, my goodness!’ Professor Balfour grimaced and made play of turning away from what lay in his hand. ‘The name derives from the Spanish for small apple. But the conquistadors had another name for it: manzanilla de la muerte.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I have no Spanish,’
Sarah said.

  Balfour wore an expression of grim delight.

  ‘It means “little apple of death”.’

  FIFTY-TWO

  aven entered the haberdashery, little more than a single room crammed full of a haphazard jumble of contents: bolts of cloth leaning against walls; ribbons and buttons; skeins of yarn. He noticed that amidst all of this was a solitary shelf of finished garments: baby clothes.

  The shopkeeper looked up from the pile of bobbins she had just finished arranging in the window. She seemed a little wary, probably unused to men coming in and inspecting her wares. Raven smiled and removed his hat.

  ‘Is there a woman visits here by the name of Mrs King?’ he asked, getting straight to the point. ‘When last seen she was wearing a blue shawl.’

  The woman laughed. ‘Shops here? She does more than that.’ She indicated the shelf Raven had noticed. ‘Keeps us in baby clothes. Has done for years. A lot of fine garments.’

  ‘Do you know where she lives?’

  ‘Aye. Above the bookshop, door at the side. Took lodgings there recently. She used to live just along the row, then she moved away for a while and now she’s back. Keen on her privacy, though. Doesn’t like visitors.’

  The woman began sorting through a box, pulling out balls of wool and arranging them on the counter.

  ‘You’re the second person asking for her today,’ she added.

  ‘A woman?’ Raven asked, surprised that Mrs King would be continuing in her trade after the discovery at Bonnington.

  ‘A gentleman. Finely dressed and well-spoken. Little good it did him, though. He got short shrift. Wasn’t in there long. Saw him leave like the devil himself was after him.’