A Corruption of Blood

by Ambrose Parry

Wilson shook his head, his tone sincere and imploring.

  ‘That was never her intention. She reasoned it would be impossible to prove that you administered the poison, only that you had motive. A “not proven” verdict would be enough to invoke a corruption of blood. She wanted the inheritance to pass to Matthew. She feared you would squander it.’

  Raven watched Gideon’s hackles rise and felt glad he had control of the pistol. Wilson’s explanation bore a harsh truth, one that was unlikely to ameliorate Gideon’s outrage. But to Raven there remained a deeper question still, concerning the conduct of this man who had been so loyal and dutiful towards Sir Ainsley all his days.

  ‘You conspired with Amelia to murder her own father?’ Raven asked him.

  Wilson looked distraught, a man in need of absolution.

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he insisted.

  Raven gestured idly with the gun, in case the man’s need to confess proved insufficient.

  ‘Then tell us what it was like.’

  Wilson swallowed. ‘On the night of the soirée, Amelia left early, you may remember. But I saw her return. No one else did, because she had dressed herself as a housemaid. She must have passed a dozen people without them giving her a second look, but I have known her since she was a child. I recognised her at first glance.’

  As he spoke, Raven realised that it had been Amelia he saw emerging from the secret passage, the one who had seemed tantalisingly familiar. It was because they had been introduced less than an hour before, when she was dressed very differently. She had turned and scurried away as soon as she saw that the room was occupied. He now knew that it was because Eugenie would have recognised her immediately.

  ‘I had no notion what she was about,’ Wilson went on. ‘People can do queer things at such parties, so I thought no more of it. But the next morning, when the master was found dead and I saw the blood in the bedpan, I knew he had been poisoned, and I knew it had been Amelia. That is why I instructed Meg to clear everything away.’

  It struck Raven that while Wilson’s conclusion was correct, his deduction process was missing a few steps – as was the reason for his subsequent conduct.

  ‘How could you know so instantly that Amelia had done such a terrible thing? And why would you so swiftly act to protect her?’

  Wilson winced. He looked to Raven and then to Gideon.

  ‘Because I failed to protect her before.’

  Gideon’s gaze became more intent, both curious and wary.

  ‘Do you know why your mother died?’ Wilson asked him.

  ‘We were never allowed to know, but I am certain she killed herself.’

  ‘I did not ask how. I asked why.’

  Now Gideon’s face was intent, as rapt as he was anxious.

  Wilson grimaced again, a man reopening a wound.

  ‘After Amelia turned twelve,’ he said, ‘your father began going to her in the night.’

  He let this hang in the air until they perceived its enormity. All that it did not say, and yet all that could be understood from it.

  ‘I witnessed comings and goings. Things I failed to deduce the significance of, or perhaps things I refused to accept the significance of. I told myself it could not be what it appeared, but it was convenient to my cowardice to believe that.’

  ‘Lady Douglas knew too?’ Raven asked.

  ‘One morning I saw her standing over Amelia’s empty bed. There was a smell off the sheets, something unmistakable. A smell of seed. A smell that should not, could not be upon a young girl’s bed.

  ‘I overheard their argument. Sir Ainsley said: “What would you have me do? Would you rather I visited the whores in the town and risk disease?” It was as though to his mind this was a lesser sin.’

  Gideon sat down on the edge of the porch, a defeated look in his eyes as he took this in. It was as though he had been drained of his outrage.

  ‘I was a coward too,’ he stated. ‘I recall seeing my father enter Amelia’s room in the night. I heard strange noises, but I was too young to understand what they meant. And maybe that was true at the time, but I understood later, and I lacked the strength to accept it. I have always been a coward.’

  ‘We were all cowards before him,’ Wilson said. ‘Which is why Amelia had nobody with the courage to protect her. It took Lady Douglas’s death for him to stop. Amelia had far more reason than you to hate your father, and that was before she had to watch you squander all that was given to you and denied to her. Which was why she devised a plan, and once she had a son, eligible to inherit where she was not, she set it in motion.’

  Raven remembered Sarah telling him how Ainsley had called Amelia the apple of his eye. He marvelled at the dark poetry of it. She had avenged herself upon him with the little apple of death.

  ‘You confronted Amelia with what you knew,’ Raven said. ‘That she had killed her father.’

  ‘Yes. My knowledge was too much to bear alone. Too much for her to bear too, for she told me all. She needed someone to understand her, why she had done this.’

  ‘And she promised to reward you for your silence.’

  Wilson nodded. ‘I was to be kept on as butler and given a generous pension when I chose to retire.’

  ‘Did she send you after Sarah, after me?’

  Wilson looked appalled at the suggestion. ‘No! It was I who feared that you would be her undoing. I knew that she had suffered so much, and I wished to see the house thrive under her stewardship. It has sat ill with me down the years and I owed her a debt of protection that I would have gone to any length to redeem. I plead for your forgiveness. I have done terrible things in search of redemption.’

  As he said this last, anguish in the man’s expression, Raven realised that Wilson was not merely talking about Fleshmarket Close, or even his actions here. The woman in the haberdasher’s had described a finely dressed gentleman. Well-spoken. It had not been Gideon.

  But if Wilson’s aim was to protect Amelia, what threat did the baby-farmer pose to her?

  Raven stood over him where he knelt and looked him in the eye.

  ‘Why did you kill Mrs King?’

  The shock of being discovered animated the butler’s face like a flash of lightning, but the moment lasted just as long. Once it had passed, his visage was one of sternest resolve.

  ‘I will take what is due me, but I will say no more. I have told Master Gideon all that he deserves to know. The rest I will take to my grave.’

  FIFTY-NINE

  arah had maintained her vigil at Dr Simpson’s bedside for as long as she could. He was still hot but sleeping peacefully – because he was improving or as a result of the residual effects of the chloroform she did not know. As Mrs Simpson continued her silent prayers for the man she loved, Sarah’s thoughts turned to Raven. She was sure it was Gideon who had taken him. But taken him where? She knew that she had to do something to help him but was toiling to think what that might be. Then she thought about the irony of Syme being called upon in Simpson’s time of need and realised who she ought to turn to for assistance.

  Eugenie.

  Sarah ran the last part of the way, hitching up her skirts and ignoring the bemused looks of those she raced past. She felt guilty, conflicted, as though she was being made to choose between the two men she loved most. But she could not continue to sit by Dr Simpson’s sickbed while Raven was in danger. And yet, what if it was a deathbed rather than a sickbed? She had left him before she could be sure. How would she feel if Dr Simpson succumbed and she was not there? What if she missed her chance to say goodbye?

  She picked up her pace as she reached St Andrew Square. She wondered at her course of action, why she had decided to appeal to Eugenie. Ultimately it came down to the fact that she had no one else. Usually it was Raven she turned to, no matter how pig-headed and annoying he had been.

  It was a warm and bright evening, a surprise after the gloom of the sick room. The Scott Monument looked resplendent against the evening sunshine, Edinburgh oblivious to her des
pair. It looked as though everything was well with the world. Right then, it felt as though nothing was.

  The address was easy to identify, a brass plaque beside the door stating ‘Dr Cameron Todd MD’. Sarah pulled the bell and waited, catching her breath.

  A maid answered, and after she gave her name, led Sarah up to the drawing room. Eugenie stood up as she entered, which was when Sarah observed that she was not alone. Amelia was sitting on a chaise longue beside the window.

  ‘How fortuitous,’ Amelia said. ‘We were just talking about you. What did you discover at Crossford?’

  ‘Crossford?’

  Though she had been there only this morning, it felt like a month ago.

  ‘Yes. I asked you to make further enquiries.’

  Sarah realised that there was a lot of information she had yet to share.

  ‘I found a deadly fruit that I think your brother may have used to poison your father.’

  Amelia shook her head, a look of grim satisfaction on her face.

  ‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘I understand his nature too well.’

  ‘I am here because I believe Gideon knows he is discovered and has taken dire action. Our coach driver was attacked, and Raven driven off to who knows where.’

  Eugenie looked horrified. ‘Will is in danger?’

  ‘I need to know where Gideon might be,’ Sarah said. ‘Where Raven could have been taken.’

  Eugenie’s face became unexpectedly thunderous. ‘Come with me!’

  She took Sarah by the arm and led her out of the room while Amelia remained seated, wearing a concerned expression, as though unsure what she should do.

  Sarah followed Eugenie down a long corridor towards a room at the back of the house.

  ‘It is time my father spoke honestly of what he knows,’ Eugenie said as they went. ‘I am tired of his evasions, his lies.’

  Eugenie barrelled through the door into what appeared to be her father’s study. Dr Todd was seated in an armchair reading a book. On the floor in front of him, lying naked on a blanket, was young Matthew. Freed from his habitual bindings, he was kicking his little legs in the air and gurgling softly to himself.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Eugenie asked, taking in the scene.

  ‘This child requires no medical attention from me apart from releasing him from the excess clothing and tight swaddling that Amelia insists upon employing,’ Dr Todd replied quietly. ‘She has him wrapped like an Egyptian mummy. I have told her many times that it is not only unnecessary but possibly harmful. Much like you young women and your insistence on restrictive corsetry. Impedes the action of the ribcage and impairs the function of the lungs. Anyway, why the interruption?’

  He looked past her, suddenly anxious that perhaps Amelia might be hovering in the doorway ready to pounce. Sarah wondered at the man. An eminent and respected physician hiding what he was doing from his patient. It made her wonder what other secrets he might be party to, what he might have done to avoid confrontation with his most wealthy patron.

  Eugenie gazed down at the child, frowning.

  ‘What is that?’ she asked.

  Dr Todd looked at what she was pointing to.

  ‘It is a congenital naevus.’

  ‘How long has it been there?’

  He scoffed at her. ‘Congenital means that he was born with it. From the Latin congenitus meaning “generated together”.’

  ‘How can it be a birthmark? I have not seen it before.’

  ‘You mean you did not notice it,’ Todd said, happy to dismiss his daughter’s doubts.

  ‘I have seen this child naked before,’ Eugenie insisted, ‘and I assure you he did not have a birthmark.’

  ‘But Christina’s baby did,’ Sarah said.

  Sarah approached the child as Todd made a move to cover him up. He was not quick enough. Sarah had seen all that she needed to: an oval birthmark on the child’s upper left arm, just as Christina had described.

  Eugenie looked confused but Sarah was beginning to see things clearly.

  ‘Matthew died, didn’t he?’

  She addressed this question to Dr Todd but did not wait for an answer.

  ‘That is why the nanny was dismissed,’ she continued. ‘So that a substitution could be made. So that Matthew could be replaced.’

  It was as though, after many attempts, the correct key had been placed in a lock, all of the tumblers falling into place.

  ‘That is preposterous,’ Dr Todd replied, his tone suffused with condescension. If it was an attempt to disarm her, it did not have the intended effect.

  ‘You knew, and perhaps Amelia did too, that her brother’s son had been given away to the self-same woman you had previous dealings with. You, Dr Todd, were the linchpin in the whole scheme.’

  Todd looked from one to the other, assessing his options – continue to lie or tell the truth. He narrowed his eyes at Sarah, trying to work out how much more she knew, how certain she was about what she had just said.

  She held his gaze. She did not look away. She did not blink.

  Todd sighed with resignation, casting another wary glance towards the door before he spoke.

  ‘I was called to the house the night Matthew died. I arrived in time to witness his final throes. It was a pitiful sight. Amelia was distraught. She had just lost her husband and now she had lost her son. She made a request that I could not refuse.’

  He spoke as if what he had done was the most natural thing in the world, something entirely reasonable. Passing off one child as another.

  ‘She knew I had been instrumental in dealing with the problem of Gideon’s housemaid. Though Amelia no longer lived at Crossford, Wilson kept her informed of what went on there. Through him, she knew that the girl had given birth to a son, and that he was being kept by a woman, for payment.’

  Sarah had to bite her tongue. She had no wish to interrupt his confession but his manner of referring to Christina as Gideon’s housemaid – as though she were a mere bit player in the whole thing – was infuriating.

  ‘Amelia asked me to procure the child,’ Todd continued. ‘She considered it fitting that she should replace the son she had lost with one from the same bloodline. One unwanted, undeserved by her brother. Thrown away like he had thrown away so many other gifts.’

  But Sarah saw that there was more to it than that: so much more than the consolation of a bereaved mother. Sarah now understood what should have been plain to her and to Raven had they not been following the misleading trail of breadcrumbs Amelia had laid.

  Amelia had another reason she could not do without her son.

  Without a son.

  She needed a male heir for her plan. Christina’s child was around the same age, and even bore the family resemblance. Only the nanny would know the difference.

  Everything had been given to Gideon and nothing to her. But if Gideon were to be blamed for their father’s death, the entire Douglas fortune would pass to her son, and control of it to her until he reached maturity. Talk of renouncing the inheritance was a ruse, designed to disguise her true intentions.

  When Matthew had died, it had thrown her plans into disarray. But what better way to rectify things than to replace her own son with Gideon’s unwanted offspring? There was a sense of natural justice to it, if not for the fact that someone had to die, and her brother blamed.

  Just then Amelia appeared in the doorway, immediately sensing from the silence that something was amiss. She spotted the child still naked on the rug.

  ‘What on earth is going on,’ she asked.

  She strode across to pick the child up, looking about the room for his clothes.

  ‘Dr Todd, have you taken leave of your senses? If Matthew takes a chill . . .’

  She began to dress him.

  It was Sarah who spoke first.

  ‘She named him Jamie.’

  Amelia stopped what she was doing and glanced at Sarah.

  ‘Christina, the housemaid at Crossford, now at 52 Queen Street. Gideon’s lover.
She named the child you are holding Jamie.’

  Amelia’s self-possession deserted her. She seemed suddenly panic-stricken. She clutched the half-dressed child to her bosom.

  Sarah was aware she could prove nothing, but Amelia did not know that and she was getting better at bluffing.

  ‘I know what you have done,’ she said. ‘But what concerns me right now is who else is involved, and where they have taken Raven. If you do not speak up and any harm befalls him, you will be answerable to me.’

  Eugenie moved to stand alongside Sarah, her face hard-set, sternly resolute.

  ‘And to me,’ she said. ‘What is going on? Where is he?’

  Todd let out a laugh, a sudden bark that seemed entirely in-appropriate to the circumstances. Then Sarah noticed his expression of relief as he pointed out of the window to the square below.

  ‘You may set your minds to rest on that score. Dr Raven is alighting from a carriage outside as we speak.’

  If his words seemed to comfort his daughter, his next statement had the opposite effect upon Amelia.

  ‘And so is Gideon.’

  SIXTY

  ’m sorry, but the professor is not at home.’

  The words fell hard on Raven as he stood on the doorstep at Millbank, calculating how much time had already been lost.

  ‘Do you know where I might find him? He is needed urgently by Professor Simpson.’

  The housemaid looked confused. ‘He already attends Professor Simpson. There was a lady came by earlier to request him. A Miss Fisher?’

  Raven felt the relief flood through him. Sarah had been alerted that something was amiss. Simpson was in the best hands now.

  He walked quickly back to the brougham, impatient to reach Queen Street. He would not rest easy until he saw how the professor fared.

  Wilson was at the reins, a faraway look in his eyes, perhaps contemplating what he had done and what might lie in his future. That, like so much else, was yet to be decided. Every time Raven looked at the man he felt the tingle of the stitches in his arm, but he found it difficult to summon much anger. There was no question who the true villain of this piece had been. It was nobody present here, nor Amelia, and nor even Mrs King.