The Way of All Flesh

by Ambrose Parry

  Mrs Lyndsay prodded Sarah in the chest with the spoon, lifting her chin with it so that she met her eye.

  ‘Selling themselves: that’s how they ended up. Didn’t know they had a good life until it was gone, same as will happen to that one who ran off from the Sheldrake house. I wouldn’t want that happening to you. Is this not a good house to work in?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Are you not grateful for your position here?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Then remember that, for you are on your final warning. Keep your head down and think only of your duties, nothing else. Otherwise you will have no duties to keep you under this roof.’

  Twenty-One

  Nobody knew her name.

  This was the third tavern Raven had visited in Leith, insinuating himself into company and conversation so that he might turn the subject to the young woman whose body he so briefly glimpsed on the quayside. A few people had heard about the discovery, but that was as far as it went.

  He thought of James Duncan, so quick to state his ambitions when he sensed a rival in Beattie. It was in the gift of caprice to decide whom history would remember, but it struck Raven as a particularly sad fate to die unknown, nobody to miss you, to remember you.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I did hear,’ said a ruddy-faced docker with salt-blasted skin and the roughest hands Raven had ever seen. ‘That she was twisted up and tied in knots.’

  Raven was in an ancient establishment called the King’s Wark, close to where the girl had been recovered the day before, and was seated at the gantry, where he thought himself best positioned to pick up on what was being said. The landlord had noticed this and regarded him with a modicum of suspicion, but as long as he was buying ale, Raven knew he would be tolerated.

  Raven had not learned what he came for, but he was enjoying the opportunity to sit in a tavern without fear of who he might run into, emboldened by the promise of Beattie’s paying work. If he encountered the Weasel, he would be able to tell him that his debt would be redeemed very soon, but only if he remained corporeally intact to carry out work for which he would be handsomely rewarded. His men might be vicious, but Raven was confident that a man such as Flint would not wish to dole out punishment that reduced his chances of being paid.

  ‘That’s the devil’s work,’ said another, a wiry fellow with eyes so narrow it was a wonder he could see out of them.

  ‘A bad business, for sure,’ said the docker.

  ‘No, I mean the work of Satan and his worshippers. That’s a sign of possession, when a body is all twisted like that.’

  ‘Or a seizure,’ Raven suggested.

  ‘If that were the case, the body would straighten again in the water,’ Gimlet-eyes insisted, which Raven would have to concede was a fair point. He didn’t know how long she had been floating. ‘She was bewitched, I’m telling you. Could be she flung herself to her death because it was the only way to be rid of the demon inside her.’

  ‘There are Satanists abroad,’ another man agreed, nodding sagely as though no reasonable fellow might dispute it. ‘I’ve heard they gather on Calton Hill.’

  ‘There’s no end of strange and godless types come off the ships down here,’ the docker said. ‘From all manner of dark and far-flung lands.’

  ‘There are devils enough come over from Ireland,’ another drinker averred, drawing murmurs of agreement from all around. ‘Glasgow is over-run with them, and soon Edinburgh will be too.’

  ‘They eat their babies,’ said a yellow-skinned old goat, clinging on to a table as though he would otherwise be spun off. ‘So who knows what other abominations they commit.’

  ‘Aye, when Ireland sends its people, they’re not sending their best.’

  ‘There was a bairn’s leg found in a gutter last week.’

  ‘The savage Erse bastards.’

  ‘I don’t imagine an Irishman was responsible for that,’ Raven argued.

  ‘And why not?’ demanded Yellow Skin.

  ‘Well, if what you say is true, he would hardly waste good eating.’

  This drew a gale of laughter, but Raven knew there was nothing to be learned from this gathering. He took in the room to estimate whether anyone else might be worth talking to. This was when he appreciated how profoundly his medical studies had changed him. No longer could he enter a place without assessing the pathology presented there, of which there was usually a plentiful supply. The wheezily obese barmaid currently pouring whisky at the end of the gantry sported a sizable goitre; a fellow headed for the door was demonstrating the wide-based, stamping gait of tabes dorsalis, an advanced stage of syphilis; and a man in the corner was exhibiting great difficulty in getting his glass to his mouth without considerable spillage as a result of a shaking palsy. It seemed that once such knowledge had been acquired there was no respite from it.

  A sudden shout from the corner of the room caused Raven to look up just as a tankard sailed over his head and hit the soot-blackened wall behind him. A scuffle broke out but the combatants were too far gone to land many punches on one another. The landlord ejected the pair without difficulty. He was a tall, muscular specimen with a domed, bald head, no hair upon his brow either. Upon disposing of his unruly customers, he bent down to retrieve the discarded tankard, which had landed close to Raven’s feet.

  ‘You’re not from round here, are you,’ he said, a statement rather than an enquiry. Evidently Raven’s scar did not have the same impact upon everybody.

  ‘No, I live in the town.’

  ‘I heard you talking about that lassie they found. How come you know about that?’

  There was an unmistakable note of suspicion in his voice.

  ‘I happened to be passing yesterday when she was laid out on the quayside. Did you see it?’

  ‘Too busy in here. I’ve heard all the blethers, though. Eejits. If you ask me, she probably fell from a ship – or was tossed from it. In which case the poor soul could have come from anywhere.’

  ‘From her clothes, she didn’t look at all far-travelled. Too pale of skin also.’

  The landlord trained a scrutinising gaze upon him. Raven guessed that in his line of work he was an accomplished reader of men, and wondered what he saw in the one before him. Someone out of his element, for sure, and quite possibly out of his depth. But maybe, if he could truly peer beneath the surface, he saw something darker.

  ‘So what do you reckon happened to her?’ the landlord asked.

  ‘I have a medical background,’ Raven said, by way of establishing some measure of credentials. ‘I have a suspicion she may have been poisoned before she went into the water.’

  ‘Why would someone poison her and then throw her into the drink? Surely the villain who murders with poison wishes to disguise his intentions, so that it may look like she died in her sleep?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Raven conceded. ‘Maybe it didn’t work as swiftly as intended. It makes more sense than the notion that it was the work of Satan.’

  ‘Don’t you believe in the devil?’ the landlord asked, his countenance darkening. ‘You would if you lived round here.’

  Raven didn’t answer. He looked down into the last of his drink. He heard his mother’s voice. You’ve the devil in you. Said in humour, said in reproach.

  Many was the time Raven had witnessed demons seize a man and transform him. They had seized him too, as Henry could attest. It usually began with a mischievous tongue when he knew the wiser path lay in remaining circumspect. But he chose the reckless path because something in him sought ‘mayhem’, as Henry described it: inner torments demanding their external manifestation.

  And then there was the night that Thomas Cunningham died.

  Raven was condemned for ever to see himself standing over the body of the man he had just killed, while his wife cowered on the floor beside him, weeping.

  Yes, he believed in the devil.

  Raven felt altogether less emboldened about who he might encounter as he made his way hom
e in the blackness of the night. His eyes searched beyond the shallow pools of light beneath the lamps, probing into the shadows for shapes and movement that might signal danger.

  He made it past Great Junction Street without having to negotiate anything more hazardous than a few drunks and beggars, but as he began his ascent towards the town, he soon became convinced there were footsteps behind him. When he stopped so did they. And when he turned, there was nobody to be seen.

  He felt reassured when a coach passed upon the road, for it meant potential witnesses and people he could call out to for help. But when the clip of hooves faded, he was even more conscious of his isolation. There was greater light where buildings stood, particularly at the junctions, but between these were stretches of foreboding gloom, hedgerows bordering fields shrouded in utter blackness. If he wished to do a man harm unseen by any witness, this would be where to strike.

  He hurried his pace towards Pilrig Street. Still he heard the footsteps, and again they stopped when he did. He glanced back, and this time spied a darting movement on the edge of the light.

  He was not deluding himself. He truly was being followed.

  Should he run? He thought of how he had been blindsided by Gargantua when his attention was fixed upon the Weasel. He had no way of knowing what he might be running into.

  Raven slowed beneath the lamps where Pilrig Street met Leith Walk. Buildings stood upon each corner of the crossroads, gaslight and shadows flickering behind the windows. There was comparative safety here, but Raven could hardly loiter all night. He looked at the climb still ahead, the New Town a dim glow in the distance. That was when he realised that the darkness was his ally.

  He passed into the space between two lamps, softening his tread. Then he veered sharply from the path and hopped over a hedgerow, where he concealed himself behind the dual trunks of a great tree in the field beyond. There he waited, drawing shallow breaths and listening for his pursuer. Sure enough, he soon heard footsteps, quickening presumably for fear that they had lost their quarry.

  Raven watched him pass beneath the next lamp, approaching Haddington Place. With his back to Raven there was no way to see his face, not that he would have been able to see much at this distance. However, even in the gloom he could make out a domed, bald head atop a tall, powerful frame.

  It was the landlord from the King’s Wark.

  Twenty-Two

  Raven shifted in his seat, putting down his finished cup of tea upon the silver tray with a loud finality that he hoped would be the cue to move things along. Beattie did not seem to notice, but his patient started a little at the sound, and from that Raven suspected she was as nervous about the planned procedure’s commencement as he was about further procrastination. Only Beattie seemed relaxed, though on this occasion his confident manner was not proving as infectious as usual.

  They sat in a drawing room on Danube Street. It was Raven’s first venture behind the grand doors of the New Town in any kind of a professional capacity. Everywhere wealth was ostentatiously displayed. A gilt-edged mirror spanned the width of the fireplace, emphasising the height of the ceiling, while vast landscape paintings lined the walls. From the ceiling hung two matching glass chandeliers, each large enough to kill a man should they fall, and Raven gauged that if the furniture was pushed back there would be enough room to perform an eightsome reel.

  Raven told himself he was anxious to get started, but in truth he was just anxious. This in itself was annoying him, as such anxiety was needless. He had administered ether at least a dozen times now, with no ill effects, and though Henry’s report of a death in England preyed on his mind, Simpson was adamant that the case had been mismanaged and the agent itself was safe.

  Nonetheless, a nagging voice kept asking why, if there was no risk attached, he had not told Simpson he was doing this. The stark answer was that he needed the money more than he needed the professor’s permission. Perhaps if there had been a salary attached to his position he might have felt differently, but right now he feared Flint’s ire more than that of his employer.

  The maid who answered the door to them had given Raven a disdainful look when she saw him. He had felt the sting of the slight, thinking that his problems with housemaids were becoming more general – did they communicate with each other? Was Sarah part of a coven of like-minded insurgents? – until he remembered that his face was still conspicuously bruised. The swelling had gone and his features had regained their usual symmetry but the purple on his cheek had transmuted into an array of yellow, green and brown which he had to admit was far from attractive. His nascent beard could only be expected to cover so much.

  Beattie greeted the mistress of the house, Mrs Caroline Graseby, with an easy familiarity more akin to friend than physician and Raven wondered how long he had known her. She gazed upon the man as though eager for his approval, which seemed odd for a woman of her stature and wealth.

  Raven had heard Mina talk about how certain women would fuss over Simpson, hungry for his attention. Beattie could not boast Simpson’s accomplishments, but given his fine dress and youthful countenance, it was possible to imagine rich and bored ladies manufacturing complaints in order that he might minister to them – with their husbands footing the bill.

  Beattie had warned Raven that she was extremely nervous about medical matters, and to this end asked him to call him only by his first name. ‘A certain informality puts her at ease, as would the avoidance of the word “doctor”.’

  They had all sat down and taken tea together, which Raven thought an odd prelude to any form of surgical procedure. Mrs Graseby sat by the fire sipping her Darjeeling. Beattie, Raven noticed, sat in close proximity to his patient and touched her hand frequently when speaking. He enquired after her health and made conversation about the weather and acquaintances they had in common. She did not address him as Dr Beattie, rather as ‘Johnnie’, which sounded not merely informal but a pet name. Given the nature of what Beattie was about to do, Raven wondered how this sat with the professional detachment Beattie had previously espoused. Perhaps how Beattie behaved and what he genuinely felt were two different matters; certainly there was little doubt the man knew how to present a version of himself appropriate to the company before him.

  Raven was beginning to wonder whether this visit would turn out to be a mere prelude to carrying out the procedure at a later date, when Beattie put down his cup and declared: ‘I think we had best be about our business.’

  At this point Mrs Graseby visibly paled and dabbed her lips repeatedly with her handkerchief. ‘I suppose we must,’ she said, rising from her chair. She looked to Raven with apprehension, as though he might step in and call a halt. ‘The room has been prepared,’ she added quietly.

  She led them from the drawing room towards the back of the house, past a portrait of an austere-looking individual with an ostentatious moustache. She noticed Raven studying it.

  ‘My husband,’ she said. Raven had assumed it was her father, given their respective ages.

  They entered a smaller chamber at the back of the house which appeared to have been cleared of all furniture with the exception of a daybed and a small side table. Beattie asked for a larger one to be brought in so that he could lay out his instruments, and there ensued a degree of fuss as a servant searched upstairs for a table of suitable size before manoeuvring it into the room.

  Raven was still unclear as to the precise nature of the procedure that Beattie intended to perform, and had initially been told little about the patient herself apart from the fact that she was young and in good health. He had pressed Beattie for more details as they made their way to the house, but the only thing he had been forthcoming about was the reason for his reticence.

  ‘If this procedure is successful – and I have every confidence that it will be – then there will be demand for it, and I will only profit fully from my innovation if I am the sole doctor who can offer it.’

  ‘I am not going to be able to replicate your technique if I can�
�t see it,’ Raven had argued. ‘All my business is at the other end, so you could at least tell me the generalities of what you are attempting.’

  ‘A fair point,’ he conceded with a sigh. ‘I will be performing a manipulation to correct a retroverted uterus, which I have assured Mrs Graseby will increase her chances of conception. Her husband is keen for a son and heir, and is frankly becoming impatient with what he considers a failing on his wife’s part.’

  ‘And will Mr Graseby be present?’ Raven had asked, thinking he could do without the pressure.

  ‘Gods, no. He is overseas. America, I think.’

  Raven watched as Beattie laid out a selection of probes and a uterine sound. How this manipulation was supposed to assist with conception he wasn’t entirely sure, but whatever was intended did not seem unduly complicated and was therefore likely to be achieved quickly.

  Raven removed a bottle of ether and a sponge from his bag, Simpson’s voice sounding in his head as he did so. The only difference between a medicine and a poison is the dosage.

  Mrs Graseby lay down on the daybed and placed her handkerchief across her eyes. Her respiration was shallow and rapid and Raven could see small beads of perspiration on her top lip. He realised, perhaps a little belatedly, that she was unlike anyone he had anaesthetised before. For one thing, she had not been in labour for several hours and she was considerably more nervous than her predecessors. In many cases they had been so desperate for oblivion that they had forcibly pulled Raven’s hand towards their own faces. Mrs Graseby, by contrast, initially turned away as the sponge was brought near, whimpering into her pillow.

  ‘Now, Caroline,’ Beattie said in a firm tone. ‘You know this must be done.’

  Mrs Graseby swallowed then nodded. She took a couple of breaths of the ether but then attempted to move Raven’s hand away. Speaking to her in a calm tone, as he had seen Simpson do, he brought the sponge in closer to her nose and mouth, and within a few minutes she appeared to succumb.