The Way of All Flesh
Page 34
‘I also have the wit to know that a preening onanist who regards himself a god does not gladly wait upon a housemaid,’ she said.
As these words met Beattie’s ears, the poker whipped through the air again, this time connecting with his skull.
Sixty
It was tea that proved her salvation.
This most mundane of tasks had insultingly come to define her everyday life: an endless ritual of making and serving hot refreshments, but loath as Sarah might be to admit it, it had also saved her life.
Miss Fisher, I owe you an apology.
Beattie’s manner had changed so suddenly. His look of gathering anger had vanished in an instant, replaced by a solicitude that was supposed to reassure her, but which in fact provoked an impulse to flee. She felt an acute sense of impending peril, an instinct of fear more profound than she had ever known.
She might have dismissed this as merely an accumulation of her anxiety in confronting Beattie about his lies, but that he meant her harm was in no doubt when a moment later he offered to make her tea. A man of his character did not make tea for anyone, least of all a housemaid.
In that moment Sarah understood that he meant to poison her, and from such a horrific realisation she began to understand far more than that. But to be absolutely sure, she offered to join him in the kitchen. She knew not to push the issue, for if she did not make it easy for him to carry out his plan, he would surely improvise another.
Though her instinct was to run, she feared she would be caught, and at that point her only advantage would be gone: that he did not realise she knew what he was about. Had he locked the front door? She could not remember. Even if it was open, he would be faster, and he would certainly be more powerful. She would have to choose her moment, when he believed he had already dealt with her.
While Beattie busied himself preparing her death, she seized the opportunity to search his study. Something unsettled her about his anatomy specimens, but the thing that most set her mind racing was the sight of the black gloves. It all fell into place when she saw those. She knew who had been wearing them and why. She knew that Beattie was Madame Anchou.
He brought the tea in already poured, which was quite wrong. This was because there was something slipped into one of the cups: cups that did not match – also quite wrong – so that he knew which one to offer her, and also an insurance against her having guessed his intention and swapping them around amidst distraction.
Steeling herself to hide her fear, she had asked him for a biscuit. As soon as he left the room, she emptied her tea into an earthenware vase, replenishing it from the pot before Beattie returned.
His conduct had been utterly transparent after that. He was stalling for time, avoiding giving anything away until he was certain of her fate. As anticipated, his manner changed again as soon as she had drained her cup.
After that, it was a question of choosing her moment to feign the effects. To assist with this, she had to know what he thought he had given her.
She clutched her stomach in reflexive response. ‘Strychnine?’
Beattie wore a patronising smile. ‘Yes, I gather you have been reading Christison. Not, I imagine, that you have understood much of it, but be reassured that no, I have not used nux vomica. It is my intention to dissect you, and I don’t wish to have to wait so long for the rigid contortions to loosen. No, I have given you prussic acid. It is a narcotic poison, swift and painless. Believe me, I would have done the same for Rose had it been to hand. I do not believe in unnecessary cruelty, Miss Fisher. I am not a monster.’
Prussic acid. She knew it from her reading. Symptoms commenced within two minutes and it caused death within ten. She also knew that unlike strychnine, prussic acid was detectable after death, but this would be of significance only if a body was found.
Sarah looked at the jars and understood Beattie’s full intentions.
Her legs had gone from under her shortly after that. She fell to the floor, breathing slowly at first, then gasping deeply for a while before lying absolutely still. Beattie did not check her pulse, which would have easily betrayed her, for it was pounding. He seemed absolutely confident about the poison, which made her wonder whether it wasn’t the first time he had done this.
Shortly after, she heard the back door open followed by footsteps from the kitchen. She dared open her eyes just a little, and almost cried out in warning to whoever approached when she saw Beattie swing back with a wooden stave, but it was already too late. She would only get one chance to act, and she had to make it count.
Sarah untied Raven and together they fastened the twine around Beattie, who was beginning to rouse. He and Raven were both bleeding, but her healing instinct only applied to one of them. In the case of Beattie, she merely wished she had hit him more than twice.
From outside, she heard the sound of horseshoes on cobbles.
‘Simpson,’ said Raven.
So he had not been lying in desperation when he told Beattie he had left word for the professor to come here.
Dr Simpson swept in through the front door. His expression of irritation and curiosity turned to one of confusion and dismay as he took in the scene that greeted him: his housemaid in another man’s home after dark, his apprentice bruised and bleeding, and both of them standing over the trussed-up figure of his sister-in-law’s betrothed.
‘I have one or two wee questions, laddie,’ he said quietly.
Raven told Simpson all.
Sarah had seldom seen the professor angry. It was a slow process, like clouds rolling over the Pentlands, thickening and darkening, gradually portending the storm to come. He looked down with fury and disgust upon Beattie, who was in turn eyeing the group standing over him with a calm that unnerved Sarah.
‘Where is McLevy?’ Raven asked.
‘He went away as soon as we returned and found my brougham back in its right place. I offered him a drink for his trouble, but he had a matter to return to. I entered the house to find Jarvis beside himself, and that is not a sight one sees every day.’
‘We must fetch him back again,’ Raven insisted. ‘Tell him what has transpired. And then this diabolical specimen will surely hang.’
Beattie snorted. ‘This gentleman and physician surely will not,’ he said, an arrogant confidence about him despite his predicament. ‘For you have proof of nothing. What can you present? A robe that you claim I wore in order to disguise myself as a French midwife? How preposterous do you think that will sound?’
‘You murdered Spiers and Rose Campbell,’ Raven retorted. ‘You dealt in poison. You killed we know not how many women.’
Beattie shrugged, as though this were all a trying inconvenience for him. ‘Again, you have no proof.’
Sarah wanted to hit him with the poker again, but there was something worse than his manner. He might be right. Strychnine could not be tested for. It left no detectable trace. There was no evidence Beattie carried out the fatal abortions, as the only witnesses were dead, and those who survived would not come forward to admit their own crimes.
‘We will search this place and find your pills,’ Raven told him.
‘And how would you prove my intention in concocting them was other than noble? How would you even prove what the pills might do? Or perhaps you could volunteer to take one in court, Mr Raven, in order to demonstrate your hypothesis. That is a trial I would be happy to attend.’
Sarah felt like the solid ground beneath her was turning into mud. Raven sensed it too. They both looked to the professor, who always had wisdom, always had answers.
Dr Simpson led them from the study and into the hall, away from where Beattie might hear.
‘This is unthinkable,’ Raven said. ‘Surely he will not walk away from this, and escape justice as he describes?’
‘I cannot say for sure,’ the professor replied. ‘It is the case that what you know and what you can prove are often two entirely different matters, and the court of law can be a harsh place to see that difference d
emonstrated. But there is another consideration.’
Sarah noted the unusually troubled expression upon Dr Simpson’s features, and she guessed what it was before he could voice it himself.
‘Such a trial would crush Miss Grindlay,’ she said.
‘Indeed, Sarah. Imagine Mina’s anguish should all of this be made a public spectacle. Not merely for the world to know how she was used and deceived, but to think that she set her heart at this vile creature.’
Raven looked withered and pale in his incredulity, as though the last of his hope was draining from him.
‘You cannot be suggesting we ignore what we know simply in order to spare Mina.’
‘I could not spare Mina such hurt were it to stand in the way of justice, but nor would I put her through it when the risk is that a murderer will walk free at the end of it anyway. But you are right: we cannot ignore what we know, for a man such as Beattie will surely repeat his crimes. That would be, as you say, unthinkable.’
‘So what should we do?’
The professor looked at the wretched figure lying upon the floor of the study, gazing at him a long time. He then glanced at the array of jars, containing so many specimens of untold provenance. There was a look of resolve upon his face, an expression of stony determination.
‘The course we must take is also unthinkable,’ he said. ‘And as such its sin will bind we three, a burden we each will have to carry for the rest of our days. Nonetheless, this duty has fallen to us and we are left with no other choice.’
Dr Simpson put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder, his voice low. ‘Go to the carriage,’ he instructed. ‘Fetch me my bag. Raven, you will help me carry him to the cellar.’
Sixty-One
No human being ever comes into the world but another human being is literally stretched on the rack for hours or days.’ These words of John Stuart Mill came to Raven’s mind as he toiled in a cramped attic above the Lawnmarket. He was no great reader of philosophical tracts, not having the time, so presumably he had heard the quote cited by the professor, or by one of the visiting dignitaries at Queen Street. Raven might be sweating from his efforts, though the room was cold, but he knew the woman lying before him had already given so much more before he arrived to assist.
His perspiration was not entirely down to his physical exertions, but as much from his anxiety that there should be no mishap. Simpson had entrusted him to deal with the case on his own, not deeming it sufficiently challenging to haul himself away from a particularly busy morning clinic. Raven was dispatched in his stead, having been told: ‘You felt able enough to administer ether unsupervised.’ How typical of Simpson that his words should be simultaneously a reassurance and an admonishment.
Raven pulled down hard on the forceps as the uterus contracted again. He almost laughed with relief as he felt movement of the infant’s head in response to his efforts, while before him the patient slept on despite his less than tender manipulations. In addition to relieving her pain, which had been considerable, the chloroform had worked its usual magic in relaxing the maternal passages, allowing Raven to apply the forceps blades with ease. The insensibility of the patient also allowed him to dispense with the modesty blanket that pointlessly impeded his view. Draping such a thing was akin to asking a surgeon to operate in the dark. He wondered what Syme would make of such a request.
Another contraction and the head emerged, followed by the trunk and possibly a gallon of amniotic fluid, which rapidly filled his shoes. Raven cared not at all, as he had just performed his first forceps delivery – with a pair of Simpson’s forceps, of course – and it appeared as though both mother and child were going to survive it.
‘A wee lassie,’ the mother said upon waking shortly after, tearful in her gratitude as the baby was placed in her waiting arms. ‘Dear heavens, you’re so bonny,’ she told her daughter.
A little later, having packed away his instruments, Raven bade his patient farewell and made for the door, his feet squelching quietly in his sodden shoes. His exit was impeded by the arrival of the patient’s husband, who shook Raven’s hand vigorously before reaching into his pocket.
Raven’s financial situation had improved of late, sufficient that he would not need to borrow from his mother for a while, and therefore she would not need to humble herself before his miserable uncle. In order to conceal what they had done with John Beattie, it had been necessary to give the impression that he had fled his home. This they had achieved by packing up certain of his clothes and belongings in a trunk and quietly disposing of them. Though he did not say as much to Simpson, Raven had privately decided that it would create a more convincing picture if it appeared such a fugitive had not left any cash behind.
It was just a pity this windfall had not come a day sooner, as he could have comfortably paid off Flint even after giving half to Sarah. Flint had, of course, forgiven Raven’s debt, but he feared the new terms he was on with the man might prove far more onerous in the long run.
The smiling new father pressed a clutch of coins into his palm. It was the first money he had earned as a medical practitioner, and he thought with some pride that he had earned it well.
Raven looked around the attic room in which he had spent the last couple of hours – a few bits of furniture, no coal for the fire – and came to a remarkably easy decision, one that would have been unthinkable a few weeks before.
‘Naw, naw,’ he said. ‘Away with ye.’
Sixty-Two
Sarah was tarrying in the professor’s study when the bell rang, an unwelcome but inevitable interruption to a moment of tranquillity. It reverberated all the louder because the house was unusually quiet, the insistent peals rattling back and forth off the walls of empty hallways. The morning clinic was over, all of the visitors dispatched with poultices and prescriptions. Dr Simpson was on his way to Musselburgh to see a patient, Raven was out on a house call, Mrs Simpson had taken the children to visit a friend in Trinity, and of course Miss Grindlay remained confined in her room.
Poor Mina had not emerged in days. She was distraught and inconsolable over the news that her intended husband had absconded, having been unmasked as a fraud. She was told that he lied about his uncle and the fine house in Canaan Lands, that his intentions towards her were insincere and that his name was probably not even John Beattie.
‘We may never know who he truly was,’ Dr Simpson had informed his weeping sister-in-law, but it was the knowledge of what he truly was that she had to be protected from. Sarah did not like to think what it would do to Mina if she were to learn this, and still less what had really happened to him at the hands of three people who lived with her under the same roof.
The bell sounded a second time. Sarah sighed and was about to head for the door when she remembered that she didn’t have to respond. Though she knew Jarvis was out on an errand, the new girl had started yesterday, so she could let her jump to it instead.
With a smile she resumed the task of restocking the medicine cabinet, arranging the bottles in neat rows, labels to the front. She took a satisfaction from their careful organisation and from her understanding of their names, regarding the medicines as tokens of her new responsibilities.
Dr Simpson had taken on a second housemaid in order to free more of Sarah’s time for assisting with clinics and other related matters. This had come about as a result of her informing the professor that she intended to hand in her notice so that she might seek her living as a nurse at the Royal Infirmary.
‘Why ever would you want to do that, Sarah?’ he asked, looking not merely surprised but, she would have to admit, a little hurt.
‘Through my duties here, I have felt privileged to assist in the care of patients and would prefer a position that allowed me to dedicate more of my time to that.’
‘That strikes me as a terrible waste. As a nurse at the Infirmary, you will spend most of your time washing floors and emptying bedpans. A bright girl like you will learn a great deal more if you simply remain here.’
Passion drove her words, but she feared she had been injudicious in venting her frustrations to Dr Simpson in such an unguarded manner. The professor had merely nodded, however.
‘It may not always be thus,’ he said softly. ‘And if things are ever to be different, it will take women like you to change them.’
Sixty-Three
He feels the lurching again as he lies in the dark, a sensation he cannot make sense of. It is dizziness, perhaps, like when he has drunk too much wine. There are cries from without, shouts of men, like labourers working a job. They are oddly muted, though, no sense of echo from the walls of buildings.
He can open his eyes now, he discovers. He has memory of being unable to before. He thinks he was blindfolded. He can see little nonetheless. The room is almost completely in darkness. His hands remain bound together, but his feet are free.
There is a dreadful smell, sharp and choking, and he is aware of a dampness next to his cheek. It is vomit, his own. He remembers nausea, but not the action of being sick. Consciousness has been an occasional visitor of late but not a fast friend. He recalls a blurry semi-waking state, feelings of disorientation, not assisted by his being able to see nothing. Exhaustion despite never being fully awake. Sleep coming as a mercy.
He does not know how long he has lain here. He puts his bound hands to his face and feels the growth. He estimates it has been at least three days since last he shaved.
Slowly come the memories, incrementally into focus like he is minutely twisting the lens on a microscope.
Being dragged to the cellar. Lying there on his own operating table, bound and strapped to it, unable to move. Lacking any sense of time, long fearful seconds turning into minutes turning into hours. Wetting his trousers for there was no option to relieve himself any other way.