The Art of Dying

by Ambrose Parry

  ‘I see.’

  As did Raven. Finally. Belatedly.

  Iain glanced back to the garden.

  ‘If that is all, I ought to return to my labours. I am sorry I could not assist you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Raven told him, the words catching in his throat, but not for the reasons that might be assumed. ‘Thank you for your candour at such a difficult time.’

  They watched him walk away with a heavy tread. He looked weighed down, and small wonder, but he had no notion of the burden he had just passed to them. The man had been more helpful than he could possibly know, and certainly more helpful than he could be permitted to know. Raven suspected that it was only for that reason that Sarah was able to wait until he was out of earshot to announce her vindication.

  ‘The trail left by Mary Dempster grows ever longer. Do you still think she is transferring some morbid principle to these patients on her hands?’

  Under the circumstances, she at least had the decency not to sound proud.

  ‘Her hands are almost certainly responsible, but not in the way I had envisaged.’

  ‘I trust you are no longer optimistic about diagnosing a new disease?’

  ‘No,’ he conceded. ‘I think we can add Raven’s Malady to the list of fatalities attributable to this Mary Dempster.’

  ‘I shudder to think just how long that list might be. She must have been working as a nurse for at least a decade. How many patients might have died leaving nobody the wiser to her being the reason why? We must tell someone: Dr Simpson, or James McLevy.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Raven cautioned. ‘If word gets out that a nurse has been murdering patients – whole families, even children – then there will be mobs on the streets. We don’t want every nurse who ever lost a patient to be held accused by angry relatives.’

  ‘She must be stopped, though.’

  ‘As soon as possible, but to do that, we need more than simply to find her. We will require the strongest proof, for who will believe something so monstrous? I certainly did not before now. More than ever, we need the how and the why.’

  FIFTY-FOUR

  he air remained unsettlingly still and consequently there was no hint of the fog lifting as Raven proceeded alone through the city, bound once more for the cottage in Lochend. Sarah had again offered to accompany him, but on this occasion he had insisted she go back and spend the rest of her day with Archie. He left it unspoken that her time was limited and she should not waste it.

  She had acceded, but he detected a degree of reluctance and recalled what she had confided in him. Every moment she spent with Archie was precious and yet simultaneously painful. The idea of her suffering made him want to hold her, but he had to put such thoughts from his mind. That way lay only confusion and anguish. He had missed his opportunity and he would have to learn to live with that.

  Also unspoken was Raven’s concern that he now knew they were dealing with someone highly dangerous, and therefore he did not wish to put Sarah in harm’s way. He had woken up many a night tormented by thoughts of how close she had come to death once before – how close they both had – due to Raven failing to see what was right in front of him.

  He had missed so much that ought to have been obvious in this recent enterprise too. Raven wondered how many enduring misapprehensions in medicine (and other fields, for that matter) were down to ambition and the desire to be vindicated. How many proud men had only sought out the evidence in support of their own hypotheses and eschewed that which might inconveniently put their ideas to the test?

  The world needed fewer such proud men, or perhaps it merely required more women like Sarah. An increase in the latter would guarantee a reduction in the former.

  Raven had been foolish, he could see that now, and he was grateful to Sarah for revealing it. His visions of being lauded for finding a new disease were unworthy, for in truth he had hoped such a discovery would hasten his elevation. There were no quick paths to success or renown, and nor should he seek them.

  Simpson had discovered chloroform not by mere happenstance and serendipity, but as a cumulative consequence of a lifetime’s endeavours and its accumulated wisdom of judgment. That was what James Matthews Duncan ought to grasp too. ‘No man can ever reach great reputation or great excellence without great exertion,’ as Simpson often said in his lectures.

  As he strode along Easter Road, Raven reflected that the pursuit of medical knowledge could also take quite a toll on one’s shoe leather. What made it even harder on the feet right then was the possibility that this was likely to be a wasted trip. In that respect he was grateful for the fog, for it might be what kept Mary Dempster indoors on a Sunday after church; if, that is, she was not still resident with her new employer.

  He had no other reason to be grateful for the murk, as it was a considerable impediment to his navigation, obscuring the landmarks by which he would normally get his bearings. He wasted a good ten minutes walking up the wrong road, taking a turn too soon. Then, once he had doubled back and corrected his course, he realised he had walked past the cottage he was looking for, as it was set back from the road.

  His approach being obscured, he wondered whether he might benefit from catching his quarry unawares. Sarah had spoken of her suspicion that Mary had been in the house when last they visited. She thought she had seen someone at the window, and there had been a delay in Martha answering the door: long enough for Mary to instruct her sister to conceal that she was home.

  The question this posed, however, was how Mary would have known to be evasive of two strangers. Then Raven remembered that she had seen him, albeit briefly, at the Porteous house. It was therefore possible that she had spied him from the window, and though she could not extrapolate from that the reason he was there, she had not evaded discovery for this long by being careless and taking chances.

  The front door was opened without delay on this occasion. Martha Dempster looked at him a moment, as if trying to place from where she knew him.

  ‘Dr Raven?’

  Perhaps it was merely in contrast to Iain McKinnon’s understandably dour demeanour, but he thought she seemed pleased to see him.

  ‘Miss Dempster. Sorry to trouble you again, but I wondered whether on this occasion your sister might be home?’

  ‘No,’ she answered, Raven reading her countenance in vain for any hint that this might not be true. ‘But do come in out of the cold,’ she added.

  She ushered him into a small drawing room at the front of the house, the door of which had been closed last time. Raven wondered what had been behind it on that occasion. The room looked expensively furnished, though many of the fixtures seemed overly grand and out of scale for the room. He had previously assumed that this had been the Dempster family’s home but now thought that he had been mistaken. The furniture must have belonged to her parents and been brought here from another house after they died.

  ‘Can I offer you some tea?’ she asked.

  As long as your sister isn’t preparing it, Raven thought. How vulnerable we all were when we placed our trust in others, how exposed when others harboured evil intent. How much more so in the case of a nurse, when they were entrusted to administer medicines.

  ‘That would be most welcome,’ he answered.

  He was thirsty, and, after his long walk through the fog, in need of something warming. But another reason he readily accepted was that it would keep Martha busy in the kitchen while he took a look around. This time he was determined to be mindful of evidence that Mary was in fact present: two used teacups, for instance, or two place settings at the table.

  As soon as Martha left the room, Raven put his hands upon the two chairs by the fire to test whether they might both be warm from having been recently occupied. Only one was but that did not surprise him. He suspected he would find no such clues today, as Martha seemed altogether less anxious. If Sarah’s notion was correct, then on this occasion her sister truly was not at home.

  Nonetheless, he crept out into the hall
on light feet and gently pushed open the door opposite leading into the room where Sarah thought she had spied movement at the window. It was a spacious and brightly decorated bedchamber, its sturdy double bed seeming likely to have belonged to the late Mr and Mrs Dempster. The bed was neatly made, and thus there was no way to determine whether it had or had not been slept in the previous night. He lifted the counterpane. The sheets were tucked under the mattress with military precision and he recognised the handiwork of someone trained at the Royal Infirmary.

  There was a plain gown laid out on the bed, a clean apron placed on top of it. The gown was dark blue with white braiding on the cuffs. He thought it similar to the one he had seen Mary wearing at the Porteous house, though he could not be certain as he had seen her only briefly on that occasion.

  There was a row of books upon the window ledge. Raven’s eye was caught by the spine of one that he thought might be a copy of Christison’s Treatise on Poisons, though he could not read the lettering clearly from where he stood. He was about to step closer when he heard a voice at his back.

  ‘What are you doing in Mary’s bedroom?’

  Raven jumped.

  ‘My sincere apologies, Miss Dempster. I was in search of the water closet.’

  He noted that she seemed almost as alarmed at her discovery as Raven had felt at being discovered. He thought of Sarah’s contention that she was afraid of her sister and could barely believe he had failed to see it before.

  She directed him to the privy, a small, dimly lit closet at the back of the house. As he relieved himself, he thought again about the bright and spacious bedroom he had just seen: at the front of the house, south-facing and enjoying a view had it not been fog-bound. Although it was Martha who had inherited money from her parents, it appeared Mary had the master bedroom. He considered what that implied with regard to who held the whip-hand in the house.

  When he returned to the drawing room, Martha had already brought in a handsome tea service on a tray and was beginning to pour.

  ‘Have you spoken to Mary since last I visited?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. She did come back, albeit briefly. She came to retrieve clean clothes and left again within the day. I gave her your card, though I assume from your visit that she has not made a point of speaking with you.’

  As she said this, Raven realised that leaving the card had been a mistake. Once again, his judgment had been skewed by chasing the wrong cause. Martha would have told Mary that her visitors were investigating the deaths of three of her most recent patients. As a result, she most certainly wasn’t going to get in touch. More likely she had run to ground.

  ‘I have not had contact with her, no.’

  ‘And how goes your quest to identify this new affliction? Are there further sufferers?’

  ‘Four more, I believe.’

  ‘I was worried for Mary after we spoke, though I was not sure what to be looking for. She seemed well enough, physically, though she was irritable. She was far from forthcoming when I asked about the symptoms exhibited by her recently deceased patients.’

  Raven got the impression this had been a fraught exchange. It also confirmed that Mary knew what he and Sarah were looking into.

  ‘I stressed that there was no implication that her competence or methods were being questioned, but she seemed angry nonetheless.’

  ‘Did she happen to mention the name of the family she is working for now?’

  Martha’s expression became meek, the look of one not enjoying being made to revisit a memory.

  ‘I did enquire, but she scolded me for asking too many questions. “What business is it of anyone but mine who I work for?” she said. She was …’ Martha shook her head. ‘Mary can be rather short-tempered and aloof, but this was different. You said that this new illness made the sufferers delirious. Would that include being so defensive and suspicious towards the honest enquiries of her own stepsister?’

  ‘No, no, I am sure she is quite well,’ Raven assured her, though everything Martha said confirmed that there was something far wrong with Mary Dempster: just not the affliction that had claimed her victims.

  ‘How is your relationship with Mary generally, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  Martha composed her face into a smile, but in the moment before, he witnessed a glimmer of concern. It was as Sarah had observed: a fear of what she was permitted to say. However, as Martha warmed to the subject, it was clear that she remembered she did not need to fear being overheard.

  ‘We have our ups and downs, like all family I’m sure; blood relations or not. Sometimes we are like the oldest of friends, and other times I am grateful she has gone to live with her patients. Doubtless she is grateful to get away from me too. She once struck out on her own for a time after we had a falling out. She stayed in some squalid place, all she could afford. I convinced her to come back, but only by apologising. I can’t even remember what for, but it only mattered that it was me who admitted I was wrong. Mary never apologises. Mary is never wrong. I think it is because she had such a harsh childhood that she finds it hard to concede ground.’

  ‘Am I right in saying that this was not the house where you grew up?’

  ‘No. We lived at Canonmills: a much finer house than this. My father worked for the bank.’

  ‘Do you have other brothers and sisters?’

  ‘No. I was alone until my mother adopted Mary.’

  Raven wondered at this way of putting it: that it was her mother who adopted Mary, not the family.

  ‘That must have been a disruption and a difficult adjustment, for all of you.’

  Martha paused, considering her answer.

  ‘Like Mary, my mother was a strong-willed woman, and not to be defied. She saw it as her role to civilise Mary. To break her in, like one might do a horse. And it should be said, the instrument was the same.’

  Raven had to conceal his reaction. The whip-hand indeed.

  ‘My mother succeeded, to some extent. She even changed the way Mary expressed herself, forbade her to speak as though she was from Glasgow. As you remarked the last time we spoke, she reverted and does so with all the greater pride now.

  ‘At the time I accepted much of this. I was oblivious and, I will admit, somewhat spoiled. I realise how hard it must have been for Mary, as I was the focus of so much more attention. It was my mother’s primary purpose in life to ensure that I married well, while Mary was shown no such consideration. She had already embarked upon a career as a nurse by the time I became engaged.’

  Raven failed to mask his surprise.

  ‘You were married?’ he asked.

  ‘No. My husband-to-be died before we could be wed. His name was Colin, Colin Flett.’

  She seemed to savour the sound of his name, a wistful look upon her face.

  ‘He was in shipping, a client of my father’s at the bank. Though you’d have thought it was my mother who was marrying him, so overjoyed was she at all her ambitions, schemes and stratagems coming to fruition. But her hopes were dashed. Colin became ill on a visit to the house, on a Sunday afternoon just like this one. He was dead by the morning.’

  She looked away with an expression of equanimity that must have taken many years to attain. Raven could not disrupt that by explicitly voicing his suspicions, but nonetheless, he needed to know.

  ‘Did Mary nurse him?’

  She smiled. ‘Of course. That is my great consolation: that he was cared for by someone who knew all that he meant.’

  Raven finished his tea in the growing silence, Martha lost in her recollection.

  He put the cup down, the sound enough to bring her back to the present.

  ‘Martha, how did your parents die, if it is not intrusive to ask?’

  ‘Not at all. After all, you are far from the first doctor I have encountered. My father passed away first. He became ill very suddenly. He had seemed in the peak of health, but as I had witnessed with Colin, disease can strike down anyone at any time. Poor Mary allowed herself no rest, tend
ing to him every hour she was not working at the hospital, but it did no good. Our doctor did not know what ailed him. Nobody was able to help him.

  ‘My mother was devastated. He was her sun and her moon. More than that: being his wife was what gave her purpose and status. She was such a proud woman, fiercely outspoken, so haughty in how she carried herself, and yet she was so diminished after that. She became poorly and took to her bed, never to leave it again. After that, though we were stepsisters, Mary and I were the closest people each other had. The only people each other had.’

  Raven had to suppress his reaction, for there it was, a mirror of events he had already heard about this very day: a cruel and spiteful matriarch who died last, only after seeing the people she loved pass away beneath her own roof and her family’s future annihilated. Long before working for the cantankerous Mrs Eddlestone, there had been Mary’s stepmother. Mary had killed her daughter’s betrothed, and with him her dreams, then killed the husband she adored, before killing her last.

  But as he looked at Martha, calmly contemplating her painful past, he asked himself why Mary had spared her. Would she not have wished to inflict that bereavement upon Mrs Dempster too: the death of her only child?

  Clearly there had to be some kind of bond between them: something that still endured, despite the fallings out and the fear Martha evidently felt towards her stepsister. Or perhaps Mary needed her somehow: if she had spared Martha for a purpose, it might prove crucial if he could work out what that purpose was.

  Raven got to his feet.

  ‘Miss Dempster, thank you for your time and your hospitality, but I must get back to Queen Street. Before I go, I would like to stress that it is imperative I speak to your sister, and soon.’

  From her face he could tell she had inferred much from the seriousness of his tone.

  ‘Do you fear for her, Doctor? Are you quite sure my sister is not in danger from this ailment?’

  Raven had to think carefully about how much he could say without putting her in danger. Mary had spared Martha thus far, but that did not guarantee the latter’s safety if Mary felt her sister had betrayed her or become a threat. Equally, he did not wish Mary to know just how much he and Sarah had uncovered. He had already alerted her to their investigation by leaving his card.