The Art of Dying

by Ambrose Parry

  ‘How much is his debt?’

  ‘I can’t see how that is any business of yours. Now, be on your way. If I need you, I know where to find you.’

  Raven took a step closer to him.

  ‘I am no longer some student or apprentice. I have a certain status and I have connections of my own in this city. I might be inclined to inform James McLevy that I recently treated a man for a gunshot wound. That would rid me of you for good, wouldn’t it, Mr Flint?’

  This gave him pause, but like a practised brawler Flint did not reel from the blow for long. He nodded, calculating.

  ‘Dr Raven, just so you understand, if you were to tell McLevy who you treated, I would have to tell him where I got the chloroform. And that’s not the worst thing I could talk about, is it?’

  Flint’s mouth curled into a cold smile.

  ‘It is true you delivered my wife, and for that I remain grateful. Admiring, even. You delivered Alec too, one could say. You were unable to save him, though it was a mercy what you did for him in the end. What they call a mercy killing: but a killing nonetheless.

  ‘I have witnesses to what you did. Witnesses who will say what I tell them to. You might claim it was an attempt to ease his pain, but they will argue that you went further than that and it was not your place to hasten his end. They might contest that his end was so assured. Some might even call it murder.’

  Flint ran a finger along Raven’s scar.

  ‘After all, this was a man you bore a grudge, the proof of which any judge can see etched upon your face. If you stop prying into matters that don’t concern you I am sure neither of us will have reason to make good on our threats.’

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  arah watched as Raven and Jarvis hefted Archie’s brass-studded leather trunk into the house.

  ‘What does he have in this thing, ship’s ballast?’ Raven complained as they manoeuvred the trunk down the hallway. Sarah followed them inside and closed the door, thinking as she did so about the first time she had ever crossed this threshold. No. 52 Queen Street had been an intimidating prospect then and she remembered feeling scared and alone.

  Little wonder. She had been sixteen years old and had just lost both of her parents. She had no experience of domestic service and was unsure what her new life would be like. She knew how to cook, to clean, to sew, this last skill being forced upon her at school when she would have preferred to continue with mathematics and Latin. She was sure that a lifetime of performing domestic chores would serve her well, but there were other aspects of her new situation which concerned her. She had heard the rumours of course; about hard labour and cruel treatment at the hands of unscrupulous employers.

  She was unafraid of physical work – having grown up on a farm she was well used to it – but harsh punishments were unfamiliar to her. She had never been beaten as a child and had no desire to experience such a thing now. Having lost her family, she felt that she had surely suffered enough already.

  She need not have been afraid. What she found here was kindness and inspiration. A household, as it turned out, full of remarkable possibilities, and through which remarkable people passed. Doctors, of course, but also writers, artists, politicians. She had been exposed to worlds that, until then, she had not known existed.

  She watched as Raven negotiated a bend in the stairs, taking care not to make contact with the walls, as though he was carrying Archie himself and not just the sick man’s luggage.

  She remembered when she had first seen Will Raven, when he had first moved in. What a terrible first impression he had made. She had expected a gentleman, similar in style and manner to the apprentice he was to replace. He had turned up on the doorstep inexcusably late, in stained clothes, reeking of alcohol and with evidence of a recent altercation etched indelibly upon his face. It was obvious that he was a man apart, unlike the others who had gone before. This made her wary of him. Understandably so. And yet they had become friends. More than friends.

  Circumstances had thrown them together. She had thought that their attachment would continue, saw no reason why it should not, but Raven had seen things differently. She had been abandoned. She could think about it in no other way and it had been a source of pain to her for some time. She would be shy of any such connection in the future. Or so she had thought until Archie arrived.

  In contrast to Raven, Archie was the epitome of respectability. A good man from a good family. Yet this façade disguised a radical heart. His egalitarian views put the liberal sensibilities of Dr Simpson in the shade. Sarah found his company intoxicating and even from an early stage he seemed to encourage her interest. Dr Simpson had prescribed fresh air and exercise as part of the treatment for Archie’s ailment and he often invited Sarah to join him in his perambulations around Edinburgh.

  She remembered the day they had climbed to the top of Calton Hill, the view along Princes Street, and of course of the Bridewell and Calton Jail. He took her to the tearoom at Nelson’s Monument and paid the fee so that they could climb to the top of the tower. Afterwards they sat outside on a stone bench and talked about their plans for the future. She had been cold, and he had put his arms around her. He had suggested to her that perhaps they could face the future together. He had kissed her then, which had sealed their collective fate.

  She was aware even then that a barrier had been crossed. She was mindful that many would have viewed this as a seduction and that she had been foolish to go along with it. She knew of the dangers facing housemaids who had relations with those above stairs, clandestine trysts behind closed doors. But their relationship was no secret; it had been conducted in the open, and thus was potentially more damaging to Archie than to herself. As a result, she had been convinced that his intentions were good. There was no subterfuge or coercion. There was no deception. Theirs was a union of equals. There was no shame in what they had done.

  Things moved rapidly from that point on. It was never acknowledged but seemed mutually understood: they did not have time to waste.

  She vividly remembered her joy at leaving this house not so long ago, to be married and live with her husband in the home that they had made together on Albany Street. How happy she had been to find herself not yet twenty and mistress of her own house. Her happiness was only tempered by the knowledge that it would not last.

  Archie soon followed his luggage and was helped up the stairs to his new quarters, Raven providing a shoulder for him to lean on. Sarah could not help but smile at the sight of it. She had not thought to see these two men become so close.

  Archie stumbled at the top, but Raven grabbed him before he could fall, strong arms encircling Archie’s emaciated frame.

  ‘I thought I told you to lay off the brandy at breakfast,’ Raven said.

  Archie laughed, but then began coughing, and their progress was halted for a few minutes until it subsided. He had become so frail, a hollowed-out husk bearing little resemblance to the man that she had first seen here not so many months ago. The rapidity of his decline was terrifying to behold, the disease consuming him voraciously and without pity, merciless in its ferocity.

  ‘I am sorry to be putting you through this,’ Archie said to her once they had managed to get him into bed. Raven had left them, sensing that they needed to be alone.

  ‘I would not have had it any other way,’ she replied. ‘These have been the best days of my life, times I never thought I would have – marriage to a doctor, in charge of my own household. Mistress of my own domain.’

  Archie looked at her with a sad smile.

  ‘I know there is a question that troubles you,’ he said. ‘But you are too kind to ask it.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said. But she did.

  ‘You wonder whether love would have been allowed to blossom between us had we met under different circumstances. Would I have asked you to marry me had I not been ill? I know this, because I am equally troubled by the question of whether you would have accepted my proposal had I been well.’
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br />   ‘How could I have refused?’ she replied, laughing, but Archie remained serious. She sighed, sitting down on the bed beside him. ‘I suppose neither of us can answer that question, for the truth is we can never know.’

  ‘I was very nearly married to another,’ Archie said.

  Sarah had never considered this before and realised that she should have done. Archie was handsome and successful: it was unusual that he had not married before now.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked, curious but also afraid of what he might say.

  ‘For various reasons we had a long engagement. Too long, as it turned out. Her affections were transferred to another. She claimed that she had never really loved me. I felt that I had been subject to an unforgivable deception. I was deeply hurt by it. It felt like a physical wound that would never heal and I did not think that I would ever let myself love another as I had no desire to experience that kind of hurt again. But then I met you.’

  Sarah wondered at the events upon which fate could turn. How different might things have been if Will Raven had returned from his travels a few months earlier than he did. Or was she deceiving herself to think he would ever have rushed back from abroad into her waiting arms?

  ‘I did not allow myself to become close to anyone after I lost her,’ Archie said. ‘It was only when I feared life might be short that I let myself be open to love once again. That is why there cannot be a definitive answer, for if I had met you before I became ill, I would doubtless have suppressed any feelings that might have developed.’

  They sat in silence for a while, Sarah thinking that there was nothing more to be said.

  ‘Perhaps what you really want to know is whether I would have done things differently from Raven.’

  Sarah was shocked by his insight, as though he knew what she had been thinking.

  ‘He spoke to me of this,’ Archie continued. ‘It made me ask myself, as you too are presumably wondering, would I have acted in defiance of the judgment of my peers in order to be with you? At such a fledgling stage of my career? All I know of the difference between Raven and me is that I was not tested in that way. In my case the disapproval of my peers was no threat.

  ‘If you find him wanting because of this … I would say, do not judge a man by his mistakes, but whether he learns from them.’

  Sarah left him to sleep, troubled by their conversation. She decided she would go home for a while as she needed time alone, time to think.

  She had offered to move to Queen Street with Archie, but he would not hear of it. He wanted her to have some respite from his illness. He wanted her to remember him in a better condition, how he was in happier days. He was trying to make it easier to adjust; it would be a separation in stages.

  ‘I do not know how long I have left,’ he said. ‘But I know that you have to prepare for the future. That future will be at Albany Street, should you choose to stay on there. You ought to get used to being there without me.’

  As she was preparing to leave, he had made a rather unexpected request.

  ‘I would like you to consider reverting to your own name, when I am gone,’ he said.

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘There was never any requirement for you to change it in the first place. I have no jurisdiction over you, nor did I ever wish to have. You do not belong to me. I want you to be your own person.’

  FIFTY-NINE

  aven watched Sarah as she descended the stairs to the hallway and reached for her coat. He could tell she was trying not to cry. He wanted to give her privacy and was about to walk away, but she called to him.

  ‘What news of our elusive nurse?’ she asked. ‘Have you located her?’

  ‘She returned briefly to the cottage at Lochend,’ he said, ‘but her current whereabouts remain unknown.’

  ‘Do you still entertain any doubt that she killed those people?’

  ‘None,’ he replied. ‘In fact, I believe that she might also have killed her stepmother, her stepfather and her sister’s fiancé.’

  Sarah’s face, already pale, blanched further.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘They all died quickly, unexpectedly, while under the same roof as Mary. The stepmother, who Mary detested, died last. A perfect precursor of what happened at Trinity.’

  ‘You suspect her motive to be what? Vengeance?’

  ‘She was treated cruelly by her stepmother. She killed those the stepmother loved, and then the woman herself.’

  ‘But why would she then go on to kill her patients? What motive would she have for that? And why did she spare Martha?’

  Raven admitted he’d been asking himself the same question.

  ‘I think that you were right when you suggested Martha was afraid of her sister, but there is undoubtedly a bond between them. I suspect Martha is useful to Mary in some way, but I cannot fathom precisely how.’

  ‘I do not think that bond would survive were Martha to learn that Mary had murdered three of the people she loved. Perhaps if we apprised her of our suspicions, she would be more forthcoming.’

  ‘That occurred to me, but I did not feel it was the time to tell her. Nor did it seem likely she would be convinced.’

  ‘Certainly not without better evidence,’ Sarah said. ‘The truth of it seems plain to us, but we remain without solid proof that Mary has poisoned anyone.’ She began to button up her coat. ‘And if we are to take our suspicions to the authorities, we need to build a case that would merit investigation. We need more than supposition and coincidence. People die all the time. How can we prove that she is killing them?’

  Raven had been grappling with the same question. His proposed motive of vengeance would not explain all the deaths that had come to their notice, and he had no idea what method she was using to achieve her nefarious ends. She had presumably killed Stuart Eddlestone with morphine, but that did not match the symptoms of her other victims.

  ‘We might never know how many have died at her hands,’ Raven said, giving voice to nothing more constructive than his vexation. He paused for a moment, his brow creased in thought. ‘What do we know for sure?’

  ‘We know that people die in numbers when Mary is around, and the death of Dr Fowler’s leeches is suggestive of mischief,’ Sarah replied. ‘According to Christison, there have been reports of leeches dying when they were applied in cases of poisoning with oxalic acid and opium.’

  ‘But our cases do not fit with either.’

  ‘We need to find out what she is giving them.’

  ‘And how do we do that?’ Raven’s voice had grown louder in his frustration. Sarah put a finger to her lips. This was not a conversation that either of them wished to be overheard.

  ‘It is unfortunate that there have been no post-mortem examinations carried out,’ Sarah observed. Raven wondered if this was a veiled criticism of himself: he had not pushed for one in the Porteous case, though convincing Dr Fowler of its necessity would have been difficult.

  ‘Even if there had been post-mortems, they might not have shown anything,’ he replied. ‘In order to detect poison in a corpse, we need to know what poison to look for.’ Back to that again. They seemed to be going around in circles.

  ‘We should speak to Dr Fowler again,’ Sarah suggested. ‘Find out who Mary has worked for in the past and what happened to them. If he was Mrs Eddlestone’s physician, perhaps he can shed some light on what happened at Trinity: what the cause of death was in each case and whether he prescribed the morphine Mary was seen disposing of.’

  ‘I would be wary of giving too much credence to his answers,’ Raven warned. ‘But even though she was caught disposing of it at the Trinity house, I doubt that morphine was her modus operandi. It does not match the other patients’ symptoms, and its effects would be too obvious, even to an old fool like Fowler. I think that our Nurse Dempster is far more cunning than that.’

  Sarah’s face suddenly contorted. She bent over and grasped at her side.

  ‘Sarah, what is it
? Are you unwell?’

  She took a couple of deep breaths and straightened up again.

  ‘It’s nothing. Just a twinge.’

  ‘Has this happened before?’

  She looked at him. Paused for just a little too long.

  ‘Once before,’ she admitted.

  ‘I should examine you,’ Raven said.

  ‘There is no need.’

  ‘How far along are you?’

  She gaped at him in surprise, which he hoped did not betray a lack of confidence in his abilities as an obstetrician. She looked as if she were about to deny it but seemed to change her mind.

  ‘I haven’t bled for two months now. There is no need to worry about me, though. I am quite well.’

  Raven hoped that this was the case but resolved to look again at the obstetric textbooks he had been studying in the wake of the Glassford case.

  ‘At least come and sit for a moment,’ he said, leading her to his consulting room.

  He sat her in a chair and closed the door.

  ‘I am wary of Quinton seeing us together again. He seems to miss nothing that goes on under this roof. He has even taken to monitoring our use of medical supplies. Counts out drops of chloroform as if they were gold coins.’

  ‘He is not so all-knowing,’ Sarah stated emphatically. ‘He has yet to find his thief.’

  ‘I think that he has been busy with other things,’ Raven replied.

  He sat down in a chair beside her.

  ‘Are you planning on moving in here with Archie?’

  ‘No. He wants me to stay at Albany Street. He says I need to rest, and I know that he is right, but I feel guilty.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it is a relief to get away. It’s so hard to watch him suffer.’

  Raven felt a twinge in his own guts as she said this. Now that Archie was here, he would be able to press Raven about his request.

  He noticed that Sarah had begun to weep and offered her his handkerchief.

  ‘I have been trying not to cry when I am with Archie,’ she said, ‘but I feel that I can cry in front of you.’ She leaned towards him, but Raven drew back. She looked surprised and then hurt.