Raven’s eyes widened in horrified surprise.
‘Aye,’ the man said, raising it to strike. ‘It’s easier to hide a wee skelf.’
So this was it, then. Down an alley, or certainly off one. An asylum for the houseless, a place for vagrants, requisitioned for the police’s overspill, making it the dregs of the dregs. Thrown in here as a murderer – and perhaps that was fair, for he was a murderer. He had killed three men, even if the last one had wished it so. He would die in disgrace, as he long feared he would. Also as he had long feared, it seemed a fitting end. But to crown it all, there would be no one to raise the alarm for Sarah.
Their eyes were locked again, Raven this time looking for the signal knowing he could not avert what followed. But before the thief could plunge his blade, a huge hand gripped his wrist.
‘I would warn you not to deprive Dr Raven of his pocket watch,’ spoke a deep, rumbling voice. ‘It did not go well for the last fellow who did so.’
‘What business is it of—’
The thief cut himself off as he turned and saw who was speaking to him.
Gargantua.
He dragged the thief off Raven and tossed the knife through the bars.
The one who had felled Raven from the back seemed undeterred. He looked a wiry and practised pugilist, adopting a fighting stance and demonstrating his fleetness of foot as he hopped back and forth.
‘Let us discover whether size is a match for swiftness,’ he said, a cocksure grin upon his chops.
The gathered throng discovered in roughly two seconds that size was more than a match for swiftness, particularly in such a confined space. Gargantua picked the man up and threw him like a rag doll. He did not get up to test his hypothesis a second time.
The giant’s huge fist was then extended towards Raven on the floor, and when he opened it, it was to present the pocket watch. There felt something symbolic about his accepting it.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘I owed you a debt,’ the giant replied. ‘You had reason only to hate Alec for what he did to you, and yet you showed him the greatest mercy.’
‘Have you changed your mind about my profession?’
His voice was a low rumble, like the sound of a train heard beneath a bridge.
‘Not about your profession, Dr Raven. Just about you.’
Gargantua beckoned him follow towards the back of the chamber, where a mere flaring of his nostrils was enough to disperse those who had taken the space he had vacated on the bench.
‘It occurs to me that I do not know your name,’ Raven ventured.
The giant looked deep into Raven’s eyes, as though trying to read what he had chosen to call him, and for a moment Raven feared he was not going to be told.
‘I am Gregor.’
‘Will.’
Gregor nodded acknowledgement.
‘I am sorry I woke you,’ Raven said.
‘On balance, I suspect that is not true. Don’t worry yourself. It was time I roused. I thought sleep the best use of my time while I waited for McLevy to let me go.’
‘Why would he let you go?’
Gregor let out a deep, booming laugh in response to the confused look on Raven’s face.
‘He has nothing to charge me with.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘Half the men in here, and in the cells next door, McLevy has brought in because he thinks they might tell him something about the recent mail-coach robbery. Even if he suspects they know nothing about it, if he can make them think he is planning to charge them with it, they will be suddenly forthcoming on other matters in order to stay on the right side of him.’
It fleetingly crossed Raven’s mind that he might inform McLevy of what he knew about the robbery, but it wouldn’t count for much against a murder charge, and would most likely come at the cost of a death sentence from Flint.
‘And are you planning to tell him something?’ Raven asked, unable to mask his surprise at the notion he would betray his employer.
‘I don’t need to. McLevy is tenacious, he’s wily and he knows how to play one man off against another, test their loyalties and probe for their weaknesses. But he’s also clever enough to know his men made a mistake in even bringing me in. A robbery carried out by masked men? Put a mask on me and I’m still the most recognisable man in Edinburgh.’
Gregor laughed again, and Raven did too, despite himself.
‘I only wish I had such a simple way of making McLevy see my innocence,’ Raven said.
He told Gregor his situation. The giant listened intently, silently contemplating for a while after Raven had finished speaking. Then he nodded solemnly to himself, as though reaching some unspoken resolution.
‘Dr Raven,’ he said, ‘there will come a time, perhaps not so long from now, when I must ask something of you.’
Raven met his gaze. ‘I think I can guess what that might be.’
‘Then I will endeavour to put myself in your good graces before that day should come.’
SEVENTY-TWO
hen Dr Raven had not returned by nightfall, I knew that providence was smiling upon me. I had feasted upon such exquisite anguish when I told her about her husband, but I had not thought I would be alone with her when Mrs Banks succumbed. It had been tantalising to know that her death was nearing and yet that I would most likely be sent from the house before it happened. If he had been detained elsewhere, then I had a precious opportunity.
Dr Raven had confessed the depth of his fears. He kept observing the wound, and told me that the paucity of pus concerned him. He would have expected far more. His deduction was that it had gathered somewhere inside her, from where there was no possibility of draining it. I knew from experience that, had infection taken hold, death would be a matter of course.
Earlier in the day, a policeman had come to the door enquiring as to Dr Raven’s whereabouts. As the hours passed and still he did not reappear, I suspected something had befallen him, and I hoped it had not been before he discovered the confession that would liberate me. I had gone to great trouble and did not wish my efforts to be in vain.
I had long ago learned the importance of putting plans in place should I fear discovery, and how drastic such action might have to be. But what better way to deal with suspicion than to give the suspicious exactly what they were looking for? I would be sorry to lose my own name, but I had lost it once before, when I was taken into the Dempster household.
It was harder to give up all that came with my reputation. That said, I had already begun telling people Martha was a nurse too. I even had my first client, though I would not charge Dr Raven for my services. I did not intend for him to survive long enough to pay me. He had recognised my hand once, so I could not risk him doing so a second time, and I certainly had no intention of stopping. With him and Mrs Banks dead, I could indulge my appetites as freely as before.
Dr Raven would take his own life in despair at the loss of a woman he clearly loved. I would tell people that I believed he blamed himself for her death following the dangerous procedure he had carried out, against the wider wisdom of his peers.
And at a stroke I would be free of the only two people who had ever suspected me.
SEVENTY-THREE
aven felt a strangling helplessness as he watched darkness begin to fall through the small windows high on the wall on the other side of the bars. Sarah was out there in the night, at the mercy of a murderess who had wiped out whole families.
At least he no longer had to worry about his personal safety. As Gregor predicted, McLevy had called for him some time ago, and though Raven could not now draw upon his physical protection, no one dared molest him, for it was clear that he and the giant were in league.
He saw movement at the door and looked up, as he had done every time it opened, his automatic response an uncomfortable mixture of impatience and dread. At such time, it feels like the not knowing is the worst part, until certainty shows you otherwise.
Soutar a
pproached the chamber and beckoned Raven forth, prompting him to spring to his feet.
‘The fiscal is here,’ he said. ‘It’s time for the charge against you to be made formal.’
The gate was opened and Raven stepped through.
‘What then?’ he asked, as his hands were bound once more.
‘You will be taken to Calton Jail to await trial.’
Raven was led out of the asylum, down the alley and towards the police office. Up above, the sky was black with rain.
He was shoved roughly through a door, inside of which he found McLevy seated at a desk. He had a pen in one hand, the other resting upon a sheaf of hand-written documents. Next to him was a portly and bewhiskered gentleman in fine tailoring, reading over McLevy’s shoulder.
McLevy looked up briefly then resumed writing. A long silence ensued. Raven interpreted its purpose as being to unsettle him, which seemed an unnecessary tactic. He thought of what Gregor had told him, and considered that McLevy was used to dealing with more hardened criminals.
Eventually McLevy stopped writing and looked up again.
‘This is Mr Auberon Findlay, Procurator Fiscal,’ he announced, with a gravity clearly intended to intimidate. ‘Mr Findlay, this is William Raven.’
‘Wilberforce Raven,’ he corrected. ‘Doctor.’
‘Ah, yes, sorry,’ said McLevy with a nasty twinkle. ‘I forgot the significance of your profession with regard to the means by which Dr Banks was murdered.’
‘There was no murder,’ Raven countered.
‘Silence,’ McLevy commanded, holding up a palm. ‘Save your words for the judge. There is nothing you need to say while the charge is being prepared. Mr Findlay has been apprised of all the relevant information.’
Then Raven heard a familiar and most welcome voice.
‘I would contest that assertion most robustly, Mr McLevy.’
He turned around to see the front door being held open by Jarvis as the professor swept into the room in his hat and sealskin coat, water dripping off its tails.
‘Dr Simpson,’ Findlay said, his tone expressing surprise and, Raven was encouraged to note, an unmistakable degree of reverence. ‘You have an interest in this matter?’
‘I have just learned of Dr Raven’s predicament and consider the accusation against him flawed to the point of absurdity.’
McLevy got to his feet.
‘I understand your loyalty to your assistant, Dr Simpson, but I am acting upon information from a very reliable witness: a fellow of your acquaintance, in fact.’
‘His witness is Quinton,’ Raven said. ‘The man has been stealing money from you, Dr Simpson. I discovered this and gave him an ultimatum to confess to you. Instead he went to McLevy, thinking if I ended up in jail, you would never be any the wiser.’
Simpson nodded sagely, as though this was no great revelation. ‘Jarvis had guessed as much,’ he said.
McLevy appeared unperturbed. ‘That’s as may be, but when I spoke to him earlier, Mr Jarvis himself corroborated certain details of Mr Quinton’s testimony.’
‘Indeed, and Jarvis told me all of this the moment I returned from Dunblane. However, Mr Jarvis and Dr Raven both withheld some important details in order to protect Dr Banks’s honour. Dr Raven did so even when to reveal this might have assisted him in his plight. Bear that in mind when weighing his character and the credibility of his word against that of an employee who has been robbing me from under my own roof.’
Mr Findlay looked intrigued, McLevy wary, as though biding his time before he might pounce once again.
‘Do elaborate,’ said Findlay.
‘Archie Banks was gravely ill. He had been suffering from carcinoma of the tongue and, as a medical man, he knew he was facing a painful and imminent death. Dr Raven suspected that Archie took his own life, to spare himself the worst. Dr Raven kept this conclusion from Mr McLevy for the same reason that he instructed Jarvis to dispose of the evidence of how Archie died: because he did not wish it to become a matter of public knowledge. He was concerned for the effect it would have on Dr Banks’s widow, Sarah.’
Raven could have wept at the mention of her name from the lips of someone else who cared about her.
‘To be clear,’ said Findlay, ‘you are saying you would concur with Dr Raven’s conclusion that Dr Banks took his own life?’
Simpson paused a moment. The room fell perfectly still.
‘No,’ he said.
Raven gaped.
‘Then who did kill him?’ Findlay asked.
‘I will show you. How is your circulation, Mr Findlay? Are your hands nice and warm?’
Findlay looked like he didn’t understand the question, and certainly could be forgiven for not understanding the relevance of it, for neither did Raven.
Simpson signalled to Jarvis, who handed him his bag.
‘This is a stock bottle of chloroform, filled to capacity, as was the one taken by Dr Banks from my store cupboard two nights ago. I know this for a documented fact, just as Mr Quinton knew it, because he wrote it down in his ledger. Hold it for me, please.’
Simpson placed the bottle in the palm of Findlay’s hand, fixing his fingers around it.
‘Typically, Archie would drop some chloroform onto a handkerchief and inhale it to aid sleep. Contrary to the nonsense you might have read in the newspapers, it would not immediately overwhelm him. He would put the stopper back on the bottle and then wait for the fumes to take effect. Normally he would place it on his bedside table, but he was very weak, and on this occasion it appears he fell asleep before he could do so. When Mr Jarvis found him, the bottle appeared to have rolled from his hand, minus its stopper, hence the fatal spillage.’
‘Merely rolling on its side would not dislodge a glass stopper,’ McLevy protested. ‘I’ll show you,’ he added, moving towards Findlay, presumably intending to demonstrate the force necessary to dislodge it.
‘Wait,’ Simpson warned, stopping his hand before it could reach the bottle.
‘For what?’ McLevy asked.
Simpson merely held up a palm. The room fell silent, all eyes upon the vessel in Findlay’s hand. They waited, Raven barely daring to breathe, the prospect of his freedom bound up in whatever might happen next.
Then the stopper dislodged itself from the neck with a pop and tumbled to the floor, landing with a piercing ring. Findlay dropped the bottle in his fright, Jarvis demonstrating remarkable reflexes in grabbing it before it could spill or even smash.
‘The heat from Archie’s hand caused the chloroform to expand,’ said Simpson, ‘and the build-up of volatile fumes forced the stopper from the bottle. His death was nobody’s intention, but rather the result of an unfortunate accident.’
SEVENTY-FOUR
he hour was late when I chose my moment. The longer I waited, the less likely it seemed that Dr Raven would return that night; but equally, I knew that if I waited too long, she might die before I could take my chance.
It was one of the reasons I insisted on being resident with my patients. Night was when I was left as their sole carer, with nobody else awake. Where possible, I always ensured it was in the hours of darkness that they died.
You might assume this was in order to conceal my part in their deaths, with relatives waking to find their loved one had died in the night while they slept. In truth, that was barely the half of it, a mere practical consideration. The real reason was that I might taste the greatest conceivable pleasure.
On occasion, I have killed out of necessity, sometimes out of misadventure or curiosity, and sometimes out of vengeance. But mostly I have killed so that I might experience the voluptuous delight of holding someone as they die.
I recall hearing my mother’s moans in that room in the Gorbals. Later in life, it comforted me to know that what I once thought was distress was in fact the throes of pleasure, but that pleasure could never compare to the delirious enjoyment I have known. It is a commingling of the physical and spiritual, a transporting and transformative s
ensation. I wrap myself around them as I hear their breathing change, then there come waves of shuddering ecstasy, an exponentially compounding euphoria.
I hold them as I held Mrs Porteous, as I held Eleanor Eddlestone, as I held her mother, as I held so many before that.
And as I held Mrs Banks.
SEVENTY-FIVE
indlay gazed down at the stopper on the floor, then at Jarvis, then Simpson, then McLevy and finally Raven.
‘On the basis of this evidence, there is clearly no charge to be brought here. Unless, that is, Dr Simpson wishes to take action against Mr Quinton over the thefts he has described.’
‘No,’ Simpson said. ‘It is a matter I would rather deal with privately, and I would ask for the discretion of all parties here present.’
‘As you wish,’ said Findlay. ‘Now, please have Dr Raven unbound.’
McLevy was clearly simmering. He looked like a dog that had just had a ham bone wrenched from its jaws and was thus an enemy in the making. Fortunately Raven felt able to pacify him by providing a juicier morsel to chew on.
‘There is a murder charge to be brought. Several, in fact. Dr Simpson, my apologies again for going against your wishes with regard to the death of Mrs Johnstone, but were it not for the efforts of Sarah and myself in this regard, many more lives would surely be lost.’
Raven poured out all that he had discovered, as quickly and succinctly as he could.
‘I will tell you more on the way,’ he said, ‘but we must get to Albany Street as soon as possible.’
‘My brougham is outside,’ said Simpson. ‘I will instruct Angus to drive the horses as hard as he can.’
‘My curricle will be faster,’ said Findlay.
‘Thank you,’ Raven said, though as they all hurried to the street, he knew that no matter how fast the carriage, Sarah’s fate was out of their hands.
SEVENTY-SIX
oo late, Sarah saw that Martha’s previous face had been a mask and was disturbed by what had been lurking behind it. How much did she truly know about her sister’s deeds? When she and Raven visited the cottage, had she been afraid of Mary, or of discovery?
The Art of Dying Page 32
