A Corruption of Blood

by Ambrose Parry

  ‘And what does she look like?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘She was wearing a blue shawl and a grey hat. Not but five minutes ago, really. If you hurry you might catch her.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Sarah said, before taking off at speed, altogether less mindful of the grimy puddles as she made her way out of the close. She turned right onto the Cowgate, Raven running to keep up with her.

  ‘Do you know this memorial she mentioned?’ Sarah asked as the crowded Grassmarket loomed ahead of them.

  ‘Can’t say that I do.’

  Now Raven did take her hand for fear that they might become separated in the ebb and flow of bodies. The touch of her fingers sent a spark through him.

  They made their way down the full length of the Grassmarket, then turned around and retraced their steps in case they had missed anything. They passed the Black Bull, the Beehive, the Clydesdale and the Market Inn in quick succession, the working men of these parts evidently fuelled by beer and whisky.

  There was no sign of either a memorial or a haberdasher’s.

  Raven realised what fools they had been. I saw her not ten minutes ago. Then Not but five . . . If you hurry you might catch her.

  ‘I think she just wanted rid of us,’ he said.

  Sarah rolled her eyes by way of agreement.

  Raven still had hold of her hand. It felt awkward now. Wrong somehow. He let it go.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘There is no need to apologise. I’m glad that you came along.’

  ‘We didn’t learn very much.’

  ‘I know a little more than I did.’

  He wanted to find some way to maintain the concord that had resumed between them.

  ‘Perhaps you can do something for me in return,’ he said, more in hope than expectation. ‘I am frustrated in an endeavour of my own.’

  Sarah smiled. It was like the sun coming out.

  ‘How can I help?’

  THIRTY

  he care of the poor should not depend upon Christian charity. Poverty should not be seen as inevitable, an inescapable feature of the human condition. I believe it can be eliminated by the application of liberal principles: social equality and fairness, self-help and self-improvement through education and temperance. Let us use the powers of the state to improve the lives of all of our citizens: men and women, rich and poor.’

  There was genuine enthusiasm in the applause as Teddy Hamilton concluded his address. Raven looked round the room. A wide range of people were represented here this evening: the haves and the have-nots; the well-to-do and those who had to make do. He had seldom seen so many ill-matched individuals congregated in one place. The closest had been in church, but even there parishioners were largely segregated according to wealth, from the polished pews at the front to the rough-hewn benches at the back.

  It was the first such meeting he had attended, although Sarah had been to a few. She seemed to be a collector of radical pamphlets, soaking up the righteous indignation to be found in them. Raven was not averse to the concept of change, to improving the lot of the downtrodden, but he remained sceptical of those who proposed easy answers to complex and seemingly intractable problems.

  ‘He thinks that the Church still has too much administrative power when it comes to dealing with the poor,’ Sarah said, as though Raven was in need of schooling on the subject. ‘The Poor Law makes provisions for the infirm but not the able-bodied unemployed; abandoned women with children receive no special consideration. Mr Hamilton favours a secular system of standardised state relief,’ she continued, a little too much admiration in her tone for Raven’s liking.

  ‘He’s brave if he thinks that he can take on the might of the Kirk and get away with it,’ Raven said. He could feel his irritation building, like an itchy rash. He had not come here to listen to Teddy Hamilton’s pontifications on the plight of the poor, of which Raven had considerably more practical knowledge. He was interested solely in what he might discover about the man himself, which was why he had asked Sarah if he might accompany her to the meeting. He had been explicit in his motives, filling her in on all he knew about Sir Ainsley’s death, and his mission, at Eugenie’s request, on Gideon’s behalf.

  He looked at Teddy again, gathering up his notes at the podium. He was handsome, articulate and – perhaps most importantly – blessed with the correct accent and consequent enunciation. Cut from a certain cloth and therefore not so easily dismissed as a rabble-rouser, he was the kind of man people listened to.

  Raven realised that if Teddy’s proselytising fervour was as real as it appeared, then it must have been a torment to remain silent and deferential in the presence of his uncle. Sir Ainsley’s money, power and influence represented everything Teddy and his political allies were going to have to overcome.

  ‘It’s good that he is specifically highlighting the plight of women,’ Raven suggested, hoping it would please Sarah.

  There was a loud snort from the lady standing beside them.

  ‘The plight of women requires more than Teddy Hamilton’s proposals to remedy it. He talks of extending the franchise but do not be fooled. It is universal male suffrage he favours.’

  She was an older lady, fashionably dressed. Raven recognised her but could not recall from where. Sarah had no such problem.

  ‘How wonderful to see you again, Mrs Crowe. I so enjoyed the book you gave me.’

  This did not help Raven at all. Sarah rescued him.

  ‘Have you been introduced to Dr Will Raven, assistant to Dr Simpson?’

  ‘I don’t believe I have had the pleasure,’ she replied. ‘It’s been a while since I attended one of Dr Simpson’s dinners.’

  Raven managed to piece it all together. Catherine Crowe. Author. Rather eccentric. Legendary imbiber of ether at Queen Street. Held literary salons at her home at Darnaway Street, which Mina attended on occasion.

  Teddy had now stepped down from the podium and was shaking hands with a number of bewhiskered gentlemen while a group of ladies looked on admiringly.

  ‘It appears he has won them over,’ Raven said.

  ‘He has the makings of a political leader, no doubt about that,’ Mrs Crowe replied. ‘He has charisma, passion and the ability to rally a crowd. But there is one thing he lacks: money. Speeches are all well and good, but you need a fortune behind you to get anywhere in politics.’

  ‘I am surprised that finance is an issue,’ Raven said. ‘Given his provenance I would have assumed that money was not in short supply.’

  Mrs Crowe looked at him as though he had said something profoundly stupid.

  ‘His mother was Sir Ainsley’s sister. They live modestly because all the family money and property went to Sir Ainsley after their father died.’

  Raven was unembarrassed by his error. Indeed, it had been helpful. Did this mean that Teddy had a motive to want Sir Ainsley dead? Raven was still new to the laws regarding primogeniture and inheritance. Given his own situation, it was not something he had needed to take an interest in before – his own father had bequeathed him little more than a pocket watch and an occasional propensity for violence.

  Raven realised that he had lost the thread of the conversation going on around him, too intent on trying to unscramble his own thoughts. He heard something about the lot of prostitutes and caught up fast: the contagious diseases ordinance that Ainsley had been so keen on.

  ‘It wouldn’t have got anywhere at all if it wasn’t for the provost’s sudden change of heart on the matter,’ Mrs Crowe said.

  ‘Why do you think Mr Mansfield reversed his position?’ Raven asked.

  ‘In the world of politics, who knows? But there are those who say you would be better asking Abigail Findlay.’

  Raven remembered being briefly introduced at the soirée. She was the wife of Auberon Findlay, Dean of the Faculty of Advocates.

  ‘There are rumours that she and Mansfield are lovers, despite both being married.’

  Raven noticed Sarah’s eyes widen at this
revelation. Not at the information itself but at the manner in which it was being relayed. Mrs Crowe was being magnificently indiscreet.

  ‘Just gossip, of course. If we had a means of proving it, perhaps we could have prevailed upon the provost to take our side in the matter. As it stands, Sir Ainsley’s demise has made the problem go away. At least until someone else proposes it again, or something worse.’

  Raven thought about what Dr Simpson had told him at Bannockburn: Sir Ainsley used means other than money to coerce people. He remembered Mansfield’s stilted, reluctant contribution to their discussion at the soirée. He was obedient after a direct prompt, like he’d had his leash jerked by his master.

  Then he recalled Mansfield skulking in the gallery that night, ducking out of sight the moment he was seen.

  If an affair were to be exposed, it would be the end of him. Ruinous for his career, disastrous for Abigail Findlay, scandalous and damaging for the dean. Mansfield seemed a decent man, one who would not wish to precipitate all that. It stood to reason that if some manner of proof existed, then Sir Ainsley had possessed it, most likely through Sanderson. It was another instance whereby Sir Ainsley’s demise made the problem go away.

  Suspects were beginning to pile up. Teddy, Mansfield, Findlay and his wife. All had reasons to wish Sir Ainsley dead, but wishing and doing were quite different things.

  Teddy had by now disentangled himself from his admirers and was making his way over to Raven’s group.

  ‘Mrs Crowe,’ he said, making a great show of kissing her hand, ‘what a delight it is to see you here.’

  ‘Oh, Teddy. Save your charm for the younger ladies. I am impervious to it.’

  Raven noticed a little reddening of her cheeks that suggested otherwise.

  ‘Dr Raven, isn’t it?’ Teddy said. ‘Dr Simpson’s assistant.’

  ‘Well remembered,’ Raven acknowledged, thinking a memory for names and faces was another attribute that would serve a man well in politics. ‘This is my associate, Miss Fisher,’ he added, by way of introduction.

  Teddy raised an eyebrow at ‘associate’, but Raven often struggled to find a suitable descriptor. What was he supposed to say? Friend? Acquaintance?

  Teddy made a bow, smiled. It was Sarah’s turn to blush a little.

  Who was this man, with his uncanny ability to make women redden in his presence? Raven felt a pang of something, an uncomfortable twist in the gut. Was he jealous? If he was, he realised he was going to have to get used to that feeling. Where Sarah chose to plant her affections was now none of his concern.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about the death of your uncle,’ Sarah said.

  Teddy paused before responding to her condolences. His polite answer when it arrived was an unenlightening one, full of the usual platitudes.

  ‘It’s very upsetting for everyone,’ he said. ‘I particularly feel for Mrs Chalmers, who was to be his new wife.’

  ‘Do you think Gideon was involved?’ Sarah asked.

  Raven was surprised by her candour. Perhaps she was not as charmed by Teddy as he had assumed. It was the question he wanted to ask, but he had planned a cautious route to get there. Sarah had cut straight to it, spurred on perhaps by the presence of the forthright Mrs Crowe.

  Again, Teddy was careful in his response.

  ‘It’s hard to imagine’, he said, ‘a son killing his father.’

  He bowed again, graced them with a sad smile, and then resumed his circuit of the room. He was immediately swallowed up by a gaggle of young women. Mrs Crowe spotted someone she just had to speak to and disappeared too, leaving Sarah and Raven alone, marooned in a little island of calm amongst the excited throng.

  ‘There is no denying his popularity,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Like a cult,’ Raven replied. ‘Or some form of demonic possession. Perhaps he induced one of them to slip some arsenic into Sir Ainsley’s supper.’

  ‘I think you are overestimating his powers of persuasion.’

  ‘Really? It is not unprecedented: the idea that radicals and anarchists might turn to murder in pursuit of their goals.’

  ‘Hardly the sans-culotte, are they?’ Sarah scoffed.

  She looked at Teddy again. ‘I don’t think that he had anything to do with it.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘If the idea was to gain the Douglas inheritance for himself, how could he know that Amelia would renounce her son’s claim?’

  Cutting to the nub of the issue as usual, Raven thought.

  ‘Depends how well they know one another, I suppose. If Teddy is an anti-establishment radical and Amelia believes that wealth and privilege are corrupting, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that they discussed what she did and did not want for her son.’

  Sarah looked profoundly sceptical.

  Raven put his hands up in an attitude of surrender.

  ‘I admit that this is where the theory of Teddy’s involvement falls down.’

  ‘You ought to be careful, Will Raven,’ Sarah said. ‘You are allowing your attachment to Eugenie to cloud your judgment.’

  She swirled off towards the exit, evidently having had enough of radical politics and Raven’s disjointed theorising for one evening.

  He let her go. He needed a moment alone to think. Was she right that his relationship with Eugenie was skewing his thinking? Was Gideon’s guilt obvious? Much as he disliked the man, he still felt duty-bound to exclude all other possibilities.

  Gideon said that Sir Ainsley had enemies more powerful than him. Perhaps what was significant was that Sir Ainsley had other enemies who were weak before him, as Gideon had been. People who did not have the means to go up against him directly and who might seek a subtler way to cut him down.

  Who stood to gain most from his death? Dr Todd had asked.

  Teddy would gain a fortune and, among other things, a newspaper. Together they represented a means to effect change, to wield real influence. The provost, Mansfield, stood to regain his autonomy by freeing himself from Sir Ainsley’s leash.

  And yet, even as he weighed all these possibilities, Raven could not ignore the fact that it was Gideon who had the most to benefit and the deepest reason to wish his father dead. Most importantly he had the means to do so. Not just the arsenic, but the will to use it, and this last part was crucial. Other people might idly wish a man dead, might even kill a man in the grip of rage, but to murder him in a premeditated and coldly deliberate way, you needed deep, lingering hatred. Raven had seen that in Gideon long before his father’s death, on a night he could never forget.

  Raven had been tutoring Gideon early one evening, following what had already been a long day preparing for a forthcoming exam of his own. As ever it felt like a losing battle, Raven struggling to imbue understanding into this singularly undisciplined student. So when Gideon had suggested they instead adjourn to a nearby tavern, Raven had acquiesced despite his instinctive misgivings.

  Amid the tavern’s raucous throng, it was not long before Raven remembered why he tended not to associate with Gideon beyond the university’s walls. The fellow did not require much ale to become obnoxious, venting ignorant opinions and running his mouth off to people as though everyone present was there as his servant. Raven had been frankly embarrassed to be in his company.

  Most of the clientele knew well enough to ignore such a blowhard, but there were a couple of men worse for their drink who took him to task. Unnerved by their vocal ferocity, Gideon had piped down, suddenly mindful that in fact nobody here owed him any deference. However, when he later noticed them making for the door, he was unable to resist barking out a parting shot.

  ‘Back to the alley with you, you pair of mangy mongrels!’

  Raven had recognised the cowardice of one emboldened only when he thought his enemy in retreat.

  By the time he and Raven headed back into the night, Gideon had probably forgotten all about them. Unfortunately, the two men had not forgotten Gideon. They emerged from a doorway close to the tave
rn, blocking the way.

  ‘You’re in our alley now, your lordship.’

  Raven assessed the situation as a matter of reflex. He saw that one of them carried a heavy bludgeon, the other a length of chain. They meant serious harm, of that he had no doubt. But they were drunk, they were old, and an evening in Gideon’s company had put Raven in one of those moods that Henry so feared.

  Things happened quickly after that. He remembered Gideon being knocked to the ground right away. He went down without a fight, curled up in the mud, arms about his head as his assailant whipped at him with the chain.

  Raven quickly dispatched his man, wresting the bludgeon from him and driving it into his gut. The fellow lurched and listed, seeming as drunk as he was winded, before collapsing in a heap against the wall.

  Raven then used the weapon to defend himself against Gideon’s assailant, who came lashing at him with the chain. Raven let it wrap around the bludgeon, then pulled it from his opponent’s grip before swinging the shaft two-handed between the man’s legs.

  Raven was watching him drop to his knees when he was blindsided by the first drunk roaring back. He launched himself into Raven with a leap, the two of them ending up rolling on the ground in a mess of gouging hands and shifting weight. As Raven wrestled and clawed with him, he caught sight of Gideon kicking and stamping the other man, who was helpless on the ground. Raven had seldom seen such fury, such viciousness. He could tell Gideon would not stop, utterly lost in his frenzy. Raven thus found himself in the absurd circumstance of having to defeat one drunk in order to save the man’s companion.

  Raven debilitated him with a blow to the throat, then scrambled to his feet and dragged Gideon away before he could inflict any further damage.

  He still saw the man from time to time around the Old Town. He was hard to miss these days, distinguished by his eye patch. He had lost the eye that night, Raven had little doubt; and but for Raven’s intervention, Gideon would have surely killed him. As he kicked and stamped, blind in his rage, he had been screaming, ‘I hate you! I hate you!’