The Way of All Flesh

by Ambrose Parry

  Yes, that sounded like Duncan, Raven thought. He couldn’t imagine the man shedding many tears if his experimentation happened to kill somebody. He’d probably view it as a necessary sacrifice on the altar of progress. With that thought, he resolved to walk home slowly despite his rumbling stomach.

  ‘That said, I think he may be onto something,’ Gregory added. ‘I was reluctant to test the formula on myself, so I experimented on some animal subjects a short while ago. They became quickly unresponsive, proving impervious to painful stimuli. I was intending to check on them again, but your arrival distracted me.’

  ‘What manner of animals?’ Raven asked.

  ‘A couple of conies.’

  ‘Do you have a lot of rabbits that you experiment on?’

  ‘No, just the two over there.’

  Raven felt something solidify within him, like mercury in the chill. He reached into the crate, placing a hand on each of the rabbits in case he had misapprehended their condition.

  He had not.

  ‘These rabbits are quite dead. How much did you give them?’

  ‘It was but the slightest dose of vapour. A single drop upon the muslin.’

  A single drop.

  Raven bolted from the lab, clattering his way down the staircases and halls. In keeping with the normal testing practice, Simpson and the others would be gathered around the dining table, dispensing ever more liberal quantities, sniffing it deeper and deeper until it had an effect or was declared useless. He had to get back to Queen Street, though it may already be too late.

  Raven barrelled out of the college and onto rain-swept Nicholson Street, where he looked about for a hansom cab. He didn’t have the funds for such a journey but he would borrow the fare from the professor, and if he got there too late, payment would be the least of his worries.

  The streets were all but empty: a few damp souls wending their way home upon the pavements, and not a carriage to be seen. Ruefully he recalled guests to Queen Street complaining that there was never a cab to be had in Edinburgh, particularly when it rained. The hour was late too: most respectable people would be digesting their dinner or preparing for their beds. The only people on the street were drunks. One of them swayed into his path, suddenly enraged and irrationally regarding Raven as his enemy. He screamed out an oath and challenged him to fight. Raven checked his stride and harmlessly passed around him.

  Then up ahead he saw a carriage approach the junction with Infirmary Street. The gentleman inside was bound to have heard of the professor. Surely he would assist when he heard how he was imperilled.

  Raven ran towards it, waving his arms and beseeching the coachman to stop. He heard an urgent voice from within as the coachman urged his steeds to hurry, cracking his whip at the approaching Raven to warn him off. He was not surprised. He must have looked like a madman trying to attack them.

  He had no option but to run. And though it burn his muscles and crush his lungs, he would drive himself without rest until he reached Queen Street.

  He calculated the most direct route as he ran, his splashing footsteps echoing off the buildings. The rhythm of his lengthening stride was soon accompanied by another beat in his chest, though he felt a welcome easing as his route took him steeply downhill on Cockburn Street, where he was able to run faster with less cost to legs and lungs. As he picked up momentum, he skidded on something – he didn’t stop to consider what – and almost tumbled. It was a near thing: a twisted ankle would have ended his mercy dash right then and there.

  Righting himself, he stepped up the pace again, his eyes trained upon the flagstone and cobbles, straining to pick out potential hazards in the gloom. Then he felt an impact that shuddered every bone, and almost bit through his tongue as his teeth clattered together. It felt as though he had run into a wall, except walls weren’t usually warm and clad in cloth. He rebounded and tumbled to the ground, feeling a blow against his thigh and a crack as the jar in his pocket smashed between his falling weight and the hard stone beneath. As he tried to focus in his daze, two horribly familiar faces loomed over him beneath the glow of a street lamp.

  He had run straight into the Weasel and Gargantua.

  Thirty-Nine

  Raven felt Gargantua’s huge hands about his shoulders, gripping him and hauling him upright like he was a carcass in a slaughterhouse.

  ‘Mr Raven,’ the Weasel said, a vicious delight dripping from his voice. ‘What a lovely surprise to run into you. Now, do you know what time it is?’

  He theatrically produced Raven’s father’s pocket watch and dangled it from its chain.

  ‘Well past time you paid up – either in coin or in kind. I think I said an eye, didn’t I?’

  The Weasel put the watch back in his pocket and took out the same blade that had ripped Raven’s face the last time they met.

  Raven started at the sight of it, but Gargantua’s hands held him firm.

  He felt sick with fear. He was barely able to think of anything other than the pain he would endure, but some part of him was thinking of the consequences beyond. Could he still have a career with one eye? It was a moot question, he realised. Being held here and mutilated meant his mission tonight was at an end. With Simpson dead, he would have no apprenticeship anyway. It was all about to be lost, for the price of trying to help Evie.

  To add insult to imminent injury, he hadn’t even helped her. In fact, it was quite possible he had merely borrowed the means by which she purchased her own death.

  Fear caused his mind to race, revisiting the events of the evening like he was experiencing them all simultaneously. Every sight, every smell, every sensation and emotion flashed before him, and amidst it all, something stuck.

  Raven’s shoulders remained gripped, but his hands were free and he could bend his elbow.

  ‘No, I have it,’ he implored. ‘I have Mr Flint’s money upon me. Please, I beg you. I have just sold a treasured heirloom and I have it here in my pocket.’

  Mindful of the broken glass, he dipped his fingers carefully and scooped up a quantity of the red powder. Then he closed his eyes and tossed it backwards into his captor’s face.

  Gargantua let go immediately and spun away, bending over and howling as he put his hands to his eyes. Even as he did so, Raven was scooping another handful, which he cupped in his outraised palm and blew, sending a red cloud to engulf the Weasel’s eyes, nose and mouth.

  The Weasel fell, his screams echoing about the walls, while behind him Gargantua remained bent, emitting a low moan and muttering about being blinded by hot coals.

  Raven crouched over the Weasel and swiftly retrieved his stolen pocket watch. Would that time itself could be recovered so easily.

  Raven resumed his running, powering down the grass of the Mound in darkness, his eyes fixed on the lights of Princes Street ahead. His heart was fluttering both from his fear and from his exertion, but he felt as though some analgesic draught was surging through him, dulling the pains in his legs and in his chest.

  The draught had worn off by the time he was careering down Frederick Street, but by that time gravity was assisting his flight. He almost flattened a gentleman alighting from a carriage as he turned the last corner, the front door of No. 52 in sight ahead of him. He barely dared to consider what awaited him behind it.

  Raven burst into the hall past a startled Jarvis, his thighs screaming from his efforts. His breath was so short he feared he would not have enough left to speak, but as he bowled through the door into the dining room, he discovered that it didn’t matter.

  He was too late.

  The room was in disarray. The lace tablecloth was hanging askew, a number of glass tumblers lay smashed upon the wooden floor and several of the dining-room chairs were on their sides. Amongst the detritus on the floor, beneath the mahogany table, were the lifeless bodies of three men: Simpson, Keith, and one he did not recognise. A fourth, James Duncan, was slumped face-down on the table, a single bottle open in front of him next to a folded cloth.

 
; Raven cursed the man. In his blasted quest for a place in history, he had killed them all.

  Forty

  Sarah carried a tray into the drawing room bearing a pot of tea, three cups and a tray of fancies. She did not think that anyone could still be hungry after the bounteous meal she had watched them consume, but she was aware of Agnes Petrie’s eyes tracing the progress of the little cakes from door to table. Mina often claimed to have ‘a second compartment for sweet things’ to excuse how she fell upon such treats after a generous dinner, though Sarah had noticed that her habits had been more abstemious in recent times: specifically since Dr Beattie started showing an interest in her.

  The ladies had retired upstairs to the drawing room while the gentlemen remained around the dining table to commence the professor’s preferred after-dinner pursuit: that of testing new candidates to improve upon ether as a drowsy syrup. Drs Simpson, Keith and Duncan were joined by a layperson, Captain James Petrie, but as he described himself as ‘a man of intrepid spirit’, he had had no qualms about throwing his weight behind the medical men’s pioneering quest.

  Captain Petrie was Mrs Simpson and Mina’s brother-in-law, the widower of their late sister. He was a voluble personality, a man who looked like he did not quite belong amidst domestic gentility. He had been friendly and polite to the staff, however. Indeed, while Sarah waited at the table, he had asked her to pass on his compliments to Mrs Lyndsey for a remarkable meal, though it became retrospectively clear that this was merely a pretext for him to hold forth on the subject of ‘the only meal I might be permitted to consider more remarkable’.

  He proceeded to talk at length of his exploits defending Britain’s interests in the American War, telling of how in 1814, following victory in the Battle of Bladensburg, his company had marched on Washington. ‘We took the city with such swiftness and audacity that James Madison’s dinner was still warm upon the table when we stormed his house and set it ablaze. I fetched a leather-bound book of poetry from the library shelves and briefly sat down to finish the abandoned meal before the flames took over, for it is a sin to waste good food.’

  Sarah was most impressed with this tale, thinking Captain Petrie sounded gallant and colourful; certainly a good deal less dusty than most of the grey-faced medical men who had dined there. It was only as they ascended the staircase that she overheard Mrs Simpson say to Mina: ‘I wonder how many times we have sat through him telling that story.’

  ‘Almost as many as the number of soldiers who claim to have eaten of that meal,’ Mina replied. ‘Truly, it must have been quite a plateful.’

  This exchange had, of course, taken place out of earshot of Agnes Petrie, the captain’s daughter and Mrs Simpson’s niece. Agnes was a plump and rather giddy creature who did not strike Sarah as blessed with the highest level of intelligence, though at least this did not mean another fine female mind condemned to atrophy through disuse. Neither had she inherited her father’s easy grace in dealing with the staff, and came across as a rather spoiled and self-regarding young woman.

  Sarah was pouring the tea when the entire house was shaken by the crash of the front door being thrown open against the wall. It was followed by a sound like rumbling thunder, the shuddering thump of someone rushing down the hall with such haste and force of weight that she could feel it vibrate through the boards beneath her feet.

  ‘What on earth is that?’ asked Mrs Simpson.

  Sarah hastened to investigate, the ladies rising to their feet at her back. She looked over the banister and observed Jarvis standing against the wall with an affronted expression upon his face.

  ‘What occurs?’

  ‘Mr Raven just came charging through here like he had the devil at his heels,’ he said.

  Sarah hastened downstairs into the dining room. She found Raven crouched over Dr Simpson, who lay face-down upon the floor, the bodies of Dr Keith and Captain Petrie motionless alongside. Raven rolled Dr Simpson over and placed his ear to his chest.

  ‘He breathes,’ he announced, panting heavily, a near-tearful anxiety in his voice. He was soaking wet, his hair plastered to his face, which was red with exertion.

  ‘You’ve been running.’

  ‘I rushed here from Gregory’s lab,’ Raven said, still struggling to catch his breath. ‘The formula Duncan ordered is poisonous. It rendered two rabbits unconscious before killing them shortly after. I fear it may yet do the same here.’

  Sarah noticed a bottle sitting on the table where Dr Duncan sat slumped, his arms sprawled before him as though reaching for it. She recognised the handwriting on the label.

  ‘But this bottle isn’t from Professor Gregory. It came from Duncan and Flockhart. “Perchloride of formyle”,’ she read.

  She handed it to him, Raven’s hand outstretched impatiently. He read the label, a look of confusion upon his face, and as he did so, Dr Simpson’s eyes opened.

  Sarah thought back to earlier in the day, when she had come here to prepare the dining room and lay the table for dinner. She had found easily a dozen bottles untidily ranged on top of the sideboard, still others seemingly abandoned on the floor. As she endeavoured to tidy the former away, she had knocked one onto its side, causing it to roll to the back where it dropped into the gap between the wall and the cabinet.

  She didn’t have the strength to move the sideboard on her own, and besides, at that moment, Dr Duncan had come in and begun chastising her for interfering. She therefore decided it best not to mention how she had just mislaid one of his bottles.

  Dr Simpson tried to sit up then lay back again, blinking several times and looking at his surroundings as though they did not make sense. Sarah fetched a cushion to help support his head as Mrs Simpson and Mina appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Oh, dear heavens, what has happened?’ Mina asked.

  Mrs Simpson rolled her eyes. Clearly it was not the first time she had witnessed such a sight.

  The professor focused upon his wife and propped himself up with his elbow. He looked at the concerned faces crowded above him and smiled.

  ‘This is far stronger and better than ether,’ he said.

  Dr Keith was next to stir, but there was no gentle waking for him. Instead he began to thrash about, kicking at the table as though trying to overturn the few items that had thus far managed to remain upright upon it. This was accompanied by loud snoring on the part of Dr Duncan.

  After several minutes of this, Dr Duncan began to rouse and George Keith, having ceased his semi-conscious violence, raised himself to his knees. He gripped the table, only his eyes visible above the edge, and stared in an unfocused way, with a hauntingly vacant expression on his face, as though his human spirit had abandoned him. For some reason he directed this ghastly gaze at Mina, who looked reciprocally transfixed, horrified by what she was seeing. Thus, just as everyone else was regaining either consciousness or composure, Mina threatened to faint. An upturned chair was righted for her, and Sarah was dispatched to find her fan and fetch her a glass of water.

  Dr Simpson climbed to his feet, assisted by his wife.

  ‘Waldie was right,’ he declared, delight in his voice. ‘This is by far the most promising of all our experiments.’ He looked about himself eagerly. ‘Where has it gone? Is there any left?’

  The sopping Raven held out the bottle to him, but Mrs Simpson gestured him away.

  ‘I think perhaps we have all had enough excitement for one evening.’

  The professor would not be denied. ‘But this is just the beginning. We may well have found what we have been searching for. Who else would like to try?’

  Mina was first to find her voice. But not in the affirmative. ‘I for one will not be making such an exhibition of myself. The look on Dr Keith’s face just now will haunt me for the rest of my days.’

  ‘Oh, come away now, Mina. It may be your chance to form part of history.’

  Dr Simpson grabbed the bottle from Raven, removed the stopper and waved it in Mina’s direction. Looking suddenly alarmed, Mina got
out of her chair and backed away from him. The professor then began to chase her round the table as she shrieked her objection.

  The pursuit was short-lived as Dr Simpson subsided into laughter and had to give up. Raven rescued the bottle before its contents were inadvertently poured onto the carpet.

  ‘I’ll try it,’ said a voice, which turned out to belong to Agnes Petrie. She had been standing in the doorway and now pushed forward into the room. ‘Oh, do let me have some.’

  Dr Simpson looked to her father, who nodded assent. Sarah suspected he had said no to few requests where his daughter was appellant.

  Agnes squeezed herself into a dining-room chair and began to inhale the saucer of liquid that had been poured for her. Within a matter of moments, her eyelids fluttered and she declared herself to be lighter than air, which seemed all the more remarkable given her size. She then began shouting ‘I’m an angel, I’m an angel,’ before sliding to the floor in a manner far removed from the seraphic. She remained there, peacefully unconscious, for a full five minutes.

  Dr Simpson decided he would try it upon himself again, ignoring the concerned looks of his wife. Dr Duncan joined him and Dr Keith took out his pocket watch to time the duration of the drug’s effect.

  ‘Perchloride of formyle,’ Keith stated, taking a note. ‘Somewhat more of a mouthful than “ether”. Can we give it a shortened name?’

  As Dr Simpson raised the glass to his nose, he paused momentarily. ‘I believe Waldie said it was also known as “chloroform”.’

  Forty-One

  Sarah watched Raven quietly withdraw from the dining room, suspecting she was the only one who noticed. Everyone else remained fixated upon the experiments, though in Mrs Simpson and Mina’s cases this seemed more an act of vigilance than enthusiasm.

  Raven had observed the recent activities wordlessly, and declined the offer of partaking in subsequent experiments. The man looked drained. He had turned up looking like he’d been pulled from the river, and if anything for a while he had become wetter. The warmth of the room made him sweat all the more following what appeared to have been considerable exertions. It had been half an hour before his face returned to a normal colour.