The Way of All Flesh

by Ambrose Parry

  ‘No, Miss Fisher, I do not intend to kill you. I killed you two minutes ago, when you drank your tea.’

  Fifty-Eight

  Raven clung to the inside of the door as the brougham took another tight corner. His heart leapt as he felt the wheels on one side actually leave the ground, but he suppressed the urge to tell the skeletal coachman to slow down. Shorn of the weight of two passengers, he was driving the horses even faster upon the return journey, and Raven had no wish to interfere with that.

  Sarah’s instincts had been right all along. She had talked of a whiff of deceit, but it was a stench, covered up by bergamot and sandalwood. It was not Sheldrake, but Beattie who was the French midwife, Beattie who had recognised Raven from a distance as he waited on the dockside, Beattie who had killed Spiers for fear that the landlord might spill his secret. And Beattie to whom Sarah was headed to confront this night, alone and with no notion of just how dangerous he was.

  Raven had deduced all of this in a twinkling the moment that overpowering scent was described. He saw beneath the veil Beattie had cast about himself and understood what had been before him since the beginning. That calm he exhibited in the face of suffering was not due to knowing true sorrow. It was because he genuinely felt nothing. He did not care about the patients. He did not care about anyone. That equanimity, that assuredness, it was a detachment from human emotion.

  Raven thought back to when Beattie told him about his lamented Julia, his one true love who died the day before their wedding. What a look of anger had preceded this revelation, an outraged fury that briefly surfaced at having been challenged. Beattie had then composed himself and responded with a tale so tragic, so poignant, and so tailored to assuage Raven’s suspicions.

  Raven recalled the pause after he asked for her name. Beattie had needed a moment to make one up.

  Suddenly every remembered conversation seemed to reveal a hidden truth.

  It is always wise to learn as much as you can about the great names in your field, in case fate should throw you into their company.

  Beattie boasted how he had researched Simpson’s background in depth. Did he know all along about the unmarried sister-in-law who might provide a route into Simpson’s family and his name? Was this in his plans even as he sent that blood-smeared note calling for Simpson’s assistance?

  Raven understood now how adept Beattie was at playing a part. He could pretend to be genuinely interested in Mina, just as he could pretend to be protecting Raven from the consequences of Caroline Graseby’s death. Raven had been unable to see how she could have died from the ether. It was clear now that it was likely something Beattie did that killed her. He had killed Graseby and he had killed so many others: some he perhaps hadn’t meant to and some he certainly did – those whose on-going existence threatened to expose him.

  Raven had raced without hesitation from Flint’s yard to the brougham, urging they proceed with all haste, until the coachman asked where they were bound. That was when he realised he did not know where Beattie lived.

  He leapt from the carriage even before it had come to a halt outside No. 52, racing across the pavement and throwing open the door. He found Jarvis in the hallway, Mrs Lyndsay standing beside him. Her face was ruddy, and not merely from the heat of the stove. She looked furious.

  ‘Where is Dr Simpson?’ Raven demanded.

  ‘He is gone with Angus to fetch McLevy,’ Jarvis answered. ‘His coach and horses were stolen – with you in it, I believe. They hailed a hansom and set off for the High Street and the police office. Where have you been? Why are you wearing Dr Simpson’s coat? And do you know what is become of Miss Fisher? She has not returned for dinner duties.’

  ‘Nor ought she to return now,’ Mrs Lyndsay added, ‘for if she does, she will find no tasks awaiting her. She is gone without leave and it is the last I will tolerate. The girl can consider herself dismissed.’

  He took the stairs three at a time in a rapid ascent towards Dr Simpson’s study. He knew there had been correspondence between Beattie and the professor, from which his place of residence might be ascertained. He knew also that Mina’s own letters had been Sarah’s source, but there were any number of subjects he did not wish to broach with Miss Grindlay in order to procure this information.

  Simpson’s desk was in its usual state of chaos, covered in so many sheets of paper that it resembled the floor of a white-treed forest in late autumn. Raven rifled through it, separating technical notes from correspondence and discarding items he had checked by dropping them to the floor. He soon happened upon what he required: a letter from Beattie formally proposing his marriage to Mina. There it was: Shrub Hill, just beyond the edges of the New Town.

  Raven’s eyes had no sooner lifted the letter than he noticed Simpson’s case journal beneath it. It was open at a recent entry concerning a visit to a house on Fettes Row, the chloroform-assisted birth of a daughter to a Mrs Fiona McDonald. Simpson kept detailed notes of all his visits in this volume, and that would include the case at Danube Street about which he was sworn to secrecy.

  He was aware time was wasting but he had to know, especially in light of what he had now discovered about Beattie. He flipped the pages frantically until he found the entry, made only hours before that fateful gathering in the room downstairs.

  Raven felt a lurching in his gut as he confirmed that the procedure at which he assisted had in fact been an attempted abortion. But that was nothing compared to what he felt as he read on. Rather than having difficulty in becoming pregnant, Caroline Graseby’s problem had been quite the opposite. She was pregnant, but the dates of an extended business trip to America quite conspicuously precluded her husband being the father. ‘Inconvenient evidence of indiscretions’ was how Simpson delicately put it. Terrified of the consequences, Mrs Graseby had sought the means to correct her condition.

  According to Simpson’s notes – which mercifully did not mention Raven’s name – the individual who carried out the procedure was a Dr John Mors. It was an alias, and one of the unfamiliar names that had appeared in Duncan and Flockhart’s ledger. Graseby had called him Johnnie, and Beattie had instructed Raven similarly to call him only John. He had claimed this informality put the nervous Graseby at ease, but now Raven understood that it was to prevent them each learning that the other knew him by a different surname.

  Raven recalled the easy manner with which Beattie and Graseby had sat together, and the pressure he was putting on her to submit to the procedure. He suddenly had a notion that Beattie had been attempting to abort his own child.

  However, none of these things was yet the most shocking. Simpson had been able to discover all this from the patient herself, for Caroline Graseby was not dead.

  Fifty-Nine

  Raven ran out onto the pavement, where he found that his ancient coachman had vanished. Perhaps they had passed a comfortable-looking cemetery on the return journey and he had gone there to take up residence. Raven looked left and right in the hope that he might find Dr Simpson and Angus hurrying back. Instead he merely saw darkness and fog.

  Having no notion of how to drive horses or to ride one, he had little option but to run. He took off along Queen Street, heading east at a pace he estimated he could maintain for the entire journey. Shrub Hill was almost the distance he had run from Professor Gregory’s lab after discovering the dead rabbits. Recalling that occasion, he wondered whether once again he might be wrong about the danger, just as it transpired that Sarah had mislaid the deadly vial. Beattie would have no reason to suspect Sarah’s queries on Mina’s behalf indicated any inkling of his greater secret, so perhaps at most he would send her away with a scolding for doubting his word, and for her insolence in pursuing those doubts.

  After all, Sarah had no inkling. If she did, she would never have gone there.

  But as he ran, he saw how Beattie might indeed suspect. He had recognised Raven on the dock outside the King’s Wark and understood that Raven was looking into these matters. Beattie had fled, and the
n doubled back to kill Spiers. Had he also seen Sarah, and deduced she was the housemaid who sought Madame Anchou’s services in order to draw her out?

  Raven cut around the back of Hope Crescent, sacrificing street light for the ability to approach Beattie’s cottage from the rear. It would not do to present himself at the front door, as Beattie already knew Raven was a threat. He would have to take him by surprise.

  He crept quietly into the grounds, picking his path carefully in the sparing glow of light from a rear window. He saw no shadow, no flicker of movement from within, and heard no voices. The sound of argument would have been a welcome one.

  Raven drew closer, crouched beneath the sill, then slowly raised himself up to look inside. All thoughts of stealth and strategy flew from his mind as he peered through the glass and saw Sarah’s body lying on the floor.

  He ran directly to the back door, ready to break it down if he had to. It was not locked. He charged inside with no thought for quiet, passing through a kitchen where he caught a glimpse of a mortar and pestle next to the kettle, fine powder dusting the marble’s rim.

  From the hall he could see Sarah’s arm outstretched where she lay on the floor of Beattie’s study. Raven felt propelled towards her as though driven by a hand at his back. As he neared the doorway, he was felled by an explosion of light and pain. Something solid and heavy struck him across the face, the full force of its swing added to the weight of his own momentum.

  He reeled from the impact, blind and dazed, his legs weakened beneath him. Raven caught a flashing glimpse of Beattie clutching a poker or a stave. Further blows rained without mercy, one to the base of the spine, another to the back of his legs, another smashing down upon his head. He collapsed face-first to the floor, where still another strike to his side left him barely able to breathe. He was helpless.

  Beattie knelt on his back and began securing his wrists with twine. He did so tightly and expertly, in a way that told Raven he was not the first person to be bound by this man.

  He tried to raise his head, but as he did so, blood ran from his scalp into his right eye. Through his left he could see Sarah lying on the carpet a few feet across the room. She was utterly still. No twine had been necessary for her.

  He would have cried then, but he did not have the breath.

  Above her body, he saw shelves upon shelves of anatomy specimens ranged in jars, dominating the room. Even in his damaged state, something about the collection struck Raven as strange, though it took him a moment to grasp what was wrong with them.

  The answer was: nothing.

  Most medical men kept specimens of diseased organs as well as healthy ones, illustrative of unusual and damaging conditions. Beattie’s were all perfectly healthy, utterly normal.

  ‘You killed them,’ Raven said, finding a voice.

  ‘Killed who?’ Beattie asked, as though irritated by the query.

  ‘So many. The women who took your pills. You gave them a slow and painful death, and you cared not. The women you operated on for abortions died just as slowly. You killed them too.’

  Raven glanced across the room once more, some part of him still hoping he would see the movement that would prove him wrong. It did not come.

  ‘And you killed Sarah.’

  ‘Quite,’ Beattie replied, as though it were a mere detail.

  Raven struggled to find his voice through anger and grief. ‘My God, man. The only woman you didn’t kill was Graseby, yet you told me I had. Did you think I would never find out?’

  ‘As you suggest, I cared not. But I knew that believing it would make you most obedient, almost as obsequious as you are towards that bombastic and self-regarding prig you work for.’

  ‘Self-regarding? You murdered Sarah, Rose Campbell and Spiers, merely to silence them.’

  ‘Their sacrifice is unfortunate, but they forced my hand. I am on the cusp of remarkable things that will bring untold benefits. For a housemaid or a publican to have stopped my work would have been a disaster.’

  Beattie satisfied himself that the bonds around Raven’s wrists were tight and began binding his ankles.

  ‘You, by contrast, will not be a great loss. You would not have made a good doctor, Raven. You let sentiment hold you back: sentiment and sympathy. To truly succeed, you must set the patients apart from yourself, and I saw no evidence you could do that, which is why you would never have been anything more than a nurse.’

  ‘Set them apart? You use them as subjects for experiment. You poisoned those women. Was it not enough to profit from their desperation by selling them a useless pill at exorbitant cost? Did you have to give them a painful death so that they did not come looking for their money back?’

  ‘That was not my intention. Again, you do not have any understanding. These were necessary sacrifices on the path to progress. I sought to get the measure right so that it might bring on premature labour without harming the mother. Imagine what a boon it will be when I perfect a safe and effective means to deal with the unwanted fruits of passion, to say nothing of a preventative check on the relentless spawning of the poor.’

  Beattie stood up straight, standing over Raven as he lectured him. He always did love the sound of his own voice. Raven was keen to keep him talking, as his only hope of salvation lay in Simpson and McLevy getting his message via Jarvis and hurrying here in response.

  ‘I sold my remedy in good faith, Raven. If the pills did not get the desired result, I offered the operation. There were many who took formulations of my drug and, though it did not have the desired effect, they did survive to request the procedure.’

  ‘Which was when you killed them with your ham-fisted butchery.’

  ‘How else is one to learn but practise? And it is vital to perfect a technique before offering it to the wealthy ladies of the New Town. So who better to learn on than whores and housemaids, as the former will be buried unmarked and the latter buried unmourned?’

  ‘What about Graseby? Your technique was not perfected when you operated on her, for I know you have killed others since.’

  ‘That was something of an emergency. Her husband was apt to cause trouble so I had to act, and I knew that if she died, then either way it solved my problem.’

  ‘So the child was yours. You are an abomination, Beattie. Primum non nocere. Do you remember quoting those words to me? You say I am held back by sentiment and sympathy, but what is our purpose if not to alleviate suffering? To lengthen out human existence, not to curtail it? And to do those things, a doctor must not be apart from his patients, but one with them.’

  Beattie sneered, ugly and yet amused. ‘You sound like your mentor: encumbered by emotion to the point of being unmanned. Do you think posterity will remember him just because he spared a few women an everyday and natural pain? I will grant you his chloroform has proven useful, but in the grander scheme, suffering has an important purpose, Raven. It is necessary. As is sacrifice.’

  Raven swallowed, the fear gripping him as surely as the bonds. Beattie had said all he wished to, and was preparing for action.

  ‘What do you mean to do?’

  ‘Young Dr Duncan was right, though he spoke in jest. A footnote might yet be made of you in medical history. You will not be a doctor, but you will make a contribution as the subject of experiment.’

  Raven’s eye was immediately drawn to the jars. He felt a growing panic, manifest in a struggle against his bonds, but his hands and feet were securely tied.

  ‘No, no, you misunderstand,’ Beattie told him. ‘The late Miss Fisher will fulfil that purpose adequately, for which I am grateful to her. Even with the Anatomy Act, cadavers for dissection are not so easy to come by. Whereas you, Raven, will provide me with something far more valuable: the opportunity to practise multiple surgical techniques on a live patient.’

  He felt rough hands around his shoulders as Beattie began to drag him from the study.

  ‘I warn you,’ Raven said breathlessly. ‘You are already undone. When I left, Simpson had gone t
o fetch the policeman McLevy. I have left word for them to come to this address.’

  ‘Yet they do not arrive. But thank you for the warning: I shall extinguish the lights, so that if they do visit this house, they shall find me not at home. For the only lamps I burn will be down in my cellar, illuminating our work together.’

  Raven saw the inescapable truth of it, and had no play left but to cry ‘Murder!’

  Even as he shouted, he could tell his voice would not carry beyond the house. Nonetheless, Beattie stopped and crouched over him once again in order to stuff a handkerchief into his mouth.

  This is how it ends, Raven thought. This is how it ends, as it was always destined to do. It was where his path began: with two bodies lying on a floor, one man and one woman. In the beginning, the man was dead, the woman alive, though scared and bleeding. At the end, it was the woman who was slain and the man bloodied but breathing – though only for now.

  Where it began: in his mother’s kitchen, watching his father beat and kick her, oblivious of the blood and the screams, too drunk and blind in his rage to see that he would soon kill her.

  Too drunk and blind to see his son approach from behind, clutching a candlestick, its round, heavy base to the top.

  He had swung it only once, to the back of his father’s head. He meant only to stop him, but his blow was truer than intended.

  You have the devil in you, she always said.

  And in that moment, the devil claimed him.

  Raven set out upon a mission to redeem himself, to become a doctor: to heal, to save, to atone. It was one of many fool’s errands in his life, for there was no redemption: only the twisting path that inevitably led him here to his final damnation.

  He heard a whipping sound, something cutting through the air.

  Beattie stopped. He let go of Raven, his eyes bulging as he clutched between his legs, a crippling, uncomprehending agony on his face.

  He dropped to his knees, revealing Sarah behind him. She stood with a poker gripped in both hands, fire in her eyes.