ain was bouncing off the pavements as the brougham drew to a halt close to the Royal Exchange. As George Keith had explained, Simpson did not keep anything so conventional as an appointment book, claiming all such relevant information to be locked safe in his head. Consequently Raven seldom knew their destination much in advance, or what the next case might involve.
He did know there had been a messenger to the house this morning during clinic, resulting in their first stop being an address in Canonmills, where Simpson had delivered a baby using his forceps. It had been an unnecessarily traumatic affair, the household being another contaminated by the Reverend Grissom’s leaflets and therefore ether had not been permitted. Raven’s lingering anger had occupied his mind on the subsequent journey, and he had not thought to enquire as to what was next on Simpson’s mental list.
He looked up at the grimy windows looming above the pavement, wondering what sights and smells awaited inside the ramshackle tenement before him. There was a lodging inn on the ground floor, an establishment he had passed many times, but the unfamiliarity of the building itself made him realise how seldom his gaze was drawn above street level. Gazing up for too long in the Old Town was merely an invitation to pickpockets.
Simpson looked out into the driving rain and waved acknowledgement to a fellow hailing them from a doorway. Raven quickly recognised him as McLevy, the police detective, accompanied by one of his burly assistants.
Simpson turned briefly to Raven, an odd look upon his face. ‘We are here to assist with a police inquiry,’ he said. He seemed rather bemused by this notion, but offered no further detail as to why. ‘It is always advantageous to have the constabulary owing one favours,’ he added.
Raven wondered whether Simpson was waiting for a break in the rain, then observed that McLevy was coming to join them inside the carriage. He clambered in, water running around the brim of his hat even from the journey of a short few yards.
Simpson made introductions. At such moments, most men of station inferred that they could now safely ignore the apprentice, but McLevy looked Raven up and down carefully, as though taking the measure of him.
‘May I pick your brains before we proceed?’ McLevy asked. Though he was looking directly at him, it still took Raven a moment to realise that McLevy meant him and not the professor.
‘By all means,’ Raven replied.
‘You may have heard tell of a scavenger discovering a bairn’s leg in a gutter pipe, not far from here?’
Of course. It had been near the Royal Exchange.
‘I have indeed. And I have heard all manner of gruesome explanations for it. From devil-worshipping child sacrifice to cannibalistic Irish immigrants.’
‘And what do you think to it yourself, Mr Raven?’
‘I would expect the cause to be more prosaic. An unwanted baby, disposed of in a hurried manner suggesting desperation and panic. The act of a person not thinking clearly.’
‘Aye,’ McLevy said with a nod, causing more rain to run from his hat. ‘The leg was found inside a main pipe, into which pipes from all the nearby dwellings feed as well as Mr White’s inn, wherein several females dwell. There are many females of a higher grade resident hereby, thus I have had to be most delicate in my investigations; perhaps too delicate, hence my lack of success up until now. This inquiry contains an imputation wont to stain a woman’s name forever after.’
Raven noted that such delicacy was only to be extended when the subjects laid claim to a certain level of respectability. He could not imagine the policeman treading so lightly around Evie’s lodgings. Nor did he care for how McLevy used the term ‘females’. He made it sound as though he were talking about some other manner of species; exotic and of interest, no doubt, but somehow beyond the human. Or beneath it.
He wondered how McLevy would get on against Miss Rigby. She was a species apart, for sure, but one beneath nobody.
‘My enquiries have so far borne little fruit, but I recently heard it said that Mr White, the landlord, has been known to impose himself upon some of the young ladies in his employ. There are staff who have bed and board in part lieu of a wage, and that can bring its complications.’
Impose.
Complications.
Raven thought there an obscenity about this politesse.
McLevy led them from the carriage and into the inn. They gathered at the foot of a staircase leading up to the lodging rooms; to their right, next to the kitchen, was a common area in which several young women were about their duties.
White was ill-named for such a red-faced individual. He did not look pleased to see McLevy, but quickly concealed this behind an oily display of obsequiousness.
‘How may I help you on this occasion, Mr McLevy? Did you ever get to the bottom of that unpleasant matter that brought you here before?’
‘That is indeed what brings me back, sir. I need to speak to the female domestics once again.’
White’s eyes narrowed. ‘As I assured you before, it would not have escaped me had one of them been in such a condition. And I would have surely acted upon it, as my house has its pride and reputation to uphold.’
As he spoke, McLevy turned his gaze to the young women, picking out one in particular for his piercing stare. She was sweeping the floor near the back door, keeping her head down just a little too keenly.
‘That one there,’ McLevy announced. ‘I don’t recall seeing her the last time.’
Raven was beginning to suspect he knew why, though he remained unsure what Simpson’s role in all this might be.
‘What is her name?’
‘Mary Brennan,’ White replied.
The girl started at the mere mention. She looked to her landlord in pale fright, though Raven was not sure whether it was him or McLevy she was more afraid of.
‘We would speak with her alone.’
White issued a sigh, then told the other girls to leave the common area.
‘I said we would speak with Mary alone,’ McLevy reiterated with a firm tone, his eyes fixed on White.
The landlord retreated with hesitancy, sending one last look to Mary before the door closed. Raven did not imagine it escaped McLevy’s notice.
Mary Brennan stood before the four of them, clutching a broom as though she might fall down without it. She was trembling.
‘We are investigating the discovery of a bairn’s leg, wrapped in cloth and flushed down a pipe. Do you know anything about this?’
Her eyes searched back and forth along the line, as though seeking an ally.
‘No, sir,’ she replied, her voice feeble. There was a determination there, however: an awareness of the stakes should she crumble.
‘Do you know who this gentleman is?’ McLevy asked.
‘No, sir.’
‘His name is Professor James Young Simpson. Does that name mean anything to you, Mary?’
Her expression was blank, but all the more worried for not knowing the potential significance of this esteemed gentleman’s presence.
‘He is one of the foremost medical men in the city, specialising in the care of pregnant women, and assisting them in their time of labour.’
McLevy then turned to address the professor.
‘Dr Simpson, if you were to examine a young woman such as Mary here, would you be able to ascertain whether she had recently given birth?’
‘Most certainly and unmistakably,’ Simpson replied.
That was all it took. The girl dropped to her knees and broke down in tears, spilling forth a confession there on the floor as though relieved to be finally shedding her burden.
‘God forgive me, I confess that I bore that child, but it was dead when it came into the world. Wild with sorrow and pain, I cut it into pieces and put it into the soil pipe so that nobody would know my shame.’
‘Did anybody know of your condition?’
‘No, sir. I kept it secret for fear I would be cast out onto the street. Mr White insists he keeps a respectable house.’
She looked to the door as she said this. A greater threat lay beyond it than anything she faced inside this room.
‘Whose child was it?’ McLevy asked, though the question struck Raven as redundant.
She hung her head, her hair all but sweeping the floorboards.
‘A wicked man seduced me,’ she answered, not looking one of them in the eye.
McLevy pressed her, but she would not name him.
She did not have to.
McLevy’s assistant helped her to her feet and led her away. She looked hollow-eyed, as though entranced, then a panic enlivened her face. ‘Am I to hang?’ she asked McLevy, terrified.
‘Not if what you told us was true, about the child being stillborn. You will only be confined a short while.’
Simpson shook his head sadly as she was led away.
‘It is a tragedy that this young woman should be facing any greater punishment than that which she has already endured,’ he stated.
‘And it sorely compounds the injustice that there should be no consequence for the landlord,’ ventured Raven, struggling to keep bitterness from his voice.
‘I’ll have a stern word,’ McLevy assured him. ‘He’ll understand I have my eye on him, but what more can I do?’
Raven thought of what more he would like to do, then remembered the fate of Mrs Gallagher, in danger of the poorhouse as a consequence of his previous thirst for justice.
McLevy thanked Simpson for his assistance, which had amounted to little more than his august presence, but Raven had to commend the policeman’s cunning in knowing this alone would do the trick.
‘You are most welcome, as always,’ Simpson replied.
‘If I may ever be of assistance, just say the word.’
‘Certainly. But in the meantime, I believe Mr Raven was curious about another case you were looking into.’
Raven looked at him in some surprise, and wondered how conspicuous his interest might have been.
‘Which case would that be?’
‘Rose Campbell,’ Raven replied. ‘She was a housemaid of Mr Sheldrake, the dentist. Her body was pulled from the water at Leith.’
‘Oh, yes. Dr Renfrew, our police surgeon, carried out a full examination of her remains. He concluded that she had drowned.’
‘So he found no trace of poison?’
‘The agonised posture of her body. It is my understanding that it can be a symptom of strychnine.’
Raven was aware of Simpson regarding him with some scrutiny, but had to press on while he had McLevy here before him.
‘As I say,’ continued McLevy, ‘no evidence of poison was found. When the bodies of the drowned are removed from the water their limbs may be contorted indicating their final struggles, contortions which persist because of the rigidity that follows on after death.’
That may well be true, thought Raven. But Evie did not drown.
‘This was a case of accidental death,’ said McLevy, with a finality that suggested further questions were superfluous. Raven ignored this.
‘Didn’t you previously entertain the notion that she had done away with herself?’
McLevy looked at him with wariness and some surprise.
‘I did indeed, as I was informed she was pregnant, as much as five or six months. But here’s the strangest thing: when the post-mortem was carried out, she did not appear to be with child after all.’
Raven reeled from this, as though the walls around him had moved. ‘Are you sure?’
McLevy allowed himself a grin. ‘Speaking candidly, Dr Renfrew is not the greatest medical mind I have ever encountered, even on the rare occasions he is sober, but I am confident that even he would not have made a mistake about something like that.’
Raven felt numb in his confusion, the world swirling around him as the brougham pulled away, rain hammering upon its roof.
‘You did not hear the answers you were hoping for,’ Simpson observed.
This was to say the least. His belief in a connection between Rose and Evie, about which he had been so certain, now appeared to be groundless. He had no real evidence that either of them had been poisoned, McLevy having provided an adequate explanation for the condition of Rose’s body when he suggested rigor had set in while she was still in the water. Now it transpired that Rose had not been pregnant, and he was forced to own that it had been mere speculation on his part that Evie was with child.
‘I will not intrude to ask why you were so exercised by Miss Campbell’s death, but I will impart a lesson that will serve you well in all your dealings as a doctor.’
Raven looked up, eager for the comfort wisdom might bring.
‘Always remember that the patient is the one with the disease.’
Raven’s expression betrayed that he did not understand.
‘It is easy to become burdened by responsibilities, to become so obsessed with a problem that you lose perspective. Evidence can be confounding, unlikely coincidences do happen, and an over-wrought mind can leap to wrong conclusions. Remember your own good judgment when McLevy asked how you would explain the dead baby’s leg. In that instance, your detachment served you well. People often hypothesise the sensational, and become inexplicably blind to the obvious that is before their very eyes.’