arah 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.arah 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.
None of the people he had exhausted himself to protect were even aware of his efforts. That they had never truly been in danger because of Sarah’s earlier mishap was something she decided she should not immediately share with him, though he would have to be told.
With the hour drawing on and her own services seeming superfluous in the face of this new distraction, she followed him out a few moments later, ascending the stairs at his back. He heard her and stopped just before reaching his room, turning to see who was there.
‘Would you like some supper, Mr Raven?’ she asked. ‘You didn’t eat yet.’
He managed a weak smile. ‘That would be most welcome.’
His voice had a tremor to it. She realised he must be cold now, and would get colder.
‘You need to get out of those clothes at once. You’ll catch a fever. Come on,’ she said, following him into his room where she lit a gas lamp. She turned to help him remove his jacket, which felt twice its normal weight.
‘I’m perfectly capable . . .’ he began, then seemed to surrender to her assistance, lacking the strength or the will to resist.
‘You really need to get yourself a proper coat, Mr Raven. Before winter truly bites.’
‘I know.’
She lifted the damp garment from his shoulders, her gaze drawn by how his hair was stuck flat about his face.
‘You ran all the way from the college?’
‘Yes, but that was not even the worst part of my evening. I watched a young woman die in agony before me at the Maternity Hospital. And I am certain she died the same way as Evie: wracked with spasms, and pregnant too.’
‘“Wracked with spasms”: the way Miss Mann described one who had taken strychnine?’
‘Precisely. But what is confounding is that earlier today, I met McLevy, and he said that there was no trace of poison in Rose Campbell’s remains. More confounding still, that neither was she found to be pregnant.’
Sarah could well understand Raven’s consternation. One part of this made sense to her, however.
‘I have been reading about strychnine in Christison’s Treatise. An added boon to any malefactor is that there is no test for it. It would not be traceable in any post-mortem examination. So it remains entirely possible that strychnine was responsible for Rose’s death.’
‘Yes, but there is an irrefutable post-mortem test for pregnancy, and McLevy insisted no baby was found.’
This part, Sarah had to concede, truly was confounding.
‘Milly was not mistaken about this,’ she argued. ‘It is the very reason Rose feared she would be dismissed.’
‘McLevy insists otherwise, and they cannot both be right.’
But as Raven spoke, Sarah realised there existed a reason that they could.
‘Perhaps she was not pregnant by the time she went into the water. What if she successfully rid herself of her unwanted burden? Strychnine brings on spasms. Could it have been used in a medicine to bring on the contractions of premature labour, which in Rose’s case it succeeded, only for her to die later?’
Raven’s eyes widened. ‘It is my suspicion that the girl who died tonight took something to get rid of her child. Perhaps Evie did too, but in each of their cases, it killed them before it could have any other effect.’
‘Who was this girl? Could she have any connection to the Reverend Grissom?’
Raven wore a look of regret. ‘I know nothing about her. Not even her full name, only that she was known as Kitty. I know not where she lived, other than that it was near enough for a man to have carried her there. But in the Old Town, that radius might include a thousand dwellings.’
His voice wavered again, shivers taking him. Even his shirt was wet through. Without asking, she began to unbutton it for him.
Sarah had seen Raven fully naked when he first arrived and was in need of a bath. This felt different, now that she knew something of him. She recalled her words – whatever you’ve got, I’ve seen it before – and though she had now indeed seen him before, this time her eyes wished to dwell.
Her hand brushed his chest as she tugged at his wet shirt, the cloth sticking to skin. She felt something surge inside herself, and the insistence of it unnerved her.
As she undid the final button, she sensed a stirring close to where she touched him, and belatedly understood what was meant by the expression ‘proud below the navel’.
Raven flinched away from her in response, presumably because he could not flinch away from himself.
Sarah stepped back from him, looking to the floor.
‘You must be starving,’ she said quietly. ‘I’d best get down to the kitchen and fetch you something to eat.’
He said nothing as she departed. She waited a moment outside his door, as she felt so light-headed as to fear she might trip on her descent.
Upon reaching the kitchen, Sarah took a plate and gathered some leftover pie, a slice of ham and a hunk of bread. She held it in her left hand, grabbed a bottle of ale with her right, then made for the stairs once again.
When she reached the top landing, she found Raven deeply unconscious, and no chemical agent had been necessary to produce the effect.