arah maintained a respectful distance while the parish clerk dealt with the fellow who had arrived at St Cuthbert’s just ahead of her. He was a young man but looked as though he carried the weight of the world upon his sloping shoulders. He was attempting to hire the parish mort cloth for the burial of his mother, but there appeared to be some issue over the fee.
The clerk examined the pile of pennies that the man had deposited upon his ledger. He separated them with the end of his pen as though reluctant to sully his fingers with the contents of the young man’s pockets. He sighed and then frowned.
‘This is insufficient. I suggest that you return with the fee already stipulated or your mother must be buried without the parish cloth.’
Then he smiled at the bereaved man with a chilly politeness and dismissed him as though they had been discussing a frippery of no earthly significance. The man said nothing, rendered mute by the clerk’s unbending adherence to his ecclesiastical price-list. Christian charity evidently did not extend to the parish’s funeral shroud. He turned and shuffled out of the clerk’s office, back into the body of the church.
The clerk watched him leave with a tiny shake of the head, as though other people’s poverty was an affront, then turned his attention to Sarah, peering over the top of his spectacles.
And anyway, what can you do about it? Raven had asked when she told him about her suspicions regarding Beattie. It had been a rhetorical question, to his mind. She would show him otherwise by answering it.
‘How may I help you?’ the clerk asked, in a tone that suggested he had little intention of doing so.
‘I come at the behest of Dr James Young Simpson,’ Sarah replied, hoping that the mention of the professor’s name would oil the wheels of cooperation.
It seemed to have some effect, as the clerk stood a little more upright and pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. His tone became oleaginous and a ghost of a smile appeared upon his thin lips.
‘How may I be of assistance to the professor?’
‘A woman has died at the Maternity Hospital,’ Sarah said. ‘Her child lives. The woman’s name is known but not that of her nearest relative. There is a need to find someone to care for the baby, to see it baptised and properly raised. The professor requested that I consult the local parish registers to see if she was married, and who her parents are, if they are still alive.’
The clerk briefly brightened at the mention of baptism but snorted at the suggestion of a marriage. It was well known that many of the women treated at the Maternity Hospital were not in possession of a spouse. He wrinkled his nose as though assailed by an unwelcome smell.
‘I am surprised such an important task has fallen to you. Has the professor not an apprentice or some other suitable person to do it?’
‘Indeed he has,’ she replied. ‘But they are all so busy, what with the recent outbreak of typhus.’
The man immediately sought out his handkerchief and held it to his nose as though the mere mention of the disease would cause it to arrive. He looked at her for a while, weighing up her request. She perhaps should not have mentioned the Maternity Hospital. Or typhus.
‘The information you request will take some time to find,’ he said at last. ‘And I should point out to you that our records are far from comprehensive: those who are not prepared to part with the necessary fee often do not bother with registration at all.’
‘I understand,’ said Sarah. ‘I can see you are a very busy man and I have no wish to impose upon you. Perhaps you would permit me to look through the book myself.’
He looked at his pristine ledger and then down at her hands.
‘My hands are clean, sir,’ she replied. ‘Dr Simpson insists upon it.’
The mention of the professor’s name again seemed to tip the balance in her favour.
‘You’ll have to look through several of the registers. The current one only goes back to 1840.’
Her search did indeed take some time, and bore no fruit. As the vestry began to darken, she tried not to think of what Mrs Lyndsay would say upon her return, what punishment she would have to endure as a result of her tardiness. A suitable excuse would have to be found or her clinic duties would be severely curtailed.
Sarah had always considered herself an honest person, and was feeling increasingly uncomfortable about the lies she now found herself having to tell on a regular basis. She felt that her concern for Mina justified her current endeavours, but she would have to make sure that this propensity for subterfuge came to an end once everything was resolved.
Yet even as she thought this, she considered what she was about and contrasted it with the person she used to be, only a few weeks ago. That meek housemaid would not have dared to deceive anyone, far less embark upon clandestine investigations in the realms of abortionists and murderers. There was a comfort and security in knowing one’s place and asking no questions. But she had never felt that a role of meekness and acceptance was her place.
Sarah was fastidious in her search, but she could find no record of Charles Latimer or of Beattie’s mother. The name ‘John Beattie’ was cited, but the dates did not tally up unless the apparently sprightly young doctor was in fact approaching his eightieth birthday.
Sarah slumped in her chair, unsure as to what this lack of information represented. She had to admit that it was hardly conclusive evidence that Beattie was a fraud of some kind. Could she be entirely on the wrong track? Were her emotions clouding her judgment, her disapproval of Mina’s choices colouring her view?
She regarded the stack of dusty registers piled in front of her and wondered if she was wasting her time. Perhaps in a desire to gain something from her afternoon’s efforts, it occurred to her that Raven’s family might be listed among them. He was someone else whose account of his own background rang false.
Sarah checked for the clerk but he had disappeared. It seemed he was content to leave her to her own devices as soon as he was sure she had no intention of amending entries, ripping out pages or drooling on the paper.
She estimated Raven’s age to be twenty and so looked at the records for the years 1825 to 1830. She found no entry for the birth of Wilberforce Raven, but she did find a record of the marriage of a Margaret Raven to an Andrew Cunningham in 1826. The surname was familiar but for a moment she couldn’t think why. Then she remembered: it was the name inscribed inside some of Raven’s books.
Sarah looked at the births registered in the following year and found him: Thomas Wilberforce Cunningham.
Raven had changed his name. But for what purpose? She tried to think what else she knew about him, what she had been told regarding his background. His mother lived in St Andrews with her brother, Raven receiving letters from there on a regular basis. She knew his father was dead, hence the removal of his mother to Fife.
Sarah wondered when this tragedy had occurred, from what age Raven had been raised without a father. She turned to the registers again, searching for burials. She looked from the present day all the way back to the year of Raven’s birth. There was no entry for the interment of Andrew Cunningham.
According to the records of St Cuthbert’s parish, which covered all of Edinburgh and some way beyond, Raven’s father was not dead at all.