aven tried turning another key without success, huddled in the darkness at the back door to the building. Though few people were likely to be passing at this hour, he had opted to approach from the rear as it was secluded from view. Unfortunately it was also secluded from the illumination of the nearest street lamp. Sarah had tried lighting a candle, but the breeze was too strong even back here, whipping through any gap it could find.
His hands were cold and he was shivering. Neither of these things were helping either.
‘Are you sure you lifted the right keys?’ he asked.
She did not respond to this, but he could imagine her expression. Sarah had only surrendered the keys on the walk here, once everyone at Queen Street had gone to bed. It had been her way of ensuring that he could not go without her. He did not understand why she would wish to, but he was learning that it was usually futile to argue.
‘We are equals in this enterprise,’ was all she told him.
Raven tried the first key again, and this time it turned. In his trembling anxiety, his fumbling fingers had not inserted it properly before.
The door opened with rather more of a creak than was comfortable. With the wind blowing so hard, the sound would not carry more than a few feet, but to Raven’s ears it sounded like the wail of a banshee calling attention to their crime.
Sarah lit the candle now that she had some shelter. By its meagre light, they found their way into the laboratory, where Raven located an oil lamp. As he turned up the flame, he saw dozens of leather-bound volumes lining a bookcase, amidst shelves upon shelves of powders and liquids. Bottles, beakers and flasks reflected the light. Raven was wary of the many retorts jutting out, inviting accident, which would preclude their intention to pass here without leaving any record.
He held the lamp to the spines. None of them was what he sought.
‘I have often seen Mr Flockhart write in his ledger upon the counter,’ Sarah told him. ‘I imagine it is kept close by.’
They crept through to the front of the shop on quiet feet, though Raven did wonder why he felt an instinct to tread so softly. The glow of the lamp through the window was more likely to be noticed than any footfall.
He turned down the lamp accordingly and they waited for their eyes to grow more accustomed to the dark, alleviated only sparingly by the street lamps on Princes Street.
Sarah went to the back of the long sales counter and rolled out a shallow drawer from beneath. There indeed was the sales ledger.
‘Let us take it where we can turn up the lamp,’ Raven said.
They withdrew into the laboratory, where they placed the ledger upon a table. Raven turned the pages carefully as Sarah held the lamp close. It was not difficult to find what they were looking for. Sales of chloroform had only commenced in the past month.
Raven ran a finger down the column on the far right, where it stated what had been purchased, and each time he encountered the word chloroform, he traced his finger left, to the name of the customer.
The first few instances were no surprise.
Simpson.
Simpson.
Simpson.
Then other names started to appear: Professor Miller, Professor Syme, Dr Ziegler, Dr Moir. Surgeons, obstetricians. There was Dr J.M. Duncan, insisting upon the extra letter, Raven observed. Mostly they were names he recognised, and it gave him pause to ask whether he was truly considering them to be his abortionist.
He saw a couple of names unfamiliar to him: a Dr John Mors, a Dr Edgar Klein. He was about to bid Sarah fetch some paper to write these down when the next purchaser stopped him with a jolt. Sarah’s eyes were quicker than his finger, and she spoke the name aloud even as he read it.
‘Adam Sheldrake. Rose’s employer.’
Raven gaped, feeling like a fool. He recalled Simpson’s lesson outside the inn near the Royal Exchange: People often hypothesise the sensational, and become inexplicably blind to the obvious that is before their very eyes.
It had been in front of him all along. He and Sarah attended the Sheldrakes’ church in order to talk to Milly, and that led them to suspect Grissom. It had never occurred to him that Sheldrake himself was the obvious suspect.
‘Not a doctor, but a medical man, of sorts,’ Raven said. ‘A dentist. Perhaps the wealthiest in the city. He might even have been responsible for Rose’s condition. She was scared she would be dismissed if he found out.’
‘I heard Mina make mention of a man in Glasgow believed to have murdered his housemaid because she was pregnant by him. But why would a wealthy dentist risk his reputation to carry out abortions?’
‘Perhaps dentistry is not his most profitable practice. And you forget he has an ingenious means of protecting his reputation. Madame Anchou is the public face of the business, while he remains in shadow. Besides, his clients are young women from the lower orders, unlikely to be familiar with him as a dentist.’
‘Until one of them turns out to be his own employee.’
Raven opened his mouth to speculate further, but no word issued from it, for at that moment they heard a key in the front door. He looked down the passage and saw the silhouette of a man in a top hat behind the glass.
Though the hour was past midnight, Mr Flockhart had returned to his shop.