SIXTY

t was tea that proved her salvation.

This most mundane of tasks had insultingly come to define her everyday life: an endless ritual of making and serving hot refreshments, but loath as Sarah might be to admit it, it had also saved her life.

Miss Fisher, I owe you an apology.

Beattie’s manner had changed so suddenly. His look of gathering anger had vanished in an instant, replaced by a solicitude that was supposed to reassure her, but which in fact provoked an impulse to flee. She felt an acute sense of impending peril, an instinct of fear more profound than she had ever known.

She might have dismissed this as merely an accumulation of her anxiety in confronting Beattie about his lies, but that he meant her harm was in no doubt when a moment later he offered to make her tea. A man of his character did not make tea for anyone, least of all a housemaid.

In that moment Sarah understood that he meant to poison her, and from such a horrific realisation she began to understand far more than that. But to be absolutely sure, she offered to join him in the kitchen. She knew not to push the issue, for if she did not make it easy for him to carry out his plan, he would surely improvise another.

Though her instinct was to run, she feared she would be caught, and at that point her only advantage would be gone: that he did not realise she knew what he was about. Had he locked the front door? She could not remember. Even if it was open, he would be faster, and he would certainly be more powerful. She would have to choose her moment, when he believed he had already dealt with her.

While Beattie busied himself preparing her death, she seized the opportunity to search his study. Something unsettled her about his anatomy specimens, but the thing that most set her mind racing was the sight of the black gloves. It all fell into place when she saw those. She knew who had been wearing them and why. She knew that Beattie was Madame Anchou.

He brought the tea in already poured, which was quite wrong. This was because there was something slipped into one of the cups: cups that did not match – also quite wrong – so that he knew which one to offer her, and also an insurance against her having guessed his intention and swapping them around amidst distraction.

Steeling herself to hide her fear, she had asked him for a biscuit. As soon as he left the room, she emptied her tea into an earthenware vase, replenishing it from the pot before Beattie returned.

His conduct had been utterly transparent after that. He was stalling for time, avoiding giving anything away until he was certain of her fate. As anticipated, his manner changed again as soon as she had drained her cup.

After that, it was a question of choosing her moment to feign the effects. To assist with this, she had to know what he thought he had given her.

She clutched her stomach in reflexive response. ‘Strychnine?’

Beattie wore a patronising smile. ‘Yes, I gather you have been reading Christison. Not, I imagine, that you have understood much of it, but be reassured that no, I have not used nux vomica. It is my intention to dissect you, and I don’t wish to have to wait so long for the rigid contortions to loosen. No, I have given you prussic acid. It is a narcotic poison, swift and painless. Believe me, I would have done the same for Rose had it been to hand. I do not believe in unnecessary cruelty, Miss Fisher. I am not a monster.’

Prussic acid. She knew it from her reading. Symptoms commenced within two minutes and it caused death within ten. She also knew that unlike strychnine, prussic acid was detectable after death, but this would be of significance only if a body was found.

Sarah looked at the jars and understood Beattie’s full intentions.

Her legs had gone from under her shortly after that. She fell to the floor, breathing slowly at first, then gasping deeply for a while before lying absolutely still. Beattie did not check her pulse, which would have easily betrayed her, for it was pounding. He seemed absolutely confident about the poison, which made her wonder whether it wasn’t the first time he had done this.

Shortly after, she heard the back door open followed by footsteps from the kitchen. She dared open her eyes just a little, and almost cried out in warning to whoever approached when she saw Beattie swing back with a wooden stave, but it was already too late. She would only get one chance to act, and she had to make it count.

Sarah untied Raven and together they fastened the twine around Beattie, who was beginning to rouse. He and Raven were both bleeding, but her healing instinct only applied to one of them. In the case of Beattie, she merely wished she had hit him more than twice.

From outside, she heard the sound of horseshoes on cobbles.

‘Simpson,’ said Raven.

So he had not been lying in desperation when he told Beattie he had left word for the professor to come here.

Dr Simpson swept in through the front door. His expression of irritation and curiosity turned to one of confusion and dismay as he took in the scene that greeted him: his housemaid in another man’s home after dark, his apprentice bruised and bleeding, and both of them standing over the trussed-up figure of his sister-in-law’s betrothed.

‘I have one or two wee questions, laddie,’ he said quietly.

Raven told Simpson all.

Sarah had seldom seen the professor angry. It was a slow process, like clouds rolling over the Pentlands, thickening and darkening, gradually portending the storm to come. He looked down with fury and disgust upon Beattie, who was in turn eyeing the group standing over him with a calm that unnerved Sarah.

‘Where is McLevy?’ Raven asked.

‘He went away as soon as we returned and found my brougham back in its right place. I offered him a drink for his trouble, but he had a matter to return to. I entered the house to find Jarvis beside himself, and that is not a sight one sees every day.’

‘We must fetch him back again,’ Raven insisted. ‘Tell him what has transpired. And then this diabolical specimen will surely hang.’

Beattie snorted. ‘This gentleman and physician surely will not,’ he said, an arrogant confidence about him despite his predicament. ‘For you have proof of nothing. What can you present? A robe that you claim I wore in order to disguise myself as a French midwife? How preposterous do you think that will sound?’

‘You murdered Spiers and Rose Campbell,’ Raven retorted. ‘You dealt in poison. You killed we know not how many women.’

Beattie shrugged, as though this were all a trying inconvenience for him. ‘Again, you have no proof.’

Sarah wanted to hit him with the poker again, but there was something worse than his manner. He might be right. Strychnine could not be tested for. It left no detectable trace. There was no evidence Beattie carried out the fatal abortions, as the only witnesses were dead, and those who survived would not come forward to admit their own crimes.

‘We will search this place and find your pills,’ Raven told him.

‘And how would you prove my intention in concocting them was other than noble? How would you even prove what the pills might do? Or perhaps you could volunteer to take one in court, Mr Raven, in order to demonstrate your hypothesis. That is a trial I would be happy to attend.’

Sarah felt like the solid ground beneath her was turning into mud. Raven sensed it too. They both looked to the professor, who always had wisdom, always had answers.

Dr Simpson led them from the study and into the hall, away from where Beattie might hear.

‘This is unthinkable,’ Raven said. ‘Surely he will not walk away from this, and escape justice as he describes?’

‘I cannot say for sure,’ the professor replied. ‘It is the case that what you know and what you can prove are often two entirely different matters, and the court of law can be a harsh place to see that difference demonstrated. But there is another consideration.’

Sarah noted the unusually troubled expression upon Dr Simpson’s features, and she guessed what it was before he could voice it himself.

‘Such a trial would crush Miss Grindlay,’ she said.

‘Indeed, Sarah. Imagine Mina’s anguish should all of this be made a public spectacle. Not merely for the world to know how she was used and deceived, but to think that she set her heart at this vile creature.’

Raven looked withered and pale in his incredulity, as though the last of his hope was draining from him.

‘You cannot be suggesting we ignore what we know simply in order to spare Mina.’

‘I could not spare Mina such hurt were it to stand in the way of justice, but nor would I put her through it when the risk is that a murderer will walk free at the end of it anyway. But you are right: we cannot ignore what we know, for a man such as Beattie will surely repeat his crimes. That would be, as you say, unthinkable.’

‘So what should we do?’

The professor looked at the wretched figure lying upon the floor of the study, gazing at him a long time. He then glanced at the array of jars, containing so many specimens of untold provenance. There was a look of resolve upon his face, an expression of stony determination.

‘The course we must take is also unthinkable,’ he said. ‘And as such its sin will bind we three, a burden we each will have to carry for the rest of our days. Nonetheless, this duty has fallen to us and we are left with no other choice.’

Dr Simpson put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder, his voice low. ‘Go to the carriage,’ he instructed. ‘Fetch me my bag. Raven, you will help me carry him to the cellar.’