The Art of Dying Read online

  She had been interrogating him about Mrs Glassford that morning, wanting to know details of the condition she was suffering from and the likely prognosis. He had skirted the truth as he had not wished to upset her. He knew Sarah had been spending time with Mrs Glassford, talking to her whenever she came to Queen Street, and visiting her at home.

  He thought of Mrs Glassford’s abdomen, the swelling of it portending death rather than new life. He pictured her drawn face, the growing tumour draining the vitality from the rest of her.

  Raven was disturbed to find that this prompted thoughts of Sarah’s husband: how thin he was, how little he spoke and ate at dinner, his use of chloroform to help him sleep.

  Suddenly Raven understood what should have been obvious to him before. Archie Banks was dying.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  arah, may I speak plainly?’

  Sarah had been summoned to the drawing room, which was not an unusual occurrence, but the growing sense of suspicion and distrust amongst the household staff was causing her to feel unduly anxious about it. The look on Mrs Simpson’s face when she entered the room had done nothing to assuage her concern.

  ‘Things are not as they should be,’ Mrs Simpson said, and then sighed. ‘Oh, do sit down, Sarah. You’re not on trial.’

  Sarah sat on one of the upholstered armchairs, noticing as she did so that the embroidered antimacassar on the back of the chair was in dire need of washing. Such a thing would not have been tolerated when she was a housemaid here. She straightened her skirt, focused her attention on Mrs Simpson and reminded herself that she had done nothing wrong.

  ‘I am beginning to feel that I am losing control of things. This house becomes more chaotic by the day. Problems seem to be mounting up and with Mina gone there is no one I can confide in.’

  Under the circumstances Sarah was relieved that she was not being accused of anything, but was surprised by Mrs Simpson’s admission. To her mind the house was no more or less chaotic than usual, grubby antimacassars notwithstanding.

  ‘Dr Simpson is away from home so frequently he scarcely knows what goes on here, under his own roof. You know what he is like, Sarah; gathers up dinner guests on a whim as he makes his rounds, and anyone of importance who visits Edinburgh must come to see him, or so it seems. There are always visitors in the house, patients, the children to take care of. And now there is money missing.’

  ‘Mrs Lyndsay has said as much to me,’ Sarah replied. She decided it would be better to keep Mrs Lyndsay’s suspicions about the culprit to herself for now. ‘I gather Mr Quinton has uncovered certain discrepancies.’

  ‘Yes. He was supposed to lighten the burden by bringing order to Dr Simpson’s chaos, but he has merely added to my worries. I am supposed to oversee the running of this house, but I feel as if I am making a poor job of it. I worry that I am at fault.’

  Sarah looked at Mrs Simpson and saw the dark circles under her eyes, the worry lines creasing her forehead. She realised that she had been concerned about the toll that the recent accusations against him might have been taking on Dr Simpson, but had failed to consider his wife. The loss of a doctor’s reputation could have catastrophic consequences for his income. Was that why there was so much concern about the missing money? She had assumed that it was an insignificant amount that had gone missing, but now thought that perhaps it was a more substantial sum than she had initially supposed.

  ‘I will do all I can to help,’ Sarah said, though how such a thing might be achieved she wasn’t sure. Her responsibilities seemed to be multiplying. ‘However, my time is necessarily divided between here and Albany Street, and I suspect that I might have to be at home a little more now.’

  Mrs Simpson looked sympathetically towards her.

  ‘Is Archie getting worse?’

  ‘He has good days and bad. More bad days of late.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that. It must be terribly hard for you. You are so young and so recently married. This should be a time of joy for you and I fear that it is not. But then we all have our crosses to bear, our losses to grieve, do we not?’

  Sarah nodded, though she tried not to feel sorry for herself. Despite the likely difficulties to come, she had no regrets. She would rather have her time with Archie cut short than never have had him at all.

  ‘If there is a further deterioration you should perhaps consider moving in here, where we can help you look after him.’

  Sarah was touched by Mrs Simpson’s thoughtfulness amid all the other problems she was wrestling with.

  ‘You know that I am no stranger to illness,’ Mrs Simpson continued, ‘having nursed my children through the worst of diseases. Of course, you know this. You were here when Mary Catherine died.’

  ‘Yes, I was,’ Sarah replied. And unlikely to forget it. Carried off by scarlet fever before her second birthday.

  ‘We lost a child before that too,’ Mrs Simpson went on. ‘Our first born, Maggie.’

  Sarah knew the fact of this but not the details. She sat back in her chair, thinking that the best service she could offer Mrs Simpson today was to listen.

  ‘It haunts me still. Before her fourth birthday, she was attacked with measles and then seized by a very bad form of sore throat. She could neither eat nor drink, took nothing for days. It was so heart-rending to witness her restlessness and distress, not being able to do anything to relieve her. Her demise was almost a relief to us all in the end.’

  She looked at Sarah, tears in her eyes, the pain still raw despite the years that had passed since it happened.

  ‘I remember her being laid out on a white bed in the parlour – this was when we lived on Albany Street, not far from where you are now. Her eyes were open, and she looked so beautiful. It seemed so strange that she did not breathe or move.’

  Sarah had no difficulty imagining what had just been described. She had helped to lay out Mary Catherine’s tiny body.

  ‘She was the first to be buried in the family plot, at Warriston Cemetery. Now her sister lies with her and I wonder how many more of my children I will lay to rest before I die myself.’ Mrs Simpson paused, looked down at her hands. ‘And yet some mothers give them away. Hand them over to strangers.’

  Sarah was confused for a moment until she realised that they were now talking about the foster children, illegitimate issue of patients in Dr Simpson’s private practice who Mrs Simpson helped place with other families. It was seldom openly discussed but the household staff knew about it.

  ‘I write to them, you know. The mothers who give their children up. Let them know about the child’s progress. I don’t know how they stand it.’

  ‘I suppose they have no choice.’

  Sarah felt the conversation was drifting into difficult territory. She had her own opinions about wealthy men who refused to publicly acknowledge their own offspring.

  ‘I understand the Quintons have adopted one of your charges,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. They have no children of their own and so agreed to take the child. A little boy. They have moved into a large property on Castle Street. Took over the lease from a friend. I think that their intention had been to rent out rooms to students, but Mary Quinton tells me that so far no boarders of suitable quality have been found.’

  ‘I can imagine Mr Quinton is exacting in the extreme with regard to the suitability of potential tenants,’ Sarah said. ‘He seems most fastidious in every regard. But is he quite sure about the missing money? Is it possible he could be mistaken?’

  ‘He assures me he has checked the accounts several times over.’ This was said emphatically, as though questioning Mr Quinton’s book-keeping skills was in some way sacrilegious. ‘He is in no doubt, and all of a sudden I don’t feel quite at ease in my own home.’

  Sarah felt uncertain of herself, wary of being given a role she was not prepared for, nor qualified to hold. Was she being spoken to as a friend? Was Mrs Simpson seeking counsel or merely a receptive ear? And when she felt in better spirits, would Sarah revert to being
seen as housemaid and nurse? She felt the need to escape from this conversation and got to her feet.

  ‘I will try to discover what I can,’ she said. ‘I’m sure that this whole matter will be resolved and that things will go back to the way they were.’

  Even as she spoke these words, she didn’t believe them. She knew better than most that some things can never be how they once were.

  When Sarah left the room, a phrase from Buchan’s Domestic Medicine came to her: ‘There is no balm for a wounded mind.’ More’s the pity, she thought.

  TWENTY-SIX

  hough the stolen bread roll had done little to sustain him over the succeeding hours, and he could smell Mrs Lyndsay’s cooking as he approached No. 52, Raven walked on past and continued to Broughton Street to check up on George Porteous, the stricken young man he had left there that afternoon. He was driven partly by the principle of what he thought Simpson would do in this situation, and as much by a wish to distinguish his conduct from the likes of Dr Fowler, a man more concerned with the welfare of his leeches than that of his patient. It was an attitude that was sadly not rare in the profession.

  The door was answered by the patient’s sister Greta, her face tear-streaked with grief.

  ‘You are too late,’ she said. ‘George has died.’

  ‘I am most sorry,’ he told her.

  She beckoned him inside and through to the parlour, where he found Dr Fowler still present, sitting in an armchair sipping tea. As soon as he saw Raven, the older man got to his feet.

  ‘We should have purged him,’ he insisted, jabbing a finger accusingly; as though an evacuation of the bowels would have saved the poor man. Raven thought that if he had prevented that last futile indignity, then his presence had perhaps served some purpose.

  After further pointless conjecture about the potential power of an aperient to raise the near dead, Fowler turned his attention to the now doubly bereaved Greta.

  ‘You have my condolences, Miss Porteous. I thought that were I to procure the intercession of Dr Simpson, we might save your brother. But alas, Dr Simpson’s assistant merely obstructed the course that I recommended. It is my belief that George might live yet had I not followed his judgment.’

  ‘I think I should go,’ Raven said, pre-empting any further discussion. ‘I will see myself out.’

  He did not care for the insinuation that in dissuading Dr Fowler from administering an enema he had in some way contributed to the patient’s demise. The man was clearly an imbecile, but he realised that, as an established practitioner, if Fowler chose to similarly denigrate his contribution to the case to the medical men of his acquaintance, Raven’s nascent reputation would inevitably suffer, irrespective of the truth of the matter.

  Greta followed him to the door.

  ‘Dr Raven, my brother was sick for days and had the best care from the nurse throughout. I do not believe anything you did or did not do contributed to his death.’

  ‘I am sorry I could not do more,’ he replied softly.

  ‘Is it contagious, do you think? Are there any precautions I ought to take?’

  ‘Contagious? What makes you say that?’

  ‘It is just that I fear whatever claimed George might spread to me next, like it went to him from our mother.’

  ‘There is no need to be afraid. Your mother died of heart failure.’

  ‘So says Dr Fowler,’ she replied, sounding less than convinced.

  As Raven walked back along Queen Street, his thoughts returned to his conversation with Ziegler regarding James Matthews Duncan’s anger over his perceived lack of credit for the discovery of chloroform. It was said that success had many fathers, while failure was always an orphan. Both sides of this were never quite so true as in medicine.

  Today was not the first time another doctor had tried to leave him with the blame for a patient’s death. For that reason, he now saw that he ought to have been more sympathetic over the assault on Dr Simpson’s character. He was reluctant to be a pawn on the chessboard, but now he was beginning to wonder what game was really being played. When someone was so keen to pin the blame elsewhere, that often suggested they had something to hide. In Dr Fowler’s case it was merely the fact that his antiquated knowledge rendered him incompetent. But perhaps someone wanted to use Simpson as a scapegoat, and there was an agenda here beyond the one that Ziegler had suggested.

  He thought of what Ziegler had told him, how he should be the answer he sought. He thought again about Sarah, how he had refused her his help, the hurt in her face when he did so, the fact that she was coming to him for assistance rather than relying on her husband.

  It dawned on him that she knew how sick Archie was. Only too well, she knew. How could she not?

  Sarah understood that some patients could not be saved, no matter the efforts of someone as brilliant as Dr Simpson. And Raven knew that sometimes, when you cannot fix something that is broken, you feel the need to fix something else in its stead.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  he curtain rises upon the Institute’s assembly hall, where the Reverend Gillies addressed the children each morning before classes and duties commenced. There were two hundred boys learning trades beneath the Belmont’s roof, and half as many girls being taught sewing, knitting, cooking and other household skills.

  It was a year later, and I was much changed: better fed and clothed, though I had not escaped the capricious rule of men. Nor had I found them to represent my only danger.

  I had made friends, though. The Institute had provided an opportunity to reinvent myself in a place where my peers did not judge me as the daughter of Mad Murdo. I told them my father had been an adventurer and my mother an actress, both of them lost in a tragic sea crossing as they returned to me from America. I relished the way they looked at me in response. There was wonder in their expressions, but also sadness for me at what I had lost. It reminded them nonetheless that I was made of better stuff than they might assume.

  Not everyone took to me for it, though. I had enemies there, not least Joyce Meechan, who was seated in the row behind as I sidled along the pew.

  Joyce had arrived a few months previously, and I was dismayed to recognise her from playing in the back courts of Cumberland Street. Joyce was a year older, a pinch-faced girl who said I was a liar and a thief. She told people that my real father was a madman who killed my mother. If anything went astray, she accused me of taking it, and said I was getting fat because I stole from other people’s plates.

  On this morning, however, Joyce did not greet me with her usual sour sneer. Instead she wore a contrite expression and gave me a gentle, beckoning wave as I took my seat.

  ‘I have urgent news,’ she said, her voice low in recognition of the growing silence in the hall as the Reverend Gillies ascended his pulpit.

  I turned and leaned across the back of the bench, impatient to learn what had led to this change in Joyce’s demeanour. Joyce in turn leaned forward, presenting her ear.

  ‘What news?’ I asked in a whisper.

  Joyce let out a shriek and recoiled, throwing her hands back dramatically in shock.

  The Reverend Gillies’ attention was immediately upon her and she was hauled to her feet by one of the masters, dragged to the front and was tearful by the time she was standing before the Reverend.

  ‘What occasioned this indecorous outburst?’ he demanded.

  I did not hear her mumbled reply, but I did see Joyce raise her arm and point directly back towards where I sat.

  The Reverend’s face was crimson. He strode down into the body of the hall and grabbed me by the neck. I was dragged along the pew and forced into the aisle, where the Reverend whipped at my backside with his stick to drive me forward, sending me through the doors of the hall and all the way outside to the yard at the back.

  I wanted to ask what I had done to merit such punishment, but experience had told me this would be folly. The impertinence of such a question would only anger him further.

  He ordered me t
o lie face-down in the dirt. I obeyed.

  ‘I will have you learn not to be so hasty with your tongue,’ he said. ‘And to that end, I would have you describe the shape of a cross with that tongue.’

  ‘Where?’ I asked meekly, raising my head.

  ‘There. In the dirt. Let filth meet filth.’

  The prospect moved me to protest.

  ‘But I said nothing. I only asked what news.’

  He struck me with the stick once more.

  ‘Silence. You will use your tongue only for what I have commanded.’

  I attempted to comply. I drew my tongue a few inches along the ground, wincing at the taste and the sensation, a horrible mixture of slime and grit. Then I repeated the ordeal, bisecting the first line to form a cross.

  The Reverend struck me again.

  ‘A cross such as the Lord died upon was greater than the length of Himself.’

  I began to cry at the injustice of it. I had no notion what Joyce had accused me of, but it was clear that the Reverend Gillies believed it of me.

  I did not know what dirt was made of. Though the Reverend stood over me as I washed out my mouth until every last speck was gone, that night I was ill with a terrible sickness, and in the following days I passed more soil than would cover the whole yard.

  It was what happened when you ate filth. You were poisoned.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  aven waited on the doorstep at Albany Street, trying to compose how he might best express his change of mind, while wondering how long it would be before he regretted it. He hoped the sunshine of being restored to Sarah’s good graces was adequate compensation for the storm clouds likely to gather among his peers and superiors.

  Mrs Sullivan, the housekeeper, answered the door.

  ‘I am here to see Sarah,’ he said, giving Mrs Sullivan what he hoped was a winning smile, a technique that Dr Simpson deployed with great success, and only possible now that his troublesome molar had been removed. A trip to the dentist the day before and a quick whiff of chloroform had seen to that. He had briefly contemplated braving the extraction without the aid of an anaesthetic, but his courage had faltered at the approach of the dentist armed with his tooth-pulling forceps.