‘I am sure we can point you in the right direction regardless. What would be your intended destination?’

Sarah swallowed, fearful her voice would dry.

‘New York,’ she replied.

‘Yes, that indeed would depart from the west coast, but we can certainly assist with a booking. Can I have your name?’

‘It’s Sarah.’

He stared expectantly at her, the pause becoming awkward in its length until she understood he was awaiting more.

‘Sorry. Sarah Fisher.’

‘And would that be “Miss” or “Mrs”?’

It seemed a simple enough question, and yet it was far from it, and not something a man was ever forced to reckon with. She had reverted to her own surname, as Archie requested, but the thorny issue of her title persisted. She pondered briefly which appellation would provide the greatest protection to a woman travelling alone.

‘It is “Mrs”,’ she said.

For now, at least.

One day, she vowed, it would be neither. One day, it would be ‘Doctor’.

EPILOGUE

shaft of sunshine plunged through a single window into the otherwise stark-walled chamber as Dr David Skae took his seat. Glancing up, he could make out the national monument atop Calton Hill, a permanent sentinel overlooking the facility that shared its name. The room in which they had convened was abutting the outer wall of the jail; those confined to the cells would enjoy no such view.

Dr Skae sat at the centre of a long table, flanked on his right by Auberon Findlay, Procurator Fiscal, and on his immediate left by Dr Alasdair Drake, Skae’s assistant. Next to him at the end of the table was Frederick Nicholson, a lawyer representing the subject.

Skae was Physician Superintendent of the Edinburgh Asylum and had been invited here by Nicholson to make an assessment of Mary Dempster’s fitness to face the charges against her.

In the past, fiscals had resisted the likes of Skae’s involvement in such matters, but the McNaughton Rule six years before had changed all that. McNaughton had been acquitted of attempting to murder Prime Minister Robert Peel, his pistol shot fatally injuring Peel’s secretary Edward Drummond instead. McNaughton was ruled to have been guilty but insane, labouring under the delusion that Peel in fact intended to murder him. The case had established a precedent that Nicholson had invoked with regard to his client.

Bringing their sitting to order, Findlay read out the ruling verbatim: ‘“To establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from a disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act she was doing; or, if she did know it, that she did not know she was doing what was wrong.”’