‘That is highly likely,’ nodded the professor. ‘There was once a case, a Lady Paget if I recall correctly, who required sixty-seven tappings in five years, yielding two hundred and forty gallons of fluid! That of course was an exceptional case. Hopes of ultimate and complete cure for ovarian dropsy by paracentesis are faint and slight indeed. Usually all that can be achieved is temporary palliation.’

There was a small rap at the door and Sarah entered, followed by Mrs Glassford. Raven met Sarah’s eye, and he felt a growing frustration about seeing her once more without having the chance to talk to her.

In the midst of the previous evening’s chaos there had been no opportunity for him to ask more about her, but perhaps that had been for the best. What he most wanted to know – when and how she came to be married – would have necessitated inappropriate and intrusive questioning. And yet he was tormented by this lack of information. He had only been gone a year. How could such a thing have happened in such a short space of time? Who was this Dr Banks and why would a gentleman from a good family take a housemaid as his bride? It made no sense to him and he found, to his chagrin, that such questions had continued to torment him into the small hours of the night, keeping him from sleep.

Raven had to admit that Sarah had a glow about her, though he did not care to dwell upon why. This was in stark contrast to the woman beside her, who if anything looked worse than she had done the day before; sallow, drawn and feeble. Raven took the patient’s hand and helped her up onto the examination couch, which had been placed against one wall, close to the window to capture the best of the available light.

Sarah moved about the room with purpose deriving from an evident familiarity with all that went on there. She removed a box from the cupboard beneath the bookcase and took from it a small glass bottle and a cloth. Approaching the patient, she removed the stopper from the bottle just as Raven turned to check the instruments he had laid out. He made clumsy contact with her forearm and knocked the bottle from her hand. It landed on the floor, the contents pouring out and rapidly seeping into the carpet. The sweet smell of chloroform began to pervade the room.

Sarah looked at the floor for a moment, then at Raven, then finally at Dr Simpson.

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

‘Accidents happen, Sarah,’ he told her. ‘Just fetch another bottle.’

Sarah blanched. ‘That was the last one,’ she said.

‘Then perhaps you would be so kind as to go to Duncan and Flockhart’s and replenish our supply.’

‘At once, Dr Simpson,’ she said, then hurried off.