‘Yes, his mother died just last week. Heart failure.’ Dr Fowler shook his head sympathetically. ‘They say that a person may die of grief. Do you think that is so?’

Raven tried to keep a growing incredulity from his voice.

‘Surely that would be a diagnosis of exclusion. There are many other possibilities to be ruled out before entertaining such a thing.’

‘Perhaps they removed his mother’s body head first,’ Dr Fowler suggested.

‘What do you mean?’

‘A corpse should always be removed from the house feet first lest it beckon others to follow.’

Raven looked askance at the man.

‘Did you, by any chance, obtain your medical degree from St Andrews?’

Dr Fowler looked momentarily confused. ‘No, Edinburgh,’ he replied, missing the veiled insult implied by this question. It had once been the case that, in their eagerness for funds, the University of St Andrews would issue a medical degree by post, without visit or examination, for the simple fee of ten pounds.

‘What do you think is the diagnosis here?’ Raven asked, hoping to redirect the man’s thoughts and curtail this nonsense; although given what had just been said, he did not anticipate giving his opinion much credence.

‘Some form of apoplexy?’ Fowler suggested.

‘Perhaps. His age would count against that and if there had been any kind of bleeding within the skull there would be other signs, would there not?’

The nurse appeared at the landing, a slight woman in a navy-blue dress.

‘I’m just stepping out briefly, Dr Fowler,’ she said. Her accent was not local. Raven thought she might be from Glasgow.

‘I still think we ought to purge him,’ Fowler said, repeating his earlier suggestion, perhaps for the nurse’s benefit as she retreated downstairs.

‘Absolutely not,’ Raven insisted. ‘You asked me here for my advice and that is it. Perhaps if you desist from relentless depletion, he might recover sufficiently for me to make a better determination of what ails him.’

The older man shrugged. ‘Very well,’ he conceded, though he didn’t sound convinced.

Fowler went back into the patient’s room and returned presently with his jar of dead leeches.

‘A terrible loss,’ he said, shaking his head.

Even in the dark of the hallway, Raven failed to conceal his disdain.

‘Your leeches?’

‘Why, yes. I’ve had them for some time, and they have served me well. I think of them as my little assistants.’

‘Perhaps their working life was excessively extended,’ Raven suggested, placing a hand on his colleague’s shoulder. ‘An earlier retirement from practice might well have saved them,’ he added, hoping to plant a suggestion in the old relic’s head.

TWENTY-THREE