‘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.