He had just returned the bottle to the cupboard when the dining-room door opened and the entire household seemed to pour through it.
‘Mr Raven. What a pleasure it is to meet you.’
The woman who greeted him had a pleasant, open countenance but appeared exceedingly pale, as though she hadn’t been outdoors for some time. She was dressed in black, evidently in mourning. Raven wondered for whom.
‘I am Mrs Simpson and this is my sister, Miss Wilhelmina Grindlay.’
‘Delighted to make your acquaintance,’ Raven replied.
Miss Grindlay looked momentarily taken aback by his appearance but regained her composure to offer him a smile.
‘You may call me Mina,’ she said.
Mina was slightly taller and thinner than her sister, making her features seem pinched in comparison. She was beyond the first flush of youth but still pleasing to the eye. Raven wondered why she was not yet married.
The ladies were followed by the domestic staff, who lined up along one wall. Raven allowed himself a glance at Sarah, but averted his gaze as a matter of reflex when she met his eye. It was his understanding that servants were specifically not supposed to do this. He wondered whether the Simpson household afforded greater leeway to those below stairs or whether this meant that his status was not considered to be above.
His attention was taken by the arrival of a fellow surely not much older than him, but who carried himself with a great deal more certainty and poise (not to mention within a suit of far finer tailoring). He had the gait of someone comfortable in his surroundings and enjoying great confidence in his purpose. He did not introduce himself, instead taking position behind a chair as they awaited the master of the house.
Dr Simpson entered last of all, bade everyone good morning and took his seat at the head of the table. He opened a grand leather-bound Bible and read something from Psalms. Everyone then bowed their heads for a few minutes of silent prayer. To Raven’s empty stomach, this represented an unwelcome delay, rendered all the more frustrating by his never having been much inclined towards the church. He was not even sure whether he believed in God. (The devil was quite another matter.)
Eventually the doctor said amen and the domestic staff left the room, Raven hoped as a prelude to their imminent return bearing food. When the door opened once more, however, it was the dog that entered, followed by two small boys who proceeded to chase it round the table, and from whose giggling entreaties he learned that its name was Glen.
He heard an approaching thump of hurried footsteps and had to suppress a smile at the harassed appearance of their nanny, who looked mortified that they had escaped her charge. Raven felt guilty for his amusement as he braced himself for the rebuke that would surely be handed down, reckoning that whether the boys or the nanny got the worst of it would be a revealing detail. However, Simpson responded instead with raucous laughter, to which almost everyone reacted with similar mirth, prompting the dog to bark with excitement before even the bloody parrot joined in.
Almost everyone, mark you. There was an exception. The smartly dressed young man merely issued a tired sigh, while presenting a token smile as thin as Ma Cherry’s porridge.
Simpson quieted the dog with an affectionate hand upon its head, the tail wagging like a metronome. Then the squealing boys were similarly calmed by the tender ministrations of their father’s hands before being led away meekly by their grateful governess. The sight piqued something bittersweet in Raven, but before he could dwell upon it, his senses were busied with the arrival of platters piled high with sausages, eggs, kippers and freshly baked bread.
Raven eyed it all longingly, awaiting Simpson tucking in as his cue to commence. The doctor was reaching for a sausage with a fork when he suddenly paused and put it down again.
‘But I am forgetting myself. Introductions! James, this is my new apprentice, Will Raven. Will, this is Dr James Duncan, recently arrived from Paris.’
Raven was about to extend a hand but noticed that Duncan’s remained fixed by his side. He wasn’t sure he was on the right side of the etiquette, but he was quite sure Dr James Duncan saw him as an inferior, and by ‘saw him’, he meant much as in the way one sees a fellow by using a telescope.
If Raven was the type to feel slighted, then the sting would have been drawn by Simpson finally signalling that everyone should eat. For appearance’s sake, he did not pile his plate conspicuously, but even then it was probably more food than he had faced at a sitting since last he visited his mother, and he was sure it would taste so much the better without his uncle reminding everyone who had paid for it.
‘Dr Duncan, I meant to ask but I kept forgetting,’ ventured Miss Grindlay, peering across the table. ‘Are you any relation to Mr Duncan of Duncan and Flockhart on Princes Street?’
Duncan gave her a look indicating that he considered this a self-evidently stupid question.
‘No. Though I understand they’re doing a fairly brisk trade in ether since its discovery.’ This latter he addressed towards Simpson, by way of moving the subject on.
Raven decided to move it right back again.
‘Any relation to Mr Duncan the surgeon at the Infirmary, then?’
For this he earned a sour look, one of which Raven was sure Duncan had a varied repertoire.
‘Again, no. There appears to be a surfeit of Duncans in Edinburgh at the moment. I am considering adding my mother’s maiden name to mine to distinguish myself.’
‘And what will your name become?’ asked Mina.
‘James Matthews Duncan.’
‘That does sound most distinguished,’ said Mrs Simpson. ‘You’ll have to make some notable contribution to medicine now, in order to be worthy of it.’
‘I intend to,’ he replied flatly.
Raven thought this was another pass at shutting down irrelevant contributions from the distaff side, but it was in fact merely an overture. Once Duncan had gobbled down the solitary boiled egg he had abstemiously selected from the cornucopia before him, he proceeded to lay down his credentials, at the end of which Raven had a stark perspective upon just how powerful that telescope would have to be.
Duncan had studied medicine in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, gaining his MD last year at the tender age of twenty, which required some form of special dispensation. He had travelled to Paris to further his studies, and while there had made extensive pathological examinations of women who had died in childbirth, considering himself to be something of an expert upon inflammatory conditions of the female pelvis. He spoke fluent German and French, and had translated Dr Simpson’s ‘Notes on the Inhalation of Sulphuric Ether’ into the latter, which had naturally flattered their host and no doubt played a part in his being offered a position as an assistant to the professor.
‘I have come here to find a better drowsy syrup than ether,’ he declared, which put a stopper in it as far as Raven was concerned, as he had only just begun entertaining the notion that this might be his own route to success.
James Matthews Duncan, he decided, was going to be insufferable. He had the bearing of a young man who had never been punched full in the face for an unguarded remark, and Raven instinctively felt he might be the one to remedy that.
The gathering was soon joined by another gentleman, who apologised for being late (having come on foot from his home on Howe Street) and insisted nobody should rise. He looked a few years older than Raven, tall and neatly dressed, with a receding hairline and a full beard. He was evidently well known to the family, as he sat down at the table without waiting for an invitation and was promptly served a cup of tea by Sarah.
‘This is my associate,