The Lost Apothecary(63)
Surrounded by crushed leaves and colorful spills, Eliza gazed over the jars and bottles in front of her as she considered my request. At last, she nodded and said, “I will go.” Then she wrapped her fingers around something I could not see and stuffed it into her dress. I did not care enough to question her about it; let the child take what she wants. Greater concerns awaited me.
After all, our very lives were at stake.
24
Caroline
Present day, Wednesday
At the back of the coffee shop, Gaynor and I leaned close together, the two articles about the apothecary spread on the table in front of us. They’d been published in a paper called The Thursday Bulletin, which, Gaynor explained, was not a widely circulated periodical and ran only between 1778 and 1792. According to her brief research that morning, the paper eventually shut down due to lack of funding, and the library’s archive carried only a fraction of the published issues, none of which had been digitized.
“Then how did you find these?” I asked her, taking a sip from my coffee.
Gaynor grinned. “Our dates were all wrong. If the hospital note was indeed a deathbed confession, the author was probably referencing something that had happened earlier in her life. So, I searched the manuscripts and expanded my search to the late 1700s. I also added the keyword poison, which seemed logical for an apothecary who helped kill people. The search returned this article, and of course I spotted the image of the bear immediately.”
Gaynor lifted the earlier bulletin, dated February 10, 1791. The headline read “Bailiff Searching for Lord Clarence’s Murderer.”
Since Gaynor had already read it, she went to the counter to order a latte while I picked up the article and skimmed it quickly. By the time she returned, I’d moved to the edge of my seat, mouth agape. “This is scandalous!” I told her. “Lord Clarence, Lady Clarence, a maid serving the dessert liqueur at a dinner party... Are you sure this is real?”
“More than sure,” Gaynor said. “I checked the parish records on Lord Clarence. Sure enough, his date of death is recorded as February 9, 1791.”
I pointed to the image in the article again. “So the maid made a wax impression of the bear on the jar, and...” I ran my fingers over the printed image. “And it’s the same as the bear on my vial.”
“One and the same,” Gaynor confirmed. “It makes sense, the more I think about it. If the apothecary really did dispense poisons to multiple women, maybe the bear was her logo, her mark that she put on all her vials. In which case, your finding one in the river is still incredible, but not as coincidental as we originally thought.”
Gaynor lifted the article and reread a portion of it. “And here’s where things get a bit unfortunate for our dear apothecary. The wax impression didn’t just have the image of the bear. It had a few letters, too.” She pointed to the section indicating that the police were looking to decipher the letters B ley.
“Police suspected this was part of an address. Obviously, we know from the hospital note that this meant Bear Alley. But at the time of this printing, police didn’t know it.” Gaynor lifted the lid from her cup to let her latte cool, and I held my breath, envisioning the door I’d gone through last night. I suspected B ley didn’t mean Bear Alley at all. It probably meant Back Alley, the walkway leading to the apothecary’s concealed room.
“It seems wild that she would put her address on any of her vials, doesn’t it?” Gaynor shrugged. “Who knows what she was thinking. Maybe a careless mistake.” She reached for the second article. “Anyway, I also brought the other bulletin with me, and it’s this one that identifies the woman as an apothecary. And more than that, an apothecary killer. I suspect that soon after the first article was printed...” Gaynor trailed off. “Well, let’s just say it was the beginning of the end for her.”
I frowned. “The beginning of the end?”
Gaynor flipped to the second article, dated February 12, 1791. But I didn’t have the chance to read it because my phone, sitting on the table in case James called, began to ring. I checked the screen, my heart lurching when I saw that it was him. “Hi—are you okay?”
I heard his haggard breathing first, a slow intake of a breath followed by a shaky, wheezy exhale. “Caroline,” he said, his voice so quiet that I could hardly hear him. “I need to go to the hospital.” I pressed my hand to my mouth, sure that my heart had stopped. “I tried dialing 911, but it’s not going through.”
I closed my eyes, vaguely recalling a pamphlet at the hotel check-in desk with the emergency number for the United Kingdom. But in my moment of disoriented terror, I couldn’t remember the number.
The sensation of vertigo hit as panic rose inside of me; the coffee shop, buzzing with chatter and the hiss of an espresso machine, shifted on its axis. “I’ll be right there,” I choked out, sliding out of the chair and grabbing my things.
“I have to go,” I told Gaynor, my hands shaking fiercely. “I’m sorry, it’s my husband, he’s sick—” At once, my eyes welled with tears. Despite what I’d felt toward James in recent days, I was now so terrified that my mouth had gone dry; I couldn’t even swallow. On the phone, James had sounded like he was struggling to breathe.
Gaynor looked at me, confusion and concern on her face. “Your husband? Oh, God, yes, okay, go. But—” She picked up the two articles and handed them to me. “Take these. The copies are for you.”