The Lost Apothecary(83)

The day my mother died.

I knew I must go to the Amwell estate, and soon. I would leave the letter and tincture with a servant, for Eliza said the mistress may be gone some weeks, and I did not expect her to be in. Then I would go to the river, sit along its silent banks and wait for a certain death. I did not expect the wait to be a long one.

But before I left my shop for good, a single task remained.

I lifted my quill, pulled the open register toward me and diligently began to record my final entry. Though I did not dispense the potion and I knew not what ingredients it contained, I could not leave without confessing the life of her, the loss of her.

Eliza Fanning, London. Ingr. unknown. 12 Feb 1791.
As the nib scratched along the paper, my hand shook terribly, and the words were so sullied that the handwriting appeared not even my own.

Indeed, it was as though some unknown spirit refused to let me write the words—refused to let me record the death of little Eliza.



34

Caroline


Present day, Wednesday

I read the final entry again, my hand over my lips.

Eliza Fanning, London. Ingr. unknown. 12 Feb 1791.
The twelfth of February? It didn’t make sense. The apothecary jumped from the bridge on the eleventh of February, and the article said the river was “littered with ice.” Even if someone survived the fall, it seemed unlikely they would have lasted more than a minute or two in the frigid water.

It was curious, too, that just one name was listed: Eliza Fanning. The entry did not say she was “on account” of anyone else. She must have come to the shop by herself, then. Did she have any idea that she was the final customer? And did she play any role in the apothecary’s demise?

I pulled a blanket over my legs. Admittedly, this final entry left me a bit spooked. I considered the possibility that the discrepancy was an error; perhaps the apothecary simply got her dates mixed up. Could this something really be nothing?

And it was also strange that the entry said Ingr. unknown—ingredients unknown. It seemed impossible. How could the apothecary have dispensed something of which she had no knowledge?

Maybe it wasn’t the apothecary at all. Maybe someone else made the entry. But the shop was well hidden, and it seemed unreasonable that someone would have entered the shop the day after the apothecary jumped in order to write down such a cryptic, final message. It only made sense that it was the apothecary’s own entry.

But if she made the entry, then who jumped?

More questions than answers had presented themselves in the last few minutes, and my curiosity melted into frustration. Nothing matched up: the victim in the first article didn’t fit with the victim in the entry about Lord Clarence; the final entry was cryptically written, with its strange handwriting and the reference to unknown ingredients; and most significant, the date of the final entry was a day after the apothecary had supposedly died.

I spread out my hands, at a complete loss. How many secrets did the apothecary take to her grave?

I walked to the minifridge and pulled out the bottle of champagne that the hotel had stocked in the suite. I didn’t think to pour the chilled wine into a glass; instead, once I’d popped off the cork, I lifted the rim to my lips and took a deep drink directly from the bottle.

Instead of fortifying me, the champagne left me fatigued, almost dizzy. My curiosity about the apothecary had worn down for the day, and the idea of further research was not appealing.

Tomorrow, perhaps.

I resolved to write down my questions about everything I’d learned today, and I would revisit them in the morning, or once James left. I grabbed a pen and my notebook and flipped to a clean page. I had a dozen or more questions about what I’d read. I prepared to list them all.

But as I held the pen in my hand and considered what to write down first, I realized that there was one question I most wanted to know. It was the most intrusive, the most insistent of them all. I sensed the answer to this question might solve some others, like why the entry was made on the twelfth of February.

I pressed the tip of my pen to the page and wrote:

Who is Eliza Fanning?
The next morning, after James had been discharged from the hospital, we sat at the small table near the door of the hotel room. I wrapped my hands tightly around a cup of weak tea as he held his cell phone close, searching the airline’s website for flights home. Housekeeping hadn’t yet come to the room so a half-drunk bottle of champagne sat near the coffeepot, and I had the headache to show for it.

He reached into his pocket and withdrew his wallet. “Found one that leaves Gatwick at four,” he said. “Gives me enough time to pack up and catch a train there. I’ll need to leave by one.”

The vase of baby blue hydrangeas sat between us; most had wilted and now tumbled over the edge of the glass. I slid the vase to the side and looked at him more closely. “You think you’ll be okay? No dizziness or anything?”

He put down his wallet. “None at all. I’m just ready to get home.”

A short while later, James stood near the window with his packed luggage beside him—as though we’d rewound the trip and he had only just arrived. I remained at the table, where I’d been half-heartedly perusing the photos of the apothecary’s book, keenly aware that the minutes were counting down. If I planned to reveal to James the truth about my own activities in recent days, I’d better do so quick.