The Lost Apothecary

Caroline leaves the hotel room after dark while James is sleeping and heads back to Bear Alley. Caroline finds a new “no trespassing” sign on the gate in front of the clearing, but she ignores it and hops the gate. She is motivated to open the door by two primary reasons: (1) avoiding the “practical, low-risk, responsible route” (164) that she’s always taken, and (2) the possibility that whatever she finds behind the door is newsworthy and could open a new career path for her. Though she has some reservations about whether she will find anything of import, she proceeds through the door. She initially finds an unassuming corridor that she identifies as a remnant of Back Alley. A bit further along the corridor, she discovers another door. This one opens to a small, empty room. The back wall of this room is wooden and has some shelves affixed to it. Caroline takes note of the odd arrangement of the shelves, the “inconsistency of things” (167), and discovers an interior door that leads to an innermost room.

Rather than return to the Amwell estate, Eliza sleeps in an alley a street away from Nella’s shop. When she awakes, she goes to the magick bookstore. Though she briefly considers returning to the servant’s registry office and finding another station, she decides against it, resolving to rid the Amwell house of its ghosts. Eliza has a bit of trouble finding the shop at first, but she quickly realizes that this is by design as the shop “[means] to disguise itself” (171). In the store Eliza finds a small section on “Magickal Arts.” The shop boy comes by as Eliza is perusing a spell for reviving a stillborn baby. The boy introduces himself as Tom Pepper, and he tells her that the book in her hands formerly belonged to his mother. He also tells her that his father opened the shop after his mother’s death, a tragedy that came the same week he was born. Tom Pepper says he was stillborn and his mother used the revival spell to save him. He identifies this exchange as potentially the “curse of magick: for every reward, there is a great loss” (174). Tom Pepper gives Eliza the book for free on account of their budding friendship. He encourages Eliza to stop by to either tell him of a spell that worked or to exchange the book for another if a spell does not work. At the prospect of seeing Tom again, Eliza experiences a new feeling that makes her step “light and [her] face warm” (175).

Nella misses Eliza as soon as the girl leaves. She hopes the book of magic will put her mind at ease in reference to Mr. Amwell’s ghost, but she does not put much stock into magic herself. As Nella is busying herself with work, Lady Clarence arrives at the store in alarming fashion, her eyes “wide as saucers” (178). Lady Clarence falls into Nella’s arms and reveals that her plan has gone awry. Miss Berkwell, her husband’s mistress, is still alive. It is her husband who died. When Miss Berkwell took a sip from the fig liqueur the maid had unknowingly spiked with the poison, she got a “lascivious” look on her face and left the dining room with Lord Clarence while Lady Clarence was momentarily distracted. Some time later, Miss Berkwell came back into the dining room alone with a terrified expression. During their tryst, Lord Clarence had apparently drained a significant amount of the poisoned fig liqueur. Lady Clarence directed her maid hide the now-empty powder jar in the cellar of the Clarence estate. She plans to return it to Nella as she can.

According to Lady Clarence, in addition to the nondescript bear Nella engraves on all her jars and vials, the one she received with the lethal aphrodisiac has writing on it. Nella lets out a nervous laugh and is sure Lady Clarence is mistaken. She then remembers that Eliza is the one who selected the jar for the powder, and that while Nella was not looking, Eliza must’ve selected a jar from the far back of her mother’s cupboard, one of the jars that is engraved with more identifying information than just the bear logo.

Nella rushes out of the shop, toward the Amwell estate, to find Eliza to determine from which cupboard the girl selected Lady Clarence’s container. Lady Clarence also leaves, and Nella hopes that she’s gone to get rid of the jar. She finds Eliza near a churchyard, reading from a new magic book. Though Eliza is not pleased to see her, and Nella refuses to give her details of Lady Clarence’s case in public, Eliza agrees to return to the store with her. Eliza shows Nella the cupboard from which she chose the jar, confirming that she used one of Nella’s mother’s canisters. In fact, the jar is “engraved with the address of [Nella’s mother’s] once-reputable apothecary shop” (186): 3 Back Alley. Eliza bursts into tears at the realization of what she’s done, and Nella comforts her, internally assuming some of the blame for this outcome. Nella tells Eliza that “all will be well” (188) even though she does not entirely believe this herself.

To Caroline, the secret room has the appearance of an old pharmacy. She finds “ledges sagged under the weight of milky, opaque glasses” (189), a scale, and old books. Caroline takes as many photos as she can before her phone battery dies, including the pages of a large old book. She leaves the building just as her battery dies and returns to the hotel. She finds James awake, and the exhilaration from her discovery promptly wanes. In the morning James has a “raspy cough” (193) that he chalks up to dry air on the plane. Caroline recommends that he take some of her eucalyptus oil for the cough, and he does so out of her sight. James leaves to visit the Tower of London, a dejected look on his face as Caroline confirms that she will not be joining him on his sightseeing venture. As soon as he is gone, Caroline reviews the pictures she took of the apothecary shop. One of her crispest photos is of a book page with text “neatly lined in rows” (195) and specific names and dates. She determines it to be a log or register. She notes that, from the varied handwriting, it seems like the pages were written by three separate hands. When she makes out some of the medicines, she finds that they seem innocuous. But she sees the word arsenic, and her interest is piqued. She notices that some of the entries reference the sale of otherwise benign ingredients in large quantities, so she writes “quantities of non-poisons needed to kill” (196) in her own notebook to research that topic later.

Caroline cuts her research short as James reenters the room. His face is “pale and clammy” (197), his forehead is sweaty, and his hands are shaking. He asks to have the room to himself so that he can vomit. Caroline, though worried about his condition, allows him this. As Caroline leaves the hotel, Gaynor calls her with news that the manuscripts she ordered have arrived. She asks Caroline to come in as soon as she can, as the manuscripts hold some incredibly fascinating information. Caroline says she cannot come to the library because she wants to be close by in case James needs her. Instead, the women meet at a nearby coffee shop to look over copies of the manuscripts. Caroline, unsure of her closeness with Gaynor, decides against telling her about the apothecary shop, since she technically broke the law and the shop might count as a historical site that Gaynor is mandated to report. Gaynor has brought two bulletins: one from February 10, 1791, and another from February 12, 1791. The earlier bulletin has the rudimentary drawing of a bear, “identical to the tiny bear on the light blue vial” (200) Caroline took from the River Thames.