The Lost Apothecary

On Blackfriars’ Bridge, Nella is about to lift her own leg over the bridge railing and follow Eliza to her death. But as the breeze hits the back of her neck and the waterfowl call out around her, she registers the magnitude of the gift that Eliza has given her. She backs away from the bridge. As she stands there, she remembers Mrs. Amwell and anticipates the grief the woman would feel over the thought that Eliza has abandoned her forever. She decides to tell Mrs. Amwell that Eliza has died. She returns to the shop to draft a letter with this information, as well as to develop a tincture, brewed with skullcap, to “ease the piercing ache of [Mrs. Amwell’s] heart” (280). There, she finds a new letter in the barley bin from a housewife who would like a poison for their husband. Nella considers how easy it would be to grant this housewife’s request, but she ultimately decides against it and burns the letter. She is emphatic that “no more death would go forth from [her] room” (281).

With the destruction of this letter, Nella intends to finally close up shop. Her health is rapidly failing—she has been coughing up blood since the chase with the bailiffs the previous day. She is no longer hungry or thirsty and sees this as a sign of her imminent death. She also notes her own symptoms as quite similar to the disease that took her mother. Despite her physical pain, she is still determined to go to the Amwell estate and notify a servant of Eliza’s death, since Mrs. Amwell is likely still not there. Before she leaves, she records Eliza’s name in her register. Even though she did not poison her, Nella feels responsible for her demise. As she writes, her hands shake so badly that it’s as though some unknown spirit “refused to let [her] record the death of little Eliza” (282). She writes: “Eliza Fanning. London. Ingr. unknown. 12 Feb 1791” (282).

After reading the final register entry dated February 12, 1791, Caroline deduces that it was the apothecary who wrote it. Since the shop is so well-hidden, it seems unlikely that anyone else could have found their way in. With this in mind, Caroline wonders who actually jumped from the bridge on the 11th. Caroline decides to take a break from research for the night but has one primary question that she feels will allow every other discrepancy to fall into place: Who is Eliza Fanning? The next day, James drinks coffee with Caroline at the table in her hotel before his flight home. Caroline considers telling him about the apothecary case but decides against it. Instead, she gives him the tin business card holder that she planned to gift him for their anniversary. She tells him that though the tin box once stood for the strength of their marriage, it now represents the strength they will need to lead fulfilling individual lives.

James leaves for his flight. In the wake of his departure, Caroline feels a “freedom […] so penetrating and real that [she stands] motionless, almost stunned” (287). She waits for the regret she expects to experience at withholding all information about the apothecary from James, but it never comes. Gaynor replies to Caroline’s message about the hospital note death date, noting that its writer was a Lady Bea Clarence who died at St. Thomas’s hospital in 1816 with no surviving children. This confirms that the note was indeed a deathbed confession. Caroline calls Gaynor and tells her about the apothecary’s register, save for the entry about Eliza, which she decides to keep to herself. Gaynor tells Caroline that her detective work has been “astounding” and invites her to join the research crew at the British Library. Caroline tells her that she has to go back to Ohio to deal with her marriage. In response, Gaynor encourages to follow her dreams. Caroline confesses that she almost applied to Cambridge but did not. Gaynor tells her that she is intelligent and capable, and that she deserves more than a wholesale return to her previous life.

As Nella approaches the Amwell estate, “[her] vision [begins] to twist and spin” (290). She has dried blood on her lips and has tucked a bloody rag into the pocket of her skirts. She wanted to write more in the letter she’s leaving for the servant about Eliza but did not feel she had the time due to her illness. In fact, her declining condition did not even allow her to record her final remedy, the skullcap she’s giving to Mrs. Amwell. As she nears the estate’s front steps, a child tangles in her skirts and reminds her of the baby she lost. This child appears a “phantom,” causing Nella to express regret at having told Eliza that ghosts do not exist outside the imagination. Nella sees Eliza in a window of the estate and thinks her an apparition. Nella collapses on the front steps. In her final moments of consciousness, she sees Eliza running toward her with a pink vial similar to the one she’d tried to give Nella on the bridge. From her place on the ground, Nella “reaches for her bright shadow” (292).

Caroline returns to the British Library. She tells Gaynor that she applied to graduate school at Cambridge the night prior. Caroline plans to complete a master’s program in 18th-century and Romantic studies because she feels this program will best connect her interest in history, literature, and research. She intends to reveal her discoveries about the apothecary shop in her dissertation. The program is nine months, which is “the same amount of time [Caroline] had so desperately wished to carry a baby” (296); she notes that her long-lost dream has taken the place of the baby. Though Caroline leaves Gaynor, she does not leave the library. She goes to research Eliza Fanning on her own. One article, published by The Brighton Press, references Eliza. The title of the piece reads: “Eliza Pepper, nee Fanning, Sole Inheritor of Husband’s Magick Book Shoppe” (297).

According to the article, Eliza inherited her husband Tom Pepper’s successful magic bookstore upon his death. In her interview Eliza expressed her intention to keep the shop open. She told the reporter that magic brews saved her life and the life of a “special friend who still encourages and counsels [her] to this day” (297). She noted that when the moment of death presented itself to her, the first potion she brewed and drank had a heat so powerful that “the frigid depths were a welcome respite” (297). The reporter asked her to elaborate about these “frigid depths,” but Eliza declined. She took the hands of her four-year-old twins and went back into the shop.

Caroline leaves the library, realizing now that the apothecary was not the person who jumped from the bridge, and that both she and Eliza had likely survived the constable chase. Caroline reflects that she feels a protectiveness over Eliza and intends to keep Eliza her lone secret for now. She suspects that her feelings stem from the kinship she feels with Eliza, despite their age difference at the respective “turning points” of their lives. She walks over to Millennium Bridge and retrieves Eliza’s vial from her pocket. She throws the vial into the river, dubbing it “Eliza’s vial, my vial, our vial” (301). Standing on the bridge, she thinks she sees the form of two women approaching. But when she looks closer, they are gone.