THE APOTHECARY’S DAUGHTER an absolutely gripping crime thriller that will take your breath away

by Jane Adams

  Ray looked sharply at her, then realized she was winding him up and grinned. ‘It was rarely like that,’ he said. ‘Someone once described policework as ninety per cent boredom and ten per cent panic.’ He glanced again at the little packets of tomato sauce in the basket at the centre of the table. ‘I’d argue with the ratio, but . . . well, you get the picture.’

  ‘So why stay with it?’

  ‘I enjoyed the ten per cent.’

  Sarah smiled at him, then reached across and passed the ketchup. ‘Go ahead,’ she told him. ‘I won’t think badly of you.’

  ‘How did . . . ?’ He smiled wryly. ‘You ought to have been a bloody copper.’

  ‘Good cop or bad cop? Seriously though, Ray. This . . . letter. What did it say to upset you so much?’

  ‘Are you always so direct?’

  ‘Only with the people I respect.’ She took advantage of his surprise. ‘Hard, isn’t it? Facing your own mortality.’

  ‘What would you know!’ He said it harshly. Far more harshly than he’d intended.

  ‘Oh, I beg your professional pardon! I didn’t realize you had to be one of the boys in blue to understand that stuff.’

  Ray shook his head. ‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ he said. ‘Or maybe it was, I don’t know. I’m sorry, Sarah, I don’t know how I feel about any of it anymore.’

  ‘Oh yes you do, Ray. You know very well and that’s the problem. It’s not easy when you’re used to being in control, to running the show, to admit that you were scared half out of your wits and totally unprepared for all the rage and pain and sheer humiliation that comes with knowing you’re human and very vulnerable.

  ‘Ray, I may not have been through what you’ve been through but I’ve been scared and I’ve been alone, regardless of how many people there were making sympathetic noises. I don’t know what happened to you, how your face and hands got into that state, but it must have been pretty bad. I understand what it’s like to know that you might be going to die or at the least maimed for life and the sheer relief, yes and the guilt, when death points the finger at someone else and not you.’

  Ray glanced at her cautiously, then stirred his tea, playing with his spoon.

  ‘Five years ago,’ she went on, ‘I found a lump in my left breast. It wasn’t very big and it wasn’t very impressive. You know, not at all the way you think that death should be. But it was there and it wouldn’t go away however much I wanted it to. Finally I went to my GP and before I knew it I was in hospital having bits of me removed by a surgeon whose only interest was that he’d saved my life, nothing about the kind of life that I’d be living afterwards.

  ‘Ray, I was devastated. Not because I’ve ever been that vain about the way I looked, or that I was even in a relationship that might be affected. It was something more fundamental than that. I’d gone from one moment in my life when I’d felt secure and certain of myself, to an instant later when my life was threatened and I was anything but certain and secure.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Ray asked her. ‘I mean . . .’

  Sarah laughed a little harshly. ‘I paid to have myself rebuilt,’ she said. ‘Like the Six Million Dollar Man, only not quite so expensive. I went to another doctor who told me that, if I’d gone to him in the first place, most of my left breast could have still been there and his job would have been a hell of a lot simpler. But, anyway. I paid for Humpty-Dumpty to be put back together again and while he sorted out the physical stuff I tried to do something about the rest of me.’

  ‘I thought, I mean, I’ve heard there are support groups and that sort of thing nowadays.’ He stared at her, suddenly embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, I’m pretty ignorant.’

  ‘Aren’t we all? Until you’re faced with it. Yes, there are support groups and I joined one for a while. A couple of the women I met I still keep in touch with, but it wasn’t for me. I’m too much my own person to go joining things.’

  There was more to it than that, he knew, but Ray didn’t push. She picked at the remainder of her food and then she asked, ‘How long before you could look in the mirror and see yourself and not just that mass of scars?’

  ‘I shave every morning,’ Ray said. He tried to make a joke of it, but the laughter stuck in his throat. He tried again. ‘It’s not the scars. It’s not the fact that people look at me in the street. It’s not any of that. It’s . . .’

  ‘That you feel guilt every time you want to complain,’ Sarah said softly. ‘Because, after all, you’re still alive, no matter what your scars are like. You’re still alive, so what right do you have to complain?’

  He looked at her, stunned. He’d never put it into words like that, not even in his most private thoughts.

  ‘You’ve every right. Every right to complain and shout and rail against all of it. Against every little scar and every minute of pain. Every right, Ray, and don’t let anyone tell you that’s not so.’

  ‘And you declare that right, do you? You stand on the rooftops and proclaim your hurt to the world, do you?’ He didn’t know whether to be amused or outraged. The spot she’d touched was still too tender.

  ‘Damned right I don’t!’ She smiled a little sadly at the expression in his eyes. ‘No, I do what you do and I hide it all away. Easier for me than you, I guess, unless I wear a transparent swimsuit.’

  ‘That I’d like to see.’ He looked away, suddenly uncertain as to whether he should have said that.

  Sarah reached across the table to touch his hand. ‘Keep talking like that, copper,’ she said, ‘and you might get lucky.’

  * * *

  She dreamed of the strange man again, the one she had seen in her garden. This time, he was inside the cottage, moving slowly from room to room, searching as though for something lost. And it seemed to Kitty that the furnishings had changed in her little house and that a Turkey carpet covered the floor that had once been bare boards scattered with woven rugs.

  In her dream she followed this stranger, walking a pace or two behind him up the stairs and into her own room.

  She could not see his face, only his back. She could see that his hair was short, cut neat against his neck and curling a little about his ears. He was big, this man. Big about the chest and waist and tall. He filled the doorways and felt it needful to dip his head as he passed beneath the lintel.

  Her own room, of all the cottage, was the least changed, the walls still white and the boards still bare but for a bright strip of carpet laid beside the bed. A washstand had been placed against the wall opposite the window and a mirror above, but neither jug for water nor basin for washing stood upon the marble, just an assortment of men’s things. A comb for his hair and keys and coins and other things she did not know. And she stood quite still, just inside the door, and watched this man as he placed his hands upon the marble stand and bent his head to peer into the glass.

  How long before you could look into the mirror and see yourself and not just that mass of scars? Sarah Gordon had asked him.

  Ray looked now, defiantly. Stared straight into his own eyes reflected in the mirror and asked himself the question Sarah made him ask.

  ‘I see myself,’ he said. ‘I can bloody well see myself.’

  And he touched his scars, feeling the lineage and extent of every one, still gazing with a fixedness at his own grey-blue, bloodshot eyes.

  And then, Ray Flowers cried, standing there with his hands gripping the washstand and his gaze still fastened on the glass and he let the anger and the pain rip through his body in harsh, wretched sobs that made his six-foot frame tremble and his eyes blur until he could no longer hold his own gaze.

  * * *

  It looked so easy in films. You just squeezed the trigger and there was a big bang. That was it.

  He’d always known it wasn’t really like that. Basic training, even just the target range, had taught him it was never just like that. Sometimes he’d imagined it. Shooting someone. But he’d always thought that if it happened there’d have been some purpose in it. That he wo
uld have saved a life, maybe, and not just taken one.

  He’d almost pulled out and in the end it had been fear of not doing it. Fear for his wife and kids and for himself that made him squeeze the trigger and fire off the first shot. And then he couldn’t stop. Kept on and on until the clip was emptied and someone took the gun away.

  They gave him whisky. A bloody great tumbler full of the stuff that burned his throat as he drank it down. It didn’t even touch him. He was still stone-cold sober and the man he’d shot was still stone-cold dead.

  Chapter Fourteen

  John Rivers phoned on the Friday morning and invited Ray to lunch after church on the Sunday.

  ‘I don’t expect you to come to the service,’ he said. ‘Not unless you want to, of course.’

  ‘Oh.’ It seemed graceless to go to lunch and not to see his host in church. ‘Of course. Look, I haven’t been to a church service in years, so you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t know the form. But of course I’ll come to that too.’

  Not well put, Ray told himself. He could hear John Rivers chuckling at the other end.

  ‘I don’t mean to impose, John, but could I bring someone with me? Um, she’s a friend.’

  ‘Of course. That would be nice. I hope she likes kids.’

  Ray had no idea. He tried, unsuccessfully, to visualize Sarah playing with children. They agreed a time and John rang off, on his way to a meeting. Ray replaced the receiver thoughtfully, wondering what Sarah would say to dinner with the vicar.

  He told Sarah as soon as he got to the records office. She was less than impressed at Ray’s invitation.

  ‘I can’t say I’m that keen on vicars.’

  ‘Neither am I, but this one’s not your usual kind.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Seriously though, I’d love to come.’

  Ray took a deep breath. He’d done a lot of thinking overnight and come to an important decision.

  ‘A friend of mine. He’s just about to leave the force and is trying to set up his own security firm. He wants me to join him and I’ve decided to tell him yes. Someone’s made an offer on my house and if the sale goes through I’ll have the capital.’

  ‘Is this a sudden decision?’ Sarah asked. ‘Or has it been fermenting for a while?’

  ‘For a while I suppose, but I made the final decision on the way over here.’

  ‘It sounds like a good idea. You should be useful, not just content to sit around.’

  Someone called her from across the office and Sarah left him. He delved once more into Matthew Jordan’s diaries. An entry for the August of that year intrigued him. It spoke of a letter received from the mysterious Master Eton who, Ray learned, went by the name of James, concerning events at the beginning of that month.

  It saddens me that the new incumbent thinks so little of our customs that the Lammas doll should be so slightly cast aside. Superstition it might well be but to the local people it is a great matter. I will pray for him that the harvest still be good. A poor harvest will further reduce the people’s faith, however misguided such a reaction might be. I have written to James Eton and suggested that I intercede with Master Randall, but I would guess mine is the last voice he would listen to.

  It troubles me that Katherine has become involved in this quarrel. James Eton promised me that he would watch over her now that I am gone, but she is a headstrong woman and will be right as much as Master Randall will be right.

  Ray made a note to ask what Lammas was. He figured it was vaguely religious. And what was a Lammas doll?

  Whatever it was, it looked to Ray that this must be where the trouble began for Kitty. Matthew Jordan gone for less than a couple of months and the conflict already there.

  Sarah dumped a slim booklet on the desk in front of him.

  ‘You’ll find this relevant,’ she said. ‘It’s something published by a local history group. 1616, 18 July, nine women were hanged for witchcraft on the evidence of a little boy. He claimed they tormented him with their familiar spirits, which caused him to have fits.’

  Ray read the passage she had pointed to. It was taken from a contemporary letter written by one Robert Heyrick of Leicester to his brother William.

  We have been greatly busied these four or five days past, being assize time, and a busy assize, especially about a sort of woman, witches, that nine of them shall be executed in the forenoon for bewitching a young gentleman of the age of twelve or thirteen years old, being the son of one, Mr Smith, of Husbands Bosworth.

  He looked up sharply at Sarah. ‘Nine of them,’ he said.

  Sarah nodded. ‘Read on.’

  Sir Henry Hastings had done what he could to hold him in a fit: but he, and another as strong as he, could not hold him. If he might have his arm at liberty, he would strike himself such blows on his breast, being in his shirt that you might hear the sound of it the length of the whole chamber — sometimes fifty blows, sometimes a hundred, yea, sometimes two or three hundred blows, that the least of them was able to strike down a strong man; and yet all he did to himself did him no harm.

  ‘And these women were actually tried for this?’ Ray questioned. ‘What other evidence did they have against them?’

  ‘None as far as we know. In fact, later in the year James the First visited Leicester. He was fascinated by witchcraft and a true believer if ever there was one. He interviewed the boy and practically got him to confess that he made it all up.’

  ‘So the women died for nothing. Some kid’s fantasy.’

  ‘It wasn’t that uncommon, Ray. Millions died, all over Europe. In fact, in parts of Europe, denouncing your neighbours as witches was a profitable business. If they were found guilty, and most were, you and the Church got to split their property between you.’

  Ray was silent for a moment. ‘These women,’ he said, ‘would they have tortured them?’

  Sarah frowned. ‘Officially torture wasn’t used in Britain, but it’s all a question of definition. We didn’t go to the lengths the Inquisition went to, but certain things were allowed. You could swim a witch. Tie her hand and foot and chuck her in the nearest pond. Mostly, if she sank then she was innocent, but not everywhere. In some places it was said that the water was God’s creation and would bear the innocent on its surface. I suppose they figure that since Christ walked on water . . .’

  ‘A truly innocent woman would do the same. Sarah, what about the ones that sank, did they leave them to drown?’

  ‘Some must have drowned. We don’t have figures. There are records of others dying of shock and pneumonia, but again we just don’t have the numbers. As for actual torture, well, sometimes what we’d call torture was allowed. Burning with irons, that sort of thing.’

  ‘And presumably, Kitty would have known that.’

  ‘Ray, most people believed in the power of witches in those days and what was done with them was widely publicized. She would have known.’

  ‘She would have been terrified of that,’ he said.

  Sarah snorted rudely at him. ‘Who wouldn’t be? Look, I’ve only ever burned myself on the oven door, but I know that it hurts. Faced with that, I’d have thought she’d have been half out of her mind before they’d even started.’

  * * *

  ‘You seem preoccupied this morning.’

  ‘Master Eton. A pleasant day to you.’

  He swung down from the back of his horse and walked beside her towards the cottage.

  ‘Something troubles you, Mistress Hallam. Your thoughts were so far away you did not even hear me approach.’

  Kitty laughed. ‘I’m sorry, I meant no insult.’

  ‘I know that. I only meant . . . Mistress Hallam, Kitty, I have known you since you moved to Matthew’s house, and now he’s gone, well, I promised him that I would watch over you. If you have troubles, Kitty, I hope that you should be able to bring them to me.’

  ‘Did I look so worried? No, really, my thoughts were elsewhere, but truly, nothing was wrong.’

  ‘What then?’
r />   She hesitated. ‘It will only amuse you and I would not be a jest in your eyes.’

  ‘You would never be that. I regard you as highly as my friend Matthew. I hoped you would be aware of that.’

  She had hurt his feelings. Kitty had no wish to do that.

  ‘Do you believe in spirits? In hauntings?’ she asked him.

  ‘In spirits? I’m not certain that I understand.’

  ‘No more do I.’ She sighed, then decided to tell. ‘The first night I moved to my new home I saw a man, standing in my garden.’

  ‘A villager.’

  ‘No, I know everyone here. This was a stranger. I went out to speak to him, I thought he looked for someone, but by the time I had unlatched my door the man was gone.’

  ‘Was it dark? Perhaps you mistook yourself.’

  ‘Not so dark, but I have seen him again. Twice more. A glimpse only, as if in the corner of my eye. But I have dreamed of him, Master Eton, and the dreams are so vivid they are like nothing I have ever known.’

  He was silent for a moment, thinking of what she had said. ‘Kitty, you are the most rational person I know and with the most sense of any woman I am like to meet but these are fancies I would expect to hear from Mim, or some other simple soul.’

  ‘I know it and you are right. I cannot explain myself and that troubles me.’

  Eton nodded thoughtfully. ‘There has been much change in your life,’ he said. ‘I think that perhaps the answer to this lies there, in an unsettlement of mind, more than one of spirit. Kitty,’ he said more seriously, ‘I am honoured that you trust me with this and I am glad that you do, but you should be careful. There are many who would be suspicious of such fantasies and read far more into them than there should be seen.’

  ‘I know this too,’ Kitty told him. ‘But you have been a good friend.’

  Eton nodded. ‘And hope always to be.’ He sighed. ‘I have just been speaking with Master Randall over the business of the tithes. Who collects them and what records should be kept.’

  ‘The records have always been kept well enough.’

  ‘So I thought, but he wants all things itemized to the last detail and accuses me of being lax in my collection of them.’