by Sarah Penner
He blew out a long breath. “I didn’t see it. I guess it serves me right.” Then, turning to face the officers: “Caroline had nothing to do with this. The whole thing was an accident.”
My knees went weak; they couldn’t arrest me now, surely. One of the officers raised his brow, and a look of boredom fell over his face, like his hot lead had just gone lukewarm.
“Are we done here,” James asked, “or do I need to sign a statement?” Frustration and fatigue were clear on his face.
The lead officer reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a small business card. He made a show of tapping the card against the table at the front of the room, then headed for the door. “If anything changes, Mr. Parcewell—or if you want to share something with us confidentially—call the number on that card.”
“Right,” James said, rolling his eyes.
Then, without so much as an apologetic glance in my direction, the officers left the room.
With the agony of the preceding hour now lifted, I lowered myself gratefully onto the edge of James’s bed. “Thanks,” I mumbled, “and good timing. If you’d waited much longer, I might have been calling from a jail cell.” I glanced at the monitors next to him, a blinking screen of scraggly lines and numbers I couldn’t decipher. But his heart rate looked steady, and no warning alarms flashed. I hesitated to admit it, but I set my pride aside and said it anyway. “I thought I might lose you. Like, really lose you.”
James’s mouth turned upward in a soft smile. “We’re not meant to be apart, Caroline.” He squeezed my hand, an expectant look on his face.
A long pause passed as both of us held our breaths, our eyes locked. It seemed the entirety of our future depended on my response—my agreement with his statement.
“I need some air,” I said at last, tearing my gaze away. “I’ll be back in a bit.” Then, gently dropping his hand from mine, I stepped away and out of the room.
* * *
After leaving James’s hospital room, I ventured down the hall to the empty waiting room and settled onto a sofa at the far corner of the room. A vase of fresh flowers sat on a table next to an oversize box of tissues. I’d be needing them; tears had begun to prick my eyes like needles.
I leaned back against a pillow and let out a small sob, pushing a tissue into my eyes to soak up not only the tears, but all the other things pouring out of me: relief at James’s wellness, coupled with the continued sense of betrayal about his infidelity; the unfairness of the officers’ questioning, and the knowledge that I didn’t tell them the full...truth.
The truth.
I wasn’t exactly blameless.
Was it really just last night that I’d dug my way into the depths of Back Alley? It felt like a lifetime ago. How did James manage to hide his infidelity for months? I’d kept my secret from James, Gaynor and two police officers for only a matter of hours, but it had proved almost physically impossible.
Why did we suffer to keep secrets? Merely to protect ourselves, or to protect others? The apothecary was long gone, dead for more than two hundred years. There was no reason for me to stand guard over her.
Like two guilty children in a playroom, there they stood, side by side: James’s secret, next to my own.
As tears continued to soak through the tissue, I realized my grief was richer and more nuanced than what lay on the surface. This was about more than the burden of the apothecary, more than James’s infidelity. Intermingled in the mess was another, subtler secret that James and I had hid from each other for years: we were happy, yet unfulfilled.
It was possible, I understood now, to be both at the same time. I was happy with the stability of working for my family, yet unfulfilled by my job and burdened by the things I hadn’t pursued. I was happy with our desire to someday have children, yet unfulfilled by my achievements apart from family life. How had I only just learned that happiness and fulfillment were entirely distinct things?
I felt a gentle squeeze on my shoulder. Startled, I lowered my soaked-through tissue and looked up. Gaynor. I’d almost forgotten that we’d left her alone in the small interrogation room. I composed myself enough to force a weak smile and take a few deep breaths.
She handed me a small brown paper bag. “You should eat something,” she whispered, taking a seat next to me. “At least a bite of the biscuit. They’re quite good.” I peeked inside the bag and found a neatly wrapped turkey sandwich, a small Caesar salad and a chocolate chip cookie the size of a dinner plate.
I nodded in appreciation, tears threatening once again. In a sea of strange faces, she had proved a true friend.
Not a crumb remained once I finished. I drank half a bottle of water and blew my nose with another tissue, steeling myself. This wasn’t how, or where, I imagined sharing everything with Gaynor, but it would have to do.
“I’m so sorry,” I began. “I didn’t want to drag you under with me. But when I was with the police and you called, I thought you might be the only person able to help me.”
She folded her hands in her lap. “Don’t apologize. I would have done the same thing.” She sucked in a breath, choosing her words carefully. “Where has your husband been the last few days? You haven’t mentioned him once.”
I looked down at the floor, concern about James’s health now replaced with shame over everything that I’d hid from Gaynor. “James and I have been married ten years. This trip to London was meant to be our anniversary trip, but last week, I learned he’d been unfaithful. So, I came alone.” I closed my eyes, raw with emotional fatigue. “I’ve been running from the reality of it, but James showed up yesterday unannounced.” At Gaynor’s look of surprise, I nodded. “And as you know, today, he unexpectedly fell ill.”
“It’s no wonder the police were suspicious.” She hesitated, then said, “Probably not the anniversary celebration you expected. If there’s anything I can do...” She trailed off, as lost for words as I was. The situation, after all, wasn’t remedied. James might have been on the mend, but we were not. I envisioned us together in Cincinnati again, trying to undo the tangled knot he’d brought into our lives, but the vision was murky and unsatisfying, like an ill-fitting resolution at the end of an otherwise decent movie.
Gaynor reached into her bag and pulled out my notebook. When I’d left the interrogation room with the police, I hadn’t even noticed that the notebook remained in the center of the table, right in front of Gaynor. “I didn’t look through it,” she said. “I thought I’d give you a chance to...explain.” Her face twisted as though she didn’t want to know the full truth—as though her ignorance would keep us both safe.
This was my last chance to escape unscathed; my last chance to salvage a remnant of our friendship. By falsifying a story about my own research, I could avoid admitting to the worst wrongdoing of all, which was that I’d breached a precious historical site. If I told her, who knew what she may do? She might chase after the two officers and report the offense; she might cash in on the incredible, newsworthy discovery; or she might reject me altogether and tell me to never contact her again.
But this wasn’t about what Gaynor would or would not do with the information. This was my burden, and if there was anything I’d learned in recent days, it was that secrets wreaked havoc on lives. I needed to let out the truth about my trespassing—which now seemed minor, relative to the murder charge I’d nearly faced—and I needed to let out the truth about the unfathomable discovery I’d made.
“There’s something I need to show you,” I said at last, checking to ensure the waiting room remained empty. I pulled out my cell phone and navigated to my photos of the lost apothecary’s register. Then, with Gaynor peeking eagerly over my shoulder, I began to unveil the truth.
* * *
When I returned to James’s bedside, it was midafternoon. Little had changed—only now, he slept soundly. When he woke, later, there were a few things I needed to tell him.
Thank God, I finally had my answer: I was not pregnant. I was very much not pregnant.
The bathroom was well-stocked with pads and tampons, the latter of which I eagerly tore open. When I was done, after washing my hands at the sink, I peered up at myself in the mirror. I pressed my fingers to the glass, touching my reflection, and smiled. No matter what would come of my marriage, there was no baby to complicate things. No innocent child to stand by helplessly as James and I redefined ourselves, both as individuals and as a couple.
I returned to my seat next to James and leaned my head back against the wall, considering whether I might be able to catch a short nap in such an uncomfortable position. In the moment of warm, satiated respite, a memory slipped toward me: this morning, in the coffee shop, with Gaynor. She’d given me the two articles about the apothecary, but I hadn’t yet read the second one.
I frowned, reaching into my crossbody bag and pulling the articles out. Why on earth didn’t I show these to the officers earlier, when they threw doubt on my research claims? In truth, I’d forgotten about the articles entirely, given the more immediate concerns at hand.
I unfolded the two pages; the earlier article, dated February 10, 1791, was on top. It was the article about Lord Clarence’s death and the wax impression of the bear logo. Since I’d already read it, I moved it to the back, and my eyes settled on the second article, dated February 12, 1791.
I gasped as I read the headline. This article, I understood now, explained what Gaynor meant at the coffee shop, when she referred to Lord Clarence’s death as the beginning of the end for the apothecary.
The headline read “Apothecary Killer Jumps from Bridge, Suicide.”
The article began to tremble in my hands, like I’d just read the death announcement of someone I knew all too well.
31
Nella
February 11, 1791
Eliza and I stood together on the bridge, the constable no more than three strides behind us. Death was close—so close that I could feel the chill of its outstretched arms.
The seconds preceding my death were not as I expected. Within me, there arose no memories of my mother, my lost child or even Frederick. There was only one memory, a single, young one, hardly formed: little Eliza and the first time she appeared at my doorstep in her threadbare cloak, her poor excuse of a hat, yet her cheeks so young and dewy, like a newborn. In the truest sense of the word, she was a disguise. The perfect murderer. For many a servant had murdered her master in the city of London, but who would believe a twelve-year-old served a poison-laced egg at the breakfast table?
No one would believe it. Not even me.
And so it was that I fell into disbelief again. For, as we stood on the bridge together and I prepared to jump, just as the word run had tumbled off my tongue, the girl lifted her thin legs over the railing of Blackfriars Bridge. She glanced back at me with a gentle gaze, the edges of her skirt whipping in the breeze that pushed up against her from the River Thames.
Was this a trick? Or were my eyes deceiving me, perhaps under attack by the demon inside me, ravaging me of this valuable sense in my final moments? I heaved my weight forward to grab her, but she slid away from me along the railing, my efforts no match for her nimble movements. This left me furious, as her little game had taken precious seconds from me. Somehow, I must find the strength to lift my own bones over the metal railing before the officer seized me.
One hand on the railing, Eliza’s other hand clutched the tiny blue vial that she had just offered me. She lifted it to her lips, sucked the liquid from it like a starving infant and tossed it into the water below.
“It will save me,” she whispered. Then her fingers, one by one, slid from the railing like ribbons.
* * *
Everything placed unto the body removes something from it, calls it forth or represses it.
My mother taught me this simple lesson, the power of earth-borne remedies, when I was a child. They were the words of the great philosopher Aulus, of whom little was known. Some, in fact, doubted his very existence, much less the veracity of this claim.
His words flooded over me as I watched Eliza’s body fall. I had never before experienced the strangeness of this vantage point, to watch someone fall directly below me. Her hair pulled upward as though I had an invisible hold on it. Her arms crossed over her chest as though she meant to protect something inside. She looked directly ahead, her gaze on the river outstretched before her.
I clung to the promise of Aulus’s words. I knew that, placed unto the body, oils and tinctures and draughts could remove—indeed, unweave and destroy—the creation of one’s womb. They could remove the thing one most desired.
I knew, too, that they could call forth pain and hatred and revenge. They could call forth evil within oneself, the rotting of bones, the splitting of joints.
Yet placed unto the body, these things could repress...what? Could they repress death?
By the time my fearful, racing heart understood what had happened, Eliza had disappeared into the water, the death I had dreamed of as my own. But animal instinct begged me away to the more urgent crisis before me: the constable mere inches away, his arms reaching, as though he, too, wanted to grab hold of the falling girl—for by jumping from the bridge, she had implicated herself, and the constable must have surely believed that only she could solve the mystery of who slipped the poison into the liqueur that killed Lord Clarence.
All around us, movement: a distraught-looking woman carrying a basket of oysters; a man herding a small flock of sheep south; several young children scattered about like rats. They all closed in, dressed in dark, morbidly curious.
The constable turned his gaze on me. “Were you in it together?” He motioned to the water.
I could not respond, so shattered was my still-beating heart. Below me the river toiled, as though angry with its newly claimed victim. It should not have been her. It should have been me. My desire to die was what brought us to the peak of this bridge, anyhow.
The constable spat at my feet. “Bloody mute, are we?”
I leaned onto the railing, my knees no longer serving me, and gripped the iron.
The second officer, brawnier than the first, came up behind him, his cheeks red and his chest heaving. “She jumped?” He peered around in disbelief before finally turning to appraise me. “This can’t be the second one, Putnam,” he shouted. “She can hardly stand. The two we saw running, they were dressed like anyone else.” He looked over the crowd, presumably searching for another cloaked figure with more vigor in her face than me.
“Damn you, Craw, it is, though!” Putnam yelled back, like a fisherman about to lose a valuable catch. “She can stand fine, she’s only shocked at the loss of her friend.”
I was, indeed. And I felt as though he meant to dig the fishhook as far into my flesh as it would go.
Craw stepped closer and leaned into his partner, lowering his voice. “You sure she’s not just one of the crowd, then?” He motioned around him. The mob of bodies, all dressed in similar dark coats as my own, had grown around us. By mere appearances, I blended in with them. “You’re sure enough to let her swing? The poisoner’s dead, sir.” He glanced over the edge of the bridge. “Buried in muck by now.”
A flash of doubt crossed Putnam’s face, and Craw seized it like a dropped coin. “We chased the rat out of her hole and we both saw her jump. It ends here. This is enough to satisfy the papers.”
“And the dead Lord Clarence?” Putnam screamed, his face red. He turned on me. “Do you know anything about him? Who bought the poison that killed
him?”
I shook my head and heaved out the words like vomit. “I don’t know who that is, or of any poison that killed him.”
A sudden commotion silenced the men as another officer ran up the bridge. I recognized him as the third constable from the alley. “There’s nothing there, sirs,” he said.
“What the hell do you mean?” Putnam asked.
“I broke through the door where the women came out. Not a thing inside. A dry storage bin full of rotted grain.”
Amid the distress of the moment, I felt a singular sense of pride. The register, and the countless names within, were safe. All of those women, safe.
Putnam jerked his hand at me. “Does this woman look familiar? Was she one of the two we saw?”
The third constable hesitated. “Hard to tell, sir. We were quite the distance.”
Putnam nodded as though he, too, hated to finally admit to this. Craw gave him a stiff pat on the back. “Your case against this woman is losing its legs, good sir.”
Putnam spat at my feet. “Get out of my face, wench,” he said. The three men gave a final glance over the railing, nodded at one another, and headed back down the bridge.
After they had gone, I peered over the edge, my eyes searching desperately for the swirling fabric of a soaked gown or the creamy paleness of skin. But I saw nothing. Only the muddy, unsettled churn of the river.
She needn’t have done it. Her little heart must have thought that by bringing the devastation upon us with her mistake, she must be the one to take the fall. Or perhaps it was something more, like her fear of spirits. Perhaps she feared my spirit, haunting her after my death, cursing her for bringing this upon us. Oh, how I wished I’d been gentler with her about the ghost of Mr. Amwell! How I wished I had softened my tone, gained her trust, convinced her of what was real and what was not. I wanted more than anything to reverse time and pull her back upward to me. I stumbled backward a step, my knees weakened under the suffocating sense of regret.