by Sarah Penner
Regret, but also discontent.
I meant to be the one down there. I meant to be the one to die. Could I live another day bearing this new agony, too?
The crowds had mostly dispersed; they no longer pushed inward, curious. And if I forced aside the memory of Eliza’s fall, I could almost convince myself that nothing had changed. It was just me, alone with the end I had always imagined.
I squeezed my eyes shut and thought of all that I had lost, and then I stepped toward the railing and leaned over the hungry black waves.
32
Caroline
Present day, Wednesday
James lay still next to me, his breaths slow and even, while I sat in the chair by the head of his hospital bed. The article rested in my lap. After reading it a moment ago, I could only lean forward and put my head in my hands. Though I didn’t know her name—I knew the woman only as the apothecary—her self-chosen death tugged at me, uncomfortable in the way of a slow-building headache.
Of course, she lived two hundred years ago; I’d known from the first moment I learned of her that she was no longer alive. The shock was how she died.
Maybe it was that I’d been to the River Thames, where the woman jumped, and I could picture the whole event in my mind. Or maybe it was that I’d been inside the apothecary’s hidden shop, the discreet and shadowy place where she lived and breathed and mixed her potions, however menacing they were, and so I felt a sense of solitary connection to her.
With my eyes closed, I imagined the events set out in the second article: the family and friends of previous victims—those who died before Lord Clarence—coming forward after seeing the first article, bringing with them their own vials and jars, all of them bearing the same logo of the little bear.
The police understanding, at once, that they were hunting a serial killer.
The mapmakers enlisted late in the night; every instance of B ley in the city turned over, inspected, considered.
The three officers descending on Bear Alley on the eleventh of February, their arrival so abrupt that a woman began to run and did not stop until she was standing at the top of Blackfriars Bridge.
The article mentioned Back Alley, too, albeit briefly. After the woman began to run, the third and most junior officer remained in the area to inspect the door from which he thought the woman had come. It was the door at 3 Back Alley. But upon entering the room, he found only an old storage cellar: a wooden bin of rotted grain and empty shelves at the far end of the room, but little else.
This place, I knew, was the very same in which I’d stood last night—the room with the crumbling shelves at the back. It served as the apothecary’s cover, her facade, akin to the mask one might hold over their face at a masquerade. Meanwhile, behind the room lay the truth: the shop of poisons. And though the two-hundred-year-old article assured the public that police would continue to dig until they uncovered her name and place of work, the untouched space I found last night told me that they never did. The apothecary’s facade had been resolute.
But there was something odd. Although the article seized a fair amount of space on the page, the author glossed over the most significant part of the whole event: the woman who jumped. Her description and features were not discussed, not even the color of her hair; it only said she wore dark, heavy clothing. The article did not reveal whether any words were exchanged with the woman and noted the whole affair had been rather disorderly. A number of spectators had descended upon the immediate vicinity, the confusion and chaos such that the officers briefly lost sight of the woman before she stepped over the railing of the bridge.
According to the article, there was no doubt the woman was an abettor in the death of Lord Clarence, and officers were certain the string of murders associated with the woman they’d dubbed the apothecary killer had come to an end. The River Thames was hostile that day, swift and frigid, littered with ice. After the woman jumped, police monitored the area for a long while. But she did not surface. She did not reappear.
Her identity, according to the article, remained unknown.
* * *
As twilight fell over London and nightfall neared, James began to stir. He turned over in the hospital bed, facing me, then slowly opened his eyes. “Hi,” he whispered, a smile pulling at his lips.
Sobbing in the waiting room had been more cathartic than I realized, and after fearing this morning that I might lose James, something within me had softened. I was still desperately angry with him. But in this moment, at least I could bear to be close to him. I reached for his hand and took it in my own, wondering if this might be the last time we would hold hands in a very long time—or perhaps forever.
“Hi,” I whispered back.
I put a few pillows behind James’s back so he could more comfortably sit up, then handed him the menu for the hospital’s cafeteria. I insisted it was no problem to go out and order him real food, but the hospital’s menu wasn’t half bad.
After he placed his order, I prayed he wouldn’t ask more questions about the police, like why they thought I poisoned him. If James asked what prompted the interrogation, he’d want to see the notebook himself. But for now, I meant to keep it between Gaynor and myself.
After I’d shared the photos with Gaynor, she agreed not to divulge what I’d told her. She realized my life was chaotic enough given the situation with James, and since she had not been directly involved in the discovery of the apothecary shop, she didn’t feel it her place to dictate my next steps. That said, she did ask me to think very carefully about what I would do with this information, given the precious historical nature of what I’d found. I could hardly blame her; she worked at the British Library, after all.
Now, the reality was that only two of us knew the full truth; only Gaynor and I knew about the workplace of the murderous apothecary who lived two hundred years ago, and the unbelievable source of information she left buried deep within the bowels of an old cellar. Once this present crisis was behind me, I would have to make a few difficult decisions about what to reveal, and how, and to whom—and how this played into my own, recently resurfaced passion for history.
To my relief, James didn’t seem interested in reliving what had happened a few hours ago. “I’m ready to get back,” he said, taking a sip of water while I perched on the side of his bed.
I raised my eyebrows. “You just got here last night. The flight home isn’t for another eight days.”
“Trip insurance,” he explained. “A hospital stay is more than enough reason to file a claim on the cost to get home. As soon as I’m out of here, I’ll rebook my flight.” He toyed with the edge of the bedsheet, then looked at me. “Should I book you a seat, too?”
I blew out a sigh. “No,” I said gently. “I’ll take the original flight home.”
Disappointment flashed in his eyes, but he quickly recovered. “Fair enough. You need space, I get that. I shouldn’t have come out here at all. I realize that now.” A few moments later, a member of the hospital staff appeared with a tray and set James’s dinner in front of him. “It’s only eight days, at least,” James added, digging ravenously into his meal.
My breath quickened. Here we go, I thought. Sitting cross-legged at the end of his bed, a corner of his bedsheet over my lap, it almost felt like we were back in Ohio, back into our normal routine. But we would never know our old “normal” again.
“I’m quitting my job at the farm,” I said.
James paused, a bite of potato suspended in front of his mouth. He set the fork down. “Caroline, a lot’s going on. Are you sure you don’t want to—”
I rose from the edge of the hospital bed, standing tall. I could not fall victim to this talk of reason, not again.
“Let me finish,” I said softly. I looked outside, my gaze scanning the London skyline. A panorama of new against old: trendy shopfront windows reflected the pearl-gray dome of St. Paul’s Cath
edral, and red tour buses sputtered past long-standing landmarks. If there was anything that the last few days had taught me, it was the importance of shining new light on old truths hidden in dark places. This trip to London—and finding the light blue vial, the apothecary—had exposed them all.
I turned away from the window to face James. “I need to choose me. I need to prioritize me.” I paused, wringing my hands together. “Not your career, not our baby, not stability and not what everyone else wants of me.”
James stiffened. “I’m not following.”
I glanced at my bag, inside of which were the two articles about the apothecary. “At some point along the line, I lost a part of who I am. Ten years ago, I envisioned something much different for myself, and I’m afraid I’ve abandoned that vision altogether.”
“But people change, Caroline. You’ve grown up in the last ten years. You’ve prioritized the right things. It’s okay to change, and you—”
“It’s okay to change,” I interrupted, “but it’s not okay to hide, to bury parts of ourselves.” I didn’t feel the need to remind him that he’d hidden a few things about himself, too, but I refused to address the other woman at this exact moment. This conversation was about my dreams, not James’s mistakes.
“Okay, so you want to quit your job and wait for a baby.” James took a shaky breath. “So, what do you plan on doing?” I sensed he meant not only with my job, but also with our marriage. And though James’s tone wasn’t condescending, it was laced with skepticism—just like ten years ago, when he first asked me how I planned to land a job with my history degree.
I now stood at a crossroads, and I didn’t dare look back at the road behind me—the road littered with monotony, complacency and other people’s expectations.
“I’m going to stop hiding from the truth, which is that my life isn’t what I want it to be. And to do that—” I hesitated, knowing once I said my next words, I could never take them back. “To do that, I need to be alone. And I don’t mean for eight more days in London. I mean alone, for the foreseeable future. I intend to file for a separation.”
James’s face crumpled as he slowly pushed away his dinner tray.
I sat next to him again and placed my hand on the white cotton sheet, warm from his body beneath. “Our marriage has disguised too much,” I whispered. “You clearly have a lot to figure out, and so do I. We can’t do these things together. We’d end up on the same trail, making the same mistakes that got us here in the first place.”
Covering his face with his hands, James began to shake his head back and forth. “I can’t believe it,” he said through his fingers, a clear IV tube still dangling from the back of his hand.
I motioned around the dim, sterile room. “Hospital or not, I haven’t forgotten that you had an affair, James.”
With his face still buried in his hands, I could hardly make out his reply. “On my deathbed,” he mumbled, and a moment later, “no matter what I do—” He broke off, the rest of his sentence unintelligible.
I frowned. “What do you mean, ‘no matter what you do’?”
He finally pulled his face from his hands and gazed out the window. “Nothing. I just need...time. This is a lot to take in.” But he seemed hesitant to look at me, and a quiet, interior voice told me to dig further. I sensed he wasn’t being entirely forthcoming, like he’d done something that hadn’t resulted in the intended outcome.
I thought back to the vial of eucalyptus oil, the toxic warning label on the outside. Like a rush of cold air in the room, a question presented itself. And as unfair as the accusation might be if I was wrong, I forced myself to spit the words out.
“James, did you ingest the oil on purpose?”
The idea of it had never entered my mind, but now it left me aghast. Was it possible I’d undergone police interrogation and the fear of my husband’s imminent death, all because James had knowingly swallowed the toxin?
He turned his head in my direction, his gaze clouded with guilt and disappointment. I’d seen this look before not long ago; it was the same look on his face when I’d found his cell phone with the incriminating text messages. “You don’t know what you’re throwing away,” he said. “This is fixable, all of it, but not if you’ve pushed me away. Let me back in, Caroline.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
He threw his hands up, startling me. “What does it matter at this point? Everything I do pisses you off. What’s one more screwup? Add it to the list.” Using a finger, he made a checkmark motion. An admission, etched right beneath his infidelity and his uninvited arrival in London.
“How dare you,” I whispered, my tone belying the fury coursing through me. Then I asked the same question I’d been asking for days: “Why?”
But I already knew the answer. This was yet another ploy, another tactic. James was a calculated, risk-averse person. If he’d swallowed the oil despite knowing its dangerous effects, he must have thought it a last-ditch effort to win my favor. Why else would an unfaithful husband put himself in harm’s way? Perhaps he thought my concern for his physical well-being would trump my heartbreak; that my pity for him would expedite my forgiveness.
It had almost worked, but not quite. Because now, having distanced myself physically and emotionally from this man, I was able to see through him to his real nature, and it reeked of deceit and unfairness.
“You wanted me to pity you,” I said quietly, standing again.
“The last thing I want is your pity,” he said, his voice cold. “I just want you to see straight, to understand that you’ll regret this someday.”
“No, I won’t.” My hands shook as I spoke, but I went on without mincing words. “You’ve managed to twist so much blame onto me. Blame about your unhappiness, your mistress, now this ‘illness.’” He grew pale as my voice rose. “A few days ago, I thought nothing good would come of this anniversary trip. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. I know, now more than ever, that I’m not the cause of your errant ways, your unhappiness. I’ve learned more about our marriage while apart from you than I ever did when we lived under the same roof.”
A light tap at the door severed the conversation. It was just as well, for I feared I might collapse to the sticky, tiled floor if I went on much longer.
A young nurse stepped into the room and smiled at us obliviously. “We’re about ready to move you to your new room,” she told James. “Almost ready to go?”
James nodded stiffly; he suddenly looked extraordinarily tired. And as my adrenaline began to recede, I felt the same. Not unlike the night I arrived, I found myself longing for my pj’s, take-out food, and my low-lit, empty hotel room.
While the nurse unhooked James from the monitors, he and I said an awkward goodbye. The nurse confirmed he was queued up for discharge the next day, and I promised to return first thing in the morning. Then, having mentioned nothing of the apothecary or her shop to James, I made my way out, closing the heavy door behind me.
* * *
Back in my hotel room, nestled in the middle of the bed with a take-out carton of chicken pad thai in my lap, I could have cried tears of relief. There were no people and no police and no beeping hospital equipment...and no James. I didn’t even turn on the TV. Between mouthfuls of noodles, I just closed my eyes, leaned back my head and savored the silence.
The carbs energized me somewhat, but it wasn’t even eight o’clock. After I finished my meal, I lifted my bag from the floor and grabbed my phone, then pulled out my notebook and the two articles from Gaynor. I spread them out around me, flipping on the second bedside lamp for better light to reread the articles about the apothecary and look more closely at the pictures on my phone.
I returned to the first few images in the set, the photos of the shop interior. They were terribly grainy and overexposed, and even after playing with the exposure and brightness, I was unable to see anything beyo
nd the foreground. It seemed the camera’s flash brought into focus only the flecks of dust floating about in the room; I supposed that was the downside of using a cell phone to capture images of a once-in-a-lifetime event. I could have kicked myself. Why hadn’t I brought a proper flashlight?
I flicked over to the next few photos, those of the apothecary’s book—her register. There were eight photos of the register, pictures I hastily took at random: a couple from the front, a few toward the middle, and the rest from the back of the book. These were the pictures that got me into trouble; they were clear enough that I was able to jot down notes, and those same notes nearly had me thrown in jail.
The final photo in the set was a picture of the inside cover of another book that was on the shelf. I could only make out one word: pharmacopoeia. I plugged this into my browser’s search bar, and the results told me this second book was a directory of medicinal drugs. So, a reference guide then. Interesting, but not as much as the apothecary’s handwritten register.
I returned to the last image of the apothecary’s register. As I zoomed into the photo, I noticed the familiar format of the entries, which included the date and to whom the remedy was dispensed. I read the entries closely, and it dawned on me that since this was the final page of the register, these entries would have been made in the days or weeks immediately preceding the apothecary’s death.
At once, my eyes fell on the name Lord Clarence. I gasped aloud, reading the entirety of the entry:
Miss Berkwell. Mistress to, cousin of, the Lord Clarence. Cantharides. 9 February 1791. On account of his wife, the Lady Clarence.
I lunged forward on the bed, reaching for the first article that Gaynor printed for me—the one dated February 10, 1791. My heart racing, I cross-checked the names and dates between the register entry and the article related to the same incident, Lord Clarence’s death. And though I’d believed all along that the shop belonged to the murderous apothecary, this was proof. This picture of the register from inside the shop was proof that she had dispensed the poison that killed him.