Death at Apothecaries' Hall (25 page)

‘I should hope not, Sir. I employ a gardener.'

‘None the less, I'm going to look. This girl has been given too much white poppy syrup. It is possible she could die. From a thistle, I can make a concoction that is good for spasm or convulsions.'

They stepped into the garden, scouring the beds and borders.

‘We're in luck,' said Garnett, and pointed to where a Scotch thistle had had the temerity to avoid discovery and was growing beside a hedge. John wound his handkerchief round his hand and produced his herb knife, something he always carried unless he was going out for the evening. Grabbing the thistle hard, he pulled so strongly that he almost fell over when the weed came up out of the ground. Cutting off the all-important roots and leaves, John hastened into the house.

Using the cook's pestle and mortar, he ground them into a pulp from which a greenish juice appeared. This the Apothecary added to watered down wine, poured the mixture into a beaker, then carried it to the room in which Clariana lay, dead to the world.

‘Has she been sick at all?' he asked Emilia.

‘Not yet. John, I'm finding it so difficult to get this down her.'

‘Give it to me.'

He took the salt water from her somewhat shaky hands and opening the unconscious girl's mouth, poured it in as best he could, even though she coughed and choked as he did so.

John smiled at the expression on Emilia's face. ‘Can you bear to stay? She'll start vomiting shortly. It won't be pleasant.'

‘If you can put up with it, so can I.'

‘Mine is not always a charming life,' the Apothecary said wryly, holding the bowl.

‘Whose is?' answered Emilia sensibly, and mopped Clariana's brow with a cool cloth.

Much as John had expected, his patient went into a spasm as soon as the contents of her stomach had gone. And it was then that he administered the stimulant made from the thistle.

‘Will she revive?' Emilia asked.

‘I don't know. The opium will have entered her system long ago. The emetic was probably no use at all. All we can do now is wait and see.'

An hour later they had their answer. An examination of Clariana's eyes showed that her pupils were returning to normal, and she fell into a peaceful sleep.

‘We'll leave her now. I'll come back in a while and see how she is,' John whispered.

With a discreet cloth draped over the bowl which he carried gingerly, the Apothecary followed Emilia downstairs, loving the back of her shapely neck where the golden hair was swept up in curls.

‘You're beautiful,' he said.

Emilia looked back over her shoulder and wrinkled her nose at him. ‘Careful with that,' she answered, and laughed.

They found Garnett and Samuel in the salon, making short work of a decanter of sherry. But this time there were no slurred words or maudlin sentiments coming from the host, instead Mr Smith radiated enjoyment, and looked round his younger guests with a genial expression.

‘I've been too long alone,' he announced to everyone in general. ‘I should have invited people here before this.'

Samuel looked wise. ‘Mourning ain't easy, Sir, but I do believe that the prolonged grief of it is only caused by guilt.'

‘What do you mean, my boy?'

‘Well, if you did your best for the dead person while they lived, I don't think sorrow drags on so long as it does for those who have a conscience regarding them.'

‘I have no guilt about Andrew. I attempted my utmost. It was others –'

The conversation was taking a dangerous turn and John stepped in. ‘I am sure that everyone tried their hardest, according to their abilities. No one in their right mind could let a loved one, friend or family, die.'

Why did those words ring so hollowly in his head? What was it that he should have realised by now? What lay just beyond his grasp that he should have seen?

‘What are you staring at?' asked Samuel.

John snapped back to attention. ‘Nothing. I was just trying to think of something.'

‘What?'

‘That's just it, I don't know.'

The Goldsmith laughed. ‘You'll have to bear with him. He's always like this when he's trying to solve a mystery.'

‘Well I think,' said Garnett, as if he were making a public pronouncement, ‘that Mr Rawlings is a very remarkable young man. He called here pretending to be something else entirely and had me completely fooled. It's not until you informed me of the fact just now, Mr Swann, that I realised he worked for the Public Office.'

‘I'm sorry about that,' John answered, ‘but one does not always get the best results by offering that particular piece of information.'

‘Quite understandably.'

‘I'm worried about the patient,' said Emilia. ‘I think perhaps I should sit with her. I cannot imagine anything worse than waking up in a strange bed in a strange room and not knowing how one got there.'

‘You're quite right,' said John. ‘I'll go with you.'

They kept a silent vigil hand in hand, until finally Clariana's lids fluttered and her eyes opened.

The Apothecary spoke at once, sitting on the bed beside her so that the sick girl could see him clearly. ‘Don't be frightened, Miss Gill. You have been rather ill. I'm afraid that the physick the doctor gave you to calm your nerves at the Assembly last evening, did not agree with you. But that has all gone now and you are well on the way to recovery.'

She tried to raise her head but fell back against the pillows. ‘Where am I?'

‘You're in a house near to the church of St-Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe. Do you remember getting that far?'

Clariana looked terrified. ‘Yes, no. It was like being in a dream.' She sat up and clutched John's coat. ‘Oh Mr Rawlings, tell me it was all a nightmare. A horrible, horrible nightmare.'

‘What was?'

‘Going home and seeing my father like that.'

‘Like what?'

‘Hanging from that hook.'

Emilia gave a muffled shriek.

‘Tell us what you saw,' John said soothingly.

Clariana went white as a ship's sail. ‘I can't remember everything. That young man, the one with the coach, ordered his postilions to carry me into my house. I think the medicine was working on me by that time for I could hardly walk. Then he left me alone. Said he had to get home and I would be better by myself. I got no further than the shop before I fainted. I woke some time later and managed to light a candle and when, when …'

‘Yes?'

‘When I looked up I glimpsed a pair of shoes above my head, swinging very slightly in the draft from the shop door.'

‘You're sure about this?'

‘No, because I could have been dreaming.'

‘Then tell me what you think you saw,' John demanded, barely able to control himself

Clariana gave him a truly ghastly look. ‘I thought I saw my father hanging from one of the hooks where the herbs are put to dry. He had a rope around his neck and, Mr Rawlings, he was quite, quite dead.'

The deep shadows of Pudding Lane were even darker in the twilight of that late November day when John Rawlings and Samuel Swann nervously came to a halt before the closed door of the apothecary's shop. Black shapes lurked at every corner and John, spinning round rapidly, swore that something had breathed upon the nape of his neck.

‘What was it?' asked Samuel, perspiring lightly despite the clammy chill of the fog that had started to seep up from the river.

‘I don't know,' John answered. And where normally he would have made a joke of his friend's patent fright, today he remained grimly silent.

They had journeyed into the City together in a coach provided for them by Garnett Smith, who had remained behind with the terrified Clariana and an equally panicky Emilia, only keeping control of her anxiety for fear of upsetting Miss Gill even further. ‘Go armed,' she had whispered to John as he left the house in Thames Street.

‘I've no weapon on me. I've been in church, remember.'

‘Then borrow one from Mr Smith.'

This plan had proved farcical, however, as Garnett, who clearly had very strange ideas about self protection, could produce little more than an antique fowling piece and a cudgel. In the end, the Apothecary had settled for the bat while Samuel, unnerved by Clariana's terrible story, had dashed home at speed to fetch a pistol. Then they had set forth to investigate what they hoped was merely a drug-induced hallucination.

There was no wind at all, the fog ensuring that the evening was calm and still, yet it seemed to the Apothecary that the door of Tobias's shop rattled as they stood looking at it, wondering quite what move they ought to make next.

‘There's somebody in there,' whispered Samuel hoarsely.

John shook his head. ‘More likely a draft blowing through.'

‘Do you think by any chance it's unlocked?'

‘It has to be if Clariana rushed out this way. She was hardly in a fit state to secure it.'

‘Yet she managed to pick up a hackney. You don't think there's anything odd about her story, do you?'

‘No. She was definitely given white poppy juice last night and she definitely showed all the signs of an overdose. What is far more odd is the attack on Francis Cruttenden.'

‘You mean that his assailant disappeared into a coach bearing Kensington's coat of arms?'

‘Exactly. Does our esteemed Liveryman have enemies in high places? And if so, why?'

Samuel shook his head, bewildered, and John, drawing breath, continued, ‘I suppose we'd better go in. Let it be hoped that everything is as it should be and we find Mr Gill alive and well in his apartment.'

‘But it's pitch dark up there,' the Goldsmith answered gloomily, and having pealed the bell to no avail, put his shoulder to the door and stumbled inside when it swung open without difficulty.

Prepared as best he could be, John struck a tinder and taking a candle from his pocket, lit it. The flickering flame illuminated little, casting even darker shadows than those in the street outside.

‘I don't care for this,' Samuel confided.

‘Neither do I.'

‘Where did she say she saw the body?'

‘Hanging on a hook normally used for herbs, which means the compounding room.'

‘Oh God!' said the Goldsmith, and swallowed noisily.

With the pit of his stomach contracting, John moved silently through the shop, wondering, even while he did so, why he was walking so quietly. For if Tobias was at home, better to call out cheerily and not startle the man.

‘Hallooh,' he tried, the sound dying on his lips as he made it.

‘Shush,' said Samuel from somewhere in the gloom.

‘But if she dreamed it all, then Mr Gill is upstairs somewhere and needs to know of our arrival.'

‘Then why is the place in darkness?'

The horrible truth of this could not be denied and John braced himself as he passed through the open door leading into the compounding room and went into the dimness beyond. He stood for a moment, his candle fluttering violently, trying to get his bearings. Behind him Samuel's breathing became magnified a hundred-fold, the only sound in the total stillness. And then some unseen object brushed against John's face.

To his shame he yelped like a dog and jumped backwards, clutching Samuel's arm as he did so.

‘What is it? What happened?'

‘Something touched my cheek.'

‘Shine the light, shine the light,' Samuel ordered, and his voice was a rasp.

With a shaking hand, the Apothecary raised the candle to arm's length, and they both stared upwards. Sad old feet in worn out shoes were up there, a long apothecary's gown flapping very slightly around two thin ankles. Tobias Gill had compounded his last physick. Somebody had done for him on the end of a rope and now he hung where once there had been a bunch of fragrant herbs.

‘Christ's mercy,' said John.

‘Amen to that.'

‘We must cut him down.'

‘But surely there's no chance?'

The Apothecary shook his head. ‘None whatsoever. He's been up there for hours. None the less, we must do the right thing.'

They hurried round the place, the confirmation of Clariana's story a relief in a sense, releasing the friends from their fear and tension and giving them a purpose, albeit a most grisly and horrid one. More candles were found and placed strategically round the room until at last there was enough light to see clearly what they were doing. Then both John and Samuel pulled chairs beneath Tobias's slight and sorrowful corpse and while the Apothecary hacked through the rope with a stout knife, discovered amongst the compounding equipment, Samuel caught the dead man. He swayed for a moment on the chair, then successfully clambered down with his burden and laid poor Mr Gill on the table.

‘We've done all we can here,' said John. ‘Now we must lock up and head straight for Bow Street.'

‘Where are the keys?'

‘There,' and the Apothecary indicated a large bunch hanging on a nail on the compounding room wall.

‘But who could have done this, John?'

‘He may have killed himself, of course.'

‘That, I don't think,' said Samuel, simultaneously earnest and excited.

‘Why?'

‘Because to do so he would have had to climb on a chair and there was none beneath his feet, either standing or kicked over. We had to drag the two chairs we used into position.'

The Apothecary stared at his friend in true amazement. ‘That was brilliantly observed. Please make the same point to Mr Fielding.'

‘Do you think it important?'

‘I think it very important indeed.'

At this hour, well past the time to dine, it was customary to find people out and about, visiting friends upon the town attending the play, the ridotto, the pleasure gardens, or simply sampling the million and one pleasures that the lawless capital offered. However, quieter-living folk could be discovered safely tucked into their abode, making music, playing cards or reading a book. And in the case of John Fielding, Principal Magistrate, it was frequently the latter, for much as he was a cultivated man, loving the theatre, music, and all the delights allied therewith, the very fact of his blindness precluded him from many of the events that he would so dearly have liked to attend. Fortunately in the choice of his wife, Elizabeth, he had found the right companion. She, too, quite preferred the simple life, sitting and reading to her brilliant husband, keeping him up with the day's events through the newspapers, or enjoying the sheer pleasure of sharing a book together.