The Apothecary

Chapter 14

Scotland Yard



When I woke, Benjamin was already gone. A note on the windowsill said he’d meet me at school. While I was eating breakfast, the postman brought my school uniform, wrapped in brown paper. I put it on and surveyed myself in the bathroom mirror in a stiff pleated skirt, a white button-down shirt, and a navy blue blazer. They all had tiny tags on them that said UTILITY.

“What does that mean?” I asked my father, showing him the tag.

“Must have something to do with rationing,” he said. “Government-issue clothes, no frills, no extra fabric.”

The skirt was too big, and my mother brought me a safety pin to make it tighter. “If they really wanted to save fabric,” she said, “they’d send the right size. And leave out all these pleats.”

“You can’t have a uniform skirt without pleats,” my father said.

My mother smiled at him. “Is that in the Magna Carta?”

“Sure,” he said. “No schoolgirl of the realm shall be caused to attend her place of instruction in the absence of—” He stopped, thinking.

“Of sufficient folds of lambswool about her lower limbs,” my mother said.

“By the law of the land,” he said.

My mother laughed, and I did too. Things felt normal with them again, and I was grateful. Then my mother caught my hand and grew serious. “Janie,” she said. “You’ll check in with Mrs Parrish every morning and afternoon? And be safe?”

“Of course!” I said. “I have sufficient folds of lambswool now. I’ll be fine.”

We went down to talk to Mrs Parrish, who agreed cheerily to the arrangement and gave me a hug before I left her apartment. I smelled something that at first I thought was pine needles—maybe some unfamiliar English cleaning product. But then she straightened uncertainly, and I realised that the smell was gin. It was eight o’clock in the morning. I didn’t want to worry my parents, who were waiting in the hall, so I said nothing and gently closed her door.

At school, I didn’t see Benjamin outside, so I walked in alone. No one stared at me in the halls, in my uniform. It was the perfect disguise, and I thought that if I could look like an ordinary schoolgirl, maybe I could be one.

In Mr Danby’s Latin class, I slid unnoticed into my chair. Sarah Pennington swanned in and took her seat in front of me. The boy next to me, I noticed, had his jacket sleeves rolled up, and he had inked an F on the little tag so it said fUTILITY.

Sergei Shiskin wasn’t at his desk, but I told myself he was probably just late. I tried not to think about the man with the scar slinking into the Shiskins’ kitchen and reaching for a knife. I realised we should have told them what had happened to the gardener, to warn them.

There were new quotations from Horace on the blackboard. A pimply boy with a squeaky, breaking voice recited a passage, and my mortification for him almost made me forget we were in danger. While he stammered, I studied the nape of Sarah Pennington’s neck beneath her braid. Her skin was smooth and creamy, I had to admit. And the fine blonde hair that escaped her braid curled silkily behind her small, round ears. But still it was just a neck—it didn’t seem very earth-shattering to me.

Finally the bell rang, and people started to file out. Sarah Pennington gave Mr Danby a thousand-watt smile as she passed his desk. “Thank you, Mr Danby,” she said.

He nodded vaguely. “You’re welcome, Miss Pennington.” Then he turned to me. “Miss Scott, I brought you these.”

He handed me paperback copies of The Portrait of a Lady and Daisy Miller, both by Henry James. The girls in white dresses on the covers seemed very far from anything that mattered, at the moment. But I appreciated the gesture.

“Thank you,” I said, and I felt myself blushing. Sarah Pennington shot me an unforgiving look as she left.

Mr Danby had the sort of eyes that can’t help looking kind. They had wounded depths in them. If he hadn’t been a war hero, he could have been a movie star. In Hollywood, he would have been both. He’d have been discovered at a lunch counter as soon as he got demobilised, and a studio would have engaged him to marry some starlet for the publicity. It seemed very English of him to be a plain old Latin teacher. I realised that we were alone.

“Are you finding London less painful yet?” he asked, erasing the blackboard.

Images of the dead gardener and the terrified apothecary flashed through my mind, but I pushed them down. “School’s okay,” I said.

“And everything else?”

“It’s . . . fine.”

“I don’t suppose I can do anything to help.”

It occurred to me that if I hadn’t told Benjamin about Sarah Pennington’s crush, he might agree that it was worth asking Mr Danby for help. And Sarah Pennington’s crush had nothing to do with anything. Mr Danby was kind and wise, like the gardener, but he was also worldly. Obviously he knew what it was to be in danger, if he’d been shot down over Germany. And he knew the system, in England, in a way my parents couldn’t. I took a deep breath.

“Well,” I said, “there’s this book.”

Mr Danby stood with the eraser, looking puzzled, then said, “Yes?”

“It’s a very rare book, and some people are after it.”

“Which people?”

“I’m not sure.”

“And to whom does it belong?”

“My friend’s father. But he gave it to my friend to protect.”

“And where is his father?”

“We think he might have been kidnapped.”

Mr Danby looked alarmed. “Kidnapped? You’ve spoken to Scotland Yard?”

“No.” I was in too deep here. “We—my friend isn’t sure the police would understand.”

“Miss Scott, that’s . . . you have to tell the police. Has he done something wrong?”

“No!” I said. “It seems like maybe someone was after the book.”

Mr Danby said, “What kind of book?”

“It’s written mostly in Latin. And some Greek. So I thought maybe you could help us understand it better. But my friend doesn’t want to show it to anyone.”

“I see.”

“But maybe I can convince him. If you’re willing.”

“If you like, of course,” he said. “But I really think you should go to the police. Goodness, Miss Scott, I thought you were only having difficulty with the labyrinthine St Beden’s social codes. This seems—well, rather worse.”



When I told Benjamin at lunch about our new ally, he was furious. “You did what?” he said.

“I didn’t tell him anything specific,” I said, flustered by his anger. “But I think he can help us.” We were alone at the empty table where I had watched him stare down the lunch lady.

“We aren’t supposed to tell anyone!”

“Your father never said that. He said you had to keep the Pharmacopoeia safe from people who want it. And we need help to do that. We’re in over our heads.”

Benjamin scowled at the food on his tray and said nothing. Then a familiar, loud, long bell rang.

“Bomb drill!” called the lunch lady. “Everyone under the tables!”

“Again?” I said, looking around. People started to push back their benches.

“It’s so stupid,” Benjamin said, his shoulders set in opposition to the noise.

“It is,” I said. “But I don’t think this is the time to make a scene and get kept after school. Or have them try to call your father.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“I’m getting under the table.”

“We’d be incinerated in an atomic bomb blast,” Benjamin said. “Instantly. We’d be ash by now.”

“I know,” I said. “Ash. Here I go.” I slid underneath.

Benjamin stayed in his seat, and I saw the lunch lady’s ankles in white cotton tights approach. “Benjamin?” she said. “Do I have to send you to the headmaster?”

I heard him sigh, and then he pushed back his bench and climbed under.

“Thank you, Mr Burrows,” she said, and her white-encased ankles moved on.

Benjamin crouched inches away from me under the table. “Happy?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “That was smart.”

When the drill ended, we climbed out again. Sarah Pennington was giggling about something with her friends. The other students climbed out from under their tables, laughing and talking.

Then I noticed a uniformed police officer and a man in a brown suit standing by the door, speaking to the lunch lady. She turned and pointed to us, and they crossed to our table.

“Benjamin Burrows and Jane Scott?” the man in the suit asked, standing behind me. He was tall, with his hat in his hand, and he had the wispy fair hair of a child or an old man. “I’m Detective Montclair, of the Metropolitan Police. This is Officer O’Nan. You’ll have to come with us, please.”

“Why?” Benjamin asked.

“Please,” the detective said.

“Are we under arrest?”

The detective glanced at Officer O’Nan, who was short and stocky, with bristly hair like a hedgehog. In that moment, Benjamin lunged towards the door.

“Run, Janie!” he said.

I scrambled up, taken by surprise, but the men were right behind me, and the detective grabbed my shoulders.

“Let go!” I cried.

Everyone in the lunchroom was staring at us now.

Benjamin reached the door at a run, but the lunch lady in her white uniform was standing in front of it with her arms crossed. The uniformed policeman tackled Benjamin, taking him sprawling.

Benjamin’s satchel, with the Pharmacopoeia in it, slid across the floor and stopped at Sergei Shiskin’s feet. I saw a look pass between Benjamin and Sergei, and Sergei quietly picked the bag up. He shouldered it as if it were his own, and I was impressed with how cool and collected he was.

Benjamin kicked and fought so that all the attention stayed on him, and the policemen didn’t seem to notice how he’d passed the satchel off. I tried to twist free, too, but the detective was strong, and they finally wrestled us both out the door, under the disapproving eye of the lunch lady. She looked as if she’d expected as much—as if resisting the bomb drill was bound to lead to police custody sooner or later.

A dark sedan was parked outside the building. “We haven’t done anything,” Benjamin protested as they dragged us to it.

“Then why are you struggling?” O’Nan asked.

“Because we haven’t done anything!”

They pushed us into the car. I looked out the window at the students who had spilled out of the school. Sarah Pennington watched with her friends, and Sergei stood quietly with the satchel. Officer O’Nan took the driver’s seat.

“Are you arresting us?” I asked as the car pulled away from the school.

“Not yet,” Detective Montclair said, turning from the passenger seat to smile at us. His wispy hair was askew from the struggle, and he had crooked teeth. “We just have some questions.”

“About what?”

“A man was stabbed to death last night at the Chelsea Physic Garden.”

“What?” Benjamin said. “We don’t know anything about that!”

I was in a panic. Someone must have seen us coming out of the garden. We needed to establish an alibi, but we couldn’t with the policemen listening.

We drove in silence through the London streets, away from St Beden’s and into neighbourhoods that seemed dirtier and more run-down, the bomb damage from the war more obvious and unrepaired. My mind was racing through possible explanations we could give for being at the garden. Our botany project for the science competition, maybe—except that the science competition didn’t really exist.

“Why are we going to the East End?” Benjamin asked.

“Because that’s where Turnbull Juvenile Court is,” Detective Montclair said.

“I thought we were just being questioned.”

“You are,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. Just ordinary procedure.”

“I want to call my parents,” I said, even though they were at a castle in the country.

“Naturally,” the detective said.

“You can’t question us without them present,” I improvised.

He smiled his crooked smile. “Oh, yes, we can, my dear,” he said. “This isn’t the ‘land of the free’, you know. You just sit tight.”