“Not just any body,” I muttered, mostly to myself.
I could barely make out the face when looking at the illustration, possibly due to the actual corpse not having an identifiable face to begin with. It was a silhouette of a woman wearing an elegant dress.
It might have just been black ink on paper, but I knew I specifically recognized that dress in baby blue.
My fingers crushed the paper between them as I shoved it in a bin while passing by, wiping my hands nervously on my skirt as if to rid them of the guilt that stained them.
My new subject has reared his ugly head again.
Phoebe and I parted ways at this point so that we could embark on our separate errands for the day. My first stop was the florist.
Caldwell’s Flora and Botanicals, the sign read.
I’ve known Mrs. Caldwell since I was a little girl. My fatheralways riddled her with strange requests. Her shop was one of the only ones that imported flowers and plants upon special request. Her husband was well-connected to the freight and import industry. This was a must for my father, who was constantly experimenting with odd flora for medicines, tinctures, and whatever else he was engrossed with at the time.
I eventually became reliant on her for anything I needed for my work until I left the city a year ago. She didn’t ask questions unless it was “How much?” or “How soon would you like it?” Over the years, she had grown on me, an extended family of sorts.
“Did my special order come in? The one I telephoned last week?” I asked, looking over the counter at the short, plump woman.
“Alina! Yes. It looks like they sent more than necessary, but I have no use for your odd little plant, so just take the whole bunch!” She bumbled around, pulling up a flat crate and slapping it on the counter. Removing the top, she revealed a generous amount of white snakeroot.
I inspected it, keeping my hands away from the shrubby plant, though it was hard to restrain myself from running my fingers over the lush leaves. It was a rich green color with little white flowers dotting the tops, similar to a hogweed. It was an unimpressive-looking plant, but the chemical inside was something magnificent.
Within this uninspiring weed was a chemical called tremetol. It took a few days for symptoms to register and could quickly bring down men and beasts alike if given enough through subtle means. It was quite a nice piece to hide in the perfume collection for the right buyer.
“It is perfect, Mrs. Caldwell,” I breathed. I couldn’t hide my grin any longer.
“You and your bizarre choice of flower arrangements. I don’t understand it, but it’s nice to see you happy.” She chuckled. “It’s just good to see you back home. How are you settling back in?”
She gave me a look that I had been seeing all too often since my return from solitude. That look of pity, condolences. I was waiting for that shoe to drop when I saw an old face, a never-ending reminder that I’d returned with one less family member than I had before.
My voice turned stiff again. “Thank you again. I’ll see you about.”
The convenient thingabout Caldwell’s was that it was only three blocks from my father’s apothecary,myapothecary.
Balancing the crate across my arm, I jammed my key into the lock. When I pushed open the door, the sharp ring of the shop bell trilled.
If I could bottle the smell of the shop into a perfume, my skin would never hold another scent for as long as I was alive.
Inside, a holy manifold of herbs and antique wood scents mingled. Waves of nostalgia greeted me every time I entered. My father came home smelling like the apothecary most nights when he had not been at the morgue for an anatomy study. I loved when the cologne of the domain would follow me home, savoring every moment it stuck to my senses. Because of this fantastical place, his memory would never fade. It was like he was here with me always—in every way but physically when I was in the shop.
Past the dark wooden counter was the back room. I called it my lab, even if it was improper and haphazard. This waswhere the magic happened.
In the back room, brass instruments that belonged to my father or were retired from the King’s College lab were scattered across the extended workbenches. Glass bottles diverse in shape, color, and volume were stacked neatly under the benches, a layer of dust collecting on their surfaces. It smelled less pleasant than the front of the store, more noticeably of mildew and bleach. The only light came from slender horizontal windows high on the walls that could be propped open for ventilation. Lastly, a simple back door opened to the alleyway where the bins and rats were kept. I used to catch my lab rats out back, but I had decided that I would most likely breed my own this time around for consistency.
As far as anyone was concerned, I studied the toxicity of compounds used in beauty and wellness, giving me good reason to collect the type of plants I do. Most of the academic jargon lost people immediately. Follow-up questions were few and far between.
As I placed the crate on the workbench, the bell at the front door rang already. Unfortunately, I would have to wait to dissect this beautiful specimen later.
Throughout the day, clients wandered in asking about makeup, what to take for which ailment, what plants would make their skin lighter, which made them skinnier, and which ones would make sure their husbands could perform the typical.
I didn’t mind any of it. All curiosities about botany made me enjoy this side of the business. I would rather people ask than believe whatever the tabloids told them without a paper backing it. This was why I frequently submitted my own articles. It wasn’t hard to dumb it down enough for everyone to understandX was poisonous, use Y.
The bell rang all day, but I was excited to hear one particular ring as she entered my shop, Madam Berdot. She was one of mylong-termspecial-orderclients. All of my clients were appreciated relatively equally, but this particular client was the one I looked forward to after long weeks or months. I had given her a generous amount of the experimental snakeroot poison just the other month through the mail. I used leftover samples my father had hidden away to make something new. She wrote to me a few weeks ago that it was working well, which was why I ordered more of it.
Her occupation came with the unfortunate hazard of dealing with unfavorable men. She owned one of the most established brothels in the city down by the harbor, so it was the perfect grounds for testing whatever solution I came up with, and she would gladly subject especially horrible individuals to my curiosity. My only rule was that she must use it on men of an abusive nature.
“We need to talk,” she said abruptly, her eyes shifting to the group of patrons perusing the herbal shelf. Her anxious hands brushed through her frizzy blond hair, and her emerald-painted eyelids fluttered skittishly toward the front door despite her recent arrival.
