He shook it like the first vendor had, then opened the jar to sniff it. “Ah,” he said, nodding, “Oreshnik. I have this.”
“What does it do?” Saffron asked as he scooped dried leaves into a new jar.
“Help with pain,” he said, patting his belly. “Mix withmedovyy.” He waved a hand to another vendor who had a number of amber-colored jars sitting on his cart.
The vendor’s sign was written in Cyrillic, but from the bee drawn on the sign, Saffron could guess his ware. “Honey?”
“Yes, yes, honey,” Grigory said with a grim sort of smile. “It for pain.” He waved his hands.
That was the second time he’d mentioned pain in the hands. Perhaps Petrov had suffered from rheumatism, in addition to ailments of the kidney and liver. “Rheumatism?”
Grigory shrugged, but then brightened. He barked something at a young man with a minuscule cigarette between his thin lips loping down the center of the lane. He rolled his eyes and swaggered over. He answered Grigory in an insolent tone, and when Grigory nodded to Saffron and Alexander, he said flatly, “How I can help you?”
“We want to know what this herb is used for,” Alexander explained.
“And what it’s called in English,” Saffron added.
The young man consulted Grigory for a moment before saying, “It is leaves fromOreshniktree. We do not know the English name. You mix with honey and drink like tea. It helps with pain of the stomach, and pain in the hands or joints. It is for old people.” He surveyed Saffron doubtfully.
Grigory added something in Russian, and the young man nodded, saying, “He says it is also good for thin blood.”
“Thin blood?” Saffron repeated, perplexed.
“For anemia,” Alexander said, accepting the jar from Grigory. “I see. Thank you.”
Before the young man departed, Saffron pulled out the photograph of Petrov. “Did you sell herbs to this man?”
Grigory nodded slowly, looking from the photograph to Saffron with suspicion, but said nothing. The young man flicked away the butt of his cigarette.
Saffron paid Grigory for the herbs and the jars, and offered a further coin to the young man, who took it without compunction, and she and Alexander set off back to Petrov’s flat. Saffron took samples from the jars before replacing them.
When they returned to the main road across from the train tracks, Alexander asked, “Off to the library?”
The library would possibly supply answers, but it might take weeks to find the correct plants to match the dried flower’s characteristics or Grigory’s descriptions. There was an alternative that would likely get her the answers they needed faster, and she really didn’t like it.
“No,” she sighed. “Off to see Dr. Aster.”
A note was stuck in Saffron’s office door when they returned. Color rose in her cheeks as her eyes flicked over the words.
“Good news?” Alexander asked mildly.
She shook her head, tucking the note into her coat pocket. “Just need to return a telephone call.”
That enigmatic statement did nothing to abate his curiosity. She darted into her office to drop off her things, then returned with her notebook and a file. “Will you give me the second jar, the one with theOreshnikleaves?”
He passed it to her. She held it up, squinting at the broken shapes of the leaves as she’d done several times during the journey back to the university. “If you’ll wait in your office, I’ll just nip up to Dr. Aster’s and see if he can tell me anything.”
“What are you going to tell him it’s for?”
She shrugged. “I’ll come up with something.”
Uncertainty swirled in his mind as she vanished up the stairs. She was putting her position at risk again, taking Aster clues. Aster would be curious why she was looking into something so unrelated to her own work.
His thoughts stopped at the sight of a paper jammed into his own door. His right hand shook as he tugged it loose and opened it.
Adrian had been summoned to the police station again. Considering the last time he’d been summoned there his brother had nearly been arrested for attacking one of the bobbies for antagonizing him, Alexander needed to get there as soon as possible. Saffron’s clues would have to wait.
Ferrand had never asked him for Saffron’s office key back after Alexander had used it to raid her files for information about how to manage her cuttings and seedlings, so he used it to deposit the other jar on her desk before taking himself off to the police station.
