THE APOTHECARY’S DAUGHTER an absolutely gripping crime thriller that will take your breath away

by Jane Adams

  ‘It’s no longer his business. He’s practically a civilian.’

  ‘He is still a serving officer. Anyway, have you seen his face? He’s got to live with that for the rest of his life, that makes it his business.’

  Peterson was silent for a moment, then he said, ‘Frank Jones was an informant. He was a doorman at the Sphinx. It’s just reopened as the Video Wall. Pierce’s brother runs it.’

  ‘Did Frank know much?’

  ‘He knew who went in, who Pierce had contact with. Ran the odd errand. And he had access, we’d had him copy some of Pierce’s records, give us dates and times of meetings. That sort of thing. He and his wife had been promised protection if he’d testify, but something had scared him and he wanted out.’

  ‘How good was your evidence against Pierce before Michaeljohn was killed?’

  Peterson seemed reluctant to answer. Finally, he said, ‘It was good. Then that damned fool, Halshaw decided it needed to be better, started planting evidence. He was caught and Pierce’s brief got to hear about it. He’s been pushing ever since. Frank Jones was our second line.’

  ‘And he ended up dead in the canal. It looks as though he had reason to be scared.’

  Peterson scowled but said nothing.

  ‘Why wasn’t a watch kept on Frank Jones?’ George asked.

  Peterson’s silence told him all he needed to know.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  July and August were months of great change. Matthew wrote to Kitty about the King’s visits to Leicester and the changes that had taken place. He came first to Leicester in July and again on his way to Nottingham before he raised his standard in that town. His first visit had been one of great ceremony, he came with Prince Charles and Prince Rupert and had ridden into the city on 22 July, to be met at Frog Island by the mayor and corporation. Three days he had remained within the city, taking his place during the assizes and later addressing a large crowd at the castle. Matthew Jordan had been among them. He wrote:

  To be truthful Katherine, I was surprised to find him such a small man, of so little stature. Though regal enough in his fine clothes and a wig that must have cost more than your father could earn in an entire year of business. I was far back in the crowd and could not catch all his words, but those around me said he spoke of loyalty and the duty of all good men to rally to his cause. With the mayor and corporation of this city so intent on compromise I cannot think that his words will have been well received, despite their smiles and courtesies.

  Later he had seen the King more closely and even been presented to him briefly when he had attended service at St Martin’s church. The King and his company had walked in slow procession to the church from the town hall and Matthew described it as being a ‘fine and moving sight’, though Kitty thought she sensed some restraint in his enthusiasm. Some worry that this show of power and wealth would not promise well for the future.

  When the King had come again to Leicester there had been no formal greeting and no ceremony marking his presence there. ‘He had not even come within the city walls,’ Matthew told her. Instead he chose to rest with his ally the Countess of Devon at the Abbey Mansion and this only two days before his standard was raised at Nottingham and all true men called to rally to his cause. It grieved Matthew so much, to think of the strife that would surely come.

  * * *

  She left for her father’s house on the day Matthew’s letter concerning the King’s second visit arrived. She waited only for her father’s man to water the horse and then they were on their way. She was worried for her father. He was gravely ill, her brother’s message had said, and her sister-in-law heavy with child and far from well. He asked would she return to them for a time at least and help with the nursing?

  Jack, the manservant, lifted her into the saddle behind him. She did not like riding pillion, it felt awkward to sit sideways with only her grip on the rider’s belt to keep her from falling. Then she looked to say the final goodbye’s to the friends who had gathered to see her go.

  ‘I will return as soon as I am able,’ she told Master Eton.

  ‘You will be missed. Give my good wishes to your father.’

  ‘Thank you. He remembers you always with friendship.’

  Mim stood with one of the village women. This woman was as far gone with her child as her sister-in-law and it seemed likely that she would miss this birth. ‘You have the herbs I gave you. And you are certain that you know what to do?’

  ‘I have everything, Mistress Hallam, and I’ve Ellen to read the words you gave me about each one. Her mother makes her practise with her letters every day and will till you come back to us.’

  She tried not to feel so worried. Mim had birthed children long before Kitty was even born and had seen her use the herbs that Kitty had left for her many times. Raspberry leaf, to be taken every day in the final months to make the body ready for the birth and to promote the flow of milk. Poppy, a few drops in wine to ease the pain. Lavender to wash the woman both before and after birth to help the wounds heal quickly should she tear and bleed too much. Dandelion for the fever, blended with other herbs that would calm and ease the body. And, though Mim herself could not read, her little grandchild could; Kitty had taught her simple words and checked that she could decipher the instructions she had left behind should Mim forget.

  She watched them still as she set off, craning around to wave as the horse walked slowly up the hill and away from the village.

  ‘Hold tight, mistress,’ Jack told her, ‘the path is not good here and I do not wish to bring you to your father’s house with a broken head.’

  ‘You say that my father has been bled twice?’

  ‘Yes, but when the physician came a third time, hoping to cup your father’s scalp and to release the humours, he did refuse and commanded that they send for you.’

  That was no surprise. Her father had a strong opinion on many of the practices seen as standard. Bleeding he would tolerate to a point, but he had little patience with the theory of humours and the cupping that went with it. Blisters were raised, by heating small cups that were then upended on the patient’s body. Sometimes this was supplemented by the use of irritants such as cantharides. The resultant blisters were slit and drained and then kept open to allow the humours release from the body. Kitty’s father did not approve. He had said that he observed only weakening of the body from the enemas and the purges and the draining of too many fluids from already sick patients and he had seen too much agony caused by the burning with hot irons and blistering.

  He was in the minority though, seen as an oddity by many.

  ‘Why will he not take their help, Mistress Hallam?’

  ‘I do not doubt that his reasons are good. He told me once that in ancient times the physicians used only herbs and gentle measures.’

  ‘He is a good man. Wise too, but we are so concerned for him and if he will not accept the help . . .’

  Kitty was anxious enough already. To distract him she asked, ‘Is there more news from Nottingham? I have heard that the King has raised his standard there, but nothing more.’

  ‘The King is still at Nottingham, though there is talk of his heading north within the week. He needs funds and many women have sold their jewels and even the family plate to give him the money that he needs. Prince Rupert seeks action now and has urged the King to force those into line who would prefer neutrality.’

  Like the people of Leicester, Kitty thought. Like Matthew Jordan and like her own family, living not a dozen miles away.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  On the Wednesday morning Ray drove to Kineton in Warwickshire, the site of the Battle of Edgehill. Even armed with a copy of the battle plan, he found the location confusing, most of it now being farmland under cultivation and with hedges and fences breaking up the contours.

  He leaned on a gate, looking towards the clump of trees where the Royalists had made their stand, glancing through the entry that Matthew Jordan had made in his journal and the
notes that Sarah had copied for him. Around 30,000 men had met on that day, pikemen and musketeers, cavalry and all the followers and baggage carts that an army on the move needed to carry all its gear.

  He knew from what Sarah had told him that people actually came to watch the battle. Local civilians wondering which way the day’s luck would fly. He wondered where they would have stood. If they would have watched the entire battle, or gained enough sense part-way through to get the hell out of there before the wave of conflict broke, the two armies separating in chaos that left no clear winner.

  Prince Rupert had been there. Ray was beginning to see him as something of a liability. He’d led his cavalry on the first charge against the Parliamentary left flank and broken through, scattering their forces. Then, Ray noted, the stupid bugger had given chase across open country, abandoning the field and leaving the infantry without support. Wilmot, on the other Royalist flank, followed Rupert’s lead, routing the Parliamentary cavalry though his efforts left the infantry intact and ready to regroup in close formation behind him. Like Rupert, he then gave chase to the scattered cavalry, leaving the Royalists open on two sides with two more regiments in Parliamentary cavalry charging in to attack the confused Royalists before they had the chance to compensate for their loss of horse.

  Ray tried to imagine the scene, the Royalist elite guarding their King on the wooded rise. The field left open by Rupert’s flight and the Parliamentary forces charging forward, almost reaching the King himself. Sixty of the King’s guard were killed in that onslaught and the King himself forced to flee with a handful of his followers, Parliamentary forces snapping at his heels.

  Ray felt a vague sympathy for King Charles. So certain of himself and his God-given victory, it must have been the gravest of shocks on that day to be almost defeated before the war had even properly begun.

  Rupert had made his way back to the battle when it was all but over. Two regiments of Royalists had managed to establish a new defensive line, but the light was fading and it was too late to carry on with the fight. It was decided to disengage. With the morning, the Royalists broke camp and moved off up Edgehill. They were not pursued.

  There had been a brief addition to Matthew’s diary for that day. It had clearly been written a few days later when the news reached him because it had been crushed into the margin at the bottom of the page. It recorded only that Kitty’s niece had been born and that they had called her Elizabeth Ann.

  ‘May God be praised,’ the Reverend Jordan wrote. ‘And may He have mercy on this little soul, born into such troubled times.’

  * * *

  Sarah had come over to Ray’s for the evening. She had arrived early and interrupted him while he was looking again through the folder that George Mahoney had sent. The scattered pages were lying on the kitchen table.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked him, direct as ever.

  ‘I suppose it’s work.’

  ‘Suppose? I thought you were on the sick.’

  Ray grinned at her and then turned to fill the kettle, wondering if he should tell her about Frank Jones. It would be good to talk to someone, to Sarah particularly, and her insight might be useful.

  She had picked up the clipping when he turned back and was reading it. ‘Who is he then, this Frank Jones?’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’

  ‘Are you supposed to have this stuff? It looks kind of official.’

  ‘Let’s just say it came from a friend.’

  She eyed him thoughtfully, then sat down at the table pulling the rest of the material towards her. ‘So, tell,’ she said.

  Ray sat down opposite. ‘A few days ago this clipping arrived through the post. No name, no message, just the date scribbled on the bottom. It’s the date I was attacked.’

  ‘Ah. This is the guy that did it to you?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it looks like someone wants me to think that.’

  ‘You know this Frank Jones, do you?’

  ‘Never met him and I can’t make any connection to anything I was working on.’

  Sarah narrowed her eyes. ‘The newspaper articles at the time, they suggested you might have been mistaken for someone else.’

  ‘I thought you said you only read the headlines.’

  ‘I lied.’ She smiled at him. ‘Actually, I went to the archive and looked it up.’

  ‘Oh? Spying on me now?’

  ‘I want to know who I’m sleeping with, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, I think I’m flattered. And did it tell you who I might have been mistaken for?’

  ‘An Inspector Guy Halshaw. He was involved in some big drugs case. I didn’t look that bit up — I ran out of lunch hour. So what do you think, was this Guy Halshaw the target or was it you?’

  Ray laughed. ‘That’s the crux of the whole thing, Sarah. I wish I knew. The next step is to find out if there’s any direct connection between Halshaw and Jones. And to find that, I need more information than I’ve been able to get hold of so far.’

  ‘And can this . . . friend . . . get it for you?’

  ‘I don’t know. He thinks I should stay out of things, wait for whoever sent me the clipping to make the next move and see what the story is.’

  ‘Sounds like wise advice, but I don’t suppose you’ll take it.’

  ‘I don’t like feeling useless, or helpless. If someone killed Frank Jones, if he didn’t just fall into the canal and hit his head, I want to know.’

  ‘Equally,’ Sarah pointed out, ‘if he did just fall, why is someone so keen for you to think it was something other than an accident?’

  Ray got up to make the tea and Sarah skimmed through the rest of the notes.

  ‘From petty thief to GBH seems an odd step,’ she commented.

  ‘I said you should have been a copper.’

  ‘But we never decided if I’d be a good cop or bad cop. Does he look like the man who attacked you?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. It all happened so fast, officer, I didn’t get time to see his face. It could have been anyone and I’ve not gone through almost twenty years in the job and not made enemies. I don’t know of anyone who could claim that. Different times I’ve had my car smashed up, tyres slashed and had shit posted to me in a Jiffy bag. It happens. I could almost have accepted being knifed one night in a dark alley, but this was just bizarre and I can’t account for it. It’s too . . . personal.’

  ‘And a knife in the back wouldn’t be? You have an odd way of thinking about these things, Ray.’ She paused, sipping her tea. ‘And this friend of yours, what does he think?’

  Ray hesitated, habitual caution making him reluctant to say too much about George, then reasoning that he had trusted Sarah so far and that she was likely to meet George Mahoney soon enough anyway.

  ‘You remember I told you about a friend wanting me to go into partnership?’

  ‘Yes, of course. It’s the same man?’

  ‘Yes. George Mahoney. I’ve known him six — almost seven — years.’

  ‘Another copper, you said.’

  ‘Actually he’s a bit higher up than that. George is ex-army and now DPG.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Oh, Diplomatic Protection Group. He’s a coordinator.’

  ‘That’s, like, protection for VIPs?’

  ‘That sort of thing, but he’s had enough and wants to set up on his own. Corporate security, he reckons. Seems to think there’s money in telling big business how leaky their security is.’

  ‘You fancy that? It doesn’t sound much like you.’ She smiled. ‘Did you work with him before?’

  ‘No, no I didn’t. I met him after his daughter died. Drugs overdose. Officially it went down as accidental, but there were complications and George was always convinced that there was more to it. There was nothing to suggest she was into anything harder than smoking a little gear. One of her friends said she’d once tried coke and been sick for days. She didn’t inject, there were no track marks anywhere on her body, no ne
edle marks at all apart from the one that killed her.’

  ‘Could be she tried it once and got it wrong?’

  ‘Could be and chances are we’ll never know.’

  ‘It must be unbearable for him,’ Sarah commented quietly.

  ‘I think if he gives himself time to think about it, then it is. I guess, maybe, George wants the chance to open things up again.’

  ‘Is he able to do that?’

  ‘If he goes into business for himself there’s nothing to stop him.’

  ‘Hang on a second. I thought you were talking about corporate security, not setting up in the private eye business?’

  ‘Disapproval, Sarah?’

  ‘No. Not exactly.’ She laughed. ‘I don’t see you tracking down divorce cases, that’s all.’

  ‘No, neither do I. And the security business is still on. George wants to take on other stuff at the same time. Cold cases, like his daughter’s. I don’t know, it’s all up in the air at the moment.’

  ‘But the idea excites you. You like getting your hands dirty.’

  Ray nodded. ‘Put like that it sounds kind of unsavoury,’ he said. ‘But yes, it does and I do.’

  Chapter Twenty-five

  By the end of November Kitty had returned home. She had been absent for almost three months but the changes she noted in the village made it feel as though it had been much longer.

  Children played mock battles on the village green and the Reverend Randall preached politics from the pulpit. Much of the village was instinctively loyal to the King, he represented the tradition and the order they had all grown up with, however much they might disagree with the details. Randall was Parliament’s man and in his view the King was a sinner about to be punished by God, and Randall made certain that the village knew that they were next in line for God’s wrath if they did not change their ways.

  Kitty had no doubt about the man’s sincerity. He believed in the need to create a better world. One that had justice in it and in which the elite was not corrupt and driven by the passions of the flesh. The problem was that he saw sin everywhere. Where he loved most was where he most imposed his discipline. He cared deeply for his wife and clearly cherished his children, but his need to keep the things he cared for pure and unsullied made him a strict master and a hard man to love.