by Emma Jameson
Miss Miller and Miss Trewin, neither a day over nineteen, always addressed customers in that fashion, whether that customer was an absolute stranger passing through Birdswing or a fellow villager they’d known from birth. They wore navy blue uniforms with starched white collars, kept their faces free of makeup, and pinned their hair up severely, like nurses.
“We’d like a word with Mr. Dwerryhouse. Is he free?” Ben asked.
“No, Doctor. He’s in the dispensary.” Miss Trewin indicated the pass-through window between the sales floor and the laboratory. “Would you care for a soft drink while you wait? We just got in a crate of Iron Brew from Falkirk. It might be our last.”
Her caution wasn’t merely a sales technique. Soft drinks relied on sugar and other ingredients that were rationed or due to be rationed. Soon beloved products like Iron Brew, Scotland’s “second national drink” (after whiskey), might become scarce or disappear completely until war’s end.
Ben glanced at Juliet to gauge her interest in a soft drink. It was a little courtesy she appreciated. When she and Ethan had walked out together, he’d ordered everything for her—cocktails, entrees, desserts—in a knowing tone that suggested he understood her desires better than she did. It wasn’t that Ben never took control; she couldn’t imagine bothering with a man who didn’t want his hands on the wheel at least half the time. It was that Ben’s ego was healthy enough to sustain itself without requiring him to dictate where others would clearly prefer to choose for themselves. Smiling, she shook her head.
“No, thank you,” Ben told Miss Trewin. “We’ll have a look at what’s on offer.”
As he studied a rack of proprietary elixirs, Juliet drifted over to Mr. Dwerryhouse’s consulting room. It was the heart of his operation, a little office where his customers might feel at home. Its desk bore a leather blotter, brass lamp, and two of the chemist’s best-known accoutrements, the mortar and pestle and the scale. Behind the desk hung his diploma from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, received in 1909. On his sign and letterhead, he always went by A. C. Dwerryhouse; only the diploma revealed his given name, Augustus Caesar Dwerryhouse.
Six days a week, Mr. Dwerryhouse consulted with villagers, answered questions, suggested remedies, and empathized when he could do nothing else. Juliet saw nothing wrong with this, and was glad Ben didn’t, either. She knew that many physicians considered pharmaceutical chemists, or “pharmacists,” like Mr. Dwerryhouse to be one step up from medicine show mountebanks. Fully half their stock was known to be useless, and once in a while, something was discovered to be harmful. Moreover, some physicians believed that the chemist’s habit of offering free advice not only undercut doctors (who always charged to prevent the devaluing of their profession), but drove a wedge between the physician and his community. How could a doctor properly serve patients when they saw him only as a last resort, after attempting folk remedies that made the original problem worse?
But after a rocky start, Juliet had watched Ben and Mr. Dwerryhouse settle into a cordial working relationship. Mr. Dwerryhouse had clearly come to respect Ben’s acumen, and she knew Ben had gained an appreciation of the chemist’s role in the community.
Mr. Dwerryhouse’s weekly infant weigh-ins, for example, were a public service. He kept detailed records, recommending supplements or raising the alarm if necessary. His willingness to cluck over children’s skinned knees, hangnails, and stomach aches saved Ben time and the children’s mothers, money. He used his medical dictionary to translate Ben’s prescriptions, written by custom in abbreviated Latin, for anxious patients. After Mr. Dwerryhouse patiently explained the distinction between a scruple and a grain, or the difference between alt. dieb. and alt. hor., even the most suspicious crofter might agree to purchase something as mysterious as sulfa tablets.
The shop door’s bell rang. Reminded of the letter, Juliet turned to see Mrs. Garrigan enter. Since the new mother’s hospitalization, they’d become friendly.
“Mrs. Garrigan,” Juliet said, smiling to see the bundle in the other woman’s arms. “And young master Charles. May I have a peek?”
“Why, yes,” Mrs. Garrigan said. She sounded a wee bit off her game, but she obligingly pulled back the baby’s blanket to reveal his sleeping face. “My beautiful boy. Would you like to hold him?”
As someone with no younger siblings, nor any history of child-minding, Juliet shook her head. “I wouldn’t want to get it wrong.”
“Cor, there’s nothing to get wrong,” Mrs. Garrigan said, pushing the baby into Juliet’s arms before she could think up a graceful evasion that didn’t involve running away. Jolted by the transition, Charles opened his eyes, saw Juliet, and immediately began to cry.
“Oh, er—” She tried to sort of playfully jostle him, as she’d observed so many women do with ease, and Mrs. Garrigan squeaked in alarm.
“Not like that, your ladyship, not like that,” she said, taking her son back. In a calmer tone, she added, “It’s all right to rock them, but you must support their head when you do it, like this. The wee ones aren’t made of bone china, as I used to imagine, but they aren’t granite, either.”
Juliet looked about cautiously. As she feared, Ben was watching with obvious amusement. Miss Trewin, who’d been waiting for the right moment, said,
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Garrigan. Back so soon?”
“Oh. Well.” She fussed with Charles’s blankets. “I thought I might pop in out of the cold. Check his weight.”
“But we checked it this morning," Miss Trewin said brightly. “I logged it in the book for Mr. Dwerryhouse, remember?”
“Oh. Yes. What a goose I am,” Mrs. Garrigan said, still fussing unnecessarily with the blankets.
“Good day,” Ben said, smiling in a way Juliet took down mentally for future vengeance. “I do hope you’ll allow Lady Juliet to hold the baby again. That was a remarkable technique she demonstrated, which I’d like to study more closely.”
“That’s unkind, Dr. Bones. You’ll give Lady Juliet the idea she’s not cut out for motherhood,” Miss Trewin said lightly.
“On the contrary, his insinuations on the topic affect me not one whit,” Juliet said. She’d always found Miss Trewin prone to inserting herself into conversations without invitation. “Perhaps you should make certain you can’t serve Mrs. Garrigan in some way?”
“Never mind,” Mrs. Garrigan said, still rather squeakily. “I don’t need anything. I’d forgotten Charles already had his weigh-in. Goodbye, Lady Juliet. Goodbye, Dr. Bones.” Turning, Mrs. Garrigan hurried out of the shop.
Miss Trewin shrugged. “I don’t envy new mums. Sometimes I think the experience turns them dozy.”
“Yes, well, no doubt you’re right,” Juliet said. “Of course, in your case, when that happy day arrives, none of us will see any difference.”
Miss Trewin’s eyes widened. She possessed just enough good sense to work out that she’d been insulted, yet insufficient wisdom to withdraw from the battlefield. “That day will come for you first, I’m sure. If Mr. Bolivar ever makes Birdswing his permanent residence, of course. Perhaps all of us must work harder to make him feel welcome, hmm?”
“Hello, hello,” Mr. Dwerryhouse interrupted in his usual friendly style. “Miss Trewin, there’s a bit of filing to be done in the dispensary. Would you see to it, please?”
“Yes, Mr. Dwerryhouse,” she said, and obeyed, but not without a defiant little toss of her head.
Taking a deep breath, Juliet silently counted to ten. One of the worst things about her faux marriage was the lingering implication in some quarters, generally female, that Ethan was the injured party, and Juliet to blame for all their troubles. It was yet another reason she and Ben had to take care not to be discovered. Men, especially unmarried men, were expected to indulge in a little mischief, be it drinking, gambling, or romance. But as the community’s physician, no one would look kindly on Ben carrying on with a married woman. As for her—well, best not to imagine the consequences.
“I do apol
ogize for keeping you waiting,” Mr. Dwerryhouse said. A small man with a hooked nose, black hair shot with gray, and one shoulder a few inches higher than the other, he might’ve resembled a cinema henchman, but for his courtly manner. Those who complained that gentlemanly comportment had disappeared from the face of the earth around 1920 (specifically with the arrival of that American invention, jazz) had never met Mr. Dwerryhouse.
“I confess,” he continued, “when I see the pair of you together I immediately think something mysterious must’ve transpired. Is this an investigation? Heaven knows the birds could use some fresh sheet music.”
“Not an investigation, precisely,” Ben said. “More of a curiosity. May we speak in your office?”
The chemist’s small brown eyes lit up behind his equally small round specs. “Oh, my. Why, yes. Yes, of course. Come through.”
Once they were settled in his consulting room, with Mr. Dwerryhouse behind the desk and Ben and Juliet sitting across from him, he said, “Now. What can I help you with?”
Ben, who remained silent, shamelessly looked at Juliet as if she’d agreed to drive the conversation. He wasn’t getting away with that. She stared back at him mutely, as if completely in the dark.
“Well. This is rather unusual,” Ben said, clearing his throat unnecessarily. “It pertains to the Fairy Post.”
Mr. Dwerryhouse didn’t hide his astonishment. “Has another child climbed inside? You’d think they’d learn. If it isn’t dung beetles, it’s carpenter bees. Muck about with the Fairy Post and the fairies will muck about with you.”
“So you, er, approve of the custom?” Ben asked.
The chemist laughed. “You seem at some pains to avoid asking me if I believe in it. And if you’d asked me when I arrived here, newly-qualified and steeped in academe, I would’ve said no. I grew up in Wiltshire, which has its own peculiarities and, I daresay, superstitions, but nothing like what one encounters here. Having said that, I’ve resided in Birdswing long enough to witness things that can’t be explained away by misunderstanding or coincidence. So yes, it’s fair to say I approve of the custom. I don’t understand the Fairy Post, but I know that letters dropped into it seem to disappear, and I know that a few of them have been delivered.”
“In those cases when they were delivered,” Juliet said, deciding to help Ben just a little, “would you say the results were for good, or for ill?”
“Oh, for good, without a doubt. Any lifelong Birdswinger or Barker will tell you that when a letter is delivered, feuds are ended or broken friendships are renewed. It’s always considered a blessing to receive a letter by Fairy Post.”
Having been given such an opening, Ben couldn’t fail to produce the letter and explain the task Mrs. Richwine had given him, which he did in short order. Mr. Dwerryhouse seemed intrigued.
“The letter’s reappearance after such a long time is curious indeed,” he said. “May I see it? You may depend upon my discretion.”
Ben passed it over.
Mr. Dwerryhouse scanned the first page, read part of the second, and sucked in his breath. Shaking his head, he folded up the letter, popped it back in its envelope, and pushed it toward Ben like a magician making something nasty go poof.
“That has nothing to do with me,” he said. “Who else have you asked?”
“Only you,” Ben said. “There was some—that is to say—”
Clearly, he wanted to explain that Mrs. Cobblepot had steered them in Mr. Dwerryhouse’s direction without using her name. Taking pity on Ben a second time, Juliet said, “You share certain qualities with the author. Age, presumed education, a childhood outside Birdswing. And it’s been mentioned that years ago, you had a love affair that ended unhappily.”
“That’s a lie,” Mr. Dwerryhouse said.
Juliet gaped at him. “I—well—only—”
Mr. Dwerryhouse stood up. “I find this all most irregular and disrespectful, yes, disrespectful of my position in this community. Forgive me for speaking bluntly, Lady Juliet, but this interview strikes me as a cruel prank. Mr. Jeffers has been spreading outright falsehoods for some time. Perhaps he concocted this letter in hopes of digging into my private business. I’m disappointed, frankly, that you would participate in this mischief, Lady Juliet, and shocked that you of all people, Dr. Bones, would go along with it. On the pretext of the Fairy Post, no less.”
With that, Mr. Dwerryhouse exited the consulting room, leaving Juliet and Ben to stare at one another in mute astonishment. Juliet hoped the chemist would collect himself and return with an explanation. But it was Miss Trewin who came to consulting room, looking almost in tears.
“I’m afraid we’re closed for the day. I’ll see you out.”
“How did it go?” Mrs. Cobblepot called when Juliet and Ben entered Fenton House.
Ben, peeling off his scarf and coat, either didn’t hear or was too disgusted to respond, so Juliet said, “Not quite as we’d hoped.”
Mrs. Cobblepot emerged from the kitchen with a beaded brow and raw, red hands. Even on a chilly winter’s day, woman’s work often entailed breaking a sweat.
“Did he admit to writing the letter?”
“No,” Juliet said. “He demanded to know why we brought it to him. Rather than use your name, I said people knew of his unhappy love affair....”
Mrs. Cobblepot winced.
“Prompting a man I’d describe as unfailingly correct to call Lady Juliet a liar straight to her face,” Ben said, dropping into a wingback. “He seems to think she and I were digging into his past with no aim but to humiliate him. Not that I blame him,” he added, shaking his head. “Didn’t I tell you that letter wanted burning?”
“A liar,” Mrs. Cobblepot whispered. “Oh, my dear, I’m terribly sorry. I was certain Aggie wrote that letter to Bertie.”
“Quite possibly he did,” Ben said. “If he did, he wants the whole thing buried, and I can’t blame him. Perhaps the story was never true, and that’s why he reacted so strongly.”
“It was true,” Mrs. Cobblepot said. “It was so long ago, but I remember it well. Aggie walked out with me from time to time, only as friends, mind you, in the days before I met my Tom. I always knew Aggie would be a confirmed bachelor, even if he never said so, and of course he couldn’t. Then he hired Bertie as his first shop assistant, and Bertie was irresistible. Shallow, bone idle, and nice-looking, of course, as so often happens. Even in his youth, Aggie was closed off. Unfailingly correct, as Dr. Bones put it. But he positively lit up when Bertie entered the room. It was—”
“It was no one else’s business then, and it’s no one else’s business now,” Ben cut across her. “This is turning into the worst sort of gossip. Mr. Dwerryhouse is the closest thing to a colleague I have in this village. I need to see him every day and work with him as smoothly as possible. I wish you’d never told me any of this.”
Juliet was more shaken by Ben’s tone then she had been when Mr. Dwerryhouse called her a liar. Mrs. Cobblepot looked stricken.
“I do hope this hasn’t made you view Aggie—Mr. Dwerryhouse—differently,” she said.
“It has. It’s made me view him as a man with something to fear, who now thinks the village has resurrected a story that could cost him his livelihood and perhaps even his freedom. Worse,” he told Juliet, “he thinks you and I came to confront him. That we handed him proof in the hopes of eliciting a confession.”
“Oh, come now,” Juliet said. “You’re taking this too much to heart, just as he did. I suppose you assume because this isn’t London, the small-minded denizens of the West Country will take up torches and pitchforks to drive him from our midst. I will remind you, I placed the complete works of Oscar Wilde in the Birdswing lending library and received no complaints.”
Ben looked as though he wanted to laugh. Infuriated, she added, “Next you’ll say it doesn’t matter, because few if any of us can read!”
He sighed. “Don’t let’s argue. It doesn’t do any good, what’s done is done. Forgive me, Mrs. Cobb
lepot, for snapping at you. I’ve no doubt you meant well.”
“I did.” She sounded sad. “Bit of a guilty conscience, I suppose. Years ago, when Bertie went round making his accusations, I should’ve come to Aggie’s defense, but I didn’t. I didn’t want anyone to think less of me for taking his part. And after Bertie had gone—paid off by Aggie, I shouldn’t wonder—and things settled down, I kept my distance. I always thought I’d make it up with him eventually, once enough time had passed. But then I met Tom, and married him, and went away for years. Now he calls me Mrs. Cobblepot, and I call him Mr. Dwerryhouse, and it’s as if we were never friends at all. I thought perhaps the letter surfaced because it was time for me to say sorry.”
“You can still say it,” Ben said. He no longer sounded cross, which didn’t surprise Juliet. He never stayed angry for long. She had to struggle to rid herself of grudges and grievances, whereas he shifted easily from emotion into analysis.
Rising, Ben crossed the room to her, giving her a half smile. “And no, I wasn’t going to suggest that no one in Birdswing has ever read The Picture of Dorian Gray. I was going to say that our library at university had every sort of book, from Oscar Wilde all the way back to Plato. It didn’t stop the Dean from drumming out a student in my year for a similar accusation. He was talented. Top marks in Organic Chemistry. It didn’t matter. Rather than endure being sent down in disgrace, he hung himself in the dorm while the rest of us were at dinner.”
Juliet’s lingering annoyance evaporated. “How dreadful. Was he—was it even true?”
“I have no idea,” Ben said. “Once the word got out, I kept my distance from him, just like everyone else.” He sighed. “We’ll sort this out with Mr. Dwerryhouse somehow. We can’t let him go for days believing the story is making the rounds again. But first, I’m taking this letter to the butcher shop. If Mr. Jeffers faked it in hopes of stirring up trouble, I want to know.”
“I’m coming with you,” Juliet said.
“No,” Ben said, but gently. “I’d like you to stay here, in case Mr. Dwerryhouse turns up to mend the breach. I’ll deal with Mr. Jeffers.”
