Dark Waters (21 page)

‘Were they making pancakes?'

He laughed just as he was putting his nose into one of the paper packets, with the result that a black dust puffed out.

‘Not with this. It's tea. And these are nutmegs.'

‘Tea, hen's egg, milk, sugar, odd spices. There's nothing unusual there.'

‘But what about this? It has a particular smell.'

He showed me a small blue paper packet, which seemed empty. I sniffed it, finding a warm pungency coming from it.

‘Is it horseradish? Or maybe ginger?'

‘I rather fancy it is something a little more dangerous. I think it might be—'

‘Stop! Stand up there!'

The voice came from behind us. It was not Shackleberry's, as his snores continued to rend the air. Fidelis and I turned, and saw standing in the door the man Dickon, Shackleberry's drooping foil, whom I had last seen with his disappearing chin and matted hair, meekly taking his medicine in the Market Place.

‘What are you?' he challenged. ‘Thieves? Trespassers? Shall I send for the constable?'

For an alleged idiot, he spoke as sharply as a thorn. I looked him up and down. His clothes were not luxurious, nor yet were they of the raggedness I had seen on his back on May Day. He wore a Quaker hat, a green coat over a yellow waistcoat, and a clean shirt and stock.

‘Neither,' I assured him. ‘We are visiting your master.'

A sneer rippled across his face and he jerked his thumb towards Shackleberry.

‘My master? You mean this sot? The man's deluded about many things, but not so far gone as to think he rules me.'

He removed the hat and hung it on the hat stand. His hair was neatly brushed and his eyes seemed no longer to look across each other, as they had yesterday.

‘But I saw you both yesterday, in Market Place,' I objected. ‘He presented you as his … well, he gave the impression you were his employee. Mr Dickon, isn't it?'

‘No, sir. Andrews, that is my name. Mr Richard Andrews, if you please. And do remember, it is not Shackleberry who directs Andrews, but the other way around. If not for my care and attention to his accounts he would have gone to gaol long ago. And if not for my care and attention to him, he would have died of drink before that. What you saw yesterday was only play-acting.'

‘Play-acting?' objected Fidelis, ‘But you sold this nostrum of yours on serious terms. You made claims for it – Paracelsus, and whatnot.'

Instead of making reply Andrews went to the bed and pinched the snorer's nose. Shackleberry spluttered explosively and rolled away from his associate to lie on his side, a position in which he breathed more quietly. On his return to us, Andrews's demeanour had changed. There was now a certain quickness in his step, a dancer's lightness, and he was smiling.

‘It was a genial deception, good sirs. A May Day prank, that's all. It was not meant to be underhand. It was for the harmless comfort of the uneducated only, in this worrying time for the town. No one expected well-schooled people such as yourselves to imbibe it.'

By now I was allowing the man a slight admiration. He was handling us with some skill.

‘I am a doctor,' said Fidelis. ‘And I can tell you that—'

‘Oh, really? A doctor of what?'

‘Of medicine, sir, and I believe this stuff you're peddling is far from medicinal.'

‘But it has nothing of harm in it!'

‘What is in it, then?'

‘Oh, this and that, you know? Common items, though not cheap. We invested quite a sum of money. It is based on black tea, and has milk, plenty of sugar and honey, a few herbs and spices.'

Fidelis held up the empty packet in which we had found the strong smell.

‘What about this?' he said. ‘This was not a spice.'

Andrews's face twisted uneasily for a moment.

‘Oh, yes, that too. A small amount.'

‘What was it?'

He shrugged.

‘How would I know?'

‘You used it without ascertaining what it was?'

‘It came from an honest source.'

‘You did not hear it called by the name belladonna?'

‘Belladonna? No, it had some Latin name. I never learned Latin in my life.'

‘
Atropinum?
'

‘I don't know. We only put it in to give a proper kick. A good mixture has to have a kick, we find – it may quite properly consist largely either of foulness, or of sweetness, but it must give a kick, or it does not appeal.'

A degree of confidence had returned to his voice as he expounded this theory. Fidelis shook the packet relentlessly in front of his face.

‘If this contained
atropinum,
its kick might kill – I'd rather be kicked by my horse.'

Andrews took half a step back, on the defensive again.

‘That can't be true, sir. I know for a fact that it is given by physicians.'

‘Yes, but advisedly, man! It is a powerful poison. Where did you get it? I do not think you dug it out of the ground. It has been dried and powdered before it was put into this packet, and probably mixed with something neutral. You bought it prepared and ready, didn't you? What was this “honest source”? Did you bring this with you, or obtain it here in town?'

Spreading his hands, Andrews patted the air, a gesture of conciliation.

‘Look, let's not quarrel. I'll tell you. Shackleberry meets a fellow in a public house and he says some doctor's been giving out a medicine containing this powder of which, seeing as we're in the medicine line ourselves, he himself can procure some for us. So we think, yes, it's a good idea. Let's put in a real drug – something the doctors themselves is using. Perhaps you yourself use it, eh, doctor, for the good of sick folk. Can't do harm, then, can it? Or if it do, we're blaming you doctors that's recommending it, ain't we? So we got it off him. But I'm not saying what it is, because I don't rightly know.'

He indicated his associate.

‘It was him that got it, not me.'

‘Do you still have a stock of this medicine?'

‘The last bottle went out earlier. A boy brought me sixpence and took it away.'

‘Mr Andrews,' I said sternly, ‘should it be found that you have, knowingly or unknowingly, been implicated in selling a noxious mixture you will be in serious trouble with the mayor. You must desist from this trade. I repeat, make no more bottles of this so-called nostrum. You understand?'

Andrews's spread-out hands, and his smile, were wide and conciliatory.

‘We cannot make more, sir, even if we wanted. We never had too much of that ingredient the doctor last mentioned, and we now have none at all. So it would lack the kick, and without the kick—'

‘By God!' spluttered Fidelis. ‘You speak of a kick, and people are lying prostrate and may die. Have you no conscience?'

Andrews made his eyes wide.

‘I swear it was all done in good faith, and to do good to the town.'

‘How many bottles of it did you make?' I asked.

‘Two dozen, at most. We sold most of 'em on May Day. Couldn't shift the goods fast enough. We soon wished we'd doubled the quantity, I can tell you.'

‘You may thank God that you didn't,' said Fidelis. ‘As you may that you did not drink the stuff yourself.'

‘But he did!' I exclaimed. ‘I saw it.'

Andrews gave us his foxy smile.

‘Yes – and look at me, good sirs. I am none the worse. You could call me fit as a fisherman's cat.'

‘That is as may be. But you will not feel so well when this is all over,' I warned. ‘The mayor's court will not see your actions as being in good faith.'

‘But they were.'

‘No. You did this only to make money, and you disregarded all consequences. We will have to speak with Mr Shackleberry further when he is sober. In the meantime, goodnight.'

Before following me through the door Fidelis lingered for a last question.

‘Oh! Just one thing, Andrews. Where and when was it that Mr Shackleberry met the unnamed person who promised to obtain
atropinum
for him?'

By this time I had started down the stairs and Andrews's reply was lost to me, as Shackleberry's thunderous snores resumed.

*   *   *

Barty was waiting for us outside. I gave him a penny.

‘I want you to watch this house. Watch for the two strangers – I mean the ones you got the mixture from. I want to know immediately if they try to leave. There'll be two more of these for you if you last out until morning.'

Barty took the money and, reaching into his shirt, pulled out a leather pouch hanging from his neck. There was no great clink of metal as he dropped the coin in. This was a boy not used to being paid in anything but farthings.

‘I'll do it, sir.'

Fidelis and I set off.

‘I don't understand how Andrews did not make himself ill,' I said. ‘I myself saw him swallowing this mixture in Market Place on Friday afternoon.'

‘You thought you saw him swallowing it. It was probably cold tea. These men are sleight-of-hand artists – remember? And they wouldn't waste their valuable commodity in merely demonstrating it.'

‘Andrews claims he doesn't know where Shackleberry got the special ingredient. I suppose he's lying about that too.'

‘Perhaps he doesn't know, though I think I do.'

‘Andrews also denied that it was called belladonna.'

‘Poisons invariably have aliases. Belladonna.
Atropinum.
Deadly nightshade.'

‘Deadly nightshade! Good God, is that what I saved Matty from?'

‘What were the symptoms we found in the patients subject to this sickness?'

‘I only know what old Parsonage told me about Nick Oldswick. He had fantasies. He didn't like being near the oil lamp. He couldn't stand up straight. Headache and fever and slurred speech.'

‘That's not a bad summary of the effects of deadly nightshade. Now, Andrews said Shackleberry had been told, did he not, that this powder was recommended by a doctor? Assuming he meant a doctor from this town, I propose that Andrews was referring to myself, though he might not have known it.'

‘Yourself?'

‘Yes. A very small amount of
atropinum
was in the preparation I sent you to order for me from Wilson the other night. It has the ability to act counter to certain of Allcroft's symptoms. So think – this is what may have happened. There are rumours in the town of a new contagion after the death of John Allcroft. These two tricksters form the idea of using their play-acting skill to sell some cheapjack mixture. But first they have to concoct one. Then Shackleberry meets an informant at a public house who mentions that doctors are prescribing
atropinum.
Shackleberry asks who can supply this
atropinum
and his informant, in drink, says he can. Who could this informant be, Titus?'

‘Well, it can only be Wilson!'

‘Precisely.'

We had now come to the door of Fidelis's lodging, where I said goodnight. It had been an arduous day for both of us and, though he pressed me to come in and take a glass of wine, I could hear the weariness in his undertone.

‘No, Luke, I am tired, and so are you. We must talk this over tomorrow. Will you have dinner with us at home? Good. Does half past twelve suit you?'

As soon as the door was shut behind him I began to walk home. Passing Porter's, I was struck by the riot of chatter, rowdy argument and hoarse singing that spilled out of the place. It seemed this scare had Prestonians either cowering indoors with their prayer books, or drinking themselves into a stupor at an inn or alehouse, for the drinking establishments were the only places lit up as the evening advanced. There will always be some people who defy fate. Or was it that people thought, if they had to die, it were better to do so drunk?

I was thinking about this when a customer came staggering out of the inn and we collided. He had rebounded off me with a look of astonishment on his face and started babbling about the election, and only then did I realize that this was Thomas Wilson, the apothecary himself. Seeing he was in no condition to manage it alone, I took his arm and engaged to bring him safely home.

As most people knew, in this town with few secrets, Wilson was a drinker very different from my wife's late uncle. Not for him the steady imbibing day by day that had slowly unglued Antony Egan. Wilson was one of those men who are drawn in almost equal degree to drunkenness, and to sobriety, so that the two continually struggled for supremacy over his soul. Day by day he was the most principled of men, conscientious in his work, faithful to his wife, careful with money and respectful towards God. But once he began to imbibe he could not stop.

To find him at this moment, and in this state, was rather convenient. I wanted to know more about the intelligence Fidelis and I had just been gathering from Richard Andrews, and I was now presented with the chance to talk to Wilson on the same matter with his guard lowered. I seized on this chance, interrupting Wilson's incoherent rambling, and shooting a direct question at him.

‘Thomas – I wonder if you have had any recent call to dispense a quantity of unmixed poison?'

His answer, if it was an answer, came obliquely, flying off his tongue like water shaken off a dog's back.

‘Goat. Bloody champion cocksman.
He
thinks he is. Nay, but I know better. I. Do. Know better. See, the man's a eunuch. Practically speaking, a eunuch.'

He groped upwards with his free hand until he found the side of his nose. He tapped it.

‘Because I know. Because his man came into the shop. His man. He bought something. I know what it is for. Pure poison but there's always those who think it answers all their deficiencies.'

He could hardly pronounce this last word, so thick was his tongue with drink. I stopped and turned him towards me, looking him directly in the face.