Sacrilege

into grotesque contortions, one arm thrown forward next to the face. Crouching beside him, I closed my eyes for a moment and laid my fingertips on the sleeve of his shirt, hard and crusted with dried blood, as a mark of respect, trying to imagine the scene that must have ensued not long after I had bid him goodbye with a promise to return in the morning for his tonic. The killing seemed the frenzied work of a madman—Fitch must have been chased around his distillery, desperately trying to fight off his attacker—but the burnt pages in the fireplace suggested something different. Who had thrown them into the flames? Fitch, to prevent someone from seeing them, or whoever had struck him down?

My thoughts were interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. I had forgotten the girl, Rebecca, waiting outside. Now I stepped carefully around the dead apothecary and through the narrow doorway into the shop. This room too was in a state of chaos, as I had seen through the shutters; books had been pulled from shelves and lay scattered about, and an earthenware jar, knocked to the ground, had broken to spill its contents—a pungent yellow powder—across the reeds that covered the stone floor. Empty spaces gaped on a number of the shelves where objects had evidently been hastily removed and not replaced.

The knock came again and I heard the girl calling, “Hello?” Crossing to the front door, I found it locked, with the key still in the keyhole. Whoever had killed Fitch must have left through the back, then. But the door had not been forced; the apothecary must have opened it to his attacker. As I turned the key, my hand froze and my breath caught in my throat as I recalled the physician Sykes in his absurd plague mask, thundering in and demanding that Fitch lock up the shop to give him private audience.

“Uncle William?” the girl asked from the other side of the door, her voice doubtful. I pulled it open just a fraction; as soon as she saw me, her lip trembled. “Where is he?”

“You must go for a constable right away,” I said, keeping my voice low. A couple of goodwives with covered baskets had stopped in the street behind the girl and were watching the door with lively curiosity. “Don’t stop to speak to anyone—just bring him as fast as you can. Do you know where to find one?”

“I want to see my uncle! What has happened?” She planted herself stubbornly on the threshold, her voice loud enough to attract further attention from passersby. I motioned with a finger against my lip.

“I’m afraid your uncle has met with an accident.”

“Oh, God!” She pressed her hands to her cheeks and set up a wail that threatened to rouse the whole street.

“Please—you must fetch a constable.” Perhaps the urgency in my voice lent it some authority; she stopped her noise abruptly, looked at me uncertainly for a moment, and nodded. “Bring him around the back,” I added, giving one sharp look to the staring women before closing the shop door and locking it again. Nothing draws a crowd like a violent death, and I felt the dead man deserved better than to be made into a spectacle for gawping market-goers.

In the gloom, I bent to look at one of the books that had been thrown onto the floor. It was a volume of A New Herbal by William Turner, dog-eared and clearly well-used by a reader who had meticulously annotated and illustrated the margins of almost every page. Squinting, I held up the fragment of paper I had rescued from the embers against the book; the hand was the same as that of the notes scribbled on the pages, which it seemed reasonable to assume was that of Fitch himself. So the papers in the fire, with their curious reference to Paracelsus, had been written by the apothecary—but why had they been thrown into the flames? Without quite knowing why, I folded the charred paper and tucked it into the purse I carried at my belt.

The smell of dead meat by now was almost overpowering; I decided to wait for the constable outside the back door. Still I found it hard to tear my eyes from the corpse. I had looked on violent death many times in my life, especially in the past couple of years, yet it never ceased to chill me, the fragility of our bodies, the way a life can be snuffed out quicker than a candle. Presently the sound of brisk footsteps interrupted this reverie, followed by a rap at the gate in the back wall. I hurried to open the latch and found myself face-to-face with the ginger-haired man whom I had noticed in the marketplace by the cathedral gate the previous evening. He narrowed his eyes as if trying to place me, stroking his pointed beard, then waved me aside.

“Carey Edmonton, constable of this parish. An accident, the girl said?”

“I didn’t want to alarm her. This was no accident—the apothecary has been murdered in his distillery.”

The constable simply stared, as if he had not understood.

“Murder? How do you know?”

“Take a look.”

He continued to regard me a moment longer, as if he was not certain whether to believe me, before asserting himself by brushing past and in through the open doorway, where he stopped abruptly as if slapped, gagging on the smell.

“What in God’s name has happened here?” he whispered, almost to himself, his words muffled by the sleeve he pressed to his mouth. He took a step back and turned to me again, as if expecting me to make sense of the sight before him.

“He was beaten to death, but it seems he put up a brave fight before he was felled. The street door was locked from the inside, but this back door was open, though the gate from the yard to the alleyway was padlocked from the inside.”

Edmonton took his hand slowly from his mouth and stepped back into the yard, frowning as if noticing me properly for the first time.

“How did you get in, then? And who the Devil are you to be poking around?”

“My name is Filippo Savolino. I came as a customer—yesterday Master Fitch had promised me a remedy. I found the girl outside, anxious because she could get no reply, so I offered to see what was wrong. When I couldn’t open the gate, I climbed the wall.”

He pulled at his beard again.

“I see. I have seen you before, have I not? Loitering about the Buttermarket, as I recall.”

“I was not loitering—I was on my way to visit my friend the Reverend Doctor Harry Robinson at the cathedral,” I said, stung by his tone. “You will see a great disturbance in the shop,” I continued, trying to sound more placatory as I led him through to the front room. “It seems to me that whoever killed the apothecary was looking for something on his shelves.”

“A robbery, then,” the constable said, as if the business required no further consideration. He glanced at the mess on the floor, set his jaw, and nodded to himself. “Since the plague fears in London, we have more than our share of vagabonds and beggars littering the streets. Probably one of them, looking for gold or whatever he could sell. I’ll have them rounded up—we’ll soon find the villain that did this.” He shot a brief glance back at the workshop and sniffed. “He was a good man, William Fitch, well liked by the townspeople. There’ll be a great deal of anger against the incomers for this.”

“And yet it seems that Master Fitch readily admitted his attacker himself without suspicion, since the shop was locked from the inside, and there is no sign of force,” I said. “And see, here—it is mainly books and papers pulled from the shelves, as if the person was looking for something quite specific. I am not persuaded that this was an ordinary robbery.” I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should mention the appearance of Sykes the previous evening, but decided against it; the physician was clearly a prominent citizen of Canterbury and any suggestion that he might be implicated would only draw unwelcome attention to myself.

The constable folded his arms across his chest and his moustache twitched as his lip curled into a sneer.

“Oh, you are not persuaded? And who are you to offer opinions either way? Are you a parish constable? I think not. You are not even a parishioner.”

I held up my hands as if to mitigate any offence.

“I beg your pardon, Constable. I was only thinking aloud.”

He grunted.

“I shall want testimony from you and the girl. Where will I find you?”

“At the Cheker of Hope.”

“Good. Do not leave the city, Master …”

“Savolino. I won’t.”

He nodded curtly and gestured towards the back gate.

“Now leave me to my job, if you please.”

I bowed slightly and crossed to the door, with a last glance back at the workshop of the unfortunate