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

  THE

  APOTHECARY’S

  DAUGHTER

  An absolutely gripping crime thriller that will take your breath away

  JANE ADAMS

  Ray Flowers Book 1

  Originally published as The Angel Gateway

  Revised edition 2020

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2000

  as The Angel Gateway

  © Jane Adams 2000, 2020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Jane Adams to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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  ISBN: 978-1-78931-603-2

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part II

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Part III

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Part IV

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Part V

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  ALSO BY JANE ADAMS

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  For my husband, Julian. Stay Crazy!

  Prologue

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  February 12, pale sun in a bright blue sky, unexpected after almost a month of rain. It was two thirty in the afternoon and the square in front of the courthouse almost deserted; the lunchtime crowds gone back to work and the rush hour still a long way off.

  After most of the day in court, DI Ray Flowers was bored. He leaned against his colleague’s car and scanned the square again, looking for distraction. A Victorian fountain stood centre stage circled by benches and trees that would hang with blossom later in the year. Today, a bitter north wind cut across the open area and no one stayed to sit on the wrought-iron benches. A woman and small child hurried by the fountain, the child momentarily distracted by the pigeons that pecked around his feet. A skateboarder, ignoring the prohibitive notices, attempted flips. An old man in a dark raincoat holding his hat tightly onto his head rushed past the other way.

  Ray thought about getting into the car, the chill finally biting through his clothes and raising goosebumps on his skin. He glanced back over his shoulder to see if there was any sign of Guy Halshaw, the car’s owner. He could see his colleague through the glass doors, chatting to a court official, a young woman with bleached blonde hair and bright red lips. A Halshaw special if ever there was one. Typical, Ray thought. You take Guy anywhere and he’d pull, it had always been the same. Like Ray, Halshaw was a big man, tall and rather less rounded with the years than Ray himself and Guy had the looks to go with it. Even in his younger days, Ray Flowers with his rather lumpy face and washed-out blue-grey eyes had never been anyone’s idea of an Adonis.

  Amused, annoyed, prepared to settle down for the wait, Ray dug deep into the pocket of his coat for the car keys. He failed to see the man running from the main street and across the corner of the square. Soft-soled shoes deadening all sound, Ray didn’t hear him either. Lulled by the unexpected brightness of the day the last thing on Ray’s mind was pain, but a second later his mind was filled with it. There had been the sudden glimpse of the man out of the corner of his eye, his arm already drawn back. And then the flames burning against his skin, eating their way into flesh, searing tendons on hands that had been thrown up in last-minute defence. Ray’s mind and body filled with agony and the silence of the bright blue day was broken by his screams.

  * * *

  She woke reluctantly, dragged from the heaviness of fever-laden sleep by some sound outside.

  She had been dreaming. In her dreams, she walked again in her garden.

  The beds were overgrown with weeds, but the air was fresh scented by a fall of rain. And she did not mind too much what others may call weeds. Much of what seeded naturally had their own virtues and their own uses.

  Beneath her feet, the ground was soft and yielding, and the sweet scent of thyme rose like the spirit of a dear, lost friend.

  She heard a sound behind her and turned to look. Her roses had fallen, a summer storm sending them crashing to the ground. It seemed strange to her that they were still in flower so late in the season. But then, what dreams were ever truthful? The roses planted in her garden grew white flowers and bloomed for just some little time in June.

  She slept then with her windows wide open to the world and let their fragrance fill the house.

  In her dream, these September rose
s had a yellow flower that grew in clusters and cast a fainter scent. She remembered, when she woke, that she had seen a man tending to them. A man dressed somewhat strangely for a cottager, tying back the flowers, puzzling himself over the arrangement of every branch and stem as though the task were new to him.

  Dear Lord, if all her dreams could be so real, so peaceful, then she would sleep out her time here and hope never to wake again.

  Part I

  Chapter One

  September 2000

  It was late evening by the time Ray turned the key in the old-fashioned lock and let himself into Mathilda’s cottage.

  He stood for a moment in the dim light and surveyed the tiny front room. It had changed little from the summer visits he had made here with his parents so many years before, though the cottage, and this room in particular, seemed smaller than he remembered.

  Perhaps, he thought wryly, he had just been much smaller himself then.

  Ray turned and closed the stiff front door, then stepped the few paces it took to reach the centre of the room, ducking instinctively but unnecessarily under the exposed beams that slatted across the dull white ceiling.

  The walls of the room were lined with bookshelves filled mainly with neatly stacked, well-thumbed paperbacks. Furnishings were worn, grown old with their owner, the most threadbare seats hidden by plaid rugs and coloured throws. And there were bare boards around the square of the carpet where it didn’t quite spread to meet the skirting, the old wood stained almost black with age and years of polishing.

  Ray smiled and, as he often did when he smiled, touched his cheek experimentally as though to see how the muscles reacted to the action.

  Stiffly, that was how, but it was getting better. The scarring not as inflexible, or maybe it was just that these days he risked smiling a little more often.

  He crossed the room to the fireplace. A fire had been lit earlier and heat still radiated faintly from the coals. The cottage had been empty for months but the solicitors had assured him they’d arrange for it to be cleaned and aired before he took possession. Ray wondered how much that consideration would be adding to his bill.

  Two little tables kept guard on either side of the fire. These were the things Ray remembered most from his visits here. Two low, round tables cluttered with an assortment of odd and — so his mother was fond of saying — useless objects. As a child, being allowed to play with Mathilda’s things was the only good part about otherwise boring adult visits. His mother had been right, he supposed, they were useless. Odd-shaped stones, a toy fire engine, a snowstorm and a painted tin containing remnants of broken costume jewellery. Its twin, full of foreign coins, sat on the other table. He fingered the objects now, remembering the pleasure he had taken in trying to guess what Tildey had added to her collection since the last visit. Remembering the guilt, too, when he had purloined a couple of coins from Tildey’s box. Three terrible months he’d kept them until the next visit, then slipped them back.

  Ray went through to the kitchen and looked out of the crooked, cross-hatched window at what had been Mathilda’s garden. It would have broken her heart to see it like this. Overgrown, trellises broken down by the spring storms and not mended, the yellow climbing roses fallen to the ground and muddied by yesterday’s rain. He leaned wearily against the kitchen table and glanced around at the 50s-style cabinets that must have been the height of fashion when Mathilda had them put in. Was he hungry? He thought vaguely that he really ought to eat or should at least go back out to the car and bring in the groceries. Maybe he’d do that, then go to bed.

  Impatiently, he jerked himself into action, inspected the state of the fridge and the larder and was relieved to find them clean and the fridge working, even if the must of long misuse still caught unpleasantly at his nose.

  He went back out to the car, making two trips to fetch the luggage and the box of essentials he’d bought on the way. He thought again about eating but the weeks of inactivity in the hospital seemed to have sapped his strength and Ray decided that he really could not be bothered with that now. He left the cases where they lay at the foot of the stairs and climbed slowly, then along the short scrap of a hallway into what had been Mathilda’s room.

  Someone had been thoughtful enough to make up the bed. He blessed them, whoever they were, and sat down with an ungraceful thump on the edge of it. The windows were low, eye level now that he was seated. To his surprise he found that he was looking out between the top branches of the apple tree in Mathilda’s garden. He could see the church spire still crowned by the lopsided weathervane he remembered. Beyond that was Southby wood.

  It was warm for a September evening. Very warm and Ray was deeply tired. The bed was almost unbearably soft.

  Without being aware of the transition, Ray drifted into sleep.

  * * *

  She wished that she could see more than a patch of sky. More than just the glimpse of the sun she’d had as they dragged her from the wagon and into the courthouse. Even in those few moments, scenting the freshness in the air was like paradise.

  It had rained. The gardens would need it, they had told her that the summer had been dry enough.

  Who tends my garden? she wondered.

  Did anyone take trouble with it? Or was it poison now because she loved it?

  The scent of lavender and of sweet thyme. Of rosemary. Rosemary for remembrance and for virtue.

  She wished that this thing could be over and she could sleep, sleep in some place where there could be no dreaming.

  Chapter Two

  Morning brought confusion. Where was he? Why was he sleeping in his clothes and with one leg dangling over the edge of the bed? It took several minutes for Ray to have the answer to those questions clear in his mind. Minutes more to realize, pushing himself reluctantly upright, that he had slept deeply and without the dreams that usually plagued him.

  Just knowing that made him feel good, impatient to be on with the day. He dragged one of his suitcases from the foot of the stairs and up to the bedroom, a task made awkward by the lack of strength in his injured hands. Physio had helped a lot, six months ago he couldn’t even have thought of driving the car, but he still had a long way to go.

  He sorted fresh clothes and, with some difficulty, persuaded the old gas boiler in the bathroom to give him enough water for his bath.

  The boiler was slow and stingy. He paced irritably between bathroom and bedroom, waiting for the bath to fill and finding homes for at least some of his clothes.

  The cooker, surprisingly new considering it was in Mathilda’s house, was somewhat more efficient and he dealt with breakfast quickly, boiling water for his coffee in a saucepan and telling himself that he must add a kettle to his list of ‘Things Needed’.

  By nine fifteen he had set the kitchen to rights and completed the unpacking, feeling energy flowing through his limbs and a clarity of thought he’d not experienced in a long time. Perhaps the doctors had been right. Make a fresh start, somewhere new. Well, he could think of worse places to be in and it wasn’t beyond the bounds of reason that he could commute to work from here.

  He stopped the idea in its tracks before it got anywhere. Thoughts about getting back to work had been what you might call unproductive thus far, he was trying not to give them too much of his time.

  He went back into the bathroom and prepared to shave, staring at himself in the mirror. Shaving was never something he had enjoyed and these days, there was the added dimension that only parts of his face needed it. The network of scars laced his left cheek and part-way across his chin. The right side, by contrast, was almost unmarked. On the left, though, his beard grew in odd little clumps, like islands amongst the over-smooth scarring. He had experimented with the art of beard growing but given up, unable to stand either the itching or the patchwork effect. The twice daily ritual of the blade had been reinstated and he put up with it as best he could, added it to one of his other lists: the one headed ‘Signs of Returning Normality’.

 
Back in the bedroom, he looked out once more at the tangled garden and the church beyond. Mathilda hadn’t been buried there, just had her ashes scattered, the graveyard being full and it being unthinkable that she could possibly have left her remains elsewhere. The solicitors had told him that there was a small memorial stone though, and he supposed he really ought to go and find it. He supposed also that he ought to take some flowers, it seemed the proper thing to do.

  Ray went back downstairs, let himself out into the garden and, with the help of a kitchen knife, cut seven of the least damaged yellow roses from the climber. It was awkward to cut them so that the stems were of a decent length. Not the cultivated, bred-for-the-florist’s-shop affairs these. They had real scent and the slightly shaggy look of creatures not really tamed. They had thorns too. He sucked his wounded fingers and held the roses gingerly, looking for something else to add to his rough bouquet. Rosemary, from the bush just outside the back door, and bay. He tried to pull branches from the cushion of fragrant thyme threatening to overwhelm the garden path, but it seemed reluctant to let go without roots and all pulling free. Feeling guilty at just adding to the disorder, Ray patted it carefully back into place and took the rest of his finds inside, wrapping the stems in kitchen foil to protect his hands from the vicious thorns.

  Ten minutes later found him in the churchyard searching for Mathilda’s marker. It wasn’t hard to find, a simple stone tablet set close to the church door, with an inset of brass inlaid wood.

  MATHILDA O’DONNEL. JUNE 1917–MAY 2000.

  That was all. No message, no formal regrets. Ray felt that he should be sad at there not being more but he couldn’t. The plaque was so much like Mathilda, matter-of-fact and to the point, but still with a thought for the aesthetic. He laid his flowers down, lowering himself cautiously to his knees, and allowed his fingers to trace the letters of her name. Mathilda O’Donnel. Strange, but he’d rarely thought of her as having a second name, or, if she had, that it would be his own.