“Let’s finish this conversation over at the station,” the officer across from me said, glancing toward the door. “I sense there’s something you’re not telling us. Perhaps our sergeant will have more success.”

My stomach clenched; a sour taste flooded my mouth. “Am I—” I paused, gasping. “Am I being arrested?” I looked around helplessly for a trash can in case I needed to vomit.

The second officer placed his hand on his hip, near the dangling handcuffs. “Your husband—with whom you are having marital problems—is down the hall, fighting for his life after ingesting a harmful substance that you gave him. And your ‘research notes,’ as you call them, mention substances ‘needed to kill.’” He emphasized the last three words as he unlatched the handcuffs from his hip. “Those are your words, Ms. Parcewell, not mine.”

27

Nella

February 11, 1791

If the departure from my shop was to be a temporary one, I would have reached into the cabinets—beginning with my mother’s, along the side wall—to withdraw certain sentimental items I wanted for safekeeping.

But death was permanent. What earthly objects, then, did I need?

I could not tell this to Eliza, of course. After she helped me with my coat—my strength, mercifully, had returned for the moment on account of the frankincense—we stood together at the threshold, ready to leave, and I was forced to give appearance that I would come back to this place after the crisis had passed.

My eyes fell on the line that Eliza had drawn in the soot on her first visit and the clean, unblemished stone hiding underneath the filth. My breath caught. From the moment of her arrival, this child had unwittingly begun to unravel me, to expose something inside of me.

“Is there nothing you want to take? Your book?” She pointed at the register in the center of the table, the one I had just slammed shut. Contained within were the thousands of remedies I had dispensed over the years, harmless draughts of lavender alongside deadly, arsenic-laced puddings. But more important were the names of the women recorded inside. I could open the book to any page at all and easily recall the memories of the women within, no matter their ailments, betrayals or boils.

The book was evidence of my life’s work: the people I had helped and the people I had hurt, and with what tincture or plaster or draught, and how much and when and on account of whom. It would be wise for me to take it, so the secrets could sink with me to the bottom of the Thames; the words smeared, the pages dissolved, the truth of this place destroyed. In this way, I could protect the women within the register.

Yet to protect them was to erase them.