I shook my head. “I’m not really sure what I think. Which is part of why I’m here. I thought I’d see if you have any old maps of the area—Bear Alley, I mean—from the early 1800s. And I thought you might be better at a simple web search, too. I tried Googling an apothecary killer in London, but didn’t turn up much.”

Gaynor’s face lit up at my request; as she’d told me when we first met, the old historical maps were her favorite. A subtle rush of envy seeped into me. With the passage of another day, I was that much closer to returning to my own job in Ohio—a job having nothing to do with history at all.

“Well, unlike yesterday,” she said, “I think I can actually help you on this. We have some excellent resources. Come with me.” She guided me over to one of the computers and motioned for me to sit. I felt, for the first time in a decade, like a student of history once again.

“All right, the best place to start is definitely with Rocque’s map from 1746. It’s a bit early for our time frame, but it was considered one of the most accurate and thorough plans of London for more than a century. It took Rocque a decade to survey and publish.” Gaynor clicked on an icon on the computer’s desktop and navigated to a screen covered in black-and-white boxes. “We can zoom into each square for a close-up of the streets, or simply type in a street name. So let’s type in Bear Alley, since that’s the street mentioned in the hospital note.”

She hit Enter, and immediately the map jumped to the only Bear Alley on the map. “To orient ourselves,” she explained, moving the map around, “let’s look at the surrounding area. St. Paul’s Cathedral is over here to the east, and the river’s down here to the south. Does this seem to be the same general area where you went today?”

I frowned, not feeling confident. The map was more than two hundred and fifty years old. I read the surrounding street names and recognized none of them: Fleet Prison, Meal Yard, Fleet Market. “Um, I can’t be sure,” I said, feeling silly. “I’m not great with maps in general. I only remember Farringdon Street, the main road I was on.”

Gaynor clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Brilliant. So we can overlay a present-day map on this Rocque map fairly easily.” She pressed a few more buttons and instantly, a second map was displayed on top of the first one. “Farringdon Street,” she said, “runs right here. It’s called Fleet Market on the old map so, at some point, the name changed. No big surprise there.”