Outside, Ben was stroking the mane of his new friend Fleet. When Fleet’s owner came out of the house, he was different. Greyer. Older.
‘Thank you,’ he said distractedly as he took the reins.
It occurred to the boy that he might not find out what all this had been in aid of – the arrival of the interesting stranger in the street, the victory that had won him the blazing marble, the mysterious visit to Mrs Armstrong in Mrs Eavis’s bad house.
With one foot in the stirrup, the man halted and things took a more hopeful turn. ‘Do you know the little girl from this house?’
‘Alice? They don’t come out much, and Alice follows behind her mother, half hiding, for she is the timid sort and pulls her mother’s skirt over her face if she thinks somebody might be looking at her, but I have seen her peeking out once or twice.’
‘How old would you say she was?’
‘About four.’
Armstrong nodded and frowned sadly. Ben felt the presence of something complicated in the air, something beyond his understanding.
‘When did you last see her?’
‘Yesterday, at the end of the afternoon.’
‘Where was that?’
‘Up by Mr Gregory’s shop. She came out with her mother and they went up the lane.’
‘What kind of shop is Mr Gregory’s?’
‘The apothecary’s.’
‘Was she carrying something in her hand?’
Ben reflected. ‘Something wrapped up.’
‘What kind of size?’
He gestured to indicate and Armstrong understood it was something the size of the bottle he had picked up in the room and now had in his pocket.
‘And the lane. Where does it go?’
‘Nowhere, really.’
‘It must go somewhere.’
‘Nowhere ’cept the river.’
Armstrong said nothing. He pictured the poor young woman entering the apothecary’s to buy the bottle of poison, then taking the lane that led to the river.
‘Did you see them return?’
‘No.’
‘Or – perhaps Mrs Armstrong returned alone?’
‘I had gone in by then to eat the profits.’
Ben was perplexed. He had the feeling that an event of significance was taking place, but he did not know what it could be. He looked at Armstrong to see whether he had been useful to him or not. Whatever it was that was happening, he felt he would like to be part of it, alongside this man who fed apples to his handsome horse and kept marbles in his pocket and looked almost frightening but had a voice full of kindness. But the dark man with the fine horse did not look at all happy and Ben felt disappointed.
‘Perhaps you would show me the way to the apothecary’s, Ben?’
‘I will.’
As they walked, the man seemed lost in thought and Ben, though he didn’t realize he was doing it, must have been thinking too, for something in the man’s sombre face told him the drama they were involved in was a bleak one.
They came to a small, low building, made of brick, with a small, dingy window, above which someone had painted the word Apothecary, but so long ago that it was now faded. They entered and the man at the counter looked up. He was slightly built with a wispy beard. He registered the newcomer with alarm, then saw Ben and was reassured.
‘How can I help you?’
‘It’s about this.’
The man barely glanced at the bottle. ‘A refill, is it?’
‘I don’t want more of it. It would be better for everyone if there had been rather less.’
The apothecary cast a rapid and uncertain glance at Armstrong, but did not respond to his implication.
Armstrong removed the stopper and held it under the man’s nose. There was something under a quarter of a bottle left. Enough to give off an aroma that rose aggressively from the back of the nostrils into the brain. You didn’t need to know what it was to be wary. The smell told you to beware.
The apothecary now looked ill at ease.
‘You remember selling it?’
‘I sell all sorts. People want this’ – he nodded at the bottle that Armstrong had placed on the table – ‘for all kinds of reasons.’
‘Such as?’
The man shrugged. ‘Greenfly …’
‘Greenfly? In December?’
He turned falsely innocent eyes on Armstrong. ‘You didn’t say December.’
‘Of course I mean December. You sold this to a young woman yesterday.’
The apothecary’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. ‘You are a friend of this young woman, are you? Not that I remember any young woman. Not in particular. Young women come and go. They want all kinds of things. For all kinds of reasons. You are not her father, I think …’ He paused and, when Armstrong failed to answer, went on with sly emphasis, ‘Her protector, then?’
Armstrong was the gentlest of men, but he knew how to seem otherwise when it served him. He turned a certain look on the apothecary and the man suddenly quailed.
‘What is it you want?’
‘Information.’
‘Ask away.’
‘Was the child with her?’
‘The little girl?’ He seemed surprised. ‘Yes.’
‘Where did they go when they left you?’
He gestured.
‘Towards the river?’
The man shrugged. ‘How am I to know where they were going?’
Armstrong’s voice was mild, but there was no mistaking the menace in it. ‘A defenceless young mother comes to you, bringing her small child with her, buys poison, and you don’t think to ask yourself where she is going next? What she plans to do? Do you never consider the result of your making a miserable few pence on such a purchase?’
‘Sir, if an unknown woman is in trouble, whose job is it to get her out of it? Mine? Or the one who got her into it in the first place? If she is something to you, Mr … Mr whoever-you-are, that’s where you should address your questions. Go to the one who ruined her and abandoned her. That’s where you’ll find the responsibility lies for what happened next! Not that I know what happened. I’m nothing but a man who must make a living, and that’s what I do.’
‘Selling poison so that girls with no one in the world to help them can kill the greenfly on their December roses?’
The apothecary had the grace to look discomfited, but whether it was guilt or just the fear that Armstrong was out to make trouble for him was hard to tell.
‘There is no law requiring me to know the seasons of horticultural pests.’
‘Where next, Sir?’ Ben asked hopefully, when they were outside again.
‘I think I’m done here. For today, anyway. Let’s go up to the river.’
As they went, Ben’s stride grew slow and he began to waver on his feet. Coming to the river, Armstrong glanced to see where the boy had got to and saw him leaning against a tree trunk, his face green.
‘What is it, Ben?’
Ben wept. ‘Sir, I’m sorry, Sir, I ate some of the green apple you gave me for Fleet, Sir, and now my belly’s aching and churning …’
‘They’re sour, those apples. No wonder. What have you eaten today?’
‘Nothing, Sir.’
‘No breakfast?’
The boy shook his head. Armstrong felt a surge of anger towards the butcher who failed to feed his children.
‘It’s the acid on an empty stomach.’ Armstrong unscrewed his hip flask. ‘Drink this.’
The boy drank and pulled a face. ‘That is truly horrible, Sir, it’s making me feel worse.’
‘That’s the idea. It’s nothing more sinister than cold tea. Finish it up.’
Ben tipped the flask and with a grimace swallowed the last of the tea. Then he was violently sick in the grass.