Death in the Valley of Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page A

pleasurable life has been denied me. Though, on second thoughts, I believe I would hate to idle away meaningless days uttering silly oaths and sniffing snuff.”
    She barked a humourless laugh. “So there’s mere to you than meets the eye.”
    “So it would appear. Now, let me fetch you some restorative physick. Believe me, it will be of help to you throughout the days that lie ahead.”
    Jocasta seemed suddenly drained of energy. “Oh, very well. It would be impossible for anything to make me feel more wretched than I do now.”
    She closed her eyes and John hurried from the room and upstairs to a small cupboard in his bedroom in which he kept his pills and physicks. There he poured some powdered Feverfew into a glass, added some Oxymel and, taking the glass downstairs, mixed the whole with white wine.
    “Here,” he said, handing the concoction to Mrs. Rayner, “this should help you.”
    She eyed it with suspicion, looking extraordinarily like her father as she did so. “What is it?”
    “A mixture to relieve melancholy and heaviness of spirits. If you send a servant to my shop in Shug Lane tomorrow I’ll prepare some bottles for you.”
    She appeared to be finally reassured that John was actually what he claimed to be and downed the glassful in one deep swallow, then pulled a face.
    “It has a bitter aftertaste.”
    “Things that are good for you often do,” he answered wryly.
    She smiled for the first time, looking quite attractive in her bony way. “A parallel with life, perhaps.”
    “Indeed.” He took a seat opposite hers. “About these papers. Where did you say they were found?”
    “In my father’s coach. He had left the house and was just stepping inside when two robbers came out of the shadows and set about him.”
    “They were definitely thieves?”
    Jocasta shot him a penetrating look. “What do you mean?”
    “Did they rob him of his money and jewels or merely attack him?”
    She frowned. “The watch disturbed them and they ran away, leaving him to die in the street.”
    “So nothing was actually stolen?”
    “No.”
    The Apothecary looked thoughtful. “I wonder…”
    “What?”
    “Whether these men were actually hired assassins and theft was not their motive at all.”
    Jocasta Rayner looked utterly astonished. “But why? Why should anyone want to hurt my father? The very idea is beyond comprehension.”
    So she knows nothing of the Shadow, John realised. Aidan Fenchurch had confided none of his troubles to his children.
    He looked vague. “One can never be sure of these things. However good a man one can never rule out the possibility of a jealous business rival or someone who imagines themselves slighted. Hardly anyone goes through life without upsetting somebody at some stage.”
    Jocasta nodded. “I suppose you’re right. But personally I don’t believe it. As far as I am concerned - and I am sure that I speak for the rest of the family as well - my father was killed by two footpads, chosen at random.”
    A slight colour had come into her cheeks as a result of the physick and she accepted the brandy that John now offered her. After a moment’s silence, Jocasta said, “Mr. Rawlings…”
    “Yes?”
    “What was in those papers and why should my father pick you to give them to? Have you known him for some while in fact?”
    The Apothecary weighed the situation carefully. To reveal everything about Ariadne Bussell to a daughter so recently and so brutally bereaved would be the height of cruelty. On the other hand, in view of the investigation that was about to start, most of the truth, if not all of it, would be bound to come out. He decided to be diplomatic.
    “I haven’t read them, of course, as you have only just now delivered them to me, but I have reason to believe that they might contain information of a nature very personal to your late father.”
    Jocasta looked immensely puzzled. “But why should he give them to you?”
    John decided on a half-truth. “He came