“An apothecary,” continued the woman, more helpfully, “is something like a doctor and something like a pharmacist. For years Dr Flammarion worked at the Colophon Clinic, just outside town, before coming here to treat the Knights. He’s been using a special medicine, but they just keep getting worse.”
“That must have been very upsetting for Miss Knight,” I said.
Zada and Zora looked very sad. “It made Miss Knight very lonely,” one of them said. “It is a lonely feeling when someone you care about becomes a stranger.”
“So Miss Knight has no one caring for her,” Theodora said thoughtfully. The cinnamon rolls were the sort that is all curled up like a snail in its shell, and my chaperone had unraveled the roll before starting to eat it, so both of her hands were covered in icing and cinnamon. It was the wrong way to do it. She was also wrong about no one caring for Miss Knight. Zada and Zora were the ones who were beside themselves with worry. I leaned forward and looked first at Zada and then at Zora, or perhaps the other way around. And then, while my chaperone licked her fingers, I asked the question that is printed on the cover of this book.
It was the wrong question, both when I asked it and later, when I asked the question to a man wrapped in bandages. The right question in this case was “Why was she wearing an article of clothing she did not own?” but this is not an account of times when I asked the right questions, much as I wish it were.
“Miss Knight was with us yesterday morning,” one of the women said, using her apron to dab at her eyes. “She was sitting right where you are sitting now, having her usual breakfast of Schoenberg Cereal. Then she spent some time in her room before going out to meet a friend.”
“Who was this friend?” I asked.
“She didn’t say. She just drove off, and she hasn’t come back.”
“She’s old enough to drive?”
“Yes, she got her license a few months ago, and her parents bought her a shiny new Dilemma.”
“That’s a nice automobile,” I said. The Dilemma was one of the fanciest automobiles manufactured. It was claimed that you could drive a Dilemma through the wall of a building and emerge without a dent or scratch, although the building might collapse.
“Mr and Mrs Knight give their daughter whatever she wants,” the aproned woman said. “New clothes, a new car, and all sorts of equipment for her experiments.”
“Experiments?”
“Miss Knight is a brilliant chemist,” Zada or Zora said proudly. “She often stays up all night working on experiments in her bedroom.”
“I imagine she learned that from watching you cook,” I said. “This cinnamon roll is the best I have ever tasted.”
Complimenting someone in an exaggerated way is known as flattery, and flattery will generally get you anything you want, but Zada and Zora were too worried to offer me a second pastry. “She probably inherited her abilities from her grandmother,” the woman said. “Ingrid Nummet Knight founded Ink Inc. when she was a young scientist, after years of experimenting with many different inks from many different creatures. Before long Ink Inc. made the Knights the wealthiest family in town. But those days are over. Ink Inc. is almost finished, and so is the town. That’s why we’re leaving Stain’d-by-the-Sea.”
“When are you leaving?” I asked.
“Whenever the Knights give the word.”
“Even if Miss Knight doesn’t come back?”
“What can we do?” asked the other woman sadly. “We’re only the servants.”
“Then make me some tea,” said an eager voice from the doorway. The bright kitchen seemed to grow darker as Dr Flammarion strolled into the room, took a cinnamon roll without asking, and sat down loudly.
“We were talking about Miss Knight,” one woman said quietly.
“Very worrisome,” the apothecary agreed, with his mouth full. “But at least her parents are resting comfortably. They were shocked to hear of the disappearance. I gave them an extra injection of medicine so that they might pass the afternoon in a comfortable state of unhurried delirium.”
“What medicine is it, Doctor?” I asked.
Dr Flammarion frowned at me. “You’re a curious young man,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Dr Flammarion,” Theodora said. She had finished her cinnamon roll and was wiping her fingers on the photograph of the missing girl. “My apprentice has forgotten his manners.”
“It’s quite all right,” Dr Flammarion said. “Curiosity tends to get little boys into trouble, but he’ll learn that soon enough for himself.” He offered me his nasty smile like a bad gift, and then said quickly, “The medicine I gave them is called Beekabackabooka.”
I have never been to medical school and am never quite sure how to spell the word “aspirin,” but I still knew that Beekabackabooka is not a medicine of any kind. It didn’t matter. Even without his revealing himself to be a liar, I knew there was something suspicious about Dr Flammarion, and even without his telling me, I knew the medicine he was giving the Knights was laudanum. I recognized the smell from an incident some weeks earlier, when people had tried to sneak some into my tea. This incident is described in my account of the first wrong question, on the rare chance you have access to, or interest in, such a report.
“It must be difficult to care for Mr and Mrs Knight all by yourself,” I said, and looked him in the eye. He blinked behind his glasses, and his beard tried harder to flee from his nasty smile.
“I’m not quite all by myself, young man,” he told me. “I have a nurse who is good with a knife.”
Theodora stood up. “I want to conduct a thorough search of the scene of the crime,” she said.
“What crime?” Dr Flammarion said.
“What scene?” I asked.
“It seems likely a terrible crime has been committed,” Theodora said firmly, with no thought to how much that would upset the two women who cared for Miss Knight.
“As the Knight family’s private apothecary, I must say that I’m not sure a crime has been committed at all. Miss Knight likely just ran away, as young girls often do.”
The two servants looked at each other in frustration. “She wouldn’t have run away,” one of them said, “not without leaving a note.”
“Who knows what a wealthy young girl will do?” Dr Flammarion said with a smooth shrug. “In any case, I told Zada it was not worth alarming the police.”
“Zora,” she corrected him sharply.
“I’m sorry, Zora,” Dr Flammarion said with a little bow that indicated he was not sorry at all.
“I’m Zada,” she corrected him again, “but it’s true. Dr Flammarion stopped Zora from calling the police and suggested we call you instead.”
“The good doctor made a good choice,” Theodora said in a tone of voice she probably thought was reassuring, and then stood up and made a dramatic gesture. “Nevertheless, I would like to search the place Miss Knight was last seen. Take me to her bedroom!”
There was no arguing with S. Theodora Markson when she began to gesture dramatically, so I followed my chaperone as she followed Zada and Zora through the packed-up house, with Dr Flammarion close behind me, his breath as unpleasant as the rest of him. Soon we were in a room I recognized from the photograph, which Theodora put down on a brand-new desk in order to rifle through the clothing in the closet. There was no sense in it. This was not the place Miss Knight was last seen. It was simply the place Zada and Zora had seen her last. The girl had driven off in a fancy automobile. It was likely someone else had seen her afterward.
“This room isn’t packed