Opening
In 1791 London, hidden behind a false wall, Nella Clavinger dispenses poisons to women who have been wronged. In the present day, Caroline Parcewell arrives in London alone, her marriage blown apart by infidelity, and stumbles toward a new path that reconnects her to history—and to herself. Two timelines move in tandem, braided by secrets, betrayal, and the ways women seize power when the world denies it to them.
What Happens
Chapter 1: A Request at Daybreak
Before dawn in February 1791, Nella studies a letter from an unknown woman asking for a poison to kill her mistress’s husband. Her joints throb; a familiar unease pricks at her as she waits in the dark, secluded shop concealed by a false wall off a desolate alley. On the counter lies her calfskin register, its pages listing the names of women who come to her in whispers—and the men marked for death.
She thinks of the shop’s past: her mother’s open, healing practice, with entries for salves and tonics to ease women’s ailments. Nella’s own pages tell a different story—nightshade, arsenic, and other precise concoctions designed to end lives when men’s treachery leaves no other remedy. The pivot point is a Betrayal: a man named Frederick whose name never touches the register, but whose duplicity carves itself into Nella’s body as constant pain. Persuading herself her misgivings are only fatigue, she prepares to receive her client.
Chapter 2: London Alone
In the present, Caroline lands in London for what should have been her tenth-anniversary vacation with her husband, only now she travels alone. She thinks of the life she once wanted—British history, graduate study at Cambridge—and how she traded it for marriage and a safe job at her family’s farm. After uncovering texts and lies from James Parcewell, his pragmatism no longer feels steadying; it feels “stifling and subtly manipulative.”
With her period late and dread edging out hope, she ducks into a pub for a drink. A stranger invites her to go mudlarking—scavenging the Thames for remnants of the past. She declines, then accepts after a pint, letting the spontaneity jolt her out of the life she has been living. The choice sparks the first flicker of Self-Discovery and Identity, a refusal to keep shrinking herself for a marriage that has already broken.
Chapter 3: The Girl in the Gray Gown
Nella’s client arrives, and surprise breaks over her like cold water: a twelve-year-old girl, Eliza Fanning, sent by her mistress, Mrs. Amwell, to fetch a poison. Poised and composed beyond her years, Eliza settles in over a cup of valerian tea, eyes bright with curiosity as she studies the dim, windowless room that exists for women alone—a principle of Female Solidarity and Empowerment Nella inherited from her mother.
Eliza asks direct, practical questions. She listens as Nella explains that men are never to cross this threshold and that the remedies here—unlike her mother’s—are meant to protect women in a world that will not. When Nella clarifies that the requested preparation will be lethal, Eliza’s reply is calm, almost cold: “Yes, miss.” With that, the girl steps squarely into Nella’s world of Secrets and Deception, unsettling the older woman’s instincts even as she intrigues her.
Chapter 4: An Inconsistency of Things
Caroline joins a mudlarking tour on the Thames led by Bachelor Alf, who teaches the group to scan the riverbed not for objects, but for breaks in patterns. As he speaks, Caroline replays how she found the messages on James’s phone—the mysterious “B,” the photo of black panties tucked into his office desk—and how his evasions unraveled under her questions. The river’s stink rises; her stomach turns.
She considers leaving, then stays, clutching this small act of defiance like a life raft. Alf’s guidance—“You are not searching for a thing so much as you are searching for an inconsistency of things”—echoes her own discovery: that a marriage can look whole until one jagged piece makes the entire picture collapse. The hunt binds her to the city’s layers and to The Power of the Past and History, suggesting the past might hand her something she didn’t know she needed.
Chapter 5: A Stained Legacy
Nella presents the poison: nux vomica, carefully injected into two large hen’s eggs and sealed with wax. She instructs Eliza on how to administer it and warns her not to watch the man die. She describes the convulsions, the choking—what the toxin will do—and reminds her that some pains are not meant to be witnessed.
Eliza’s shrewd questions cut cleanly, revealing the mind of a child already accustomed to adult secrets. Nella’s thoughts slide backward, to the days after her mother’s death when she fell for Frederick. His betrayal hardened her into someone who could kill; he became her first victim, and the shop’s purpose shifted toward Revenge and Justice. Eliza pays. Nella hands her a small glass jar etched with a bear—an unspoken sign of the source—then watches as the girl draws a playful line through the soot on the wall, leaving a bright streak of stone. After the door closes, Nella opens the register and writes: “Thompson Amwell. Egg prep NV. 4 Feb 1791. On account of Ms. Eliza Fanning, aged twelve.”
Character Development
Three women begin in crisis or conviction and take their first decisive steps—some into darkness, some toward light.
- Nella Clavinger: Chronic pain and isolation shape a woman who turns her mother’s healing legacy into a covert operation that answers women’s injuries with deadly precision. Frederick’s betrayal calcifies into purpose; the register becomes both confession and chronicle.
- Caroline Parcewell: Reeling from James’s affair, she confronts how she set aside her love of history for a version of stability that erased her. Mudlarking becomes an act of reclamation—small, risky, and hers.
- Eliza Fanning: A child with a steady gaze and a hungry mind, she navigates adult schemes without flinching. Her composure hints at resilience—and at the moral danger of moving so fluidly through a lethal world.
Themes & Symbols
Secrets seep through both timelines, binding hidden rooms and hidden messages. The apothecary’s false wall and Nella’s register cloak illicit transactions just as Caroline’s marriage disguises rot. Betrayal ignites both plots—Frederick’s deception hardens Nella into an avenger, while James’s affair jolts Caroline awake—and each woman responds by seeking control inside structures designed to deny it.
Female solidarity quietly powers the narrative. Nella’s shop exists for women alone, a sanctuary where knowledge and aid pass hand to hand when public avenues fail. Across centuries, history becomes a lifeline: Caroline sifts the Thames for remnants and, in doing so, reconnects to the curiosity she abandoned. Symbols accumulate—Nella’s hidden apothecary as the architecture of secret female power, the register as a ledger of clandestine justice, and mudlarking as a metaphor for digging through silted-over selves to retrieve what still gleams.
Key Quotes
“You are not searching for a thing so much as you are searching for an inconsistency of things.”
Alf’s instruction reframes both Caroline’s mudlarking and her life: one odd piece—those messages, that photograph—exposes the truth. The line also mirrors the novel’s structure, inviting readers to scan two timelines for the breaks that reveal connection.
“Yes, miss.”
Eliza’s cool assent to a lethal plan collapses the boundary between childhood and adult culpability. The simplicity chills Nella, signaling that innocence has already been compromised.
“Stifling and subtly manipulative.”
Caroline’s reappraisal of James’s “pragmatism” captures the shift from romantic ideal to coercive reality. The phrase marks the moment she stops rationalizing and starts naming what has happened to her.
“Thompson Amwell. Egg prep NV. 4 Feb 1791. On account of Ms. Eliza Fanning, aged twelve.”
Nella’s register entry is both clinical and damning. The precision transforms a private conspiracy into a historical record, memorializing a girl’s role in a man’s death and the apothecary’s complicity.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters lay the novel’s scaffolding: a clandestine apothecary in 1791 and a disoriented historian in the present, each pushed into action by a man’s betrayal. The arrival of Eliza complicates the historical thread, forcing questions about agency, innocence, and the price of justice, while Caroline’s mudlarking sets her on a collision course with the past. Together, the openings seed the central mystery of the apothecary’s legacy and launch two intertwined journeys of self-reclamation that will show how what’s buried—whether in ledgers or river mud—refuses to stay hidden.