Page 16 of A Botanist’s Guide to Society and Secrets

Elizabeth, her anger toward Saffron forgotten, found Demien Petrov’s file after two days of searching the records room with Colin’s help, she explained enthusiastically upon presenting Saffron with a piece of paper in her perfectly executed typewriting. She had gotten his last known address as well as quite a bit of other information, including a photograph of the man.

“Eliza!” Saffron gasped, taking the black-and-white photograph in her hand. “You can’t just take this!”

“I’ll return it on Monday,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not like anyone will miss it. I thought you might like to know what he looked like.” She sighed, inching forward on the couch they shared in the parlor to look at Petrov. “I can see the pain of his losses so clearly in his eyes.”

Saffron had to agree. Adrian had described him as having a face like concrete, and he was rather lined and aged-looking in this photo, taken in 1919 when he’d immigrated, but there was softness in his shadowed gaze. Saffron felt for him having run from his homeland to start anew. He’d been sixty-one when he’d arrived in England, and nearly sixty-five when he’d died. He’d been married, but his wife had died young and he’d never remarried. He’d had no known children and no family in England. He’d lived a long life, but Saffron wasn’t certain it had been a good one. It certainly hadn’t ended well.

It put a pall on her mood the next morning when she met Alexander at the bus stop nearest her flat. Any sense of adventure from their planning had dissipated, leaving her unsure of their course of action. The prospect of looking through Petrov’s things felt like an invasion of privacy after the reminder that he was no longer a living, breathing person. Looking at her father’s papers had had a similar effect; she’d learned her father had been in communication with Dr. Calderbrook just before his deployment to France, rejecting the offer to join Kew. The letter had alluded to a private research project her father believed would soon bear fruit. Seeing her father’s handwriting spike with telltale excitement had given her a strange, out-of-body feeling, as if she watched him write it. She could so clearly imagine him pushing his eyeglasses up on his forehead as he reread his words.

“Harpenden is rather far from Tottenham,” Alexander said, recalling her to her task for the day. “I looked at the train timetables; it would have taken Petrov at least an hour to travel from there each day.”

She’d looked at the map herself; Petrov had lived in Tottenham, north of London proper. Harpenden was also north of London, but the train and bus lines would have taken him through the city to get there. “I wonder why he would live so far away from the lab.”

Eventually, the neighborhoods became less crowded, the buildings alternating between new and old the further from the Thames they went. They switched from bus to tram, and, at long last, they emerged onto a rather plain-looking street.

Saffron didn’t know what to expect when they set out on the journey, but what she found was a busy neighborhood street opposite the train tracks. The day was overcast and promised rain, but that didn’t stop women from hanging their laundry in the tiny yards, or a handful of young men standing around smoking as they chatted at the end of the street.

They passed one street, then another. Saffron resisted the urge to get out her map and examine it to assure herself they were headed in the right direction. Seeing her craning her neck a bit to see what street came next, Alexander caught up her arm and threaded it through his own. “You will draw the wrong sort of attention doing that,” he muttered.

“I know,” she said plaintively. “I just want to know we’re not wandering around, missing it.”

“It’ll be just up here.”

“Did you memorize the map?” That would be a very Alexander thing to do. He was so exasperatingly competent and assured, it was both extremely annoying and extremely attractive, neither of which was useful when she was anxious about their housebreaking.

“Yes,” he said, “but I can also see what we’re looking for.”

Saffron followed his nod toward carts stationed at the end of the next street. As they grew near, she could make out the hum of conversation, laughter, arguing, and calls for customers.

The street sign affixed to the building announced Durban Street, the one Saffron had been searching for. The market seemed to spill out of the street, a colorful display of produce, clothing, books, and an assortment of housewares.

Women with their hair draped in colorful patterned scarves went from cart to cart. In the small gardens of the houses before which the market was set up, older men sat across chessboards with steaming cups of tea. Children shrieked as they ran, hopping over the short fences and rubbish bins and anything else in their way.

“I feel as if they’ve just picked up their Russian neighborhood and set it down in England,” she said to Alexander after watching a boy no older than six insist on carrying an enormous bag of produce for his mother, or that was Saffron’s guess, since their conversation had not been in English.

Alexander surveyed the street thoughtfully. “There’s a lot of talk in the papers about the émigré population and their plans for the future. Some think this is temporary, that when things settle down and order is restored to Russia, they’ll just go home. I’ve known a few people in similar situations who feel there’s no point in learning to be English. Or they just don’t want to.”

“Your family?” Saffron asked.

“Some of them. A few have gone back to Greece, but most have stayed and plan not to leave again. Greece has had troubles of its own.”

One thing that struck her, as Alexander was beckoned from her side by an old fruit vendor, was that the whitewash of the buildings was gray, the linens hanging from the line were gray. Alexander’s shirt collar was brilliant by comparison. Yet the place was not drab; it was vivid with color and movement and life. It might not look particularly familiar—particularly English—but it was life all the same. It was full of pockets of jolly conversation and good-natured arguments between neighbors, the scents of cooking food, cigarette and pipe smoke, and spices.

Alexander returned to her side with a pair of oranges. He began peeling one and offered her a piece. She took it, rather surprised to be eating on the street, but it was delicious.

They took their time, matching the pace of other shoppers, taking in the shapes and colors of the produce, sacks of dried herbs and ground spices, the stacks of secondhand books in Russian and other eastern European languages.

The line of carts stopped abruptly in the middle of the street, and it became quieter, though life still puttered on. Children played and neighbors chatted over stout garden walls. Saffron and Alexander garnered some curious looks, but no one approached them.

They reached the house marked with Petrov’s address. Saffron walked right up and knocked, hoping that her prepared story would work.

An old woman opened the door. She looked between Saffron and Alexander, wispy white eyebrows raising as she said, “Da?”

It hadn’t occurred to her that they might need to be able to communicate with a person who didn’t speak English. That was a foolish oversight. Saffron put on a sad smile and offered the woman the photograph of Petrov from Elizabeth’s file. She said, “I come from Mr. Petrov’s work. I wish to see his rooms to collect some of his equipment.”

Alexander gave her a sidelong look as if uncertain about the bluntness of her plan.

The woman took the photograph and frowned down at it. She sighed heavily and returned the photograph to Saffron. She turned and began hobbling deeper into the house.

She had not shut the door in their faces, and that was a victory in Saffron’s book. They followed her inside.

Demian Petrov’s rooms consisted of a parlor and a bedroom. The kitchen and bathroom were shared by a handful of others, not uncommon for a boardinghouse. Streaks of dust marked the paths of hands over mismatched bookshelves stacked high with academic texts in English, Russian, Polish, and French. A teacup stained with brackish liquid sat on the single small table. Saffron leaned over it and caught a sickly sweet scent.

“I’ll check the bedroom,” Saffron said, and Alexander volunteered to look around the parlor.

The first thing she noticed in the bedroom was the only movement in the place: a rubbish bin with flies buzzing around it.

Dreading what she would find inside, Saffron peered into the bin, but it turned out to be only fruit peels and cores. That explained the vaguely fruity scent which accompanied the nameless scent a place took on after a person had lived there for a long time.

The rest of the simple bedroom consisted of an iron bed frame, the bed made rather messily with worn quilts, a bedside table, and a wardrobe.

The table at the bedside was a rickety thing with a drawer, in which sat a Bible, recognizable though the characters were Cyrillic. She thumbed through the pages until she came across a trio of photographs. One was an old-fashioned portrait of a somber woman, dated May 5th, 1884. Saffron guessed that if Elizabeth checked Petrov’s file more carefully, she’d find Petrov was married on or near that date, for the woman held flowers.

The other two photographs were not photographs, she saw on closer inspection. One was a postcard from Russia depicting a city on the water. The other was a postcard of Brighton, the word typed neatly in the corner of a photograph of the famous pier. Neither had been posted or written on.

Saffron puzzled at the postcards, wondering what was so important about these two specific places.

“Saffron,” Alexander called, “you’ll want to see this.”

She replaced the photographs and the Bible in the drawer and returned to the parlor.

Alexander had turned on the single lamp standing between two shelves. He stood next to the largest bookshelf, a solid piece with a cabinet at the bottom. It was open, and Alexander crouched to point out what was within.

She crouched next to him and peered inside. “A spirit lamp!”

Carefully, she reached inside the cabinet to lift out the small glass bottle. The tip of the wick was blackened, and it still carried a burnt smell. She loosened the cork surrounding the wick to get a whiff of what was inside and caught the heady scent of strong alcohol. She coughed lightly.

“Was he doing experiments here?” Alexander asked, looking deeper into the cabinet.

“Let’s find out,” Saffron replied. The interior of the cabinet was too dark to make much out. She offered him the spirit lamp. “Light this?”

He stood, going to another of the shelves with drawers and withdrew a pack of matches. She’d forgotten he didn’t smoke, unlike Lee who was ever ready with a light.

With the spirit lamp lit, the contents of the cabinet were revealed. More laboratory equipment lay within.

Heart pounding, Saffron began carefully bringing each piece out. A weighted stand with an adjustable arm, somewhat rusty. A glass beaker, the neck of which would fit into the stand, tinted brown around the bottom, came out next. Finally, two glass jars containing dried leaves.

She carefully pried the lid of the first container off and took a hesitant sniff.

“He used it to make tea!” Saffron exclaimed, unexpectedly delighted.

“Bit elaborate,” Alexander said, accepting the container to smell its contents. “It’s not tea.”

“No, but it is definitely herbal. And we know well the dangers of making tea from things we ought not to. What if these were what made him ill?” She held up the two jars.

“It is possible,” he said cautiously. “But how could you prove it?”

“We figure out what’s in the jars, of course. And I know just where to start.”