Dr. Bones and the Lost Love Letter by Emma Jameson

Author:Emma Jameson [Jameson, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyonnesse Books

* * *

WHITE’S GOUT PILLS

COOLEY’S TONIC BITTERS

WEDGE’S COUGH MIXTURE

WARNER’S TUSSO

* * *

as well as more general items inside:

* * *

TRUSSES

ELASTIC STOCKINGS

CRUTCHES

ENEMA SYRINGES

NURSERY ITEMS

SICK-ROOM REQUISITES

ARTIFICIAL LIMBS ORDERED & FITTED UPON REQUEST

* * *

“I still think we’re likely to humiliate ourselves,” Ben said, hesitating by the door. “If Mrs. Cobblepot is so certain he’s the author, why couldn’t she recognize his penmanship?

“Penmanship can change over the years.”

“I’ve never known Mr. Dwerryhouse to use so many grandiose words.”

“It might be a habit he’s abandoned, or one he reserves for the epistolary rather than the colloquial.”

“Are you sure you didn’t write it?”

“Mrs. Parry is watching from across the street. In!”

The twin bells above the door jingled as they entered. One of Mr. Dwerryhouse’s assistants, Miss Miller, waved from behind the counter as the other, Miss Trewin, sailed up to greet them.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Bones, Lady Juliet. How may I serve?”

Miss Miller and Miss Trewin, neither a day over nineteen, always addressed customers in that fashion, whether that customer was an absolute stranger passing through Birdswing or a fellow villager they’d known from birth. They wore navy blue uniforms with starched white collars, kept their faces free of makeup, and pinned their hair up severely, like nurses.

“We’d like a word with Mr. Dwerryhouse. Is he free?” Ben asked.

“No, Doctor. He’s in the dispensary.” Miss Trewin indicated the pass-through window between the sales floor and the laboratory. “Would you care for a soft drink while you wait? We just got in a crate of Iron Brew from Falkirk. It might be our last.”

Her caution wasn’t merely a sales technique. Soft drinks relied on sugar and other ingredients that were rationed or due to be rationed. Soon beloved products like Iron Brew, Scotland’s “second national drink” (after whiskey), might become scarce or disappear completely until war’s end.

Ben glanced at Juliet to gauge her interest in a soft drink. It was a little courtesy she appreciated. When she and Ethan had walked out together, he’d ordered everything for her—cocktails, entrees, desserts—in a knowing tone that suggested he understood her desires better than she did. It wasn’t that Ben never took control; she couldn’t imagine bothering with a man who didn’t want his hands on the wheel at least half the time. It was that Ben’s ego was healthy enough to sustain itself without requiring him to dictate where others would clearly prefer to choose for themselves. Smiling, she shook her head.

“No, thank you,” Ben told Miss Trewin. “We’ll have a look at what’s on offer.”

As he studied a rack of proprietary elixirs, Juliet drifted over to Mr. Dwerryhouse’s consulting room. It was the heart of his operation, a little office where his customers might feel at home. Its desk bore a leather blotter, brass lamp, and two of the chemist’s best-known accoutrements, the mortar and pestle and the scale. Behind the desk hung his diploma from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, received in 1909. On his sign and letterhead, he always went by A. C. Dwerryhouse; only the diploma revealed his given name, Augustus Caesar Dwerryhouse.

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