Chapter 17

They returned to the market, where Saffron marched up to the first spice vendor she saw. Jar held up, she asked, "I would like to buy more of this herb."

The vendor squinted at her, making her already narrow eyes almost disappear into her layers of wrinkles.

Saffron repeated herself, and the woman waved her hand for the jar. She opened it, sniffed it, then shook her head. "Grigory." She pointed to another cart.

They thanked her and went to Grigory's cart. He was a thin, middle-aged man, his gaunt cheeks ruddy and his gray eyes sharp under a swath of black hair sticking out from beneath a worn cap. He'd seen the other vendor point to him and watched them approach.

"Good morning," Saffron said. She held up the jar. "I would like to buy more of that."

He beckoned for it and stared at its contents. He then looked her up and down in a rather offensive way. In heavily accented English, he said, "What you want it for?"

"For my own reasons," she replied. "Have you any?"

"Is for milk," he said, looking between her and Alexander now with the same sort of rude speculation. When Saffron merely looked at him blankly, he held his hands out in front of his chest with cupped hands. "Milk for baby."

"Oh," Saffron gasped, face flaming. Next to her, she thought she heard Alexander choke on a laugh. She shook her head vigorously. "Not for me. For my, er, grandfather."

"Oh," repeated the man, nodding. "Grandfather. He has pain?"

Saffron nodded, relieved. "Yes."

Grigory knelt behind his cart, sorting through crates. "Hands? Feet?"

"Er, both," Saffron said.

Grigory returned with a burlap sack. He waved for the jar, and Saffron shook her head. She had to return this jar to the flat for Inspector Green to find later. "I need a new jar."

Grigory grunted and stooped down again, returning with another jar. He scooped it into the sack, coming out with it brimming with dried flowers and leaves.

He sealed it, then handed it to her. She compared the two containers.

It was clear they held the same dried plant. The bits of faded magenta petals mixed with olive-green leaves and stems matched. "Thank you. What is it called?"

Grigory replied with a word in what she guessed was Russian, but she would have had no hope of repeating it, let alone writing it down. "Do you know the name in English?"

He screwed up his face in thought. "No."

"What about this one?" Alexander handed Grigory the next jar, and he frowned at it.

He shook it like the first vendor had, then opened the jar to sniff it. "Ah," he said, nodding, "Oreshnik. I have this."

"What does it do?" Saffron asked as he scooped dried leaves into a new jar.

"Help with pain," he said, patting his belly. "Mix with medovyy." He waved a hand to another vendor who had a number of amber-colored jars sitting on his cart.

The vendor's sign was written in Cyrillic, but from the bee drawn on the sign, Saffron could guess his ware. "Honey?"

"Yes, yes, honey," Grigory said with a grim sort of smile. "It for pain." He waved his hands.

That was the second time he'd mentioned pain in the hands. Perhaps Petrov had suffered from rheumatism, in addition to ailments of the kidney and liver. "Rheumatism?"

Grigory shrugged, but then brightened. He barked something at a young man with a minuscule cigarette between his thin lips loping down the center of the lane. He rolled his eyes and swaggered over. He answered Grigory in an insolent tone, and when Grigory nodded to Saffron and Alexander, he said flatly, "How I can help you?"

"We want to know what this herb is used for," Alexander explained.

"And what it's called in English," Saffron added.

The young man consulted Grigory for a moment before saying, "It is leaves from Oreshnik tree. We do not know the English name. You mix with honey and drink like tea. It helps with pain of the stomach, and pain in the hands or joints. It is for old people." He surveyed Saffron doubtfully.

Grigory added something in Russian, and the young man nodded, saying, "He says it is also good for thin blood."

"Thin blood?" Saffron repeated, perplexed.

"For anemia," Alexander said, accepting the jar from Grigory. "I see. Thank you."

Before the young man departed, Saffron pulled out the photograph of Petrov. "Did you sell herbs to this man?"

Grigory nodded slowly, looking from the photograph to Saffron with suspicion, but said nothing. The young man flicked away the butt of his cigarette.

Saffron paid Grigory for the herbs and the jars, and offered a further coin to the young man, who took it without compunction, and she and Alexander set off back to Petrov's flat. Saffron took samples from the jars before replacing them.

When they returned to the main road across from the train tracks, Alexander asked, "Off to the library?"

The library would possibly supply answers, but it might take weeks to find the correct plants to match the dried flower's characteristics or Grigory's descriptions. There was an alternative that would likely get her the answers they needed faster, and she really didn't like it.

"No," she sighed. "Off to see Dr. Aster."

A note was stuck in Saffron's office door when they returned. Color rose in her cheeks as her eyes flicked over the words.

"Good news?" Alexander asked mildly.

She shook her head, tucking the note into her coat pocket. "Just need to return a telephone call."

That enigmatic statement did nothing to abate his curiosity. She darted into her office to drop off her things, then returned with her notebook and a file. "Will you give me the second jar, the one with the Oreshnik leaves?"

He passed it to her. She held it up, squinting at the broken shapes of the leaves as she'd done several times during the journey back to the university. "If you'll wait in your office, I'll just nip up to Dr. Aster's and see if he can tell me anything."

"What are you going to tell him it's for?"

She shrugged. "I'll come up with something."

Uncertainty swirled in his mind as she vanished up the stairs. She was putting her position at risk again, taking Aster clues. Aster would be curious why she was looking into something so unrelated to her own work.

His thoughts stopped at the sight of a paper jammed into his own door. His right hand shook as he tugged it loose and opened it.

Adrian had been summoned to the police station again. Considering the last time he'd been summoned there his brother had nearly been arrested for attacking one of the bobbies for antagonizing him, Alexander needed to get there as soon as possible. Saffron's clues would have to wait.

Ferrand had never asked him for Saffron's office key back after Alexander had used it to raid her files for information about how to manage her cuttings and seedlings, so he used it to deposit the other jar on her desk before taking himself off to the police station.

Alexander's memories of the police station hadn't been fond before his brother had been brought there, and now the crowded, dim space was one of his least favorite places in the city. The disorganization alone would have been enough to make his skin crawl, but entering the station now, he wanted to burn the place down. Bobbies and officers eyed him when he walked in, doubtless both because he resembled his brother and because the last time he'd visited the station, he too had been on the belligerent side of irritated. He was not proud of it, but nor would he back down when he was Adrian's only defense. He hadn't even had time to contact the solicitors Mr. Feyzi had recommended.

Just as Alexander started toward the desk sergeant, a cool voice said, "Mr. Ashton."

Alexander turned to the man at his side with dread pooling in his stomach. "Inspector Green."

The older man raised a hand in the direction Alexander knew his office was in. "I'd like a moment of your time."

But rather than guiding Alexander to his office, Inspector Green took him to a small room with a pair of chairs on either side of a scuffed table. Alexander forced himself through the door and into the seat.

"Why am I being questioned?" Alexander asked the moment the door closed.

Inspector Green sat opposite him at the table. "We've had some new information regarding the Petrov case." He paused, giving Alexander the chance to ask what it was, but Alexander merely stared at him. He pulled his notebook from his pocket and flipped a few pages. "For the record, please state your name and address."

Alexander did so.

"Your brother is staying with you at your flat."

"Until you tell him he is free to leave London," Alexander said, wanting to emphasize that his brother was following Inspector Green's directive to stay in the city.

"I see."

The inspector's eyes rose to his, locking him in a stare that was neither eager nor bored. It was the look of a man with an extremely good hand of cards and the means to mask his anticipation of victory. It raised Alexander's hackles.

And with the coolness of a man setting an ace on the table, Inspector Green said, "Tell me about your brother's involvement in the royalist political movement during the war."