74 pages • 2 hours read
Sarah PennerThe Lost Apothecary
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 22-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary: “Eliza—February 10, 1791”
In the wake of the revelation of her mistake, Eliza watches Nella fix up the shop. Nella would rather “[strain] under the effort” (201) of tidying up on her own rather than allow Eliza to help. To Eliza, it seems that Nella is cleaning up the store as though she means to leave temporarily or permanently. Eliza is afflicted with guilt at the thought that “[her] mistake with the canister might expose countless women in the book” (202). As Nella cleans up, Eliza reads the book of magic that Tom Pepper gave her. She finds a spell recipe titled Tincture to Reverse Bad Fortune and believes that it could potentially aid her and Nella’s situation.
As she reviews the ingredients for this mixture, there is a knock at the shop door. It is Lady Clarence, “covered in loose black fabric [… and] a hood” (204). She has brought the incriminating jar, which she returns to Nella. Lady Clarence tells them that her maid left her post without first notifying her. As she leaves, she says that she is seeking a replacement for her departed maid and that the position is available to Eliza, should she want it. Nella lets Eliza stay the night but encourages her to visit Lady Clarence in the morning. Eliza silently decides to not accept Lady Clarence’s offer because she “did not trust her and her manner was cold” (206). She plans to pilfer ingredients from Nella’s shop to try the spell that will reverse their fortunes and “vanquish Mr. Amwell’s spirit” (206).
Chapter 23 Summary: “Nella—February 11, 1791”
In the morning Nella worries that her sickness has reached her lungs, as “a thick, bloody trickle in [her] throat” (207) had bothered her the previous day. Ironically, none of her medicinal brews help. She suspects that each poison she dispenses “[rots her] from the inside out” (207), with Lord Clarence’s murder hastening the decay. She summons her strength and goes to the market for a block of lard. Eliza is still in the shop. Nella tells the girl that she must leave, but Eliza says she has a headache and wants to rest a bit longer. Nella relents and allows her to stay.
On her way to the market, Nella spots an advertisement in The Thursday Bulletin announcing that the bailiff is searching for Lord Clarence’s murderer. From the article, Nella learns that Lady Clarence’s maid, who abruptly resigned from the estate, made a wax impression of the engraving on the jar that Eliza used for the fatal aphrodisiac. The maid took the impression to the authorities before leaving the city. As of now, authorities can only make out the B ley of the wax impression and the bear logo. The ad asks that the dispenser of the poison come forward and, in exchange for a measure of clemency, identify exactly who purchased it, thereby resolving the maid and Lady Clarence’s conflicting stories. Nella briefly considers closing the shop, locking the register inside it, and dying by suicide. But she decides against this course of action because she feels she must go back for Eliza, who she presumes is still at the shop.
When Nella gets back to the store, she finds Eliza “sat before numerous jars, bottles and crushed leaves of all colors, sorted into separate bowls” (213). Eliza claims that she’s working on some hot brews. Eliza assures Nella that she was as careful as she could be about choosing ingredients. Nella implores Eliza to leave the shop immediately without telling her of the bailiff’s advertisement, hoping that keeping the truth from Eliza will allow the girl plausible deniability. Eliza agrees to go, “[wrapping] her fingers around something [Nella] cannot see” (215) as she does. Nella, worried about the trouble they are in, does not question her about it.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Caroline—Present day, Wednesday”
At the coffee shop, Gaynor tells Caroline that the two 18th-century articles—from February 10 and 12 of 1791—she found were taken from a short-lived periodical known as The Thursday Bulletin. Gaynor notes that the maid of the Clarence estate brought a wax impression of one of the apothecary’s jars to authorities after the mysterious death of her master; the impression had the bear logo and three letters: B ley. Gaynor notes that this was only the “beginning of the end” (218) for the apothecary and points Caroline’s attention to the second article, cited February 12. Before Caroline can take a good look at it, she receives a call from James. James, through “haggard breathing” (218), says that he needs to go to the hospital. Caroline is strongly affected by the sound of James’s labored breathing, feeling very worried for him. Caroline makes to leave, and Gaynor hastily pushes the articles into her hands as she departs.
Caroline gets back to the hotel to find James in a fetal position on the bathroom floor, with blood in this mouth. Caroline calls the front desk so they can call an ambulance for her. While they wait, James tells her that he’d taken the eucalyptus oil she’d recommended for his cold that morning “like [he] would take DayQuil” (220): by ingesting it. Eucalyptus oil is only for topical application and is supremely toxic when ingested. The medics arrive, and as they are about to move James from the room, he falls unconscious; they agree to allow Caroline to accompany James to the hospital. As the group leaves the hotel room, one of the medics lets her know that there are two officers waiting at the hospital to ask her some questions. Caroline is horrified and confused by this, but the medic gestures toward her notebook. He points to a line she wrote while taking notes about the apothecary shop: “quantity of non-poisons needed to kill” (223).
Chapter 25 Summary: “Eliza—February 11, 1791”
Nella returns from the market sooner than expected. Just moments before Nella steps inside the shop, Eliza pours her newly mixed potion into two vials: a translucent blue vial and a rose-colored pink one. As a diversion for Nella, she pretends she was just working on some experimental hot brews. Eliza recognizes that Nella seems disturbed by something when she returns, but she does not know what. When Nella asks her to leave the shop this time, Eliza agrees. She is sure that she will not see Nella again. She has no intention of returning to the Amwell estate, as Nella suggests. Her tincture to reverse bad fortune “must cure for sixty-six minutes” (225) to be effective, and to ensure that the potion actually dispels Mr. Amwell’s ghost, she does not want to return to the Amwell house before it is ready. Instead, she goes to the Clarence estate out of curiosity, to view the “unseen place where Lord Clarence met his end” (226). She arrives and sees constables on the property. She pretends to inquire about a housemaid vacancy and gains access to the house.
Lady Clarence tells Eliza of the information printed in the Thursday Bulletin but also apprises her of some more details. After the image of the bear on the maid’s wax impression was printed in the paper, a man from St. James’s Square went to the authorities because he found a vial with the same logo under the bed of his recently deceased adult son (a death previously attributed to a natural fever). According to Lady Clarence, at least one other person has come forward with a similar vial and a similar story. Lady Clarence tells Eliza to go warn Nella, expressing regret at forcing Nella to make the aphrodisiac. Eliza leaves the Clarence estate to warn Nella, haunted by her mistake of using a jar stamped with Nella’s address.
At the shop, Eliza tells Nella about the other people who came forward with similar vials and stories, but Nella seems entirely calm. Eliza offers to bring Nella to the Amwell estate to hide, but Nella “already knows where [she’s] going” (232). Eliza believes Nella is going to safety and helps the woman with her coat as she prepares to leave. As the two prepare to exit, Eliza brings up something Nella said in a previous conversation about how if she had bled again, she might have stopped selling poisons long ago. Nella tells the girl about menstruation, and Eliza learns that her bleeding from a few days ago is a natural part of entering maturity. Stunned, Eliza “allows [herself] to consider the possibility” (233) that her bleeding had nothing to do with Mr. Amwell.
Chapters 22-25 Analysis
These chapters play host to the primary plot conflicts in Nella, Eliza, and Caroline’s stories, conflicts that dissect the nature of innocence. Readers are led first into these explorations by Eliza’s brewing of the Tincture to Reverse Bad Fortune, which she hopes will allow her to control—remove—the “sickness” that Mr. Amwell has visited upon her, as well as any lingering traces of his spirit at the Amwell estate. Eliza fixates on the brew’s cleansing potential and promise of expulsion. What this tincture offers her is a sort of return to innocence, a chance to step into a version of purity where, though Mr. Amwell’s murder cannot be undone, the stain of his vengeance can be erased. Since Eliza operates under the assumption that her period is retribution from Mr. Amwell, this brew has the added aim of returning her to a state of prepubescent “innocence” as well; she sees her period as both unnatural and punitive, echoing how menstruating bodies have been historically misunderstood or actively demonized. Nella also believes that her sickness is a physical manifestation of her guilt and that Lord Clarence’s murder has worsened her condition. In these chapters she understands herself to be the very embodiment of guilt and believes that dying by suicide will remove the single element that could condemn Eliza, and all the women in her register, to execution.
Though Nella explains menstruation as a natural process to Eliza, Eliza only considers the possibility that her bleeding had nothing to do with Mr. Amwell. This emphasizes a stubbornness in her character that mirrors Nella’s own unyielding nature (a nature evidenced by her commitment to her register, to protecting Eliza no matter what, and to her eventual plan to die by suicide). It also reveals how significantly Mr. Amwell’s patriarchal power has been compounded with the power of the mobile, persistent supernatural. While Eliza once only encountered him only at the Amwell estate, this supernatural vehicle has allowed him to become a haunting presence, making it difficult for Eliza to take Nella’s words as the unvarnished truth. This moment underscores Eliza’s terror as it underscores how deeply Mr. Amwell’s abuse and death have affected her.
Meanwhile, James’s consumption of the eucalyptus oil, and Caroline’s incriminating notes on volumes of nontoxic substances necessary to kill a person, call Caroline’s own innocence into question. This turn of events brings James and Caroline’s strained marriage under public scrutiny, the farthest cry from the privacy that Caroline sought to emotionally digest the state of their union. Additionally, by arranging these chapters so that Caroline’s encounter with guilt and innocence aligns with that of Nella and Eliza, Penner sparks a cross-century conversation on this topic of public scrutiny. Out of all three women, Caroline is the only one who has not played a hand in the murder of a man, yet she is the one who is definitively accused of poisoning by an authority figure. It seems the consequences of Nella’s actions, epitomized by the register that Eliza once believes “should be burned” (126), have reverberated through time, publicly damning the sort of scorned woman who might have sought Nella out. Eliza’s assessment of the register’s damning potential is validated even in the present.
