“We’re trying to find someone who lives in Spitalfields,” Elijah said, but Knabby was already through the door to the courtyard.
It wasn’t nearly as lively this afternoon. “Cully’s sleeping,” Knabby announced. “Sophisba’s husband took her away again, and Mrs. Nibble went to stay with her sister, as has a stomach ulcer.”
After greeting everyone in the circle, Elijah said, “We’re trying to find Ponder Stubbins, who lives in Spitalfields and raises flowers. Does anyone know him?”
There was a moment of silence. Then Waxy said, “’Course it is the duke.” But it was clearly a struggle between Spitalfields loyalty and glassworks loyalty.
“We don’t mean him any harm,” Jemma put in. “We only want to find a doctor who buys his flowers.”
“Oh,” Knabby said, sounding very relieved. “In that case, Stubbins is just around the corner. He lives somewhere, maybe on Wiggo? But he’s never there as his wife is a proper terror. He sleeps behind the mews in Fish Street.”
“Excellent. We are most grateful for your help.” Elijah made the rounds of the circle again, shaking the wavering hands that were held out in his direction, and they left.
The mews were a two-story wooden structure. The ground-story rooms were occupied by horses, busily producing manure, which made it easy enough to find Stubbins. They had only to follow the smell. It was a particularly rich, brown type of smell, perhaps because the back of the mews faced east, and sun struck the manure piles all morning.
Stubbins had everything neatly arranged. To the left were flower beds, and to the right were fresh piles of dung.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he said, leaning on a shovel. “I thought you’d be about.”
“You did?” Jemma asked, shocked. “You thought we’d follow you here?”
“Not you, ma’am, but your husband here. I reckoned he was curious about the manure, and I was right wasn’t I?” Without waiting for an answer, he started showing Elijah his arrangements. “It can’t be too hot. Fries the flowers, I suspect. So I rakes it here, and then I give it, oh, four or five days. Sometimes I pour fresh milk on it.”
That would explain some of the pungency, Jemma thought.
“Then I pile it over here and mix in a little o’ that and a little something else. Then I plant my seeds.”
He showed them the shack where he kept his seeds, and Elijah looked at everything gravely and asked just the right sort of questions, and Jemma knew exactly why the Cacky Street Glassworks was doing so well. It was Elijah. He was grave and compassionate, and so honorable that people longed to be near him.
A few minutes later Elijah led Stubbins to the question of the doctor.
“He used to live in Birmingham,” Stubbins confirmed. “And then he went to one of them far-off countries, but it didn’t do the doctor’s lungs any good, so he’s back in London now. He has rooms on Harley Street, I think. ’Course I never go there because he just sends a man to pick up my flowers.”
Jemma’s heart was pounding in her throat. “It is he,” she said, clutching Elijah’s hand. “Dr. Withering! He’s the one, Elijah, he’s the one!”
A moment later they were back in the carriage and racing to Harley Street.
Chapter Twenty-seven
April 4
“Grindel’s in Wapping does not appear to be known to the headmaster of St. Paul’s,” Ashmole said, appearing like a bird of prey in Villiers’s study. “In fact, the headmaster believes there are no schools in Wapping.”
“Any word from Templeton?”