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The rapping at the door is perfectly in time with Pris's pounding head. She's been without a drink for 3 days now, and has been clean out of money for 6. She'd even gone around looking for a certain lunatic to remind her of what she owes back when she was first running low about 2 weeks ago, only to find Houndsditch closed, the brats scattered, Dr. Bumby mush on the Moorgate Station tracks. Suicide, the coppers say. I doubt that! And as for Alice, well...
Pris swings open the door to her apartment, and there stands the madwoman of the hour herself, looking as disheveled as always. But what's more important to Pris isn't that the girl's mysteriously alive, it's what she's holding in those fragile hands: two whole bottles of gin! Looks like the good stuff, too.
"Hello, Nurse Wit..."
"There's a good girl," Pris interrupts her hurriedly, snatching one of the bottles from Alice and popping off the cork with a strength a woman of her age shouldn't have. She tips her head back and guzzles the whole bottle down in no more than 4 gulps. "Ah...now that's the stuff, dearie..." She pauses.
Pris could've sworn that when she opened the door, Alice was a mess, as always, except...she no longer is. Gone is the unsightly, short greasy hair, instead it hangs long, loose, and glossy. The dark circles and sallow skin have been replaced with a healthy glow and makeup like one of the most priciest of whores. Even her clothes have changed. Instead of the near-rags Pris had provided her with, she now wears a fine white pinafore and deep blue dress.
"I'm glad I could help to quench your thirst, Nurse Witless," Alice says with what could almost pass for a smile, and perhaps if Pris was a more sober person the fact that Alice is near-smiling and looking neat would unsettle her. Pris is not more sober. All she can fixate on is the second bottle in Alice's hands, and Alice seems aware of it, handing it over casually. "I was hoping you would be so kind as to allow me to see your birds again?"
Again, if Pris cared for anything but the drink, perhaps she would have noticed how Alice acting in such a way towards her is out of the ordinary. But all she sees is that her thirst will be sated, so she takes it in stride. "Of course, dearie." She places both the full bottle and the empty one on a small side table. "I'll save that for after. But in the meantime, why don't you tell me all about where you've been, hm?"
The left side of Alice's mouth moves upwards. "I would enjoy nothing more."
The little bell rings as Felix finishes tying his apron around his waist. "In a moment!" He calls.
"It's alright, take your time," a feminine voice replies. Felix emerges from the back of the pharmacy and is greeted by a face he's seen before.
"Good day, Miss...Liddell, was it?" The green-eyed woman nods. "It's good to see you again. Did the poison for the rats work?"
She opens her mouth to respond, only for her eyes to widen and her nose to scrunch. Felix is about to ask her what the matter is, but then the smell hits his nose and he covers his mouth as to avoid gagging. It's a stench that's unlike anything he's ever smelled before. "Good God! Where is that infernal smell coming from?"
"Outside," Miss Liddell chokes. Both he and his customer stumble out the door. Other people are gathering about, all covering their faces and swearing to high heaven about the stink. There, coming down from the tenement two doors down, are several constables unceremoniously carrying the source of the smell while trying to cover their faces at the same time. People cry out and some retch. Felix feels his eyes widen, and he sharply inhales before immediately regretting it.
It's an old woman...or rather, what's left of her. Bloated and rotting, Felix sees maggots falling out of her skin and nose, and chokes down the natural urge to vomit. The buzzing of flies is loud enough to feel as though it's rattling his skull, and he fights the urge to clamp his hands over his ears.
"Who was that?" he wonders aloud.
"That'd be...or was...Pris Witless," a loafer tells him. "Old bat used to be a nurse over at Rutledge's, but these days, you were more like to find her guzzling down the blue ruin than takin' care o' anyone."
Felix blinks. "You're saying she...drank herself to death? All alone? No one thought to check on her?" The young pharmacist has a large family in Leeds, and they all write him so much that he doesn't have time to miss them.
"'s not that uncommon in the city, lad," comments a nearby baker somewhat sympathetically. "Old biddy was probably lyin' stiff for 'bout a week or two 'fore the smell got too bad that someone finally decided to do somethin'."
(If Felix is paying attention to his customer, he would notice how Miss Liddell's bright green eyes gleam a little brighter, how her back straightens, how she's eerily silent. But he isn't.)
He crosses himself once and grimaces, turning back around and heading back inside with Miss Liddell in tow. "Such a tragedy...no one deserves to die in such a manner, especially an elderly woman..."
"You have a good heart, sir. Take care not to lose it," Miss Liddell says suddenly, earnestly. He turns around and blinks owlishly at her. Her composure is admirable, though he supposes it's likely from living in London much longer than he. "But to answer your earlier question, the rats have been flushed out." She casually brushes a strand of long dark hair behind her ear. Outside, Felix can see old Pris Witless being loaded into a cart outside and wheeled unceremoniously to (presumably) a potter's field far away. "I was just wondering if you sold any creams that would diminish the appearance of old scars...?"