The apothecary’s bell

An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.

At seven o’clock, Mr Fenner took his coat from its peg and left Elias to close the medicine shop. Elias had done this many times before. He polished the counter, straightened the account book and checked that the street door was bolted. Around him, the labelled jars stood in orderly rows, and the room smelled pleasantly of lavender soap.

The little brass bell above the door gave a single note.

Elias looked up. The bolt remained in place, and there was nobody on the wet pavement outside. A passing carriage must have shaken the glass, he decided. Yet when he returned to the counter, the shop no longer seemed so familiar. In the unsteady lamplight, the round jars appeared to watch him from the shelves.

The bell rang again: two thin, sharp notes. Between them came a scrape from behind the green curtain leading to the store-room.

“A bottle settling,” Elias said aloud. His voice sounded smaller than he intended.

He crossed the shop and drew back the curtain. The store-room door, which he was certain he had shut, stood open by the width of his hand. Darkness pressed through the gap. Elias lifted the lamp and stepped closer. For several seconds, nothing moved. Then, from inside the store-room, came the careful chink of one glass bottle being placed against another.

Analyse the ways in which language and structure reveal Elias becoming more uneasy as the passage develops.

You should consider:

• how the descriptions of the shop change
• how the writer orders Elias’s discoveries.

Use evidence from the passage in your response.