“Miss,” came a soft voice. “Miss.” I looked up to see the mother, holding the hand of her now-obedient son, resplendent in his thick coat, waiting for me to return the paper to her.

“Y-yes,” I stammered. “Yes, here you are.” I handed it over, the paper trembling as it passed from my fingers to hers. She thanked me and stepped away, after which I rushed immediately to the newsboy at the stand. “The Thursday Bulletin,” I said. “You have more copies?”

“A few.” He gave me one of two remaining copies on his table.

I dropped him a coin, shoved the paper into my bag and rushed away from him lest the terror on my face betray me. But as I fled to Ludgate Hill, forcing one foot in front of the other with as much speed as I could muster, I finally began to fear the worst. What if the authorities were at my shop right that moment? Little Eliza, she was there alone! I crouched between two rubbish bins at the side of a building, opened the paper and read it as quickly as I could. It was printed overnight; the ink was fresh.

At first, I found the article so impossible to believe, I wondered if I’d been given a prop in some performance, one in which I acted the unwitting performer. And perhaps I could have been convinced it was mere theatrics if the details did not tie together so well.

The lady’s maid, I learned, did abruptly resign from her post, just as Lady Clarence said—but she must have put two and two together about Lord Clarence’s sudden death, for she went to the authorities with a wax impression of my mother’s engraved jar. At this revelation, I nearly cried out; it was of no consequence that the jar now rested safely in my shop, for the maid took a damned impression of it! She must have done it before Lady Clarence seized the canister from the cellar. Perhaps the maid was fearful of taking the jar itself on account of being found out and labeled a thief.

According to the article, the wax impression revealed a partially legible set of letters—B ley—and a single, thumbprint-size drawing, which appeared to authorities to be that of a bear on all fours. The lady’s maid told authorities that her mistress, the Lady Clarence, instructed her to put the contents of the canister into the dessert liqueur that was ultimately ingested by Lord Clarence. The maid presumed it a sweetener; only later did she realize it was poison.

I continued reading and clasped my hand over my throat. The authorities went to Lady Clarence’s home late last evening—it must have been soon after she had returned the jar, which would explain the hours-old ink on the hastily printed insert—but Lady Clarence vehemently denied the maid’s claim, insisting no knowledge of any poison or canister whatsoever.