That wasn’t to say I would find myself alone; I expected the constables would soon bring in the countless other women whose names were in my register. Women I intended to aid, to comfort, would then be alongside me behind the iron bars, and we would be accompanied only by the unwanted groping of the prison guards.

No, I refused it. I refused both possibilities, because there was one more alternative.

This third and final choice was to lock up the shop, leave the register safely behind the false wall, and hasten my own death: to dive into the icy depths of the River Thames, to make myself one with the shadows of Blackfriars Bridge. I had thought of it many times, most recently while crossing the river with baby Beatrice in my arms, as I’d gazed at the waves lapping against the creamy white stone pillars and felt the film of mist on my nose.

Had all of my life led me to this destiny, that fateful moment when the cold water would braid around me and pull me under?

But the child. Eliza was at the shop, just where I left her, and I could not leave her alone to suffer the inquisition of a bailiff that might find his way to 3 Back Alley. What if Eliza heard a commotion, peeked out of the door and unwittingly exposed what lay behind the false wall? She’d made one grave mistake already; if she made another and found herself facing an angry constable, I could not ask the poor child to defend all that I’d done.

It had hardly been fifteen minutes since I left her. Stuffing the newspaper back into my bag, I stepped out of the alley to return to my shop of poisons. I could not choose a certain death. Not yet, anyhow.

I had to go back for her. I had to go back for little Eliza.

I heard her before I saw her, and fury rose inside of me. Her careless noisemaking could have ruined us, if the drawing in the newspaper didn’t do it first.

“Eliza,” I hissed, closing the cupboard door behind me. “I can hear your clatter from halfway across the city. Have you no—”

But my breath caught at the scene before me: at the table in the center of the room, Eliza sat before numerous jars, bottles and crushed leaves of all colors, sorted into separate bowls. There must have been two dozen vessels in all.