One of the constables raised his hand. “Lady Clarence, we are not yet finished.”

“I won’t be but a few minutes with the child, sir.” She gave him not another word before wrapping her arm around me and rushing me from the room. Her skin felt damp and sticky; sweat beaded on her brow. Quickly, she pulled me up the stairs to the second story and took me into one of the rooms. It was pristinely arranged, the four-poster bed stiff as if never used. A cabinet, recently polished, reflected the buttercream light from the window.

“It is all very bad, Eliza,” she whispered after she had shut the door. “You must go back to Nella immediately and tell her to leave. Both of you, as soon as possible, for she will be arrested and hanged—and you, too, possibly. They will not spare you on account of your age—oh, how impossible this whole thing is.”

“I do not understand,” I said, my lips trembling, words tumbling out. “You returned the jar and said all was well—”

“Oh, but it all fell apart last evening! You see, when my maid left yesterday, little did I know that she first divulged much to the constables. She told them I instructed her to put the contents of the jar into the glass, and she gave them a wax rubbing of the jar—it shows the little bear and the address. The address, thank heavens, has not yet been discerned, though I fear it is only a matter of time. And little use in returning the jar to Nella when the maid had already taken an impression of it, isn’t it? How terrible that maid is, and how cowardly! If she had any smarts, she would have stolen the jar itself to give to the police, but I suppose she was scared someone might walk in and catch her stuffing it into her gown.”

Lady Clarence sat on the bed and smoothed her skirts. “The image was printed overnight in a bulletin and put into the papers this morning, and shortly thereafter, a gentleman from St. James’s Square went straight to the authorities. Several weeks ago, following the unexpected death of his grown son—which they believed, first, to be gaol fever—he found a vial underneath the bed where his son died. He’d thought nothing of the vial at the time, until seeing the image in the newspaper. The exact image of the bear was on the vial he’d found!”