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Jasper cleared his throat and tried to focus on the trouble at hand. “I’d just returned to the Yard when Price received your note,” he explained. “What has happened?”

Leo turned to view the woman reclining on the sofa. “This is Mrs. Augusta Lawlor. She arrived at Tate’s two hours ago.”

Taking a cursory assessment of Augusta Lawlor, Jasper placed her in her middle to late thirties. She wore a dark purple gown of fine quality, tailored well to fit her round figure, and she had the soft hands and skin of a woman of some wealth.

Claude released Mrs. Lawlor’s wrist; it fell limply onto her stomach. She tried to sit up, but Leo’s uncle persuaded her to be still.

“You will feel well soon, Mrs. Lawlor,” he assured her. “But you must rest now.”

“My husband…” Her voice was weak and winded. “Has someone… sent for…?”

Jasper frowned at her unfinished thought and her slow, slurred words. A clammy sheen of sweat dotted her brow, and her white skin lacked any hint of color. Her lips were just as pale. He’d seen the aftereffects of opium before, and Mrs. Lawlor appeared to be heavily dosed with it.

“Yes, Mrs. Lawlor, your husband has been sent for,” Mr. Tate said. “I am sure he will be here momentarily.”

Leo touched Jasper’s arm and, eyeing the hallway, indicated they should exit the office. Once they stood just outside the door, she parted her lips to speak. But then, her attention landed on his jaw. She lifted her fingers and gently ran them over the bruise that had formed where the housebreaker’s fist had caught him.

“You’ve been injured,” she said, concern brightening her eyes.

He covered her hand with his. “It’s nothing.” Though it must have been purpling quickly if it was already showing through his scruffy, burnished blond beard. “I’m fine, really. Tell me what is happening here.”

She lowered her hand and kept her voice low. “The casket bearers who collected Mrs. Lawlor earlier this morning returned to her home to summon her husband. However, they brought back news that he has quit the house. His staff do not know where he has gone.”

“A tavern somewhere, I suspect,” Jasper said, thinking of where a newly widowed man might go to drown his sorrows. But Leo shook her head.

“You don’t understand,” she said, even quieter now. “He has left entirely. Taken some of his belongings and disappeared.”

Jasper cocked his head, alarm lifting the hair on the back of his neck. “The very day his wife is mistaken for dead?”

“And when she has so obviously been dosed with opium,” Leo added. “Uncle Claude has been attending to her, and he agrees that she shows all the signs of an overdose. It would explain why she appeared dead; her heart rate would have been slow, her breathing shallow and slow too.”

He supposed someone not trained in the medical profession could have easily made such a mistake in thinking the woman was deceased.

“It is possible she took too much laudanum,” Jasper suggested. The tincture of opium was a popular drug among people of all classes. Women were often prescribed it by their doctors when they suffered from nerves or any number of maladies. Or when they simply wanted to escape from a painful reality. It would not be so out of the ordinary for someone to have purposefully sipped too much of the stuff in an attempt to leave the earthly world entirely.

“But why did her husband flee so swiftly?” Leo asked.

Jasper grimaced. He knew what she was alluding to. “I agree that he needs to be found and questioned. If he gave her too much, the overdose might have been accidental. He could be panicking.”

Leo nodded, though she pressed her lips into a tense line that hinted she did not believe that theory. Jasper wasn’t entirely convinced, either.

“Does she need to be taken to hospital?” he asked.

Leo peered into Mr. Tate’s office, where Claude was still at the woman’s side. “No, my uncle says her heartbeat is strengthening already. We gave her some strong coffee, and she vomited, which Uncle Claude believes will help with her recovery.”

“Then, once she is ready, I will take her home,” Jasper said. He would speak to the woman’s staff and see what he could determine about how Mrs. Lawlor came to be mistaken for dead.

“I’ll come with you,” Leo said and, before he could argue as he was about to do, added, “It would put Mrs. Lawlor at ease to have a woman with her.”

He could not dispute that, especially as the woman was clearly of some refinement. Besides, Leo might be able to draw Mrs. Lawlor into conversation whereas he, as a detective inspector, might be viewed with hostility or reservation.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll summon a carriage.”

The Lawlors’ home in the heart of Mayfair was every bit as posh as Jasper had anticipated. When the hired carriage drew up to the elegant home on Hill Street, just off Berkeley Square, the first thing he noted was the wide, black swath of fabric drawn across the front door. It marked the terraced, brick and limestone, four-level residence as a house in mourning. The deliverymen from Tate’s Funeral Service had informed the staff that the lady of the house was not dead after all, but clearly, they had not taken the word of two laborers as fact.

Jasper descended from the carriage and helped Mrs. Lawlor to the pavement, her movements still sluggish and weak. Leo descended without his aid and immediately shored up the woman’s opposite side. As they approached the front entrance, the door whipped open. An older man in what looked to be a butler’s uniform stood upon the threshold, gawping with astonishment.

“We dared not believe the claims made by the two men who came earlier, madam,” he apologized, stepping aside to allow Mrs. Lawlor, Jasper, and Leo entry. “But it is true. By the grace of God, you are alive. Come, come.”