An inquest was ordered next day, and meantime Mrs. Gaunt was told she could not quit the upper apartments of her own house. Two constables were placed on the ground floor night and day.
Next day the remains were removed to the little inn, where Griffith had spent so many jovial hours; laid on a table, and covered with a white sheet.
The coroner's jury sat in the same room, as was then the custom, and the evidence I have already noticed was gone into and the finding of the body deposed to. The jury, without hesitation, returned a verdict of willful murder.
Mrs. Gaunt was then brought in. She came, white as a ghost, leaning upon Houseman's shoulder.
Upon her entering, a juryman, by a humane impulse, drew the sheet over the remains again.
The coroner, according to the custom of the day, put a question to Mrs. Gaunt, with the view of eliciting her guilt. If I remember right, he asked her how she came to be out of doors so late on the night of the murder. Mrs. Gaunt, however, was in no condition to answer queries. I doubt if she even heard this one. Her lovely eyes, dilated with horror, were fixed on that terrible sheet, with a stony glance. "Show me," she gasped, "and let me die too."
The jurymen looked, with doubtful faces, at the coroner, he bowed a grave assent.
The nearest juryman withdrew the sheet.
Now, the belief was not yet extinct that the dead body shows some signs of its murderer's approach.
So every eye glared on her and It by turns, as she, with dilated, horror-stricken orbs, looked on that awful Thing.