“I have made several notes here upon items of evidence that may be used in our defence, and about which I wish to question you. In the first place, then, in the evidence given by Lady Leaton before the first coroner’s inquest, her ladyship testified that on the same night of her husband’s sudden death, while the sleeping-draught stood on the stand beside his bed, she being in her adjoining dressing-room, with the communicating door open between them, heard the rustle of a woman’s silk dress moving about, and saw the shadow of a woman’s form gliding along the wall of her husband’s chamber. In the second place, the testimony of the late Agatha Leaton proves that this unknown intruder could not have been yourself, as you were at that very hour engaged in reading to her in her own private apartment. Consequently, the midnight intruder who stole secretly into Lord Leaton’s room, and dropped the fatal drug into the sleeping-draught, must have been some other woman. Suspicion seems to have fallen on no one else; but have not you, in your private thought, some idea as to who this midnight poisoner really was?”
“Not the remotest in the world,” replied Eudora, in astonishment at the question.
“Humph—take time—reflect.”
“I have reflected, sir, but without effect.”
“Again, then,” said the lawyer, referring to his notes; “in your own evidence given before the second inquest you testify that on the night of your cousin’s sudden death, while watching beside her sick-bed, you lost yourself in light slumber for a moment, but was almost immediately awakened by the impression of some strange presence in the room, and that, in the momentary interval between sleeping and waking, you saw, or dreamed you saw, a dark-robed female figure glide through the room and disappear in the communicating one; but that on arousing yourself, and searching that room and the adjoining one, you found no trace of an intruder. Now, what I wish to ask you is, whether you believe that you really saw anyone in the sick-chamber at that hour or not?”
“I was so shocked and terrified, and grieved by the sudden death of my cousin, that I could not then speak definitely as to whether I really saw or only dreamed of that figure in the room; because the scene passed on the instant of my waking up, and while my faculties were bewildered by slumber. But since that night, every time I have thought of that strange incident in my watch, I have become more and more firmly convinced that what I saw was reality.”
“In a word, that there was a woman in Miss Leaton’s room that night?”
“Yes, I earnestly believe that there was.”
“And that this woman dropped the poison into the cooling drink prepared for Miss Leaton?”
“Indeed I fear so; for when I saw the figure it was gliding away from the mantelpiece where the jug of tamarind-water stood, towards the door that opened into my own little room.”