The witnesses examined upon this point were the household servants of Allworth Abbey, who all testified to the facts that Miss Eudora Leaton had been the constant attendant upon the sick-beds of the deceased; that she had prepared all their food and drink, and especially the tamarind-water, and that she was with Miss Agatha Leaton at the hour of her sudden death.
These witnesses were carefully cross-examined by Mr. Fenton, but, alas! with no favorable result for his unhappy client!
Finally, the police-officers who had executed the search-warrant for examining the chamber of the prisoner, produced a small packet of strange-looking grey berries, that they testified to having found hidden in a secret drawer of her escritoire.
The medical men were recalled, and identified these to be the deadly fabæ Sancti Ignatii of the East Indies, the same fatal poison which had been discovered in the autopsy of the dead bodies and the analysis of the tamarind-water.
These were the last witnesses examined on the part of the prosecution. And as it had happened before, the closest cross-examination by the prisoner’s advocate only resulted in strengthening the testimony.
“And now,” concluded the Queen’s counsel, “the second item in the prosecution—namely, that the poison by which the deceased came to their death was feloniously administered by the prisoner at the bar—may be considered so clearly proved that we are contented here to rest the case for the Crown.”
CHAPTER XXII.
THE CONVICTION.
Thus on her doom to think,
Well may the dews of torture now
Hang bead-like on her straining brow,