“But,” he continued, “I have a theory that I shall offer in explanation of those circumstances, which I firmly believe must exonerate my client in the mind of the jury and every just person present.
“Before proceeding further, I will read a few extracts from the records of the coroner’s inquest upon the case.”
Here Counsellor Fenton took from the hands of his clerk certain documents, from which he read aloud that part of the evidence given by the late Lady Leaton, in which she testified to having seen the shadow of a woman’s form upon the wall, and heard the rustle of a woman’s dress along the floor of her husband’s chamber a few moments before he drank the fatal sleeping-draught that stood upon the stand beside his bed on the night of his death.
Next the advocate turned to another part of the record, and read the evidence given by the late Miss Leaton, in which she deposed that, at the very time at which her mother heard the noise and saw the shadow in her father’s room, Eudora was seated beside Agatha’s bed, engaged in the vain effort to read the restless invalid to sleep.
Finally, he referred to the record of the second coroner’s inquest, and read the evidence given by Eudora Leaton, in which she testified that, while watching by the bedside of her cousin, on the night of her death, she fell into a light slumber, from which she was awakened by the impression of some one moving about the room, and that at the moment of opening her eyes, she saw a figure steal away through the door opening into her own adjoining chamber; but that on following the figure, she found the next room vacant, and therefore fancied that her half-awakened senses had deceived her.
“The evidence which I have just read,” continued Counsellor Fenton, as he returned the documents to the hands of his clerk, “is so significant, so important, so vital to the cause of justice, that, had it been permitted to have its due influence with the coroner’s jury, no such cruel suspicion could have fallen upon Eudora Leaton as that which has placed her here on trial for her life. And now at least, when that evidence shall be duly considered, it must entirely exonerate this most innocent girl. From that evidence, gentlemen of the jury, I draw the whole theory of this most mysterious chain of crime, and that theory I would undertake to establish, as the only true one, to your perfect satisfaction.
“The whole Leaton family have perished by the hand of the poisoner. True—alas! most horribly true! But who, then, is that poisoner? Who but that nocturnal visitor, who had stolen like a fell assassin to the chamber of Agatha Leaton, and while her watcher slumbered, put the poison into her drink, and whose ill-boding form was seen by the awakening watcher to steal away and disappear in the darkness? Who, but that midnight intruder, who, in the temporary absence of Lady Leaton, glided like an evil spirit to the bedside of Lord Leaton, and dropped the deadly drug into his drink, and whose rustling raiment was heard by Lady Leaton to sweep across the floor like the trailing wings of a demon, and whose dark shadow was seen to glide swiftly along the wall like its vanishing form?
“But who was this fiend in human form. Not Eudora Leaton, whom the testimony of the late Agatha Leaton proved to have been at that hour engaged in another place. Who, then was it? Heaven only knows! But whoever it might have been, it was one who, in resolving upon the destruction of the whole Leaton family, had determined upon the death of Eudora too! One, who in carrying out the fell purpose of extirpation, while compassing the death of Lord and Lady Leaton and their daughter, took measures to fix the crime upon Eudora Leaton for her ruin. The same fiend who, in the midnight glided into the chamber of Agatha Leaton, and infused the deadly ignatia into her cooling drink, in passing through Eudora’s room, deposited the fatal drug in her drawers to fix this suspicion upon her! It was a most diabolical plot, worthy only of the accursed spirits of Tophet.
“This,” he concluded, “was his theory of the murders, a theory that he most fervently believed to be the true one—a theory that he most earnestly entreated the jury to deeply consider before consigning a young, lovely, and accomplished woman; a delicate, sensitive, refined being; a most injured, most unhappy, yet most innocent maiden, to the deep dishonor of a capital conviction, the unspeakable wretchedness of a blighted name, and the horrible martyrdom of a public death!”
The advocate sat down really, not professionally, overcome by his emotions.