“Sir, what I have to say to you is painful in the extreme both for me to utter and for you to hear; but the sternest duty obliges me to speak.”
Mr. Montrose withdrew his hand from his corrugated brow, raised his troubled eyes to the speaker, and awaited his further words.
“I know that what I am about to communicate must greatly augment the sorrow under which you suffer, and yet it must be communicated.”
“Speak out, I beseech you, sir,” said Mr. Montrose, with a vague but awful presentiment of what was coming.
“Three months ago I attended the death-bed of the late Lord Leaton. I gave it as my opinion then, I hold it as my opinion now, that his death was accelerated by poison. The coroner’s jury came to a different conclusion, and their verdict, taken together with the fact that the post-mortem examination detected no trace of poison, I confess shook my faith in my own conviction. To-night I have been called to the bedside of his only daughter; I have looked upon her dead body, and heard an account of the manner in which she had died. And now, Mr. Malcolm Montrose, I positively assert that Agatha Leaton came to her death by poison, administered in the tamarind-water of which she drank some five or ten minutes before her death—and I stake my medical reputation upon this issue.”
“My God! it cannot be true!” exclaimed Malcolm Montrose, starting up, and gazing upon the speaker in the extremity of horror and grief.
“Mr. Montrose,” said the doctor, impressively, taking the hand of the young man, and forcing him back to his seat, “the widowed and childless head of this house is now in no condition to meet this crisis. You are her natural representative. You must summon all your firmness and take the direction of affairs. I shall remain here to assist you. I have already taken some steps in the matter; I have secured the jug and glass of tamarind-water to be analyzed. I have also telegraphed for the family solicitor to come down, and I have sent for the coroner, and for a police force to occupy the house, for no one must be permitted to escape until the coroner’s inquest has set upon the deceased and given in their verdict.”
“But, good Heaven, doctor!” exclaimed the young man in horror and amazement; “who, who could aim at so harmless and innocent a life?”
“Who,” repeated the doctor; “who had the greatest interest in her death, and in the death of her father before her?”
“None! no one on earth! Who could have possibly had such an interest?” cried the young man, shuddering.