It was broad daylight, the sun was high in the heavens, though the dismayed servants seemed only now to remember to extinguish the lights and open the windows.
Breakfast was prepared in the breakfast-parlor, but no family circle gathered around it.
The doctor, the Princess Pezzilini, and finally Malcolm Montrose, strayed separately and at intervals into the room, quaffed each a cup of coffee, and withdrew.
Meantime, the coroner formed his inquest. The investigation required some time and much caution, therefore the whole house was placed in charge of the police while the examination was in progress.
Physicians and chemists were summoned to assist in the autopsy of the dead bodies and the analysis of the water of which they had both drank immediately before death.
The autopsy and the analysis both proved successful. Traces of a virulent poison were found in the bodies of the deceased, and the presence of the same fatal agent was detected in the beverage of which they had partaken. It was so far clearly proved that both Lady Leaton and her daughter had died by poison!
But by whom had it been prepared and administered? That was the next point of inquiry.
Alas! the question seemed but too easily answered. Nevertheless, the coroner went coolly, formally, and systematically to work.
The witnesses, that had been kept jealously apart during the progress of the inquest, were called and examined separately, and their testimony carefully taken down and compared together. The coroner’s jury then deliberated long and carefully upon the evidence before them.
The inquest lasted through the whole of two long summer days, and the sun was setting on the second when they made up their verdict.