THE TRIAL.
Her veil was backward thrown;
Relieving tears refused to flow,
All drank by her great thirsty woe,
She seemed transformed to stone.
Save that at times her white lips quivered,
And her young limbs like aspen shivered,
And burst a low, sad moan!—_Nicholas Michell._
And how did Eudora pass the few anxious days of imprisonment preceding
her trial?
Oh, Heaven! how much the human heart may bear, and yet live on! Who can
compute the amount of sorrow, humiliation and terror that formed the
great weight of anguish that pressed her young heart almost to death?
Deep, poignant grief for the loss of her nearest and dearest kindred;
burning shame at the infamous charge under which she suffered, and
shuddering horrors at the awful doom that darkly lowered over her.
Either of these passionate emotions singly was enough to have crushed
her heart or crazed her brain. All of them at once she was fated to
endure.
Often, as with closed eyes and laboring lungs she lay upon the narrow
bed of her prison-cell, she thought that her fainting heart must stop,
and her gasping breath cease forever. Often she hoped that they might.
And thus, indeed, her light of life might have been smothered beneath
its weight of anguish, but for the tender care of those few devoted
friends who cherished the dying flame.
Malcolm Montrose, Counsellor Fenton, Mr. Anderson and Mrs. Barton, all
endeavored in every possible way to comfort, cheer, sustain and
strengthen Eudora.
She was seldom left alone for half an hour during the day.
The devoted love of her betrothed gave her consolation; the confident
manner of her advocate inspired her with hope; the zealous friendship of
the governor filled her with gratitude, and the constant attention of
her wardress left her little time for brooding melancholy.
And thus passed the days that brought the fatal Monday for the opening
of the assizes.
That Monday on which those assizes were held will long be remembered in
Abbeytown.
The most intense interest was felt by people in all ranks of society, in
all parts of the country, in the approaching trial of a young,
beautiful, and high-born girl, for the atrocious crime of poisoning.
All persons who could possibly leave their homes, came to Abbeytown to
abide during the holding of the assizes, for the purpose of being
present at the trial.
As early as the Saturday previous, the hotels, lodging-houses, and even
private dwellings, began to fill with an ever-increasing crowd of
visitors.
On Sunday the town was quite full. On Monday, though the multitude
continued to pour in, not one disengaged room or bed was to be procured
for love or money within its boundaries.
Ingle, the young law-clerk that had come up from London in attendance
upon Mr. Fenton, declared that Abbeytown during these assizes, looked
like Epsom in the race week.
Lord Chief Baron Elverton was on the circuit that year.
About nine o’clock in the morning, the hour of the judges’ arrival
having been duly notified by telegraph, the high sheriff, with his
constabulary staff, proceeded to the railway station to meet and escort
their lordships to the town.
They drove from the station to the Leaton Arms, where the best suites of
apartments had been pre-engaged for their accommodation, and where a
public breakfast awaited them.
At about twelve at noon the whole party went in procession to the
court-house, and opened the commission.
The whole of that afternoon was occupied with the preliminary business
of the session.
The second day was employed in trying those common rural cases of
poaching, riot, and petty larceny that took precedence upon the docket
of the one great trial. These were all disposed of before the
adjournment of the court on Tuesday evening.
And thus on Wednesday morning it was confidently expected that, as soon
as the court should meet, the case of the “Crown _vs._ Eudora Leaton,”
charged with poisoning, would be called.
The same lawyers’ clerk, whose talents lay rather in drawing comparisons
than briefs, declared that if the town at the opening of the assizes
resembled Epsom in the race week, it now bore a striking likeness to
that famous little village on the Derby-day.
Abbeytown was indeed full to repletion. Every house, every street, every
thoroughfare was crowded to suffocation. Every avenue approaching the
court-house was blocked up by carriages, horses, and foot-passengers.
Every person seemed to have come with the wild idea of being able to
catch a glimpse of the notorious prisoner as she was conveyed from the
gaol to the court-house, or even with the mad hope of getting a seat in
the halls of justice to witness the trial. Of course most were
disappointed; for the narrow court-room could not comfortably
accommodate much more than one hundred souls, or, compactly crowded,
more than two hundred; though upon this particular occasion nearly three
hundred persons were said to have been squeezed between its four walls.
The aristocracy, gentry, and yeomanry of the country were represented
among the spectators that filled to suffocation that court-room.
In one part of the hall, to the right of the bench, were assembled the
whole family from the Anchorage; for not only the Admiral, Sir Ira
Brunton, his nephew, the young lieutenant, his grand-daughter, Annella,
his guest, the Italian princess, but even his ancestresses, the two
ancient dames, were present, drawn thither by the intense interest of
the approaching trial.
In the very deepest shadow of a corner behind this group stood apart a
tall man, whose form was enveloped in a long, dark cloak, and whose face
was shaded by a deep sombrero hat.
At some little distance, sulky, silent and alone, stood Norham Montrose.
And all there were so closely pressed in by the crowd, that they could
neither move, converse, nor scarcely breathe. The whole assembly seemed
so intensely anxious for the commencement of the trial, that they hardly
once removed their eyes from the door by which the prisoner was expected
to be brought into court. At half-past nine the judges appeared.
As soon as the Lord Chief Baron Elverton and the associate judges took
their seats, the eyes of the whole assembly were directed towards the
bench.
Indeed, the central figure there, the presiding judge, Lord Chief Baron
Elverton, was, by his imposing presence, no less than his august office
and his mysterious family history, calculated to attract and rivet
attention.
He was now but sixty years of age, though looking seventy-five or
eighty. His once large, massive, and erect form was now bowed, shrunken
and emaciated: his fine, high, noble features were faded, sunken, and
sharpened; his once luxuriant auburn hair and beard were now thin and
white as snow; his countenance, though expressive of intellectual pride
and conscious power, was impressed with the ineffaceable marks of deep
suffering modified by patient benignity.
But what was the nature of that suffering? Was it inconsolable sorrow
for some heavy misfortune earth could never repair? Or was it
inextinguishable remorse for some deep sin that Heaven could not pardon?
No one ever knew, or even surmised. But, as the spectators looked upon
that care-worn face, they spoke together in whispers, of that strange,
terrible, unexplained episode in his family history; the sudden, fearful
midnight flight of his son; the total estrangement between himself and
his daughter-in-law, and the rigid seclusion of his young
grand-daughter; and, for the hundredth time, wondered whatever could be
at the bottom of those mysteries. For the moment, even the impending
trial was forgotten in this discussion of the family secrets of Lord
Elverton.
But the attention of the assembly was soon recalled to its first
subject.
The prisoner was ordered to be brought into court.
And once more every eye was turned and fixed in unwinking vigilance upon
the door by which she was expected to enter.
And all this eager curiosity in the crowd was only to see one poor,
frightened, trembling girl brought up to trial for life or death.
They had not long to wait for their spectacle.
The doors were thrown open, and the young prisoner was led in between
the deputy-sheriff and the female turnkey.
The merciless gaze of those hundreds of eager eyes fell, not upon a bold
woman—a hardened criminal—but upon a young, slight, delicate girl,
dressed in black and deeply veiled, who advanced with trembling steps
and downcast eyes.
Behind her walked Malcolm Montrose, whose haggard countenance betrayed
the agony of anxiety he suffered on her account.
She was led up the length of the hall and let into the dock, where a
seat had been placed for her by some kind hand.
At a sign from the sheriff, the wardress entered and took a place by her
side.
Malcolm Montrose posted himself as near the dock as he could possibly
get.
As Eudora dropped into her seat, her head sank upon her breast, her
hands fell upon her lap, and her whole form collapsed and shrank beneath
the oppressive gaze of that large assembly.
Yet, if the poor girl could have looked up, she would have seen more
than one pair of eyes regarding her with an expression kinder than mere
curiosity; even those of the venerable judge were bent upon her in deep
compassion.
But she dared not lift her head.
She heard a murmur of voices, a stir of hands, a rustle of papers, and
then the voice of the clerk of arraigns, calling out:
“Eudora Leaton!”
She started as though she had received a blow, and instinctively threw
aside her veil.
And the beautiful, pale, agonized young face was revealed to the whole
assembly.
A murmur of compassion moved, breeze-like, through the hitherto pitiless
crowd, and a single half-suppressed cry was heard from the Anchorage
party.
That cry came from Annella Wilder, who then for the first time
discovered the identity between her friend Miss Miller and the accused
Eudora Leaton.
“Attend to the reading of the indictment,” continued the clerk,
addressing the prisoner.
Eudora obeyed by lifting her frightened eyes to the cold, business-like
face of the speaker, who commenced reading the formidable document he
held in his hand, setting forth in successive counts how the prisoner,
Eudora Leaton, being impelled by satanic agency, with malice prepense,
at certain times and places therein specified, by the administration of
certain poisonous and deadly drugs, did feloniously procure and effect
the death of the Honorable Agatha Leaton, &c., &c., &c.
“Prisoner at the bar, arise, and hold up your right hand,” ordered the
clerk, when the reading was finished.
Eudora, pale, faint and trembling, obeyed.
“Prisoner, you have heard the charge against you. Are you guilty or not
guilty of the felonies with which you are accused?”
“Not guilty, as I shall answer at the last day before the awful bar of
God,” said Eudora, in a low, sweet, solemn voice, that thrilled through
the hearts of that whole assembly, as she sank again into her seat.
The attorney-general, who had come down from London to prosecute this
most important case, now arose in his place, took the bill of indictment
from the clerk of arraigns, and proceeded to open the case on the part
of the Crown.
He commenced by saving that his duty in the present instance was
extremely distressing in its nature, but, fortunately, simple in its
course; that the case he stood there to prosecute, dark as it was with
the deepest guilt, was yet so clearly illumined by the light of
evidence, that happily it need not occupy the court long; that whether
they considered the tender youth of the criminal, the cold-blooded
atrocity of the crime, or the high worth of the victims, this agonizing
case had no parallel in the long experience of the oldest barrister
living, or the whole history of criminal jurisprudence; that he need not
recall to memory the celebrated cases of Borgia, Essex, Brinvilliers, or
Lafarge to prove that youth, beauty, womanhood and high rank combined,
were not incompatible with deep guilt and dark crimes in their
possessors; that he did not mean to draw any comparison between the
female fiends he had named and the prisoner at the bar, for he should
soon prove Eudora Leaton had succeeded in reaching a much higher point
upon the “bad eminence” of criminal fame than had ever been attained by
Lafarge, Brinvilliers, Essex, or Borgia.
“The prisoner,” he said, “of Indian parentage, was the only child of the
late Honorable Charles Leaton and his wife, Oolah Kalooh, of Lahore,
and, doubtless, she must have derived from her mother all those subtle,
secretive, and treacherous elements of character for which the East
Indian is noted, while she gained from her father all that rare,
dangerous, botanical knowledge of the deadly plants of the country, the
study of which had once been his favorite pastime, and the acquaintance
with which has been recently her most fatal medium of destruction.
“By the death of her parents,” he continued, “she was left an orphan at
the early age of sixteen years. Her uncle, the late Lord Leaton, as soon
as he received intelligence of her condition, dispatched a special
messenger to India to bring her home to his own house. Upon her arrival,
he, as well as his whole family, received the orphan with the utmost
tenderness, placing her at once upon an equal footing with his own only
daughter and sole heiress.”
“But how,” inquired the prosecutor, “has the benevolence, confidence,
and affection of this honored family been repaid by their cherished
_protégée_! They have been repaid by the blackest ingratitude, the
foulest treachery, the deepest guilt; they have been repaid with
death—the insidious, protracted, dreadful death of slow poison—poison
administered by her whom they received into the bosom of their family.
“And what,” he asked, “tempted this young, beautiful, and high-born girl
to plunge herself into this deep Gehenna of guilt, misery, and infamy?
“The basest motive that could influence human nature-the love of lucre!
She knew that, in the event of the death of Lord and Lady Leaton and
their daughter, _she_ must be the sole inheritor of the whole Leaton
estate; and for this inheritance she has perpetrated crimes unequalled
in atrocity by her most notorious predecessors of criminal celebrity.
“She has sacrificed her nearest kindred in this world, and her dearests
interests in the next. She has destroyed those who sheltered her. Yes,
she whom they received into their homes and hearts, warmed at their
household fire, cherished with their bosom’s love, _she_ drugged their
daily food and drink with the deadliest poisons, until they wasted,
withered, and perished before her, as plants before the breath of the
death-blowing sirocco!
“As under the action of this slow poison, one after another sank upon
the last couch of illness, _she_ it was who superseded every honest and
trustworthy attendant, and with deceitful zeal and deadly purpose,
hovered about the bed of death!
“_Her_ hand it was that changed the heated billow, bathed the burning
brow, and then placed the poisoned cup to the parched lips that thanked
her for the cooling draught, and blessed her for her loving care!
“_Her_ hand it was that wiped the death-dew from the fading forehead,
returned the last pressure of the failing fingers, and closed the
glazing eyes of the dead victim—dead by her deed. But they
“‘Are in their graves, where she,
Their murderess, soon shall be.’
“For she has lost the game at which she staked her soul, and sits there
now to wait her doom.
“Bowed down and crushed almost unto death is she? Aye, not by grief for
her sin, but for that ‘sin’s detection and despair.’
“Beautiful, is she? Aye! beautiful as all the fatal growths of her
native clime! beautiful as the spotted serpent of her jungles—as the
striped tigress of her forests—as the stately ignatia of her plains!
“Thank Heaven, she is not a native of civilized and Christian Europe,
but of that deadly clime where the fierce heat of the sun draws from the
earth the most noxious plants, and developes in man and brute the most
ferocious passions—the land of the upas and the cobra—the land of Nena
Sahib!
“But enough,” he concluded. He would not deal in invective, or seek to
exaggerate that guilt which no words of the prosecutor could magnify. He
had stated the facts of the case; he would now proceed to call witnesses
to prove them.
This severe opening charge was felt by all to be no mere official
denunciation by the prosecutor, but the awful truth, as he himself
believed it to be, and finally succeeded in causing judge, jury, and
audience to accept it.
Its effect upon the poor young prisoner was overwhelming. She drooped
still lower, and breathed from the depths of her wounded spirit—
“Oh, Father, Thou, who knoweth all things, knowest that this is not true
of me; Thou who canst do all things, will yet deliver me from this
death!”
But was she the greatest sufferer there! Ah, no! He who stood behind
her, hearing this terrible charge, without the power of contradicting
her accuser—seeing all eyes fixed in horror upon her without the
privilege of saying one word in her defence, and witnessing her distress
without the means of consoling it—suffered more, though he bore up
better than she did.
Upon our simple family party from the Anchorage the effect of the
attorney-general’s opening address was very profound.
“Dear, dear, dear!” sighed old Mrs. Stilton, whose simple mind received
every word uttered by that high dignitary as gospel truth, because how
could such a learned gentleman be mistaken? “Dear, dear, dear! what a
young devil she is to be sure!”
“Yes—a real young Indian demon! a genuine little cobra-di-capello—an
infant Thug! They’ll be sure to hang her, that’s one comfort!” said the
admiral.
“It is false! The attorney-general is no better than a licensed
slanderer! I hate him! and I wish _he_ was on trial!” cried Annella,
bursting into tears of rage and grief.
But the clerk was calling the first witness for the Crown, and all eyes
and ears were directed to the words of that functionary.
The evidence for the prosecution was essentially the same as that
elicited at the coroner’s inquest and at the magistrate’s investigation.
It need not be repeated in detail here. It is sufficient to say that the
first witnesses examined were the medical men who had assisted at the
autopsy of the dead bodies, and the analysis of the tamarind-water.
Their testimony clearly proved that the deceased had died from the
effects of ignatia, and that the fatal drug had been administered in
their drink.
And the severest cross-examination of these witnesses by the counsel for
the prisoner only served the more strongly to confirm the facts, and the
more deeply to impress them upon the minds of the jury.
“And thus,” said the counsel for the Crown, “the primary item in the
prosecution—to wit, that the deceased came to their death by poison—may
be considered as established. Our next care shall be to prove that this
poison was feloniously administered by the prisoner at the bar.”
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.”