CHAPTER XXI.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.
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.
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.
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 fortheir 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 “Crownvs.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 representedamong 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 withthe 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 haggardcountenance 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 thecold, 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 darkcrimes 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 cherishedprotégée! 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-thelove of lucre! She knew that, in the event of the death of Lord and Lady Leaton and their daughter,shemust 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,shedrugged 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,sheit was who superseded every honest and trustworthy attendant, and with deceitful zeal and deadly purpose, hovered about the bed of death!
“Herhand 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!
“Herhand 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.’
“‘Are in their graves, where she,Their murderess, soon shall be.’
“‘Are in their graves, where she,Their murderess, soon shall be.’
“‘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 serpentof 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 learnedgentleman 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 wishhewas 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 thetamarind-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 deadlyfabæ Sancti Ignatiiof 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.”