Yet there was no definite charge against Frau Ursinus. No motive for murder could be ascertained. They were by no means bad friends, this wedded pair. Frau Ursinus might in her secret heart desire to be freed from the bond that tied her to an infirm old man, and marry another husband, but she had always appeared grateful to the privy counsellor and treated him kindly. On the other hand, it was proved that she had purchased a quantity of arsenic for the purpose of destroying the fictitious rats. Sufficient doubt existed to justify the exhumation of the body and proceed to a postmortem examination. No definitely incriminating evidence was, however, forthcoming. The autopsy was conducted by two eminent doctors, who could find no positive traces of arsenic, but there was a presumption from the general condition of the vital organs and convulsive contraction of the limbs that it had been used. Three physicians who had attended Herr Ursinus in his last illness testified that his death resulted from a natural cause, that of apoplexy of the nerves, and repudiated all idea of arsenic. At this stage there was a foregone conclusion that Frau Ursinus would be quite exonerated from the felonious charge. Suddenly the situation entered upon a new phase. Frau Ursinus was accused of another and entirely new murder, that of her aunt, a maiden lady named Witte, who had died at Charlottenburg on the 23d January, 1801, after a short illness. No suspicious circumstances were noted at the time of her death, but after the arrest of Frau Ursinus, the possibility of her complicity in this deed took definite shape. A careful inquiry ensued and the inculpation, amounting to little less than certainty, was soon established. Again the process of exhumation was set afoot and there was not the smallest doubt that the deceased had died from arsenical poisoning. It was equally certain that Frau Ursinus had administered it.