On the afternoon of the tenth of September she purchased a quantity of vegetable poison of a chemist. On the evening of the eleventh the man sat up drinking heavily into the small hours of the morning; and at noon on the twelfth he expired in the presence of a doctor, who had been fetched by a maid servant, although the woman herself had done her best to prevent a doctor from being summoned. In the doctor’s opinion the symptoms pointed to death by poisoning. A post-mortem was held the same afternoon; as the result of it the woman was taken into custody, the house was searched, and a quantity of strychnine was found concealed in her bedroom. Subsequently the contents of the man’s stomach was submitted to a public analyst; and in his evidence he would testify to the presence of strychnine in sufficient quantities to cause death. This was the case for the Crown. Evidence was called in corroboration; first the detective who had taken the woman into custody, and another who had discovered the poison. These were examined briefly by Mr. Topott, the junior counsel for the Treasury. The doctors then described the cause of death and the result of the post-mortem; and these were confirmed in their opinion by the analyst when he came to describe the result of his researches. All of these were soon disposed of, as Northcote did not attempt a word in cross-examination. Two of the members of the junior bar, young men and critical, who were not disinclined to see a personal affront in Northcote’s preferment, were not slow to note his passiveness, and to add it to the estimate they had already formed of his incapacity. “I never saw a fellow look in such a funk,” said the first of these gentlemen, one who had been nurtured in an atmosphere of wealth and influence, and himself a former president of the Oxford Union. “The case will be over by lunch.” “They are not wasting much time, certainly,” said his friend, the son of the Master of the Rolls. Two maid servants were called in evidence, and examined by Mr. Topott with the same convincing brevity as the previous witnesses. Here again Northcote refrained from cross-examination. “Ought to do something,” whispered the ex-president in the ear of his friend. “Missing opportunities. Why don’t he ask if she saw it administered?”