possession, her means of obtaining it remain a mystery. How in London could she have procured such a medicine, unassisted and undiscovered? or how, having by some extraordinary means become possessed of it, could she have kept that possession a secret from the persons by whom she was always surrounded?—from Mrs. Sheldon, who knew every medicine she took—or from her friends in Hyde-park street, from whom she hid nothing. It was equally improbable that she could have secretly procured it from the laboratory at the Castle.
But granting that, in some unaccountable way, she had become possessed of Prussic acid, the evidence taken at the inquest not only leaves the proof of her having swallowed it, inconclusive, but furnishes the strong presumption, that her death could not have been caused by such means. The surgeon found her "perfectly insensible, with the pupils of both eyes much dilated;" an empty bottle, labelled "Hydrocyanic acid" in her hand; was convinced that the medicine was the cause of her death, and did not open the body. This is the whole of the testimony in support of the hypothesis that she died by poison.
Now, assuming Prussic acid to have been in her possession, as a bottle so labelled undoubtedly was (though not concealed, but shown to her husband, and seen by her servant,) are the circumstances in which she is found dying, favourable to the supposition that she had swallowed any? Mrs. Bailey distinctly swears, that her mistress was "lying on the floor, with the bottle in her hand." The effect of Prussic acid, however, is hardly reconcilable with this fact; for that effect is, the instant relaxation of the whole system; and
