As soon as she was removed, Jane Withers was called.  She deposed that three days previously, as she was, just before dusk, arranging some linen in a room a few yards distant from the bedroom of her late mistress, she was surprised at hearing a noise just outside the door, as of persons struggling and speaking in low but earnest tones.  She drew aside a corner of the muslin curtain of the window which locked upon the passage or corridor, and there saw Mrs. Bourdon striving to wrest something from her son’s hand.  She heard Mrs. Bourdon say, “You shall not do it, or you shall not have it”—­she could not be sure which.  A noise of some sort seemed to alarm them:  they ceased struggling, and listened attentively for a few seconds:  then Alfred Bourdon stole off on tip-toe, leaving the object in dispute, which witness could not see distinctly, in his mother’s hand.  Mrs. Bourdon continued to listen, and presently Miss Armitage, opening the door of her mother’s chamber, called her by name.  She immediately placed what was in her hand on the marble top of a side-table standing in the corridor, and hastened to Miss Armitage.  Witness left the room she had been in a few minutes afterwards, and, curious to know what Mrs. Bourdon and her son had been struggling for, went to the table to look at it.  It was an oddly-shaped glass bottle, containing a good deal of a blackish-gray powder, which, as she held it up to the light, looked like black-lead!

“Would you be able to swear to the bottle if you saw it?”

“Certainly I should.”

“By what mark or token?”

“The name of Valpy or Vulpy was cast into it—­that is, the name was in the glass itself.”

“Is this it?”

“It is:  I swear most positively.”

A letter was also read which had been taken from Bourdon’s pocket.  It was much creased, and was proved to be in the handwriting of Mrs. Armitage.  It consisted of a severe rebuke at the young man’s presumption in seeking to address himself to her daughter, which insolent ingratitude, the writer said, she should never, whilst she lived, either forget or forgive.  This last sentence was strongly underlined in a different ink from that used by the writer of the letter.

The surgeon deposed to the cause of death.  It had been brought on by the action of iodine, which, administered in certain quantities, produced symptoms as of rapid atrophy, such as had appeared in Mrs. Armitage.  The glass bottle found in the recess contained iodine in a pulverized state.

I deposed that, on entering the library on the previous evening I overheard young Mr. Bourdon, addressing his mother, say, “Now that it is done past recall, I will not shrink from any consequences, be they what they may!”

This was the substance of the evidence adduced; and the magistrate at once committed Alfred Bourdon to Chelmsford jail, to take his trial at the next assize for “wilful murder.”  A coroner’s inquisition a few days after also returned a verdict of “wilful murder” against him on the same evidence.