18 : Dangerous BusinessThe coroner was an honourable man, but he was also sensible, with a natural distaste for publicity.
When the court resumed after the postponement, Mrs. Potter’s sad little corpse was sat upon by a dozen interested but busy people who, after all the available evidence had been placed before them, brought in a sane but not very satisfactory open verdict.
They found that the deceased had met her death by poisoning by nicotine, but that there was insufficient evidence to show if it were self-administered or no.
The testimony of the tremulous Miss Cunninghame concerning her friend’s behaviour on the last afternoon of her life did much to dispel the jury’s doubt from the public mind at least, and, as there is hardly anything which the average man finds so dull and depre
