the liver.

The outcome was that Lady Shillito at the inquest found herself "in
a very unpleasant position" and was placed under arrest, and later
charged with the murder of her husband.

Believing herself guilty she summoned all her resolution to her aid,
admitted nothing, appealed to Michael Rossiter and others for
advice. Thus David was drawn into the business.

[But this doesn't sound very credible, you will say. "If the
husband felt he could not face the agony of death by cancer, why
didn't he leave a note saying so, and every one would have
understood and been quite 'nice' about it?" I really can't say.
Perhaps he wished to leave trouble for her behind him; perhaps he
divined the reason why she thought a day nurse unnecessary, and
insisted on giving him his day medicines with her own fair hands.
Perhaps he hoped for an open verdict. Perhaps he wasn't quite right
in his mind. I have told you the story as I remember it and my
memory is not perfect. Personally I've always been a bit sorry for
Grimthorpe. It is quite possible that all those hints as to his
"queerness" were invented by his wife to excuse herself. I only know
that Science benefited greatly from his researches, and that he
bequeathed some priceless collections to both branches of the
British Museum. Some one once told me he had a heart somewhere and
had loved intensely a sister much younger than himself and had only
begun to be "queer" and secretive and bald after her premature
death. I think also that in the last year of his life he was greatly
embittered at not getting the expected peerage; after the trouble
and disagreeableness he had gone through to obtain heirs for this
distinction this poor little attempt at immortality which it is in
the power of a Prime Minister to bestow.]

The Grand Jury returned a true bill against Lady Shillito. David had
been studying the case from the morrow of the inquest, that is as
soon as Rossiter had learnt of the coming trouble. The latter though
he regarded Cousin Arbella as a rather amusing minx, an interesting
type in modern psychology (though really her type is as old
as--say--the Hallstadt period) had no wish to see her convicted of
murder. Furthermore he was getting so increasingly interested in
this clever David Williams that he would have liked to make his
fortune by helping him to a sensational success as a pleader, to
one of those cases which if successfully conducted mark out a path
to the Bench. So h