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came forward to
give evidence at the inquest was Christiana, who claimed that she
and her friends had also become ill after eating sweets from
Maynard’s store. She blamed Mr Maynard for some personal discomfort
caused the previous year, when the wife of a good friend had
suffered a similar event. There was evidence to back this up,
because tests before the inquest discovered strychnine in the
chocolates sold by Maynard’s. What was not resolved at this inquiry
was how the strychnine had come to be within the chocolates. As a
consequence, a verdict of accidental death was recorded on the boy,
and the shop owner John Maynard exonerated of any intentional
poisoning. He destroyed all his stock.
    If, at the
time, Barker’s death was considered to be an unfortunate accident,
there followed a series of occurrences to arouse suspicions of foul
play. Shortly after the inquest on Sidney Barker, three anonymous
letters were sent to the boy’s father urging him to sue Maynard for
his son’s death. All the letters suggested that the ‘young lady’
who spoke to the inquest would be prepared to help in further
proceedings. Did someone know more than had been discovered at the
inquest? Also, the poisonings continued. A palpable sense of fear
crept through the streets of the seaside town: where and who would
the poisoner strike at next? The Police had no leads, and no
obvious way of protecting the local population. They decided to
make a public appeal. Brighton’s chief constable placed an
advertisement in the local newspaper offering a reward for any
information which led to the arrest of the poisoner.
    That action
became part of the endgame. Another element was the imminent
departure of the Beards from Brighton to a new life in Scotland.
The intrigue culminated on Thursday 10th August 1871, when six
prominent local men and women, including Mrs Emily Beard, received
parcels of poisoned fruits and cakes, couriered on a train to
Brighton from Victoria Station. This time, two of Mrs Beard’s
servants had been invited to taste her gift; they had duly eaten a
poisoned plum cake and fallen ill. Mrs Beard’s household was not
alone: one of the Beard’s neighbours had also been poisoned, along
with the editor of the local newspaper. And, once again, Christiana
Edmunds had received one of the poisoner’s parcels. When the Police
arrived to remove her parcel, she told them that that she feared
for her safety, as it seemed impossible that the culprit could ever
be found. ‘How very strange’, she said, ‘I feel certain that you’ll
never find it out’. After she had shut the door on the local boys
in blue, she took up her pen and paper, and wrote her latest letter
to Dr Beard, drawing much attention both to Mrs Beard’s near miss,
and to the Barker inquest earlier in the summer.
    Christiana was
taunting the Police, and she was taunting Dr Beard; in fact, she
was taunting everyone. Did she want to be caught? If so, she had
sown the seeds of her own capture. It was after he received that
latest letter that Dr Beard decided to go to the Police and voice
his suspicion that Christiana Edmunds might have something to do
with it all. He handed over the large cache of letters which she
had continued to write to him, even after her banishment from his
presence. That he had kept these letters, secretly, meant that they
were potentially incriminating to him as well; but he concluded
that the seriousness of the situation required him to face his own,
social judgement. The Brighton Police decided to test his theory.
They wrote to Edmunds about the Barker case, and received a reply
in the same hand as the doctor’s correspondence. They decided that
the matter warranted further investigations.
    Christiana was
arrested a week after that last batch of poisoned parcels arrived.
Immediately, the Police began to ask around about Miss Edmunds and
what she did, and suddenly, many small and unconnected incidents
began to make sense. It did not take long to