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discover that she had
left Brighton on Tuesday 8th August to spend two days in Margate,
attending to family business. Further enquiries indicated that she
had then caught the train to London, before returning to Brighton
from Victoria on the Thursday in question. She was on the same
train that carried the poisoned post, and had been placed at the
scene of the crime However, what exactly was the crime? The Police
worked forwards from Dr Beard’s letters. They concluded that the
motive must be sex: Christiana was demonstrably in love with Dr
Beard, and had decided that her only hope at union lay in the
removal of Mrs Beard from this mortal coil. Edmunds was charged
with attempted murder.
    This set the
scene for her committal hearing, which began at the Brighton Police
Court one week after her arrest, on 24th August 1871. Christiana
appeared decked in black: a long silk dress, a lace shawl, and a
veiled bonnet. Over the course of three hearings over the next
fortnight, many witnesses provided pieces in the jigsaw. Dr Beard
testified to the events of September 1870, when his wife had fallen
sick after eating chocolates. A boy called Adam May testified that
he would run errands for Edmunds, taking forged prescriptions to
druggists to obtain poisons. He would also purchase sweets and
chocolates for her from Maynard’s. A chemist called Isaac Garrett
testified that he had known Edmunds as ‘Mrs Wood’ for four years,
and that in March 1871 and two subsequent occasions he had supplied
her with strychnine. She had said she wanted to poison some local
cats which had become a nuisance. Garrett said that a local
milliner called Mrs Stone had vouched for Edmunds’s good character.
There were others who were called to the stand, too, placing
Edmunds at the scene of other poisoning events, hitherto
unknown.
    It quickly
became apparent that enough evidence existed to charge Edmunds with
additional offences. Arsenic had been found in the last batch of
parcels, and Edmunds was also known to have purchased arsenic as
well as strychnine. Secondly, those who had received the recent
poisoned gifts all appeared to know the Beards or have some
knowledge of the poisoning case. Most significantly, the name of
Maynard’s kept returning. It was Christiana who had drawn attention
to herself and to Maynard’s at the time of the inquest into Sidney
Barker’s death, when she had provided evidence of her own
poisoning. Now, a handwriting expert concluded that the addresses
appended to the parcels, the signatures of ‘Mrs Wood’ in Mr
Garrett’s books, and even the notes handwritten to Sidney Barker’s
father, were all by the same author as that August letter to Dr
Beard. The handwriting was a direct match. That author had also
been a regular customer at the sweet shop, placing herself at the
centre of all that had gone on in Brighton that summer. The
direction of the prosecution changed, probably to Dr Beard’s great
relief. The case was no longer about his wife, and his relationship
with Christiana. On 7th September, Edmunds was charged with the
murder of Sidney Barker, and it was this new charge on which she
would stand indicted.
    The story now
suggested by the prosecution was that after Christiana’s failed
attempt to poison Emily Beard in September 1870, her subsequent
poisoning spree had been occasioned by a wish to blame Maynard’s
for the whole affair. The suggestion was that by casting guilt
elsewhere, Christiana believed she could reassure Charles that he
had no grounds to banish her. The truth was that no one was really
sure what she had hoped to achieve. An alternative argument doing
the rounds was that Christiana had taken to experimenting in
preparation for a renewed attempt to kill the obstacle to her own,
personal happiness. Throughout the spring and summer of 1871, these
experiments had been meted out allegedly on animals and innocent
passers-by, with different dosages of poison being trialled and the
results noted. Whatever, it