That's all for our live coverage of the third day of the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry.

Revisit BBC News Wiltshire tomorrow where we expect to hear from the ambulance service about the emergency service response to the Salisbury and Amesbury poisonings.

Today's live blog was written by Dawn Limbu and Adam Goldsmith and was Edited by Richard Greenaway and Chris Kelly.

Dan O'Brien
Political reporter, BBC Wiltshire

The most striking moment from today’s hearing was the recounting of the moment Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley opened that perfume bottle which contained the chemical weapon.

Transcripts of several police interviews with Charlie – at times contradictory on certain details – describe their struggles to open it, the oily texture, the unremarkable smell and the speed at which Dawn become severely unwell.

A question surrounds the way it was wrapped. Charlie’s statements were at times contradictory but always pointed to needing a knife to cut through the strong thick plastic packaging.

Tests from Porton Down show it as the same type of novichok used to target the Skripals, but was it the same vessel? Commander Murphy today said he had a “strong view” it was but cannot be sure.

If so, had it therefore been sealed back up again before being discarded? Or does it raise the potential for there perhaps being more than one vessel? The inquiry has been told it will return to the issue of the packaging in a later hearing.

But where – and when – did Charlie find that bottle in the first place?

That remains a vital question to all of this, yet he doesn’t seem able to recall.

In one police interview he says the poisoning, along with his drug and alcohol issues, have left him struggling with his memory.

It is possible Charlie will appear at a November session via video link.

After Francesca Whitelaw finishes up, Adam Straw KC - representing the families of Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley - has a couple of procedural questions.

He discusses CCTV on Dawn's flat, as well as some of the clothes that Rowley was wearing.

After concluding his questions, the judge decides that's it for the day.

The inquiry will resume at 10:00 BST tomorrow, but stick with us for some final thoughts and analysis on all the evidence that we heard today.

On the 6th of December, Operation Read received the full post-mortem results for Dawn Sturgess.

The Senior Investigating Officer, detective chief inspector Philip Murphy, indicated in his witness statement that Dawn Sturgess was contaminated with the poison through inadvertent exposure, after Charlie Rowley gave her what he thought was perfume.

Tiny traces of the deadly nerve agent Novichok were found at the Queen Elizabeth Gardens in Salisbury, including in the public toilets.

Dawn and Charlie had visited the gardens on Friday 29 July - the day before they were poisoned. The gardens were later cordoned off and forensic examination took place.

Commander Murphy says that the Department of Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) had ruled that it was possible that there could have been cross contamination, as these findings were so low.

The findings suggest there was a chance it was a cross contamination from the control sample. Murphy says that the advice was that they couldn't "attach much significance to these findings".

At the moment, Francesca Whitelaw KC and Commander Murphy are tackling some pretty fine details about how and where the perfume bottle of Novichok and its packaging were found in Rowley's flat.

The important element of this is that Operation Read matches up with the statement we heard earlier on from Charlie Rowley about events on the day of the poisoning.

As Commander Murphy explains, the bottle was found on the side next to the kitchen sink - an area later found to have high levels of contamination - and its packaging had been discarded in a makeshift bin on the floor nearby.

This follows from Rowley’s testimony that he spilt some of the Novichok on himself when fiddling with the bottle by the sink before “quickly” washing it off.

Dawn Limbu
BBC News, Bristol

Some reaction now on how the 2018 Novichok attack affected Salisbury.

Councillor Sven Hocking, the Mayor of Salisbury, says the poisonings has left a mark on the city's history.

He says the attack had a terrible economic effect on the city, pushing Salisbury it into the spotlight for "all the wrong reasons".

"It's still talked about, it's still part of the city's history and it'll never got away," he says.

"I think the residents and businesses have sort of moved on from that now and we're just getting on with business as usual."

The inquiry has resumed after a short break.

Follow this page for more updates from the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry.

You can watch the stream from Salisbury Guildhall by clicking Watch Live at the top of this page.

The inquiry rounds up its first section after lunch by reiterating how important finding the bottle of Novichok was.

However, Commander Murphy cautions that there is "no way of knowing" for sure whether it is the exact same weapon used to poison the Skripals.

With that, the inquiry takes a quick break.

Whitelaw and Commander Murphy are discussing the perfume bottle which contained the Novichok.

Murphy says the bottle comprised of four parts, one of which cannot be seen in the photo below. It had a glass bottle - which contained the liquid - a silver screw cap and a white nozzle which Murphy says looks like the type of nozzle that you'd see on a throat spray. He says the cap is not the type you'd usually see on a perfume bottle.

The bottle had an orange cap, which was found separately in Charlie's flat.

Image source, Dawn Sturgess Inquiry

Francesca Whitelaw KC and Commander Dominic Murphy have been going through some granular details on how the investigation took place.

They've now turned to address the moment the bottle of Novichok was found in a rubbish pile next to a sink in Charlie Rowley's flat.

Up to this point, Murphy says, it wasn't entirely clear how the Novichok that had been used to poison the Skripals in Salisbury had been carried around.

So, the police officer calls the discovery of the perfume bottle "a milestone".

He says "it helped provide absolute clarity" on how Novichok was being administered in the country.

The lawyer picks up again briefly on the link with Sergei Skripal’s poisoning in Salisbury three months earlier.

It’s observed by Commander Murphy that there was “no known links” between any of the individuals.

As a result, the police officer says that investigating teams initially felt that the small distance between Salisbury and Amesbury - where Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley were taken ill - was the “most significant” link between the cases.

Dan O'Brien
Political reporter, BBC Wiltshire

Before this inquiry began, plenty of people asked if we would really learn anything new. Didn’t we already know Dawn was poisoned, that it was Novichok, that it was in a perfume bottle?

But part of the job of the inquiry is not to simply accept those assumptions as fact - how do we know what we know? Today's session is an example of the inquiry taking those assumptions and interrogating and analysing the evidence behind them.

This morning we were shown lots of CCTV footage of Dawn and Charlie’s movements in Salisbury the day before, the bus ticket they used to get to Amesbury, photos of the bin found at Charlie’s home – all of which were later searched.

At the moment they’re going through forensic reports of Charlie Rowley’s flat, as well as Dawn and Charlie’s body and clothing, detailing where on the body, clothing and furniture Novichok was located.

All of the above gets compared to witness statements – which particularly in Charlie’s case, have not always been consistent.

One example: Novichok was located on handles and taps inside Charlie's flat, but not on the front door handle – suggesting the exposure happened inside.

Having assessed the door way into the property, Commander Murphy sets out how his forensic teams analysed the rest of the flat for contamination levels.

He tells the inquiry that traces of Novichok were found "on various" parts of furniture throughout, which he suggests is likely down to cross-contamination.

The highest results, Murphy continues, were in the bathroom, and also around the kitchen sink.

The inquiry observes that this tallies with Rowley's explanation on how he spilt Novichok on himself while in the kitchen, and then quickly washed it off.

This leads Murphy to conclude that contamination occurred within Rowley's flat.

"The direct exposure to the nerve agent took place in 9 Muggleton Road. That was the main scene of contamination," Murphy says.

The inquiry has resumed after lunch.

Francesca Whitelaw is asking the Met Police's counter terrorism commander Dominic Murphy about Operation Read - the forensic investigation that commenced at 9 Muggleton Road after Dawn and Charlie were poisoned.

Commander Murphy explains how one of the main priorities was to understand the level of contamination.

He says they found no traces of Novichok on the external part of the door handle, but they found low level traces on the inside.

He said it was likely to come from cross-contamination rather than direct contact with Novichok.

Seeing no Novichok on the outside suggests that Dawn and Charlie weren't contaminated when they entered Muggleton Road on the evening of Friday 29 June.

The inquiry is just about to resume after an hour’s lunch break.

So, in case you’re just joining us, here’s a quick recap of what we were told this morning:

• The police had learnt lessons after the Salisbury poisoning of Sergei Skripal, so were better equipped when Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley fell ill
• We won’t hear from Charlie Rowley in this session - or be told how he found the bottle of Novichok. That might come when the inquiry resumes in London in November
• The Novichok “did not smell like perfume” according to Rowley, and was found in a tightly wrapped box
• Around 15 minutes after applying the Novichok to her wrists, Sturgess began to “act peculiarly” before Rowley found her convulsing fully clothed in her bath

The inquiry has adjourned for a lunch break.

We will be back soon with more live updates from the Dawn Sturgess public inquiry. The inquiry is expected to return at 13:40.

This afternoon we expect to hear more forensic evidence and about Dawn and Charlie's poisoning.

We're hearing more now about how Charlie Rowley began to feel ill. O'Connor describes Dawn was taken away by ambulance, then two of Rowley's friends arrived.

The inquiry describes how they "used heroin" before attending an outdoor church fete.

Charlie then began to feel unwell at around 15:30, appearing "sweaty".

Having returned to his flat later that evening, Charlie's friend Sam Hobson said Charlie began "acting very strangely", and so he called an ambulance at 18:30.

O'Connor then switches to Rowley's statement, and considers Charlie's evidence on why he had taken longer to feel symptoms of poisoning than Dawn.

“I washed the Novichok off my hands very quickly using soap and water… Dawn did not do so," Charlie says in his statement.

Charlie goes on to speculate how he could have become re-contaminated after this, citing the fact that he smoked a cigarette Dawn had been using when she sprayed the Novichok, or using the tap he had touched earlier.

We now hear about how Dawn's condition deteriorated rapidly, just 15 minutes after spraying herself with the poison.

Charlie describes how Dawn said that she felt "very, very strange" and had to go lie in the bath.

"After a minute I found her lying in the bath with her clothes on just lying in the bath convulsing and foaming at the mouth and I panicked. I didn't know what to do."

Charlie says he called 999 but had a "complete memory blank" and didn't even know where he lived. He said the bath had no water. The whole time Dawn's condition was getting worse and worse.

When the ambulance turned up, Charlie said his "head was screwed" and that he was "pacing backwards and forwards", unsure of what to do.

A short time after opening and spilling what he believed to be a beauty product, Charlie describes how Dawn began to feel unwell.

Once Dawn had rubbed the substance on her wrists, Charlie told the police how he had begun to worry about his partner’s health.

From the police interview O’Connor, reads Charlie’s recollection that he wasn’t sure why Dawn felt ill at first as they were both “hungover”.

But, when Dawn got into the bath around 15 minutes later, Rowley says she started “acting peculiar” and “breathing funny”, so he phoned for help.

“That’s when I thought I had to call an ambulance, because I was panicking,” Charlie says in the interview.