“It was soft mold, sir, an’ they were plain enough.”
“Were not a dozen men running about this garden at twenty minutes past ten?”
“Ay—quite that.”
“And you tell us coolly that you could distinguish those of one man?”
“There was on’y one man’s track i’ that pleäce, sir.”
Benson was not to be flurried. Mr. Jonas and a police sergeant corroborated his opinion.
Dr. MacGregor followed. He described Pickering’s wound, the nature of his illness, and the cause of death. The stab itself was not of a fatal character. Had it diverged slightly it must have reached the lung. As it was, the poison, not the knife, had done the mischief.
The county analyst was scientifically dogmatic. His analyses had been conducted with the utmost care. The knife was contaminated, the pitchfork was only rusty. The latter was a dangerous implement, but in no way responsible for the state of Pickering’s blood corpuscles.
Mr. Dane, of course, made the most of these witnesses, but Mr. Stockwell wisely forbore from pressing them, and thus hammering the main items again into the heads of the jury.