“No proof; that is, no proof that I can advance, that would satisfy the eye or ear. But I am certain, by the look of them, that those were never my pills.”
All this took the jury aback; the coroner also. It had seemed to some of them an odd thing that Hester Reed should have swallowed two or three of the pills at once without their entailing an ache or a pain, and that one each had poisoned the babies. Perkins the butcher observed to the coroner that the box must have been changed since Mrs. Reed helped herself from it. Upon which the coroner, after pulling at his whiskers for a moment as if in thought, called out for Mrs. Reed to return.
But when she did so, and was further questioned, she only kept to what she had said before, strenuously denying that the box could have been changed. It had never been touched by any hands but her own while it stood in its place on the press, and had never been removed from it at all until she took it downstairs on the past Tuesday night.
“Is the room where this press stands your own sleeping-room?” asked the coroner.
“No, sir. It’s the other room, where my three children sleep.”
“Could these children get to the box?”
“Dear no, sir! ’Twould be quite impossible.”
“Had any one an opportunity of handling the box when you took it down on Tuesday night?” went on the coroner after a pause.
“Only Mrs. Dovey, sir. Nobody else was there.”
“Did she touch it?”