“The used medicine bottles were always washed and sent back to Dr. Dimsdale.”
“Did you send back the corks, too?”
“No, the corks were usually burned in the rubbish destructor.”
“Do you know what happened to this particular cork?”
“I took it down with me in the morning and dropped it in the bin which was kept for the rubbish to be taken out to the destructor. The cork must have been burned with the other rubbish the same day.”
“When you gave deceased that last dose of medicine from the new bottle, did you notice anything unusual about it? Any smell, for instance?”
“I noticed a very faint smell of lavender. But that was not unusual. His medicine often smelt of lavender.”
“Do you know if the previous bottle of medicine smelt of lavender?”
“Yes, it did. I noticed it when I was washing out the bottle.”
“That, gentlemen,” said the coroner, as he wrote down the answer, “is a very important fact. You will notice that it bears out Dr. Randall’s opinion that more than one dose of the poison had been given; that, in fact, a number of repeated small doses had been administered. And, so far as we can see at present, the medicine was, at least, the principal medium of its administration. The next problem that we have to solve is how the poison got into the medicine. If none of you wish to put any questions to the very intelligent witness whom we have just been examining, I think we had better call Dr. Dimsdale and hear what he has to tell us.”