“Yes. I looked at it and took out the cork and smelled it and tasted it.”
“What made you do that?”
“I noticed that it seemed to contain Tincture of Cardamoms and I smelled and tasted it to find out if the other ingredients had been changed.”
“And what conclusion did you arrive at?”
“That they had not been changed. I could taste the Nux Vomica and smell the orange and the Liquor Arsenicalis—at least the lavender.”
“Did you realize what the lavender smell was due to?”
“Yes. I recognized it as the smell of Liquor Arsenicalis. I knew that deceased was taking Liquor Arsenicalis because I had asked Dr. Dimsdale about it when I first noticed the smell.”
The coroner wrote down this answer and then, raising his head, looked steadily at Madeline for some seconds without speaking; and the jury looked harder still. At length the former spoke, slowly, deliberately, emphatically.
“You have told us that you examined this medicine to find out what it contained, and that you were able to recognize Tincture of Cardamoms by its colour and Liquor Arsenicalis by its smell. It would seem, then, that you know a good deal about drugs. Is that so?”
“I know something about drugs. My father was a doctor and he taught me simple dispensing so that I could help him.”