“You have had some experience in dispensing. Do you consider it possible that the Liquor Arsenicalis could have been put into the medicine by mistake when it was being made up?”
“It would be quite impossible if a minim measure-glass was used, as the glass would have had to be filled twelve times. But this is never done. One does not measure large quantities in small measures. Three ounces would be measured out in a four or five ounce measure, as a rule, or, possibly in a two ounce measure, by half refilling it.”
“Might not the wrong measure-glass have been taken up by mistake?”
“That is, of course, just possible. But it is most unlikely; for the great disproportion between the large measure-glass and the little stock-bottle would be so striking that it could hardly fail to be noticed.”
“Then, from your own observation and from Dr. Dimsdale’s evidence, you reject the idea that a mistake may have been made in dispensing this bottle of medicine?”
“Yes, entirely. I have heard Dr. Dimsdale’s evidence and I examined the medicine. I am convinced that he could not have made a mistake under the circumstances that he described and I am certain that the medicine that I saw did not contain more than a small quantity—less than a drachm—of Liquor Arsenicalis.”
“You are not forgetting that the analysts actually found the equivalent of three ounces of Liquor Arsenicalis in the bottle?”
“No. But I am sure it was not there when I examined the bottle.”
The coroner wrote down this answer with a deliberate air, and, when he had finished, turned to the jury.
“I think we have nothing more to ask this witness, unless there is any point that you want made more clear.”