“Yes. It is that of a well-proportioned, fairly muscular man of about sixty, quite healthy with the exception of the heart, one of the valves of which—the mitral valve—was incompetent and allowed some leakage of blood to take place.”
“Was the heart affection sufficient to account for the death of deceased?”
“No. It was quite a serviceable heart. There was good compensation—that is to say, there was extra growth of muscle to make up for the leaky valve. So far as his heart was concerned, deceased might have lived for another twenty years.”
“Were you able to ascertain what actually was the cause of death?”
“Yes. The cause of death was aconitine poisoning.”
At this reply a murmur of astonishment arose from the jury, and I heard Miss D’Arblay suddenly draw in her breath. The spectators sat up on their benches, and even the veiled lady was so far interested as to look up from her paper.
“How had the poison been administered?” the coroner asked.
“It had been injected under the skin by means of a hypodermic syringe.”
“Can you give an opinion as to whether the poison was administered to deceased by himself or by some other person?”
“It could not have been injected by deceased himself,” the witness replied. “The needle-puncture was in the back, just below the left shoulder-blade. It is, in my opinion, physically impossible for any one to inject into his own body with a hypodermic syringe in that spot. And, of course, a person who was administering an injection to himself would select the most convenient spot—such as the front of the thigh. But apart from the question of convenience, the place in which the needle-puncture was found was actually out of reach.” Here the witness produced a hypodermic syringe, the action of which he demonstrated with the aid of a glass of water; and having shown the impossibility of applying it to the spot that he had described, passed the syringe round for the jury’s inspection.