of the terrible pain they had died in. Duffham and a medical man, who was a stranger and had helped at the post-mortem, testified to arsenic being the cause of death. The next question was, how had it been administered? A rumour arose in the room that the pills had been analyzed; but the result had not transpired. Every one could see a small paper parcel standing on the table before the coroner, and knew by its shape that it must contain the pill-box.
Hester Reed was called. She said (giving her evidence very quietly, just a sob and a sigh every now and then alone betraying what she felt) that she was the wife of George Reed. Her two little ones—twins, aged eleven months and a half—had been ailing for a day or two, seemed feverish, would not eat their food, were very cross at times and unnaturally still at others, and she came to the conclusion that their teeth must be plaguing them, and thought she would give them some mild physic. Mrs. Todhetley, the Squire’s lady at Dyke Manor, had called in on the Tuesday afternoon, and agreed with her that some mild physic–
“Confine your statement to what is evidence,” interrupted the coroner, sternly.
Hester Reed, looking scared at the check, and perhaps not knowing what was evidence and what not, went on the best way she could. She and Ann Dovey—who had been neighbourly enough to look in and help her—had given the children a pill apiece in the evening after they were undressed, mashing the pill up in a little sugar and warm water. She then put them to bed upstairs and went to bed herself not long after. In the night she and her husband were awoke by the babies’ screams, and they thought it must be convulsions. Her husband lighted the fire and ran for Dr. Duffham; but one had died before the doctor could get there, and the other died close upon it.
“What food had you given them during the day?” asked the coroner.
“Very little indeed, sir. They wouldn’t take it.”
“What did the little that they did take consist of?”
“It were soaked bread, sir, with milk and some sprinkled sugar. I tried them with some potato mashed up in a spoonful o’ broth at midday—we’d had a bit o’ biled neck o’ mutton for dinner—but they both turned from it.”
“Then all they took that day was bread soaked in milk and sweetened with sugar?”
“Yes, it were, sir. But the bread was soaked in warm water and the milk and sugar was put in afterwards. ’Twas but the veriest morsel they’d take, poor little dears!”
“Was the bread—and the milk—and the sugar, the same that the rest of your household used?”
“In course it were, sir. My other children ate plenty of it. Their appetites didn’t fail ’em.”
“Where did you get the warm water from that you say you soaked the bread in?”
“Out o’ the tea-kettle, sir. The water was the same that I biled for our tea morning and night.”
“The deceased children, then, had absolutely no food given to them apart from what you had yourselves?”
“Not a scrap, sir. Not a drop.”
“Except the pills.”
“Excepting them, in course, sir. None o’ the rest of us wanted physic.”
“Where did you procure these pills?”
She went into the history of the pills. Giving the full account of them, as already related.
“By your own showing, witness, it must be three months, or thereabouts, since you had that box from Abel Crew,” spoke the coroner. “How do you know that the two pills you administered to the deceased children came from the same box?”
Hester Reed’s eyes opened wide. She looked as surprised as though she had been asked whether she had procured the two pills from the moon.
“Yes, yes,” interposed one of the jury, “how do you know it was the same box?”
“Why, gentlemen, I had no other box of pills at all, save that,” she said, when her speech came to her. “We’ve had no physic but that in the cottage since winter, nor for ever so long afore. I’ll swear it was the same box, sirs; there can’t be no mistake about it.”
“Did you leave it about in the way of people?” resumed the coroner. “So that it might be handled by anybody who might come into your cottage?”
“No, sir,” she answered, earnestly. “I never kept the pill-box but in one place, and that was on the top of the high press upstairs out of harm’s way. I put it there the first night Abel Crew gave it me, and when I wanted to get a pill or two out for my own taking, I used to step on a chair—for it’s too high for me to reach without—and help myself. The box have never been took from the place at all, sir, till Tuesday night, when I brought it downstairs with me. When I’ve wanted to dust the press-top, I’ve just lifted the pill-box with one hand and passed the duster along under it with the other, as I stood on the chair. It’s the same box, sir; I’ll swear to that much; and it’s the same pills.”
Strong testimony. The coroner paused a moment. “You swear that, you say? You are quite sure?”
“Sir, I am sure and positive. The box was never took from its place since Abel Crew gave it me, till I reached up for it on Tuesday evening and carried it downstairs.”
“You had been in the habit of taking these pills yourself, you say?”
“I took two three or four times when I first had ’em, sir; once I took three; but since then I’ve felt better and not wanted any.”
“Did you feel any inconvenience from them? Any pain?”
“Not a bit, sir. As I said to Ann Dovey that night, when she asked whether they was fit pills to give the children, they seemed as mild as milk.”
“Should you know the box again, witness?”
“Law yes, sir, what should hinder me?” returned Hester Reed, inwardly marvelling at what seemed so superfluous a question.
The coroner undid the paper, and handed the box to her. She was standing close to him, on the other side his clerk—who sat writing down the evidence. “Is this the box?” he asked. “Look at it well.”
Mrs. Reed did as she was bid: turned it about and looked “well.” “Yes, sir, it is the same box,” said she. “That is, I am nearly sure of it.”
“What do you mean by nearly sure?” quickly asked the coroner, catching at the word. “Have you any doubt?”
“Not no moral doubt at all, sir. Only them pill-boxes is all so like one another. Yes, sir, I’m sure it is the same box.”
“Open it, and look at the pills. Are they, in your judgment, the same?”
“Just the same, sir,” she answered, after taking off the lid. “One might a’most know’em anywhere. Only–”
“Only what?” demanded the coroner, as she paused.
“Well, sir, I fancied I had rather more left—six or seven say. There’s only five here.”
The coroner made no answer to that. He took the box from her and put on the lid. We soon learnt that two had been taken out for the purpose of being analyzed.
For who should loom into the room at that juncture but Pettipher, the druggist from Piefinch Cut. He had been analyzing the pills in a hasty way in obedience to orders received half-an-hour ago, and came to give the result. The pills contained arsenic, he said; not enough to kill a grown person, he thought, but enough to kill a child. As Pettipher was only a small man (in a business point of view) and sold groceries as well as drugs, and spectacles and ear-trumpets, some of us did not think much of his opinion, and fancied the pills should have been analyzed by Duffham. That was just like old Jones: giving work to the wrong man.
George Reed was questioned, but could tell nothing, except that he had never touched either box or pills. While Ann Dovey was being called, and the coroner had his head bent over his clerk’s notes, speaking to him in an undertone, Abel Crew suddenly asked to be allowed to look at the pills.