Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 11.pdf/331

 302

of repose. Its effects, and indeed its very existence were but recently known in this country, though it had for some time been used in other nations of Europe; and it was supposed to be a discovery of the Ger man chemists, and to be produced by a powerful distillation of the seed of the wild cherry tree, so abundant in the Black Forest. But the fact being ascertained, that the cause of the death was poison, left open the much more momentous question, by whom was it administered? It could hardly be supposed to be by the deceased himself! There was nothing to induce such a suspi cion; and there was this important circum stance, which of itself almost negatived its possibility, that no phial, or vessel of any kind, had been discovered, in which the poison could have been contained. Was it then the prisoner who administered it? Be fore he asked them to come to that conclu sion, it would be necessary to state more distinctly what his evidence was. The pris oner's family consisted only of himself, a housekeeper, and one man-servant. The man-servant slept in an out-house adjoining the stable, and did so on the night of Thom son's death. The prisoner slept at one end of the house and the housekeeper at the other, and the deceased had been put in a room adjoining the housekeeper's. It would be proved, by a person who hap pened to be passing by the house on the night in question, about three hours after midnight, that he had been induced to re main and watch, from having his attention excited by the circumstance, then very un usual, of a light moving about the house at that late hour. That person would state, most positively, that he could distinctly see a figure, holding a light, go from the room in which the prisoner slept, to the house keeper's room, and the light disappeared for a minute. Whether the two persons went into Thomson's room he could not see, as the window of that room looked another

way; but in about a minute they returned, passing quite along the house to Smith's room again; and in about five minutes the light was extinguished, and he saw it no more. Such was the evidence upon which the magistrates had committed Smith; and singularly enough, since his committal, the housekeeper had been missing, nor could any trace of her be discovered. Within the last week, the witness who saw the light had been more particularly examined; and, in order to refresh his memory, he had been placed, at dark, in the very spot where he had stood on that night, and another person was placed with him. The whole scene, as he had described it, was acted over again; but it was utterly impossible, from the cause above mentioned, to ascertain, when the light disappeared, whether the parties had gone into Thomson's room. As if, however, to throw still deeper mys tery over this extraordinary transaction, the witness persisted in adding a new feature to his former statement; that, after the per sons had returned with the light into Smith's room, and before it was extinguished, he had twice perceived some dark object to in tervene between the light and the window, almost as large as the surface of the window itself, and which he described by saying it appeared as if a door had been placed be fore the light. Now, in Smith's room, there was nothing which could account for this appearance; his bed was in a different part; and there was neither cupboard nor press in the room, which, but for the bed, was entirely empty, the room in which he dressed being at a distance beyond it. He would state only one fact more ( said the learned counsel ) and he had done his duty: it would then be for the jury to do theirs. Within a few days there had been found, in the prisoner's house, the stopper of a small bottle of a very singular description; it was apparently not of English manufacture, and was described, by the medical men, as