"Another circumstance worthy your attention is that poisoning by
hydrocyanic acid is so easily recognized that it has seldom been used
for purposes of murder, except in cases where the person committing the
crime felt safe as to his own identity, and desired to make it appear
that some one else had done the deed."
She paused in her recital and cast a glance at a large, muscular man,
seated among a group of witnesses for the defense. He gave her an almost
imperceptible nod in the affirmative, and she went on slowly and
impressively:
"What is more, gentlemen of the jury, this candied fruit was not
purchased in Boston, but in Providence, and the person buying it
insisted on a perfectly plain box, without any name upon it; he also
bought several separate pieces of similar fruit."
There was a buzz of excitement in the human hive, which the bailiff
suppressed by a sharp rap of his gavel. Those who had caught the signal
turned their eyes from Silvia to the large man, but there was nothing in
his impassive demeanor to attract attention.
The defendant and his family were evidently as much at sea as were the
others in the courtroom as to the significance of these assertions, but
the look of worry had entirely disappeared from the face of Dr. Earl.
"It is true," she went on, "that I had taken the little girl to the
country for a week when this awful crime was committed, but Dr. Earl
knew nothing of this, and the evidence is already so clear as to need no
further illumination that the person who sent the poisoned candy was
aware of the fact that the child was not at home, and would not be for
several days at least. So clear is it that Dr. Earl did not know the
child was in the country that I will prove to you that he sent to her
city address a box of pecans which were forwarded by her mother to the
country, and I will offer in evidence the box in which they were sent.
The person who mailed this box had designs on one victim only, and had
the child been at home she would undoubtedly have been the one killed,
for she would have been certain to receive the first piece. With all due
deference to the learned district attorney, and while his theory is
possible that a kiss given and received might have caused the death of
the other, the probability is so remote that a person skilled in the
knowledge of poisons and their effects, as Dr. Earl is, would scarcely
have undertaken to poison two people in this clumsy and uncertain
fashion, when the placing of two pieces of candied fruit instead of one
on the top of the box was all that was necessary to insure the end
desired."
She paused again, and gave the large man another look, and then
exhibited a card to the jury, which she had been holding in her hand
from the beginning of her address.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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