The next witness, Peter Stockdale (also a druggist of Edinburgh), followed, and said: "The prisoner at the bar called at my shop on the date indicated on my register, some days later than the date indicated in the register of Mr. Kinlay. He wished to purchase sixpenny-worth of arsenic. My assistant, to whom he had addressed himself, called me. It is a rule in my shop that no one sells poisons but myself. I asked the prisoner what he wanted the arsenic for. He answered that he wanted it for killing rats at his house, called Gleninch. I said, 'Have I the honor of speaking to Mr. Macallan, of Gleninch?' He said that was his name. I sold him the arsenic--about an ounce and a half--and labeled the bottle in which I put it with the word 'Poison' in my own handwriting. He signed the register, and took the arsenic away with him, after paying for it."
The cross-examination of the two men succeeded in asserting certain technical objections to their evidence. But the terrible fact that my husband himself had actually purchased the arsenic in both cases remained unshaken.
The next witnesses--the gardener and the cook at Gleninch--wound the chain of hostile evidence around the prisoner more mercilessly still.
On examination the gardener said, on his oath: "I never received any arsenic from the prisoner, or from any one else, at the date to which you refer, of at any other date. I never used any such thing as a solution of arsenic, or ever allowed the men working under me to use it, in the conservatories or in the garden at Gleninch. I disapprove of arsenic as a means of destroying noxious insects infesting flowers and plants."
The cook, being called next, spoke as positively as the gardener: "Neither my master nor any other person gave me any arsenic to destroy rats at any time. No such thing was wanted. I declare, on my oath, that I never saw any rats in or about the house, or ever heard of any rats infesting it."
Other household servants at Gleninch gave similar evidence. Nothing could be extracted from them on cross-examination except that there might have been rats in the house, though they were not aware of it. The possession of the poison was traced directly to my husband, and to no one else. That he had bought it was actually proved, and that he had kept it was the one conclusion that the evidence justified.
The witnesses who came next did their best to press the charge against the prisoner home to him. Having the arsenic in his possession, what had he done with it? The evidence led the jury to infer what he had done with it.