Note 115 — Chapter VI

To the evidence for these statements, the Dean of Faculty objected that, though the guard of the train from Stirling was shown the photograph of L’Angelier, and identified him by it, the photo. was not shown to Ross—that Ross only spoke of him as a foreigner—that no one at the place where he had refreshments at Coatbridge was called to identify him—that the “foreigner” told Ross he had walked from Alloa (eight miles), and not from the Bridge of Allan, and that on the Friday or Saturday previous he had walked into Stirling to try and get a cheque cashed, and yet no attempt was made to show that he did so. The witnesses for the defence, on the contrary (Adams, Kirk, Dickson, druggists), were clear (Adams) that at half-past five on Sunday, the 22nd, a gentleman came to his shop for 25 drops of laudanum; Dickson, of Batherton, two miles from Coatbridge, that one whom he recognised as extremely like the photo. of L’Angelier came for a similar dose at 6.30 on a Sunday at the end of March, suffering from a bowel complaint; and Miss Kirk, of the Gallowgate, Glasgow, who remembered a gentleman, “as like as anything I ever saw” to the photo. of L’Angelier, came about 8 p.m. on a Sunday night at the end of March for a medicine, and got a white powder. [But it must be remarked that, weak as this evidence was, it was weakened by the admission of Adams that his customer did not complain of illness—by that of Dickson that it might have been in April, and by the inability of Miss Kirk to fix any date for the occurrence, or to state what the powder was, though she identified the purse from which the party took the money for the payment of it.]