Robinson nodded impatiently, lifting his hand and waggling it to assure agreement on this point. He was leaning over the back of his chair, in quiet conversation with his client. In a moment Knowlton saw Lizzie rise from her chair. The deputy sheriff rose at almost the same instant. There was a buzz in the courtroom as she made her way out, the deputy sheriff following. Knowlton turned back to the witness box.
“Now, Dr. Draper,” he said, “I will ask you whether from an examination of that skull, coupled with the observations of your autopsy, you are able to determine the length of the edge of the instrument which inflicted the wounds.”
“I believe I am, sir.”
“What do you say it is?”
“Three inches and one-half.”
“Will you tell us what it is that leads you to that conclusion?”
Draper reached into his bag and brought out a pie-shaped wedge. “This metallic plate of stiff tin,” he said, “is three and a half inches on its longer side.” He held the skull firmly in place on the railing of the witness box, and brought the piece of tin to it. “Adjusting it that way,” he said, “it fits in the wound in the base of the skull, cutting across the large arteries supplying the brain. It also rests against and cuts the surface of the upper portion, but takes in this edge and no more. I also found another wound in the skull which fits, but not so well. That shows, but not so well as the posterior wound, the same fact.”
“Are you able to say whether this hatchet head is capable of making those wounds?” Knowlton asked.
“I believe it is.”
“Have you attempted to fit that in the wounds?”
“I have seen the attempt made.”
“Will you do it yourself?”
“I will try.”
Knowlton handed him the hatchet head. The courtroom was suddenly quite still. The silence was not lost on Robinson. He turned immediately to the jury box.
“I shall have to ask you,” Knowlton said, “to point out to the jury — so that they can see it — the cutting edge to which you refer. And then, after you’ve done that, to show what you mean by the insertion of the three-and-a-half-inch piece of tin, and then by the insertion of the hatchet.”
“If I may go one step further in the demonstrations, I will say a four-inch plate does not go into either of those places.”
“Will you show us, so that the jury can see it, how that hatchet went in there?”
Robinson’s attention was on the jury. As Draper fitted the actual head of the hatchet into the wound he had earlier described, the eyes of each man in the jury box were fastened on that gleaming white skull.
“Now won’t you try the four-inch piece of tin?”
The attention of the jury was unwavering. Robinson turned to where Draper was now trying to insert the larger piece of tin into the same wound.
“I attempt to get this four-inch in,” Draper said, “and I cannot get it in, in any way, into that wound in the base. The same applies to the front, but not to the same degree.”
“Now, having shown what you desire to call attention to the jury, what do you say the cutting edge was of the instrument that caused the wound that you have described the borders of?”
“Three and a half inches.”
“Are there any other wounds, besides those, on which you can make any accurate determination as to the size of the cutting edge?”
“Not so far as I have studied the materials.”
“What in your opinion, doctor, was the cause of these wounds?”
“Blows upon the head with an edged instrument or weapon of considerable weight, supplied with a handle.”
“Would a hatchet be consistent with the description that you have given?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In your opinion, could the results you found have been produced by the use of an ordinary hatchet in the hands of a woman of ordinary strength?”
“In my opinion, they could, sir?”
Professor Wood was on the stand again when Lizzie came back into the courtroom, the deputy sheriff following her. Robinson turned to her as she took her customary seat behind him. Their eyes met. She could read nothing in those eyes.
“And who handed the hatchet head to you, professor?” Knowlton asked.
“City Marshal Hilliard.”
“Where?”
“In his office.”
“Is that the hatchet head?”
“Yes, sir...”
... it has been in my possession about all the time since. When I received this hatchet, this piece of handle was in the head in its proper position, this fractured end of the handle being close up to the iron. That is, it was in — in that relative position — so far as the upper and the lower end of the eye of the hatchet was concerned. This fractured end was just underneath or flush with the lower edge of the hole in the hatchet, of the eye of the hatchet as I have heard it called here.
When I received this hatchet, it contained more of a white film upon both sides than it does now. But it still contains — adherent tightly in little cavities here in the rusty surface, which can easily be seen with a small magnifying glass — white dirt, like ashes, which is tightly adherent and which have resisted all of the rubbing which this hatchet has had since it came into the courtroom. And it is still visible there and gives the side of the hatchet, as you can see, a very slight grayish appearance here in this round part.
That was far more marked on the hatchet on both sides when I first received it than it is at the present time.
And that coating there looks as if it might be ashes.
I don’t know.
I haven’t tested it to see whether it is ashes or not. I couldn’t do that. It might be any white dirt, so far as I could see, so far as I know.
The fractured ends of this bit of handle, the rough end, had a perfectly white, fresh look, and it was not stained as it is now. And these chips here, these two large chips from the side of this piece, and a little chip from this side also, had not been removed when I had it. When I drove the handle out from the eye, I placed the hatchet in a vise and drove this wood out.
And upon examination with a magnifying glass, that fractured end of the handle was perfectly clean. There was no dust or dirt, no fragments of dirt which could be seen in the angles in this fractured end by means of a magnifying glass. And they cannot be seen there today. It is as clean now, so far as coarse dirt is concerned, as it was then.
In soaking — in order to determine whether there had been any blood upon this handle between the hatchet head and the handle — I placed this to soak in water containing a little bit of iodide of potassium, which removes blood pigment in my experience better than water itself, and allowed it to soak there for several days.
But soaking that bit of wood in that solution darkened the fractured end somewhat so that it came out a darker color than it had been when I placed it in the solution. That’s probably due to some of the discoloring matter being soaked off from the outside and absorbed by the wood.
Then I tested that solution — after taking this piece of wood out of it — tested that solution for blood pigment by chemical tests which I need not detail, and found that there was no blood removed from the handle.
Both sides of the hatchet were uniformly rusty, as they are now. And it will be noticed that on the cutting edge here, there are a few smooth pieces in the rust, which I made myself by scraping the rust from the beveled edge. Those smooth spots were done by me in scraping the material with my knife for chemical testing, in order to determine whether there was any blood mixed with the iron rust or not.
There were also several suspicious spots upon the underside of the hatchet, one of which is plainly perceptible here, three-fourths of an inch from this little notch in the lower edge of the head.