The High Court heard she had once put Stilnox, one of the sedatives found in the stomach of her dead husband, into his whisky bottle when they were in Vermont. She said her husband had just been aggressive with the couple's children and she wanted to calm him down, but it had not effect.

Back in Hong Kong, she tried the same tactic, but when she saw the sediment from the drug form at the bottom of the bottle she poured it all out in the sink, bought a new bottle and poured half the liquor into the old bottle. She ``never thought about it again.''

Referring to the earlier testimony of her neighbor, Andrew Tanzer, that he became drowsy and then unconscious after he drank a milkshake that came from her kitchen, her counsel, Alexander King, SC, asked: ``What can you tell us about that?''

Kissel replied: ``It was a milkshake that I made for my children and for someone else's child. I wouldn't harm my own children. I wouldn't harm someone else's child. I made the milkshake for my children in the afternoon. That's all I remember,'' she said.

Kissel, 41, is accused of murdering her husband, American investment banker Robert Kissel, on November 2, 2003. She denies the charge. The prosecution alleges she conducted an attempted cover-up operation, telling her maids first that he was asleep, then that she was assaulted by her husband who was drunk and had taken cocaine.

Images from closed-circuit TV cameras around the Parkview residential complex and statements from prosecution witnesses have suggested that she went on two shopping sprees to replace blood-stained items.

Witnesses have testified that they received phone calls from the accused, ordering cardboard boxes and a team of men to remove a large rug into storeroom 15112. Her husband's decomposing body was found wrapped up in a rug in the early hours of November 7, 2003 in the same storeroom.

Her fingerprints were found on tape used to secure the rug and fasten the boxes containing blood-stained clothing and the ornament used to kill the former banker. In relation to all the events, between November 2 and 7, she offered similar replies: ``I don't remember'' or ``I have no recollection.''

Throughout her testimony, Kissel answered softly, often pausing before each sentence. When invited to approach the clerk's desk to identify a baseball bat, she held on to the witness box for support as she got out of her seat.

She said it was the bat her husband was holding - one of her last memories of that fatal night. ``He said ... he was going to kill me. And he was going to.''

Her counsel asked: ``Are you able to tell us the last thing you remember going through your mind during this incident?'' Kissel replied: ``I just wanted him to stop swinging that bat at me.''

During cross-examination, Senior Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions Peter Chapman

suggested to Kissel that, since April, 2004, she had had plenty of time to read witness statements and forensic reports while in Siu Lam psychiatric center.

The trial, before justice Michael Lunn, continues Monday.