maid ever could, would, or should be. And Kate had mentioned to Mrs. Barnard that Edward the footman "hated her ladyship" and often felt as if he could do her a mischief, because she tried to make Kate think he was too far beneath her to make a good husband.
During the adjourned inquest, Kate was recalled, on the strength of this evidence, and, for her lover, made a far worse witness than she had made the other day. She stammered, and contradicted herself, and drew attention ostentatiously to the fact that Miss Verney had been in the woods, near the Tower, not so very long before Lady Hereward was shot, "looking ready to die of fear, or shame, or something." And before Kate could be interrupted and forbidden to touch upon a subject irrelevant to her evidence, she had blurted out the gossip about "Mr. Ian Barr having been seen in the neighbourhood on the day of the murder."
Of course, the coroner and the policemen from Scotland Yard and the neighbourhood already knew perfectly well what the gossip was; but either they could not prove the truth of it, or else they had not been able to lay hands upon Mr. Barr, for he was not among the witnesses summoned to testify at Friars' Moat. Nevertheless, Kate's words, spoken desperately when she was at bay in defence of her lover and herself, probably did some harm to Ian Barr in the minds of jury and journalists, while Edward's statement,
