"'I really couldn't tell you—about ten o'clock, I think.'
"'You are not sure?' persisted the coroner. 'Think, Lady de Chavasse,' he added earnestly, 'try to think—the life of a fellow-creature may, perhaps, depend upon your memory.'
"'I am indeed sorry,' she replied in the same musical voice. 'I could not swear without being positive, could I? And I am not quite positive.'
"'But your servants?'
"'They were at the back of the flat—the girl let herself out.'
"'But your husband?'
"'Oh! when he saw me engaged with the girl he went out to his club, and was not yet home when she left.'
"'Birdie! Birdie! won't you try and remember?' here came in an agonised cry from the unfortunate girl, who thus saw her last hope vanish before her eyes.
"But Lady de Chavasse only lifted a little higher a pair of very prettily-arched eyebrows, and having finished her evidence she stepped on one side and presently left the court, leaving behind her a faint aroma of violet sachet powder, and taking away with her, perhaps, the last hope of an innocent fellow-creature."
CHAPTER IV.
"But Pamela Pebmarsh?" I asked after a while, for he had paused and was gazing attentively at the photograph of a very beautiful and exquisitely-gowned woman.
"Ah, yes, Pamela Pebmarsh," he said with a smile. "There was yet another act in that palpitating drama of her life—one act—the dénouement as unexpected as it was thrilling. Salvation came where it was least expected—from Jemima Gadd, who seemed to have made up her mind that Pamela had killed her aunt, and yet who was the first to prove her innocence.
"She had been shown the few words which the murdered woman was alleged to have written after she had been stabbed. Jemima, not a very good scholar, found it difficult to decipher the words herself.
"'Ah, well, poor dear,' she said after awhile, with a deep sigh, ''er 'andwriting was always peculiar, seein' as 'ow she wrote always with 'er left 'and.'
"'Her left hand!!!' gasped the coroner, while public and jury alike, hardly liking to credit their ears, hung upon the woman's thin lips, amazed, aghast, puzzled.
"'Why yes!' said Jemima placidly. 'Didn't you know she 'ad a bad accident to 'er right 'and when she was a child, and never could 'old anything in it? 'er fingers were like paralysed; the ink-pot was always on the left of 'er writing-table. Oh! she couldn't write with 'er right 'and at all.'
"Then a strange revulsion of feeling came over everyone there.
"Stabbed in the back, with her lung pierced through and through, how could she have done, dying, what she never did in life?
"Impossible!
"The murderer, whoever it was, had placed pen and paper to her hand, and had written on it the cruel words which were intended to delude justice and to send an innocent fellow-creature—a young girl not five-and-twenty—to an unjust and ignominious death. But, fortunately for that innocent girl, the cowardly miscreant had ignored the fact that Miss Pebmarsh's right hand had been paralysed for years.
"The inquest was adjourned for a week," continued the man in the corner, "which enabled Pamela's solicitor to obtain further evidence of her innocence. Fortunately for her, he was enabled to find two witnesses who had seen her in an omnibus going towards St. Pancras at about 11.15 p.m., and a passenger on the 12.25 train who had travelled down with her as far as Hendon. Thus, when the inquest was resumed Pamela Pebmarsh left the court without a stain upon her character.
(At this point try to solve the mystery yourselves.—Ed.)
"But the murder of Miss Pebmarsh has remained a mystery to this day—as has also the secret history of the compromising letters. Did they exist or not? is a question the interested spectators at that memorable inquest have often asked themselves. Certain is it that failing Pamela Pebmarsh, who might have wanted them for purposes of blackmail, no one else could be interested in them except Lady de Chavasse."
"Lady de Chavasse!" I ejaculated in surprise. "Surely you are not going to pretend that that elegant lady went down to Boreham Wood in the middle of the night in order to murder Miss Pebmarsh, and then to lay the crime at another woman's door?"
"I only pretend what's logic," replied the man in the corner with inimitable conceit; "and in Pamela Pebmarsh's own statement, she was with Lady de Chavasse at 51, Marsden Mansions, until eleven o'clock, and there is no train from St. Pancras to Boreham Wood between eleven and twenty-five minutes
