From the first, therefore, you see, there was a great element of mystery about the whole case, and it was only natural that the local police should feel that, unless something more definite came out at the inquest, they would like to have the assistance of some of the fellows at the Yard. So the preliminary notes were sent up to London, and some of them drifted into our hands. Lady Molly was deeply interested in it from the first, and my firm belief is that she simply worried the chief into allowing her to go down to Ninescore and see what she could do. 2 At first it was understood that Lady Molly should only go down to Canterbury after the inquest, if the local police still felt that they were in want of assistance from London. But nothing was further from my lady’s intentions than to wait until then. “I was not going to miss the first act of a romantic drama,” she said to me just as our train steamed into Canterbury station. “Pick up your bag, Mary. We’re going to tramp it to Ninescore--two lady artists on a sketching tour, remember--and we’ll find lodgings in the village, I dare say.” We had some lunch in Canterbury, and then we started to walk the six and a half miles to Ninescore, carrying our bags. We put up at one of the cottages, where the legend “Apartments for single respectable lady or gentleman” had hospitably invited us to enter, and at eight o’clock the next morning we found our way to the local police-station, where the inquest was to take place. Such a funny little place, you know--just a cottage converted for official use--and the small room packed to its utmost holding capacity. The entire able-bodied population of the neighbourhood had, I verily believe, congregated in these ten cubic yards of stuffy atmosphere. Inspector Meisures, apprised by the chief of our arrival, had reserved two good places for us well in sight of witnesses, coroner and jury. The room was insupportably close, but I assure you that neither Lady Molly nor I thought much about our comfort then. We were terribly interested. From the outset the case seemed, as it were, to wrap itself more and more in its mantle of impenetrable mystery. There was precious little in the way of clues, only that awful intuition, that dark unspoken suspicion with regard to one particular man’s guilt, which one could feel hovering in the minds of all those present. Neither the police nor Timothy Coleman had anything to add to what was already known. The ring and purse were produced, also the dress worn by the murdered woman. All were sworn to by several witnesses as having been the property of Mary Nicholls. Timothy, on being closely questioned, said that, in his opinion, the girl’s body had been pushed into the mud, as the head was absolutely embedded in it, and he didn’t see how she could have fallen like that