“This is Miss Pamela Pebmarsh,” he said, pointing to one of these; “tall and good-looking, in spite of the shabby bit of mourning with which she had contrived to deck herself. Of course, this photo does not give you an idea of what she looked like that day at the inquest. Her face then was almost ashen in colour; her large eyes were staring before her with a look of horror and of fear; and her hands were twitching incessantly, with spasmodic and painful nervousness. “It was pretty clear that public feeling went dead against her from the very first. A murmur of disapproval greeted her appearance, to which she seemed to reply with a look of defiance. I could hear many uncharitable remarks spoken all round me; Boreham Wood found it evidently hard to forgive Miss Pamela her good looks and her unavowed past. “The medical evidence was brief and simple. Miss Pebmarsh had been stabbed in the back with some sharp instrument, the blade of which had pierced the left lung. She had evidently been sitting in the chair in front of her writing-table when the murderer had caught her unawares. Death had ensued within the next few seconds. “The medical officer was very closely questioned upon this point by the coroner; it was evident that the latter had something very serious in his mind, to which the doctor’s replies would give confirmation. “‘In your opinion,’ he asked, ‘would it have been possible for Miss Pebmarsh to do anything after she was stabbed. Could she have moved, for instance?’ “‘Slightly, perhaps,’ replied the doctor; ‘but she did not attempt to rise from her chair.’ “‘No; but could she have tried to reach the hand-bell, for instance, which was on the table, or—the pen and ink—and written a word or two?’ “‘Well, yes,’ said the doctor thoughtfully; ‘she might have done that, if pen and ink, or the hand-bell, were _very_ close to her hand. I doubt, though, if she could have written anything very clearly, but still it is impossible to say quite definitely—anyhow, it could only have been a matter of a few seconds.’ “Delightfully vague, you see,” continued the man in the corner, “as these learned gentlemen’s evidence usually is. “Sergeant Evans then repeated the story which Pamela Pebmarsh had originally told him, and from which she had never departed in any detail. She had gone to the theatre, leaving her aunt all alone in the house; she had arrived home at one o’clock by the late Wednesday night train, and had gone straight into the sitting-room, where she had found her aunt dead before her writing-table. “That she travelled up to London in the afternoon was easily proved; the station-master and the porters had seen her go. Unfortunately for her _alibi_, however, those late ‘theatre’ trains on that line are always very crowded; the night had been dark and foggy, and no one at or near the station could swear positively to having seen her arrive home again by the train she named.