“‘Ah, well, poor dear,’ she said after a while, 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 every one 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. “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 it is that failing Pamela Pebmarsh, who might have wanted them for purpose 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 past midnight. Pamela’s _alibi_ becomes that of Lady de Chavasse, and is quite conclusive. Besides, that elegant lady was not one to do that sort of work for herself.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Do you mean to say you never thought of the real solution of this mystery?” he retorted sarcastically.