Samuel Parsons was a ganger. He had been walking along the up line to
his morning's work, when he saw something lying among the bushes about
half-way down the bank. It was a woman. She was dead. He described the
position in which she lay, and exactly whereabouts he found her.
Tommy's counsel asked no questions.
A policeman followed. He had been informed that a woman had been found
dead on the line. Went to see her. Described the position in which she
lay. Was informed that she had not been touched before he came. She was
quite cold. Was well dressed. Her clothes were wet. It had rained
earlier in the morning. There was nothing about her to show who she
was. Examined her linen later; there were no initials or marks on it of
any kind. Her pocket was empty.
Again Tommy's counsel asked no questions.
A porter came next--Joseph Wilcox. He was examined by Sir Haselton
Jardine. Joseph Wilcox was a pleasant-faced young fellow, who gave
his evidence with a degree of assurance and an air of conviction
which--considering what his evidence was--took me aback. If ever there
was a witness who seemed convinced of the truth of his own testimony,
Joseph Wilcox was the man. And yet----
Well, this is what his evidence amounted to:--
He was the porter who had shown me into Tommy's carriage when the train
left Brighton. I had not noticed him. Indeed, I remembered nothing at
all about him. He declared that he had noticed me particularly. He
should have known me again if he had seen me anywhere. Asked what had
made him notice me, he said because I had come running up just as the
train was starting, and--this with something of a blush--because I was
so good-looking. I ought to have blushed, but I did not. Asked to
describe me, he gave a pretty glib and pretty clear description of a
woman who was not in the least like me.
I wondered what impression Joseph Wilcox's ideas of my personal
appearance made on Tommy. I guessed that they did impress him, because
presently a scrap of paper was handed from the dock to the counsel in
front.
Asked if he had seen me since, he said that he had. He had gone to East
Grinstead, and had seen me in the mortuary, dead. Had he the slightest
doubt that the woman he had seen in the mortuary dead was the same
woman he had shown into the carriage?
He had no doubt whatever.
He said this with an air which, I am persuaded, impressed every one who
heard him with the conviction that there was no doubt.
I wondered what Mr. Wilcox's feelings would be if he ever came to learn
that he had done his utmost to hang a man by the utterance of as great
a lie as ever yet was told.
Sir Haselton then asked him if he had noticed if there was any one in
the carriage into which he had shown me. There was--a gentleman. He had
occasion to notice him because he had been leaning out of the carriage
window talking to two other gentlemen who had come, apparently, to see
him off.
"Should you know him again?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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