MR. CHESTERTON: Enough to compel you to do anything? WITNESS: Anything that was right and true. You can’t catch me that way. MR. CHESTERTON: I put it to you that the whole of your story is a romance. WITNESS: You put it to me? MR. CHESTERTON: I put it to you, in fairness. WITNESS: Will you please consider that I am here on my oath? MR. CHESTERTON (_to Judge_): Your Lordship knows I am bound to put that. WITNESS: I can only answer that every word I have spoken is true. MR. CHESTERTON: Suppose every word you have spoken is true: is there a single word you have spoken that proves that Edwin Drood was murdered? WITNESS: I don’t know that you have asked questions to elicit that. MR. CHESTERTON: It is not my business. Is there a word in the whole of the testimony you have given to your own Counsel or to me that proves that Edwin Drood was murdered? Did you, for example, see Edwin Drood murdered? WITNESS: No. MR. CHESTERTON: Do you know anyone who saw the murder? WITNESS: No. MR. CHESTERTON: Have you seen his body? WITNESS: No. MR. CHESTERTON: Do you know anyone who has seen it? WITNESS: I don’t think his body could be seen. MR. CHESTERTON: Then you really have no evidence to produce to prove that Edwin Drood is dead? WITNESS: I have the ring. MR. CHESTERTON: That is all the evidence—your whole case? I want to press this point very much. On that ring your case rests. Is that so? WITNESS: I am not a woman who understands very much about legal proceedings. It is the first time I have been in court. It is a hard thing for a clever man like you to put a question like this to an unsophisticated witness. MR. CHESTERTON: But you are the person who has worked out the whole scheme against Jasper. Does not the whole case for the death, not for the plan or the undertaking, but for the death having taken place, rest on the finding of that ring? WITNESS: Well, perhaps the case for incriminating, bringing it home to Jasper, rests on the ring. MR. CHESTERTON: And if that ring—the presence of that ring—could be satisfactorily explained—the presence of the ring in the quicklime could be satisfactorily explained in any other way—you would have nothing to produce to show that it was a murder? WITNESS: I might have no evidence, but I should be morally certain. MR. CHESTERTON: You would hold your opinion, we know, but you would have no evidence? WITNESS: No. JUDGE: I think we must be careful not to get into argument. MR. CHESTERTON: My Lord, I am finishing. WITNESS: What you and I think is evidence might be two different questions. JUDGE: That is indeed very probable. WITNESS: I don’t think it fair to ask questions like that. MR. CHESTERTON: I will take her answer. MR. WALTERS (_re-examining_): It does not require particular affection for any particular person to wish that he should not be murdered? WITNESS: No. MR. WALTERS: Although you might not be violently enamoured of Edwin Drood, you might want to bring his murderer to justice?