Some thought they might be able to say who it was, and others wanted to tell their friends in future years that they had seen an approved hall-marked murder in cold flesh.
None of those people had thrown the least light on the subject. The body remained unrecognised until the religious crank went in.
He kissed the book with a reverent smack, and stood awaiting the interrogations of the Sergeant and the J.P.
The audience, with bated breath, leaned eagerly forward to catch every word of the religious crank’s low replies.
“It happened quite accidentally,” he said, that he had gone into the shed where the body on which enquiry was being held had been conveyed, he believed, from the wharf. He could not swear that it was the same body which had been taken out of the river in the morning.
He knew Constable Flanagan. He was upon the Lord’s work when he was requested to enter the shed. He had not heard the constable’s evidence.
It was not a fact that he had recognised the body. (Murmur of disappointment ran throughout the court). All he had said to Constable Flanagan was that he believed he had seen deceased before at a meeting in one of the river towns. He would not swear positively that it was deceased, but he believed it was. If he remembered rightly, the man’s name was Gooch-Peter. He could not say what occupation he followed. This happened about six or eight weeks before. That was all he knew about the matter. The name might have been Good; he was not sure.
The witness, instead of throwing light upon the case, seemed to have added to its mystery.
Nobody knew of a person named Good or Gooch along the river, not even the oldest residents, and oldest residents know everything. Still, the crank had given the police a clue. Up to that they had been hopelessly fogged. Now there was some sort of a trail to follow.
The Sergeant applied for an adjournment and wired up the river. He wired to various persons; none of them could positively swear that they knew a man answering to the description of deceased.