"Nobody helped me," replied Louisa Speck, with rising indignation. "Do you think I'm not capable of doing things on my own? I can use my eyes and ears as well as you can—and perhaps better!"
"Answer my question!" said Stedman, as a laugh rose against him. "Who got you to go to the police?"
"Nobody got me to go to the police! I went to the police on my own account. I read the newspaper about what took place at the inquest—the last inquest, I mean—and as soon as I heard about the handkerchief, I knew very well that that was the one I'd noticed in our laundry, and so I went to see Mr. Hawthwaite. Mr. Hawthwaite's known what I had to tell you for a good while now."
Stedman was taken aback. But he put a definite question.
"On your oath, did you see that handkerchief in Mr. Krevin Crood's possession that night he was at Mr. Mallett's?" he asked.
"I've already told him I never did," retorted Louisa Speck, pointing at Meeking. "I didn't see him with it. But I'm very certain he got it!"
Stedman waved the witness away, and Meeking proceeded to put in the depositions taken before the Coroner in regard to the finding of the fragment of handkerchief and its ownership, and called evidence to show that the piece just produced was that which had been picked up from the hearth in the Mayor's Parlour on the evening of the murder, soon after the finding of the dead man, and to prove that it had remained in the custody of the police ever since. The fragment went the round of the bench of magistrates, and Tansley whispered to Brent that if Meeking could prove that Krevin Crood had taken that handkerchief out of Mallett's drawer, and had thrown it away on the following evening in the Mayor's Parlour, Krevin's neck was in danger.
"But there's a link missing yet," he murmured. "How did Krevin get at Wallingford? They've got to prove that! However, Meeking's evidently well primed and knows what he's after. What's coming next?"
What came next was the glancing of the barrister's eye towards a venerable, grey-bearded man who sat in the front row of spectators, leaning on a gold-headed cane. He rose as Meeking looked at him, and came slowly forward—a curious figure in those sombre surroundings.