“’E ’adn’t got no coat” she said decidedly. “No coat at all! I remembers that very perticulerly. I thought it queer, as it was so cold—everybody as can wears some sort o’ coat this weather!”
A juryman who had been looking at a strip of newspaper, and apparently not attending at all to what the witness was saying, here jumped up and put out his hand.
“Yes?” the coroner turned to him.
“I just want to say that this ’ere witness—if her name is Lizzie Cole, began by saying The Avenger was wearing a coat—a big, heavy coat. I’ve got it here, in this bit of paper.”
“I never said so!” cried the woman passionately. “I was made to say all those things by the young man what came to me from the Evening Sun. Just put in what ’e liked in ’is paper, ’e did—not what I said at all!”
At this there was some laughter, quickly suppressed.
“In future,” said the coroner severely, addressing the juryman, who had now sat down again, “you must ask any question you wish to ask through your foreman, and please wait till I have concluded my examination of the witness.”
But this interruption, this—this accusation, had utterly upset the witness. She began contradicting herself hopelessly. The man she had seen hurrying by in the semi-darkness below was tall—no, he was short. He was thin—no, he was a stoutish young man. And as to whether he was carrying anything, there was quite an acrimonious discussion.
Most positively, most confidently, the witness declared that she had seen a newspaper parcel under his arm; it had bulged out at the back—so she declared. But it was proved, very gently and firmly, that she had said nothing of the kind to the gentleman from Scotland Yard who had taken down her first account—in fact, to him she had declared confidently that the man had carried nothing—nothing at all; that she had seen his arms swinging up and down.
One fact—if fact it could be called—the coroner did elicit. Lizzie Cole suddenly volunteered the statement that as he had passed her window he had looked up at her. This was quite a new statement.