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?"
"I should." Mr. Wilcox pointed towards the dock. "This is the gentleman."