"No."
"Can you describe him?"
"Yes; he was dark and foreign-looking, rather."
"Was he alone?"
"I don't know. I don't think so, somehow. I think he was talking to some one."
"How is it that you do not remember more distinctly what occurred when it is only three nights ago?"
The shock had put everything out of her head, she said. "Besides," she added, her gelatinous backbone ossified suddenly by the coroner's ill-hidden scorn, "in a queue one doesn't notice the people next one. Both I and my husband were reading most of the time." And she dissolved into hysterical weeping.
Then there was the fat woman, shiny with satin and soap-and-water, recovered now from the shock and reluctance she had displayed at the crowded moment of the murder, and more than willing to tell her tale. Her plump red face and boot-button brown eyes radiated a grim satisfaction with her rфle. She seemed disappointed when the coroner thanked her and dismissed her in the middle of a sentence.
There was a meek little man, as precise in manner as the constable had been, but evidently convinced that the coroner was a man of little intelligence. When that long-suffering official said, "Yes, I was aware that queues usually go two by two," the jury allowed themselves to snigger and the meek little man looked pained. As neither he nor the other three witnesses from the queue could recall the murdered man, or throw any light on any departure from the queue, they were dismissed with scant attention.
The doorkeeper, incoherent with pleasure at being so helpful, informed the coroner that he had seen the dead man before — several times. He had come quite often to the Woffington. But he knew nothing about him. He had always been well dressed. No, the doorkeeper could not recall any companion, though he was sure that the man had not habitually been alone.