was the afternoon of the adjourned inquest, and Joseph Distin was on the scene, ready to watch the inquiry. He had arrived at Penmorval in time for breakfast, after travelling all night.
“Such a good way of getting rid of the night,” he said, as he discussed a salmi of trout, caught in the stream that traversed Penmorval Park.
Alone in the library with Julian Wyllard after breakfast, the London lawyer confessed that for once in his life he had been pretty nearly beaten. He had shown the photographs of the dead face to two of the cleverest detectives in London—had set one to work in the east and the other in the west, promising a liberal reward for any valuable information; and nothing had come of their labours. One had tried every lodging-house within a certain radius of Paddington. The other had explored the neighbourhood of London Bridge Station, and failing there, had come as far west as Charing Cross. The ground had been thoroughly beaten, and no likely place had been forgotten in which a stranger of this girl’s class could find shelter.
“She might have gone to the house of friends,” suggested Wyllard.
“If she had friends in London—were they ever such slight acquaintances even—they would have been heard of before now,” argued Distin. “I take it that she was unknown to a mortal on this side of the Channel, except the man who murdered her, and who had no doubt some very powerful motive for wanting to get rid of her.”
“What do you suppose that motive to have been?”
“My dear Wyllard, what a question for a clever man to ask!” exclaimed the lawyer, with a shade of contempt. “To speculate upon the motive I must have some knowledge of the man, and of this girl’s murderer I know nothing. If I could once find the man, I should soon find the motive. Such a murder as this generally means the breaking of some legal tie that has become onerous—some bond which death alone can loosen.”
Chapter 4.
Bothwell Declines to Answer.
The room at the Vital Spark was filled to overflowing on the occasion of the adjourned inquiry. At the previous examination only the inhabitants of Bodmin and its immediate neighbourhood had been present; but on this second afternoon people had come from long distances, and there was not standing room for the audience, which filled the passage, and waited with strained ears to catch a stray word now and then through the open door.
The idea of a profound mystery—of a dastardly crime—had been fostered in the local mind by the newspapers, which had harped upon the ghastly theme, and gloated over the particulars of the nameless girl’s fate in paragraphs and leaderettes ad nauseam. Articles headed “More details concerning the Bodmin Mystery,” “Further particulars about the strange death on the railway,” had served as the salt to give savour to cut and dried reports about the harvest, the markets, and those small offenders whose peccadilloes furnish the material for Justice to exercise her might upon at petty sessions.
Every one had read about that strange death of a lonely girl in the summer sunset. Every one was interested in a fate so melancholy—an abandonment so inexplicable.
“I thought that there was hardly ever a human being so isolated as to be owned by no one,” said the curate of Wadebridge. “Yet it would seem that this poor girl had no one to care for her in life, or to identify her after death. If she had one friend living in England or France, surely that person must have made some sign before now.”
“People in France are very slow to hear about anything that happens in England,” replied Dr. Menheniot, to whom the curate had been talking.
“But I heard Mr. Heathcote, at the first inquiry, say that he meant to advertise in a Parisian newspaper.”
“Then be sure the advertisement appeared,” answered Menheniot. “Heathcote is one of those few men with whom meaning and doing are the same thing.”
The inquiry dragged its slow length along, and hardly one new fact was elicited. There was a great deal of repetition, in spite of the Coroner’s attempt to keep all his witnesses to the point. Mr. Distin sat near the Coroner, and asked a few questions of two or three of the witnesses; and though he elicited no actually new facts, he seemed to put things in a clearer light by his cross-examination.
Just before the close of the inquiry, he said:
“I see Mr. Grahame, of Penmorval, is here this afternoon. I should like to ask him a question or two, if you have no objection.”
The Coroner paled ever so slightly at this suggestion, but he had no objection to offer: so Bothwell Grahame was asked to come up to the table, and kiss the Book, which he did with a somewhat bewildered air, as if the thing came upon him as an unpleasant surprise.
“You were in the train that evening, I believe, Mr. Grahame,” said Distin.
“I was.”
“Were you alone, in a compartment, or in company with other passengers?”
“I had a third-class compartment to myself.”
“And you saw this girl fall?”
“I saw her fall—but as I saw just a little less than Dr. Menheniot and the guard saw, I don’t see the good of my being questioned,” answered Bothwell, with rather a sullen air.
“I beg your pardon,” returned Mr. Distin suavely, “every witness sees an event from a different point of view. You may have noticed something which escaped the two witnesses we have just heard.”
“I noticed nothing more than you have been told by these two, and I saw less than they saw. I did not look out of the window till I heard the girl’s shriek, and I saw her in the act of falling.”
“Good. But you may have observed this solitary girl—a foreigner, and therefore more noticeable—on the platform at Plymouth. You were on the platform at Plymouth, you know.”
“I was. But I did not see the girl at the station.”
“Strange that she should have escaped your observation, although the porter who was busy with his duties had time to notice her,” said Mr. Distin.
“Would it surprise you to hear that during the four or five minutes I spent in the station before the train started I was standing at the bookstall buying papers, with my back to the platform?”
“That would account for your not having seen this noticeable young stranger. You were in Plymouth for several hours, I believe, Mr. Grahame?”
“I was; but upon my word I don’t see what hearing that fact can have upon this inquiry.”
“Perhaps not. Still, you will not object to tell us what you were doing in Plymouth—how you disposed of your time there.”
This question evidently troubled Bothwell, simple as it was, and easy as it ought to have been to answer.
“I played a game at billiards at the Duke of Cornwall,” he said.
“I am sure you are too good a player for that to occupy more than half an hour,” said Mr. Distin, with his silky air, as if he were employed in a very pleasant business, and were bent upon being as cheery as possible.
“I had to wait for the table.”
“Come now, Mr. Grahame, you need not be mysterious about so simple a matter,” exclaimed Mr. Distin. “You don’t mean to tell us that you went to Plymouth by the 12.15 train”—he had ascertained this fact before the inquiry began—“and spent the whole of the day there, in order to play a game at billiards in a public billiard-room. You must have had other business in Plymouth.”
“Certainly. I had other business there.”
“Will you kindly tell us what that business was?”
“As it concerned others besides