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Updated: June 8, 2025
Krevin took the matter calmly, and merely remarked that he, Hawthwaite, was making the biggest mistake he had ever made in his life; Simon manifested great anger and indignation, and threatened an action for false imprisonment. When actually charged neither of the accused made any answer at all. The superintendent stood down, and Meeking looked towards an inner door of the court.
Anyway, there's a barrister in the case on their behalf that little, keen-eyed chap at the far end of the table on your left; that's Meeking, one of the sharpest criminal barristers going and I hear they're meaning to call a lot of new witnesses. But what it's all about, I don't know." Brent looked up and down the table at which they were sitting.
But this time it was not the Coroner who put questions to the witness. There had been some whispering between him, Hawthwaite and Meeking, the barrister who represented the police authorities, and it was Meeking who turned to the girl and began to get her information from her by means of bland, suavely-expressed, half-suggesting interrogatories.
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.
If I could have had those things brought before the inspector, I could have proved something. But I couldn't bring them before a court of inquiry like that. You can bring them before this!" "How?" demanded Meeking. "Because, I take it, they bear a very sinister relation to the murder of the late Mayor," replied the witness. "He was as well aware as I am that things were all wrong."
Meeking said little. The prisoners, he observed, addressing the bench in quiet, conversational tones, were charged, Krevin Crood with the actual murder of the late Mayor, John Wallingford; Simon, with being accessory to the fact, and, if they had not absconded during the previous twenty-four hours, two other well-known residents of the borough, Stephen Mallett and James Coppinger, would have stood in the dock with Simon Crood, similarly charged.
He turned to the Coroner who, for the last few minutes, had shown signs of being ill at ease, and had frequently shaken his head at Wellesley's point-blank refusals. "I don't know if it is any use appealing to you, sir," said Meeking. "The witness " The Coroner leaned towards Wellesley, his whole attitude conciliatory and inviting.
"The interview, then, was a secret one?" "Precisely! Secret; private; confidential." "And you flatly refuse to give us the caller's name?" "Flatly!" Meeking hesitated a moment. Then, with a sudden gesture, as though he washed his hands of the whole episode, he dropped back into his seat, bundled his papers together, and made some evidently cynical remark to Hawthwaite who sat near to him.
But Meeking, the battered typewriter before him, kept the witness waiting.
"Well, I want to ask you a very important question about that connecting wall. Is there a secret way through that wall from St. Lawrence tower to the Moot Hall?" Dr. Pellery drew himself up, stroked his beard, and glanced round the court. Then he gave Meeking an emphatic nod. "There is! And I discovered it years ago. And I have always thought that I was the only living person who knew of it!"
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