unfrequented spot, you were really in the chemist’s shop in Styles St. Mary, where you purchased strychnine in the name of Alfred Inglethorp?”
“No, that is a lie.”
“I put it to you that, wearing a suit of Mr. Inglethorp’s clothes, with a black beard trimmed to resemble his, you were there—and signed the register in his name!”
“That is absolutely untrue.”
“Then I will leave the remarkable similarity of handwriting between the note, the register, and your own, to the consideration of the jury,”
would blazon out the news in staring headlines:
“MYSTERIOUS TRAGEDY IN ESSEX”
“WEALTHY LADY POISONED”
There would be pictures of Styles, snap-shots of “The family leaving the Inquest”—the village photographer had not been idle! All the things that one had read a hundred times—things that happen to