not chosen a good example. Two hundred years hence the case of Jessie M'Lachlan will still fascinate, tease, beckon, and defeat the student of crime. It was a case in a million. No, not even that. I believe it is, and always will be, unique."
The conversation turned easily, from this statement, to a discussion of the verdict in the case of Ronald True, and the problem in English law of the criminal lunatic; the eternal query in the case of Madeleine Smith; the vexed question of Thomson and Bywaters; and the talk continued into the small hours.
The next day was Sunday, and at half-past five in the evening the guest departed regretfully for London.
On Monday morning Mrs. Bradley telephoned her son.
"I am eaten up with curiosity," she said. "Can't you find me somebody else who was mixed up with it all?"
"Would one of the jurors do?" Ferdinand inquired. "I think I could get you a perfectly good juror. As a matter of fact, he's my barber."
"Ah, an artist. Most satisfactory. When and where?"
"I'll tell him you're coming, and let you know the arrangements. I suppose your time is your own?"
"Better than that: my time is his," said Mrs. Bradley. She hung up and rang for Henri. Her cook appeared, preceded, in the manner of the Cheshire cat's grin, by an expression of marked anxiety.
"Ze 'addock, madame?" he enquired, spreading his hands disconsolately. "What I 'ave said to ze fishmonger!"
"No, no, Henri, dear child! This has nothing to do with the haddock, which was eaten in its entirety by Mr. Pratt. It is simply this: do you know any hairdressers?"
Henri gazed at her stupefied. Then he began to talk in French and continued to do so for nearly ten minutes.
"Ah," said Mrs. Bradley, who was old-fashioned enough to believe that French is the most civilised language on earth (except, possibly, for Chinese, which she did not know), "then you will agree with me, Henri, when I suggest that a hairdresser must be, of necessity, an artist."
Henri agreed in another burst of idiomatic rhetoric. His employer nodded and dismissed him. Next day Ferdinand rang up to say that his barber, whose name was Sepulle, would be delighted to recall, for her benefit, his experiences at the trial of Bella Foxley.
Mrs. Bradley met the barber in a room at the back of his shop. It was during business hours, but that, said Mr. Sepulle, mattered nothing. He himself had no appointments that afternoon, gentlemen being, on the whole, more prone to the 'drop-in' than to making appointments, and as to serving on a jury, well, appointments or no appointments, that had had to receive attention before anything.
Not that it was altogether a waste of time, he continued; no, he should be sorry for anybody to think he thought that. We all had a duty, and ought to be prepared to face it. No shirking; that was his motto, peace or war. And it had been a very interesting case, although, in his opinion, it had been 'messed up.'"
"Messed up?" Mrs. Bradley inquired.
Well, there was this woman, Bella Foxley, brought in and charged with the wilful murder of her cousin, and pleading 'Not Guilty,' and then a whole lot of disagreement among a lot of doctors, and then all this stuff about Reasonable Doubt from the judge when the evidence had been completed, and then the jury sent out to consider their verdict.
"We were out about an hour and three-quarters," concluded Mr. Sepulle, "arguing the point, with seven of us for an acquittal and five against. I was against."
"Why?" asked Mrs. Bradley. The barber had believed Bella Foxley to be guilty because he did not like her face. That, surely, was not part of the evidence, Mrs. Bradley suggested, but he denied this. Her appearance was a fact, he protested, and, as such, it had importance. Then he added that the police knew what they were doing when they arrested her. To this Mrs. Bradley agreed, but very cautiously. What, in the end, she enquired, caused the five jurors who were against an acquittal to join those seven who were in favour ?
Well, Mr. Sepulle had always believed that there were two ways of looking at everything, and the judge had stressed giving the prisoner the benefit of the doubt. The doubt in his own mind, he confessed, was rooted in the story that the house was naunted. He did not believe in haunted houses, he explained. Why should not the 'ghost' have committed