r. Monroe, "but
it is necessary to discover where those rose petals in the library came
from. You saw the flowers in her room, Mrs. Pierce?"

"Yes, I believe I did. But I paid no attention to them, as Florence
nearly always has flowers in her room."

"Would you have heard Miss Lloyd if she had gone down-stairs after you
left her?"

"I don't know," said Mrs. Pierce, doubtfully.

"Is your room next to hers?"

"No, not next."

"Is it on the same corridor?"

"No."

"Around a corner?"

"Yes."

"And at some distance?"

"Yes." Mrs. Pierce's answers became more hesitating as she saw the drift
of Mr. Monroe's questions. Clearly, she was trying to shield Florence,
if necessary, at the expense of actual truthfulness.

"Then," went on Mr. Monroe, inexorably, "I understand you to say that
you think you would have heard Miss Lloyd, had she gone down-stairs,
although your room is at a distance and around a corner and the hall and
stairs are thickly carpeted. Unless you were listening especially, Mrs.
Pierce, I think you would scarcely have heard her descend."

"Well, as she didn't go down, of course I didn't hear her," snapped Mrs.
Pierce, with the feminine way of settling an argument by an unprovable
statement.

Mr. Monroe began on another tack.

"When you went to Miss Lloyd's room," he said, "was the maid, Elsa,
there?"

"Miss Lloyd had just dismissed her for the night."

"What was Miss Lloyd doing when you went to her room?"

"She was looking over some gowns that she proposed sending to the
cleaner's."

The coroner fairly jumped. He remembered the newspaper clipping of a
cleaner's advertisement, which was even now in the gold bag before him.
Though all the jurors had seen it, it had not been referred to in the
presence of the women.

Recovering himself at once, he said quietly "Was not that rather work
for Miss Lloyd's maid?"

"Oh, Elsa would pack and send them, of course," said Mrs. Pierce
carelessly. "Miss Lloyd was merely deciding which ones needed cleaning."

"Do you know where they were to be sent?"

Mrs. Pierce looked a little surprised at this question.

"Miss Lloyd always sends her things to Carter & Brown's," she said.

Now, Carter & Brown was the firm name on the advertisement, and it was
evident at once that the coroner considered this a damaging admission.

He sat looking greatly troubled, but before he spoke again, Mr.
Parmalee made an observation that decidedly raised that young man