She Came Back Read Online Free PDF

since—liked him a good deal, and was not at all sure that he wasn’t the most intractable of the lot. Lawyers see a good deal of human nature. He said,
    “These identity cases are always ticklish, and they attract a most undesirable amount of interest.”
    “An understatement, I should say.”
    Mr. Codrington looked grave.
    “If she brings a case—” he said, and then broke off. “You know, I couldn’t go into the box myself and swear she wasn’t Anne Jocelyn.”
    “You couldn’t?”
    “No, I couldn’t.”
    “You think she’d win her case?”
    “I don’t say that. She might break down under cross-examination. Short of that—” He shrugged his shoulders. “You know, Philip, the resemblance is amazing, and the trouble is we can’t get at the people who know Annie Joyce, and by the time we can get at them—if there are any of them left—accurate recollection will be dimmed. She’s been over there in France with Miss Jocelyn ever since she was fifteen, and that’s getting on for eleven years ago. I saw her just before she went—Miss Jocelyn brought her into my office. She was a year or two older than Anne, and thinner in the face, but there was quite a likeness—you’ve all got the same eyes and general colouring. But there it ended. Her hair was darker and quite straight—none of Anne’s wave.”
    Philip smiled.
    “Hair can be tinted and waves induced.”
    “That, I think, would be susceptible of proof.”
    Philip shook his head.
    “Aunt Milly raised the point last night. Miss Joyce had her answer ready. Three years of privation had spoiled her hair dreadfully. She had had to have a permanent wave as soon as she landed. She said she had found a very good hairdresser in Westhaven—spent her last penny on it. And as to the colour, all these fair girls use a brightening wash, you know. Anne did herself, so there’s nothing in that.”
    Mr. Codrington slewed round in his chair.
    “Philip,” he said, “will you tell me just why you are so sure that she isn’t Anne? When I went into the room just now and saw her standing there under the portrait—well, you know—”
    Philip Jocelyn laughed.
    “She’s very fond of standing under Anne’s portrait. It’s a pity she can’t wear the fur coat all the time. She made a most effective entrance in it, I understand, but she can’t very well go on wearing it in the house. Everything else is most carefully reproduced—the hair, the dress, the pearls—Anne to the life at the time the portrait was painted. But don’t you see how that gives her away? Why should Anne dress to a portrait that’s four years old? Do you see her doing her hair the same way for four years? I don’t.” He gave a short laugh. “Why should she bother to reproduce Amory’s portrait, or to stop in Westhaven and have things done to her hair? If she was Anne she wouldn’t have to bother. She could come home in any old rag, with her head tied up in a scarf like half the girls do anyway, and it would never occur to her that she could be taken for anyone else. It’s the woman who’s putting on an act who’s got to dress the part and be particular over her make-up. Why should Anne think that her identity would be questioned? The bare possibility would simply never enter her head.”
    Mr. Codrington nodded slowly.
    “That’s a point. But I don’t quite know what a jury would think about it. Juries like facts. I’m afraid they don’t care about psychology.”
    “Well, it’s one of my reasons for being sure she isn’t Anne. Here’s another—but I’m afraid you’ll call that psychological too. She’s astonishingly like Anne—as Anne might have been if she had lived to be nearly four years older—astonishingly like, to look at. But she’s not Anne, because if she were, she’d have flared back the moment I gave her the rough side of my tongue. I didn’t mince words, you know, and she turned the other cheek. I don’t see Anne doing that.”
    “Three and a half