At the conclusion of the People's case the evidence that Mrs. Parker had
forged the checks amounted simply to this: That an officer who was
greatly interested in her conviction had sworn to a most astonishing
series of facts from which the jury must infer that this exceedingly
astute young person had not only been entirely and completely deceived
by a detective, but also that at almost their first meeting she had
confessed to him in detail the history of her crimes. Practically the
only other evidence tending to corroborate his story were a few
admissions of a similar character made by her to newspaper men, matrons
and officers at the police station. Unless the jury were to believe that
Mrs. Parker had actually written the signatures on "the Peabody sheet"
there was no evidence that she was the actual forger; hence upon
Peabody's word alone depended the verdict of the jury. The trouble with
the case was that it was _too_ strong, _too_ good, to be entirely
credible, and had there been no defense it is exceedingly probable that
the trial would have resulted in an acquittal, since the prosecution had
elected to go to the jury upon the question of whether or not the
defendant had actually signed the checks herself.

Mrs. Parker, however, had withdrawn her plea of insanity and determined
to put in a defense, which proved in its turn to be even more
extraordinary than the case against her. This, in brief, was to the
effect that she had known Peabody to be a police officer all along, but
that it had occurred to her that if she could deceive him into believing
that it was she _herself_ who had committed the forgeries her husband
might get off, and that later she might in turn establish her own
innocence. She had therefore hastily scratched her name on the top of a
sheet already containing her husband's handwriting and had told Peabody
that the signatures had been written by herself. That the sheet had been
written in the officer's presence she declared to be a pure invention