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There was silence before Hilary said:
“She’s wise, old boy. Four years’ friendship with a beautiful woman in a husband’s absence means only one thing with a jury, and many things with the Public.”
Adrian nodded. “But I don’t see how the fact that I’ve known them both so long can be concealed.”
“First impressions,” said Di
“It’s putting a lot on you, my dear.”
“Oh! no. If I’m not called before you and Uncle Hilary, will you both say that it was I who came and asked you, and I can rub it in afterwards?”
“After the doctor and the police, Diana will be the first witness.”
“Yes, but I can speak to her, so that we shall all be saying the same thing.”
Hilary smiled. “I don’t see why not, it’s very white lying. I can put in that I’ve known them as long as you, Adrian. We both met Diana first at that picnic Lawrence gave near the Land’s End, when she was a flapper, and we both met Ferse first at her wedding. Family friendship, um?”
“My visits to the Mental Home will come out,” said Adrian, “the Doctor’s been summoned as witness.”
“Oh! well,” said Di
Both smiled, and Hilary said: “All right, Di
“Good-night, little serpent,” said Adrian.
“Good-night, dear Uncle; you look terribly tired. Have you got a hot water-bottle?”
Adrian shook his head. “I’ve nothing but a tooth-brush which I bought today.”
Di
“If you will, Di
“After tomorrow the sun will shine.”
“Will it?” said Adrian.
As the door closed, Di
CHAPTER 30
The reflections of Adrian and his niece, when together they entered the Coroner’s Court on the following day, might have been pooled as follows:
A coroner’s inquest was like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on Sundays, devised for other times. When Sunday afternoons were devoted to games, murders infrequent, and suicides no longer buried at cross-roads, neither custom had its initial wisdom. In old days, Justice and its emissaries were regarded as the foes of mankind, so it was natural to interpose a civilian arbiter between death and the Law. In an age in which one called the police ‘a splendid force’ was there not something u
The fact that the Court was full confirmed these reflections and they passed on into a little room to wait. Adrian saying: “You go in fifth wicket down, Di
They sat very silent in the little bare room. The police, the doctor, Diana and Hilary had all to be examined first.
“It’s like the ten little nigger boys,” murmured Di
“See, my dear,” said Adrian, and drew a little bottle from his breast pocket, “take a sip or two of this—not more—it’s fifty-fifty sal volatile and water; it’ll steady you no end. Be careful!”
Di
“You too, Uncle.”
Adrian also took a cautious gulp.
“No finer dope,” he said, “before going in to bat, or anything like that.”
And they again sat silent, assimilating the fumes. Presently Adrian said:
“If spirits survive, as I don’t believe, what is poor Ferse thinking of this farce? We’re still barbarians. There’s a story of Maupassant’s about a Suicide Club that provided a pleasant form of death to those who felt they had to go. I don’t believe in suicide for the sane, except in very rare cases. We’ve got to stick things out; but for the insane, or those threatened with it, I wish we had that Club, Di
Di
“It’ll last pretty well an hour.” He got up. “My turn, I see. Good-bye, my dear, good luck! Stick in a ‘Sir,’ to the Coroner, now and then.”
Watching him straighten himself as he passed through the door, Di
Another quarter of an hour, however, passed before she was called, and she spent it, with her eyes still fixed on that calendar, thinking of Condaford and recalling all her pleasantest times there. The old days of its unrestored state, when she was very small, hayfield days, and picnics in the woods; pulling lavender, riding on the retriever, promotion to the pony when Hubert was at school; days of pure delight in a new, fixed home, for, though she had been born there, she had been nomadic till she was four—at Aldershot, and Gibraltar. She remembered with special pleasure winding the golden silk off the cocoons of her silkworms, how they had made her think of creeping, crawling elephants, and how peculiar had been their smell.
“Elizabeth Charwell.”
Nuisance to have a name that everyone pronounced wrong as a matter of course! And she rose, murmuring to herself:
Someone took charge of her on her entry, and, taking her across the Court, placed her in a sort of pen. It was fortunate that she had been in such places lately, for it all felt rather familiar, and even faintly comic. The jury in front of her looked as it were disused, the coroner had a fu