The Woman in Black

by E. C. Bentley

  CHAPTER VII

  THE INQUEST

  The coroner, who fully realized that for that one day of his life as aprovincial solicitor he was living in the gaze of the world, hadresolved to be worthy of the fleeting eminence. He was a large man ofjovial temper, with a strong interest in the dramatic aspects of hiswork, and the news of Manderson's mysterious death within hisjurisdiction had made him the happiest coroner in England. A respectablecapacity for marshaling facts was fortified in him by a copiousness ofimpressive language that made juries as clay in his hands and sometimesdisguised a doubtful interpretation of the rules of evidence.

  The court was held in a long unfurnished room lately built onto thehotel, and intended to serve as a ball-room or concert-hall. A regimentof reporters was entrenched in the front seats, and those who were to becalled on to give evidence occupied chairs to one side of the tablebehind which the coroner sat, while the jury, in double row, withplastered hair and a spurious ease of manner, flanked him on the otherside. An undistinguished public filled the rest of the space, andlistened, in an awed silence, to the opening solemnities. The newspapermen, well used to these, muttered among themselves. Those of them whoknew Trent by sight, assured the rest that he was not in the court.

  The identity of the dead man was proved by his wife, the first witnesscalled, from whom the coroner, after some inquiry into the health andcircumstances of the deceased, proceeded to draw an account of the lastoccasion on which she had seen her husband alive. Mrs. Manderson wastaken through her evidence by the coroner with the sympathy which everyman felt for that dark figure of grief. She lifted her thick veil beforebeginning to speak, and the extreme paleness and unbroken composure ofthe lady produced a singular impression. This was not an impression ofhardness. Interesting femininity was the first thing to be felt in herpresence. She was not even enigmatic. It was only clear that the forceof a powerful character was at work to master the emotions of hersituation. Once or twice as she spoke she touched her eyes with herhandkerchief, but her voice was low and clear to the end.

  Her husband, she said, had come up to his bedroom about his usual hourfor retiring on the Sunday night. His room was really a dressing-roomattached to her own bedroom, communicating with it by a door which wasusually kept open during the night. Both dressing-room and bedroom wereentered by other doors giving on the passage. Her husband had always hada preference for the greatest simplicity in his bedroom arrangements,and liked to sleep in a small room. She had not been awake when he cameup, but had been half-aroused, as usually happened, when the light wasswitched on in her husband's room. She had spoken to him. She had noclear recollection of what she had said, as she had been very drowsy atthe time; but she had remembered that he had been out for a moonlightrun in the car, and she believed she had asked whether he had had a goodrun, and what time it was. She had asked what the time was because shefelt as if she had only been a very short time asleep, and she hadexpected her husband to be out very late. In answer to her question hehad told her it was half-past eleven, and had gone on to say that he hadchanged his mind about going for a run.

  "Did he say why?" the coroner asked.

  "Yes," replied the lady, "he did explain why. I remember very well whathe said, because--" she stopped with a little appearance of confusion.

  "Because--" the coroner insisted gently.

  "Because my husband was not as a rule communicative about his businessaffairs," answered the witness, raising her chin with a faint touch ofdefiance. "He did not--did not think they would interest me, and as arule referred to them as little as possible. That is why I was rathersurprised when he told me that he had sent Mr. Marlowe to Southampton tobring back some important information from a man who was leaving forParis by the next day's boat. He said that Mr. Marlowe could do it quiteeasily if he had no accident. He said that he had started in the car,and then walked back home a mile or so, and felt all the better for it."

  "Did he say any more?"

  "Nothing, as well as I remember," the witness said. "I was very sleepy,and I dropped off again in a few moments. I just remember my husbandturning his light out, and that is all. I never saw him again alive."

  "And you heard nothing in the night?"

  "No; I never woke until my maid brought my tea in the morning at seveno'clock. She closed the door leading to my husband's room, as she alwaysdid, and I supposed him to be still there. He always needed a great dealof sleep. He sometimes slept until quite late in the morning. I hadbreakfast in my sitting-room. It was about ten when I heard that myhusband's body had been found." The witness dropped her head andsilently waited for her dismissal.

  But it was not to be yet.

  "Mrs. Manderson." The coroner's voice was sympathetic, but it had a hintof firmness in it now. "The question I am going to put to you must, inthese sad circumstances, be a painful one; but it is my duty to ask it.Is it the fact that your relations with your late husband had not been,for some time past, relations of mutual affection and confidence? Is itthe fact that there was an estrangement between you?"

  The lady drew herself up again and faced her questioner, the colorrising in her cheeks. "If that question is necessary," she said withcold distinctness, "I will answer it so that there shall be nomisunderstanding. During the last few months of my husband's life hisattitude towards me had given me great anxiety and sorrow. He hadchanged towards me; he had become very reserved and seemed mistrustful.I saw much less of him than before; he seemed to prefer to be alone. Ican give no explanation at all of the change. I tried to work againstit; I did all I could with justice to my own dignity, as I thought.Something was between us, I did not know what, and he never told me. Myown obstinate pride prevented me from asking what it was in so manywords; I only made a point of being to him exactly as I had always been,so far as he would allow me. I suppose I shall never know now what itwas." The witness, whose voice had trembled in spite of herself-control, over the last few sentences, drew down her veil when shehad said this, and stood erect and quiet.

  One of the jury asked a question, not without obvious hesitation. "Thenwas there never anything of the nature of what they call Words betweenyou and your husband, ma'am?"

  "Never." The word was colorlessly spoken; but everyone felt that a crassmisunderstanding of the possibilities of conduct in the case of a personlike Mrs. Manderson had been visited with some severity.

  Did she know, the coroner asked, of any other matter which might havebeen preying upon her husband's mind recently?

  Mrs. Manderson knew of none whatever. The coroner intimated that herordeal was at an end, and the veiled lady made her way to the door. Thegeneral attention, which followed her for a few moments, was now eagerlydirected upon Martin, whom the coroner had proceeded to call.

  It was at this moment that Trent appeared at the doorway, and edged hisway into the great room. But he did not look at Martin. He was observingthe well-balanced figure that came quickly toward him along an openingpath in the crowd, and his eye was gloomy. He started, as he stood asidefrom the door with a slight bow, to hear Mrs. Manderson address him byname in a low voice. He followed her a pace or two into the hall.

  "I wanted to ask you," she said in a voice now weak and oddly broken,"if you would give me your arm a part of the way to the house. I couldnot see my uncle near the door, and I suddenly felt rather faint.... Ishall be better in the air.... No, no! I cannot stay here--please, Mr.Trent!" she said, as he began to make an obvious suggestion. "I must goto the house." Her hand tightened momentarily on his arm as if, for allher weakness, she could drag him from the place; then again she leanedheavily upon it, and with that support, and with bent head, she walkedslowly from the hotel and along the oak-shaded path toward White Gables.

  Trent went in silence, his thoughts whirling, dancing insanely to achorus of "Fool! fool!" All that he alone knew, all that he guessed andsuspected of this affair rushed through his brain in a rout; but thetouch of her unnerved hand upon his arm never for an instant left hisconsciousness, filling h
im with an exaltation that enraged andbewildered him. He was still cursing himself furiously behind the maskof conventional solicitude that he turned to the lady when he hadattended her to the house, and seen her sink upon a couch in the morningroom. Raising her veil, she thanked him gravely and frankly, with a lookof sincere gratitude in her eyes. She was much better now, she said, anda cup of tea would work a miracle upon her. She hoped she had not takenhim away from anything important. She was ashamed of herself; shethought she could go through with it, but she had not expected thoselast questions. "I am glad you did not hear me," she said when heexplained. "But of course you will read it all in the reports. It shookme so to have to speak of that," she added simply, "and to keep frommaking an exhibition of myself took it out of me. And all those staringmen by the door! Thank you again for helping me when I asked you.... Ithought I might," she ended queerly, with a little tired smile; andTrent took himself away, his hand still quivering from the cool touch ofher fingers.