The Perfect Daughter

by Gillian Linscott

  ‘Too much for her,’ a woman said. ‘They shouldn’t have let her come.’

  After what seemed like a long time the car started and they drove off, a policeman clearing the way for them.

  * * *

  Eleven o’clock. I went to the door, asked a constable where the witnesses were supposed to wait and was directed to a room off the corridor. I’d expected to have to face Ben there, assuming that he’d be a witness too, but there was no sign of him. There were just two people apart from myself, the doctor who’d arrived in such a hurry and a sharp-faced man in a grey suit who had a professional air about him. He and the doctor were sitting next to each other, talking in low voices, very much two medical men together. The doctor still looked hot and anxious. They glanced at me, stood up and said good morning, sat down and went on with their conversation. From the room next door we heard chairs scraping, the low boom of a man’s voice, probably the coroner’s. I knew enough about the procedure to guess what was going on – first the formal opening, name of the deceased and date of her death. The coroner would already have been to view the body, probably days earlier. Then the swearing-in of the jury, followed by evidence of formal identification. Ben would do that and normally it wouldn’t take long, but the coroner might decide to question him about Verona’s state of mind. After that, it would be the discovery of the body. My turn. The two medical men had finished their talk now and were staring straight ahead, trying not to catch my eye. It was a warm day, with sunshine and the sounds of a town going about its business coming through the open window. I wondered if there was anybody back at the house to look after Alexandra, wished I could do something for her but knew I was the last person in the world she’d want to see.

  ‘Miss Bray.’

  The coroner’s officer. I followed him along a corridor, through a door, was sworn in. The coroner was an ordinary conscientious-looking man with a bald patch. The jury were ten respectable tradesmen in their Sunday best, middle-aged mostly, showing no hostility in the way they stared at me. Not yet. Ben was sitting to one side of the front row. He stared too, beyond me, as if at something far out to sea. The room was full, five rows of people. The coroner asked questions about how I came to find Verona, making it easy. I was family after all. Naturally I’d be visiting Alexandra, taking a stroll to the boathouse. We came to finding her hanging, pulling in the body with a boathook. The coroner took a long time writing it down.

  To make sure my eyes wouldn’t come into contact with Ben’s, I looked towards the back of the room – and found myself staring at Bill Musgrave. The last man I’d have expected to see. He should have been in court or in his chambers in Manchester, not travelling hundreds of miles to inquests that had nothing to do with him in Devon. He gave a kind of twisted smile that might have been encouragement, sympathy or even an apology for surprising me. I looked away, trying to give my mind a chance to catch up. There was a woman sitting next to him, small, in her thirties, with glossy dark hair and big beautiful eyes. She was staring at me, lips apart, very intently. I’d never seen her in my life before. It was almost a relief when the coroner stopped writing and started asking questions again, but the relief didn’t last long. He wanted to know when I’d last seen Verona alive. I told him about probably seeing her outside Buckingham Palace a week before I found her body, on 21 May. In what circumstances? So, of course, it all came out about the deputation. The coroner managed to keep the disapproval off his face although not out of his voice. A few of the jurors looked downright hostile. In the next pause for writing I couldn’t help looking at Bill. He was worried. Had he come all this way to try to protect me, for goodness sake? I wished I could tell him that I was a lot more used to this than he was.

  The coroner wanted to know whether I’d seen much of Verona in London. Just twice, I said. Had I formed any judgment about her state of mind? I’d expected this and had my reply ready.

  ‘As far as I could tell, she was starting to settle down in London, making friends.’

  Scratch, scratch, his pen went. Bill was still looking worried. The dark-haired woman next to him was looking even more intent, as if this part of the story mattered a lot to her. But why should it? If she’d been friends or family, she’d have been sitting up at the front near Ben. Press? Just possibly. Her jacket and turban-style hat were more fashionable than you’d expect at a seaside town inquest.

  ‘Would you have expected her to confide in you if she’d had problems of any kind?’

  When the coroner asked that, I felt an electric charge in the air. At the time I had no idea why. It was an obvious enough question after all. We were talking about a suicide. But there was something happening I didn’t understand. It had to do with Alexandra’s sudden flight, with the bearded man’s anger.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t have expected her to confide in me.’

  That was it. I was allowed to step down and listen to the rest of the proceedings. There was a spare seat on the end of the second row, at the far side from Ben.

  * * *

  The next witness was the man I’d seen getting out of the governess cart, the family practitioner, Dr Maidment. He was there because he’d been the one to certify Verona dead. After getting that on record, the coroner asked if he’d known the deceased for some time.

  ‘Yes, indeed. I took up practice here soon after she was born. I have the pleasure to be doctor to Commodore North and his family.’

  ‘Had you seen Miss North recently?’

  ‘Not very recently. The last occasion was back in the autumn. She came to say goodbye to my daughter before going to London.’ (Presumably the girl who’d been driving the governess cart.)

  ‘And you hadn’t seen her since then?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  It was all simple enough, and yet the family doctor was clearly unhappy, even more unhappy than you’d expect in the circumstances. The feeling that there was something worse to come was growing. We all felt it. Dr Maidment was allowed to step down and paced heavily to a seat near the back of the court.

  Next witness, Dr Stephen White, pathologist. The other man from the waiting-room was sworn in. It seemed to take the coroner for ever to note down his string of professional qualifications. Yes, at the coroner’s request, he had carried out a postmortem examination on the body of Miss Verona North on 28 May 1914. Had he formed any opinion as to the cause of death? The pathologist hunched over his notes, reading in a monotone. Chair legs squeaked on the linoleum floor as everybody strained forward to hear him, all except Ben.

  ‘… congestion of face and cyanosis typical of asphyxia, engorged tongue, burst capillaries in eyes, considerable bruising and abrasions on neck and throat, consistent with pressure from a tight ligature…’

  I closed my eyes but still saw the silver light of the water in the estuary, smelt mud and creosote.

  ‘… some abrasions and bruising on the ankles and over the insteps, also consistent with pressure from ligatures…’

  Feet still in their stockings and shoes, green weed trailing.

  ‘… compression of the jugular vein and trachea, no rupture of spinal cord and no significant displacement of neck vertebrae…’

  The hangman’s fracture, they called it, that deplacement of the neck vertebrae. But if the hangman got it wrong, the victim died from strangling not a broken neck. That was what had happened to Verona. The coroner wanted to get it quite clear, for the jury.

  ‘In layman’s terms, Dr White, in your opinion death resulted from strangulation.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Feet being pulled out and out by the tide, noose slowly tightening. Her arms weren’t tied. Surely she couldn’t have helped doing something to relieve the pressure? I was sitting on the edge of my seat. I wanted to stand up and ask Dr White, ‘Were her nails broken? Were there scratch marks on her neck?’ The coroner asked Dr White if he had made any more observations the court should know about.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He turned over another page of his notes, seem
ed to hesitate, then went on in the same monotone. ‘I observed a deep puncture wound in her upper left arm, some three and a half inches above the elbow joint, surrounded by superficial bruising.’

  Whispering and rustling in court. The coroner frowned.

  ‘Did you form any opinion as to what might have caused the puncture?’

  ‘In my view, it was consistent with an injection from a hypodermic syringe.’

  ‘An injection?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Administered by the deceased herself or by some other person?’

  ‘Either. The position of the puncture would be consistent with self-administration.’

  The coroner looked at him steadily for a long time.

  ‘Is there any evidence of what might have been administered?’

  ‘Yes. On examination of the internal organs I found distinct traces of morphine.’

  Gasps around the court. Ben was staring straight ahead. The coroner had been making a note of what the pathologist was saying but stopped, pen in hand.

  ‘You’ve given your opinion that death resulted from strangulation?’

  ‘Yes, sir, and that remains my opinion. I had further analysis done of the internal organs which confirmed that though morphine was present, it was not in sufficient quantities to have caused death.’

  The coroner sighed, then wrote for a long time.

  ‘Any other observations?’

  ‘One.’ Dr White was on the last page of his notes now. He seemed reluctant to get to the end of them. The court was as quiet as the inside of an ice cave. ‘The deceased was well advanced into the first trimester of pregnancy.’

  More gasps. I happened to be looking towards Bill at the time and the dark-haired woman in the turban hat sitting next to him. She wasn’t the one who’d gasped, but the expression on her face was more than concern. It was pain.

  The coroner said, ‘By first trimester, you mean…?’

  ‘The deceased was somewhere between two and three months pregnant, in my opinion somewhere between eight and ten weeks.’

  Like everyone I couldn’t help glancing at Ben. He gave no sign that he’d heard, none at all. They’d warned him, which was why he’d got Alexandra away. The court had been struck silent at first, but now a rustle of whispering started.

  The coroner put down his pen.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Smith. Please call the next witness.’

  The next, and last, witness was a young police constable who’d arrived about an hour after Verona’s body was discovered. I remembered him asking me a few questions and how he’d seemed awed both by Ben’s position and the event itself. Now he gave his evidence stolidly, not looking at Ben. He’d arrived at the house where Dr Maidment was already present and had certified death. He’d spoken to Commodore North and arranged for the removal of the body to the mortuary. Later he’d made a search of the boathouse and taken possession of the following objects.

  A hemp rope, one end knotted in a noose, the other cut.

  (I’d gone running up to the house for help when I knew I couldn’t get Verona down on my own and Ben had run back with me. We’d got her into one of the rowing boats. I’d held her while Ben cut the rope with a sharp seaman’s knife. When we’d got her back on the wooden platform Ben had somehow got the noose off and flung it down.)

  A large plank of wood with hemp ropes knotted round it, some cut.

  (I remembered Ben kneeling on the planks in the boathouse, hacking at the ropes round Verona’s feet. No use, of course, but the useless things seem important when there’s nothing you can do.)

  A woman’s overcoat, with the label of a London store. The constable had found it in one of the dinghies moored to the platform, as if flung there. It was blue-grey tweed, not nautical wear. (I couldn’t remember an overcoat.) In the pocket of the coat he’d found an object. I almost missed what he was saying. I’d been thinking about Ben’s fingers trying to loosen the knots, wondering if he still hoped then that she might be alive. A collective gasp brought me back to what was happening, with the coroner asking the constable to repeat that to make sure the jury heard it.

  ‘Yes, sir. A hypodermic syringe, in the pocket.’

  ‘Did you take possession of the syringe?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Was there anything in the syringe?’

  ‘It was nearly empty, sir. Just a bit of stuff at the bottom.’

  ‘Stuff?’

  ‘Liquid, sir.’

  ‘Did you have that liquid analysed?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And what was the result?’

  ‘Morphine, sir. Solution of morphine.’

  Chapter Nine

  THE JURY TOOK UNDER AN HOUR TO DECIDE that Verona North killed herself while the balance of her mind was disturbed. When it was over Ben walked out first in complete silence. When he’d gone the murmuring started again and the rest of us filed outside. I hung back to give Ben plenty of time to get clear and found Bill beside me.

  ‘Are you all right, Nell?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Would you rather I weren’t?’

  I was so angry – not so much with him as with everything – that I almost said yes, but didn’t know if I’d mean it, didn’t know anything. Besides, there were people all round us in the corridor, hungry for more drama. We went with the crowd, out to the yard where the cars and carts were parked. I hadn’t given Ben enough time after all. He was sitting in the big black car with the engine running and the driver at the wheel. The man with the grey beard and scar was standing beside the car with one foot on the running board, leaning in and talking to Ben. I tried to make myself inconspicuous in the crowd but the bearded man turned and looked straight at me. He turned back to the car, said something to Ben and nodded. It looked as if he’d asked a question and got an answer. He took his foot off the running board, stepped back and the car drove away. The man watched it out of sight and started walking towards me.

  ‘Somebody you know?’ Bill asked.

  ‘No, but he must be a friend of the family. I’ll have to talk to him.’

  The last thing I wanted to do was stay and collect more blame, but I needed to know about Alex. Bill took a tactful few paces back. The man stopped, raised his hat.

  ‘Excuse me for troubling you, but am I speaking to Miss Bray?’

  Yes, I said.

  ‘My name’s Archie Pritty. Ben asked me to make apologies on his behalf.’ His voice surprised me. It was soft and likeable with a touch of West Country accent in it. From his manner, I’d expected something more peremptory. Seen close to, he was younger than you’d have guessed from the beard, late fifties or early sixties probably. The beard was a bright silvery-grey, his face had a light tan that made the scar stand out and the eyes that were looking into mine were the colour of the sea on a cloudy day. The pupils were small and that gave his look an intensity, as if you were being recorded by a pin-hole camera. Perhaps he was aware of that, because he had a way of looking then glancing away.

  ‘Apologies?’

  ‘For not speaking to you. I’m sure a time will come when he and Alexandra want to talk about what happened, but at present…’

  He waited.

  I said, ‘I’m not sure that Ben will ever want to speak to me again. Please tell Alex, if she ever does, I’ll come and see her at any time.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I took that more as a promise to deliver the message than a sign that Alex might want to see me.

  ‘And if you think she needs to hear this, please tell her that I had no idea, no idea at all.’

  It was odd, saying this to a man I’d only met a minute before, but it was in my mind that Alex might think I’d known about the morphine and the pregnancy and hadn’t told her.

  ‘Verona hadn’t confided in you at all?’

  I guessed then that Ben had offered no apologies and that Archie Pritty was there entirely as Alex’s messenger.

  ‘No. I wish with all
my heart that she had.’

  ‘I’m sure we all wish that. I’m very sorry indeed to have troubled you, Miss Bray. Are you staying here or going back to town?’ Back to town, I said. To my annoyance he glanced at Bill, standing just out of earshot, acknowledged his presence with a nod and got one back.

  ‘And may I offer you my most sincere sympathies. She was a remarkable girl, Miss Bray. A quite remarkable girl. Good morning. I’ll give her mother your message.’

  The voice was quivering on the last few words. As he put his hat on and turned away I saw that tears were gathering in the corner of the down-turned left eye, trickling down the line of the scar. I watched him walk away and Bill came and stood beside me.

  ‘Distinguished-looking chap. What did he want?’

  ‘Alex can’t face seeing me, but I think she’s trying to keep the lines of communication open.’

  ‘Poor woman.’

  ‘I can’t do anything. I must be like losing Verona twice over, first her dying and then all this.’

  ‘Let’s get away from here, shall we. I thought you might like…’

  I didn’t find out what I might like, because we’d got to the gateway of the yard and had to stand back to let out Dr Maidment in his governess cart. He was red-faced and jerking at the reins like a man in a bad temper. He was alone in the cart. I looked round for the anxious girl with the dark curls whom I took to be his daughter and saw her leaning against the wall, hat askew, with her back to everybody and a hand up to her face. Verona had liked her enough to say goodbye before going off to London.