Verdict of Twelve

by Raymond Postgate

  He threw himself at her, kicking and clawing, a whirling flail of childish anger. His thin legs and arms in his ridiculous Norfolk suit banged helplessly against the stout and heavy woman.

  Rosalie’s face was nearly as furious as his. She pushed him away and then deliberately, with all the strength she could, struck him a violent blow on the side of his head, sending him staggering across the room. Mrs. Rodd, with a shocked expression, put herself between them. Philip fell on the floor and Rosalie, as dignifiedly as she could, sailed out of the room.

  Distress and the gas-ridden atmosphere had its natural effect on Philip. He was sick. He lay on the floor, his head pillowed on his dead pet, sobbing and retching alternately until Mrs. Rodd, with an expressionless face, gathered him up in her arms and took him up to his room.

  Later in the evening Philip came down again. He found Rodd. “Where’s my rabbit?” he said. Rodd looked at his drawn face and decided to answer truthfully.

  “In the woodpile,” he said. “I was going to bury him.”

  “Lend me your spade,” said Philip.

  Rodd nodded towards it.

  Philip went down with it and with the body to his favourite playing place behind the rhododendron. There he dug a grave, and laid the rabbit within it. He did not place any headstone or mark upon it. He would always know where it was, and he did not want his aunt to know. Tears were pouring down his face all the time, but he was not sobbing. He was muttering to himself continually; without ceasing; all the time.

  6

  On Monday morning next Edward Gillingham leapt lightly off his bicycle and walked in by the front door. Mrs. van Beer was taken by surprise. She had forgotten that the tutor was due to resume his duties that day. If she had remembered, she would have put him off. Indeed, she began to go downstairs to say that Philip was ill; but it was too late. Philip had heard him come in and rushed to meet him, gripping him by the wrist fiercely and almost dragging him to the schoolroom. Edward was startled by this vehemence, and perhaps for the first time looked at his pupil closely.

  He saw the eyes sunken in and red-edged, the sallow peaked face more sallow and peaked than ever, and a general expression of deep misery. His conscience rebuked him. He had never paid enough attention to the child. After all Philip was an intelligent boy, interested in his work and with a mind worth developing. It wasn’t his fault if he was pert and given to fits of bad temper. Any one who had to live with that ghastly aunt would show traces of it. He must be kinder to him. He spoke to him as they sat down at the table, in a warmer tone than usual.

  “It’s very nice to see you again, Philip.” He smiled at him as friendlily as he could.

  The result startled him. Philip laid his head on his arms and burst into tears. His sobbing was not loud, but it was violent; his body shook with it. Edward rose in alarm and put his arm round his shoulders. “What is it, old man?” he said. “Tell me. Is there anything I can do?”

  This evidence of affection, a thing so little known to Philip, had as its first effect to worsen the crisis, but in a few minutes he began to control himself. “She murdered him,” was the first coherent sentence he got out; and then in due course brought out the whole story.

  Edward wrote that evening about it to a young woman named Ellen Cartmell. (She was twenty-three to his twenty-four; to the world she was moderately pretty, with a snub nose, a wide mouth, a fresh complexion and rather thick ankles; to him she was unparalleledly beautiful and lightened any room as soon as she came into it. That is to say, he was in love.)

  “This morning (he said) I had a curious and unpleas-

  ant experience. You remember me telling you about Philip Arkwright, the boy whom I tutor and who lives with a very disagreeable aunt named van Beer? Well, before I could get down to work he suddenly started howling; and when he was able to talk he said the aunt was a murderer. She keeps him very much under her thumb—won’t let him play with other children, and treats him as an invalid.

  “It appears she quite wantonly killed his rabbit, the only thing he has to play with. There was hardly a shadow of an excuse and it sounds very malicious.

  “I’ve never seen any one so heartbroken. I think the child is very unhappy and lonely, and he had given the animal all the love that he could find no other home for. I couldn’t understand all he said, but in some way he seems to have believed that the rabbit was exceptionally wonderful, remarkable, and even powerful; it was a sort of fetish and he used to give it a sort of ritual, if that is the right phrase. Anyway, it died a very mean sort of death in a gas oven, and his whole world seems to have been overturned. There was a sort of horror as well as sorrow in the poor child’s face.

  “He talked very fast and confusedly, and kept asking me if murder would be punished. I did my best to comfort him, but I’m afraid I’m not very good at that sort of thing. We didn’t do very much work, but he did calm down a little. I think I’m almost the only person he talks freely to.

  “When we were finishing, this aunt of his came in. She’s a middle-aged brassy woman, rather false genteel and I should think very selfish. She smiled toothily at us both when I stood up and said: ‘Well, Philip dear, are you getting on nicely?’ He didn’t answer and I do hope that never, never in my life, any child, or anybody at all, looks at me as he looked at her. I’ve never seen such hatred. She looked pretty disagreeable too, I must say.

  “So then she said, ‘I should think you’d better stop; you mustn’t work too hard, darling.’ But this time she didn’t look at him at all, but turned her head aside. I was going anyway, so it didn’t matter her stopping us. But I didn’t like the atmosphere at all, and I will try and take more care of that boy.

  “Some day, my darling, we will have lots of children of our own. We’ll be surrounded by them, all we can afford; and we will love them all, and the house shall be full of happiness. We’ll let them sing and dance and shout, and keep rabbits and rats. And you will be there among them. After that dreadful house, there’s no person I want and need to see more than you. You are loveliness, and cleanness, and kindness; and everything that that house isn’t. Every time I think of you and remember what you are…”

  The rest of the letter is nothing to do with anybody but the two of them.

  7

  As soon as she had disposed of the tutor, Mrs. van Beer went out into the garden. She stood on the red brick paving which ran the length of the house and looked round her. The place was far from tidy. The bed facing her was full of dead montbretias, which had not been cut down. Their browning leaves and leggy stalks were unsightly. A whole large spray of the unkempt ivy had fallen away from the house and swayed slowly in the breeze. Little streaks of ivy dust lay about the bricks, there were some unidentifiable leaves scattered around, and even a bunch of withered cut flowers, thrown down there and left to die. There was a bed of nasturtiums which was thick with black fly. Only the lawn was well kept.

  Mrs. van Beer, if she saw any of this, said nothing. Her nephew came out of the house after her, and she looked at him with a curious expression. He stared back at her, as warily as a cat. In a few seconds, they both went down the garden, separately.

  An hour later they both sat down to dinner. On the table, waiting, was a cold leg of lamb and a salad consisting of lettuce, cucumber, and beetroot, dressed by Mrs. Rodd. The lamb was tasteless and the salad gritty, but they neither of them mentioned this. Indeed, they hardly spoke. Mrs. van Beer once said, “Eat your food up, Philip”; he did not answer, but did as he was told.

  After lunch, he went out and played in the garden: Rosalie stayed in to drink her usual glass of port. There was a third of the bottle left; she said aloud, though no one was listening, “It’s hardly worth keeping,” and refilled her glass until the bottle was finished. It was a very hot September day, and though the sun did not come into the dining-room, it was oppressive indoors. She was sleepy and flushed; her cheeks had a rather
purplish colour.

  About half-past three she entered Mrs. Rodd’s room. She was dignified, but greenish yellow. “Mrs. Rodd,” she said, “you must throw that meat and that salad away. There’s something wrong with it. I felt very queer just now, and went to get a little bicarbonate. Before I could take it, I came over very ill, and I’ve thrown up everything. Everything,” she repeated with sombre satisfaction.

  “Perhaps it was the port, madam, this hot weather,” said Mrs. Rodd innocently.

  “Certainly not,” snapped Rosalie. “Throw that food away at once.”

  “Yes, madam,” said Mrs. Rodd, and went to the kitchen to do so.

  Later in the afternoon Philip came in and sat down in Mrs. Rodd’s kitchen. He said nothing, but trembled as he sat. She looked at him and said, “Anything wrong, Philly?” As he did not answer she looked a second time at his white face. “You’re all quaking,” she said.

  “Don’t feel well,” he said in extremely tired tones. “I’m all shaky. My head aches.

  “I think I’ll be sick,” he added, brightening a little as a child does at the prospect of any unusual event. He went upstairs, Mrs. Rodd’s eyes following him anxiously.

  “Perhaps that meat wasn’t all right after all,” she said to Ada. “I’m glad the dustman calls to-morrow; I wouldn’t like it smelling the place out.”

  Philip refused his tea, and went to bed at seven o’clock. His aunt suggested it, and for once, he agreed to something she said without any hesitation. She seemed wholly recovered and ate a large quantity of bacon, sausages, fried eggs and tomatoes, with a thick slice of fried bread, O.K. sauce and a tin of peas, followed by lemon blancmange and tinned pineapple; she drank more port with it. This she did with relish and apparent immunity.

  In the morning Philip seemed worse. He got up to breakfast very unwillingly, ate a little porridge and threw it up immediately. He went to lie down, and his aunt—not failing to point the moral to Mrs. Rodd—took his temperature. It was 101; she gave him her universal remedy, syrup of figs.

  He vomited it.

  Rather later in the day (no one afterwards could remember the time), Mrs. van Beer rang up Dr. Parkes. “I think Philip has eaten something that disagreed with him. He’s been sick and he’s a little feverish. Could you manage to look in this afternoon?”

  Booking another fee, Dr. Parkes agreed and arrived at a quarter past four. At the gate, he met Edward Gillingham, who came in the afternoon on Tuesdays and Thursdays instead of the morning, owing to another teaching engagement. They walked up the path together.

  “I don’t expect you’ll be needed to-day, young man,” said the doctor. “I hear our little friend has something wrong with his tummy.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I’ll come in, though, and see.”

  They were both shown into the untidy sitting-room. Edward remained in the room while the doctor went upstairs.

  Some people have nearly all the social virtues and retain just one childish fault. Edward was one of these. He was honest, polite, courageous, affectionate and intelligent. But he was inquisitive. He nosed into everybody’s business; he could not help it. Several times he had been on the verge of discovery and a minor humiliation; even his Ellen had once had to tell him to mind his own business. He walked up and down the room, peering into the ornaments, looking at the calendar mottoes for nearly a week ahead, and picking up the books. In one of these he was surprised to find a cutting from the East Essex Monitor of a year ago. He opened it out and read it with absorbed attention. His mother had first commented when he was nine that he’d be rich if only he’d give to his work the same passionate interest that he gave to things that hadn’t the least possible importance to him. This one turned out to be a report of an inquest. When he had read it, he refolded it and put it back, and looked for more fodder. He found a yellow-backed book which had belonged to Sir Henry and whose title was effaced. On the page which he opened he read the words:

  “Oscar, you have been down the area again!”

  Very much astonished, he sat down to read it, and made his first acquaintance with Whistler’s correspondence. He did not move again until Dr. Parkes reappeared.

  “You can’t give your charge any lessons to-day, I’m afraid,” he said. “The heat and some bad food have been too much for him.”

  “Is he seriously ill?” said Edward, as he walked to the gate with Dr. Parkes.

  “Oh, I don’t think so. No. No. A little bicarbonate in warm water and a good rest will do wonders in a case like this, you know.” Dr. Parkes climbed into his car and smiled amiably at this young man whose name he had forgotten—why was the fellow walking away instead of going back to the house? Oh, ah; he was the tutor, of course, not a relative. He put his car into gear and set off with a violent jerk and scrunch. The engine stopped almost at once, because he had left on the handbrake. “I forget so easily,” he said to himself, and then stamped on the thought, for it was one he dared not allow.

  Next morning, he was summoned by an urgent telephone message from Mrs. Rodd, sounding very unlike Mrs. van Beer’s cooing tones. Please to come at once, Philip was much worse. He did come at once.

  He was escorted upstairs, and outside the door Mrs. van Beer spoke to him, with Mrs. Rodd listening on the stairs. “Philip has been sick continually, Doctor. He couldn’t even keep down the bicarbonate you ordered; he said the other medicine hurts him, and I haven’t given it him this morning. He wouldn’t have kept it down anyway. He looks very ill, and he’s quite exhausted. And his last sick seemed to me to have blood in it.”

  Dr. Parkes said nothing, but the last sentence had made him start. His face grew more anxious when he saw Philip, who was still now and very hollow-eyed. He was sweating lightly and scratched himself half-unconsciously. Dr. Parkes tested his heart, and his anxiety suddenly doubled. Mrs. van Beer said: “What is it, Doctor? Is he worse?”

  “Just leave me with him for a moment, alone, please,” he replied gravely.

  When she had gone he sat down by the bed, but he did no more than look at the boy. He had come to a point which he had hoped never to reach. For there had happened to him the worst thing that can happen to a doctor. His patient was in grave danger, as he could see, and he realized that he had no idea whatever the cause could be. A younger man might know. But he, he was as much use as an African medicine man; and for all he knew he might have done nothing but harm up till now. The vomit did contain blood; he had seen that at once. That was an unmistakable warning; but of what?

  He looked at the boy, who seemed nearly comatose, and made up his mind. He went out, shutting the door silently, and said:

  “Mrs. van Beer, I’m afraid we ought to have a second opinion. The case presents some very baffling features. Unless you have any other suggestions I would like to call Dr. Herrington of Wrackhampton into consultation.”

  “Oh, Doctor, is Philip seriously ill?”

  “I am a little worried,” he admitted. “I think we should have this second opinion as soon as possible. I should like to telephone now if I may.”

  “Whatever you say, Doctor.”

  Dr. Parkes telephoned, and came back to say that he and Dr. Herrington would return at half-past twelve—earlier if possible.

  The two men came in fact at a quarter past twelve. Dr. Herrington was a tall dark man of about forty, very alert; Dr. Parkes looked very dejected. Mrs. Rodd ran hastily towards them.

  “Thank goodness you’ve come,” she said. “It’s been awful. He’s been terrible. It’s blood now, always.” She followed them upstairs. “He won’t have his auntie near him.”

  Philip had opened his eyes soon after Dr. Parkes had left and had seen Mrs. van Beer looking at him. Mrs. Rodd was standing by the door. He spoke in a faint voice but very distinctly, with long pauses.

  “Go away. Don’t ever come near me again…

  “Mrs. Rodd…

  “Do
n’t let Auntie come near me.”

  Mrs. Rodd had come near the bed and said diplomatically, “It’s all right. I’ll be here.”

  “I want…Mr. Gillingham.”

  “He isn’t here to-day, dear; you aren’t strong enough for lessons.”

  “I want…to talk…to him.”

  “I’ll tell him when he comes to-morrow, and if Doctor lets him, I’m sure he’ll come up.”

  Philip had shut his eyes.

  The two doctors went into the room, and both figures, the tall alert dark one and the bowed white-haired and shaking one, stopped short momentarily at what they saw. Then the first strode quickly to the bed. Dr. Parkes closed the door in Mrs. Rodd’s face.

  About ten minutes later he came out and asked for Mrs. van Beer.

  “This is a great shock,” he said a little incoherently. “I am sorry. Philip is—”

  “He’s dead!” cried out the woman.

  The doctor bowed his head. “I think Dr. Herrington should speak to you.”

  The younger man had come up behind him, and intervened:

  “I am very, very grieved. We did all we could for your nephew. But it was too late. And,” he said with a slight sigh, “I feel I must tell you now that we are not satisfied of the cause of death. I am very loth to add to your distress, but Dr. Parkes and I have consulted and we feel there must be an autopsy.”

  Mrs. van Beer looked at him with wide eyes, and without a word ran into the dead boy’s bedroom.

  8

  Most of the windows of the coroner’s courtroom were closed, from some obscure habit, though the day was hot and the room crowded. Dr. Saunders, the Coroner, continually wiped his forehead, but it never seemed to occur to him to order the room to be better ventilated. The air quickly became foul; heads ached and attention wandered.

  Dr. Parkes was the first witness. He seemed to have aged greatly; his stoop was more marked and his face very lined and tired. He answered questions in a halting and unconvincing manner. He seemed frightened.