The two doctors followed, one after the other. Consequential little Doctor Roe bustled forward, giving everyone in the court the impression that he wished to appear in a great hurry. Gina stirred uneasily. Was this awful clarity to be the peculiarity of the whole inquiry? In other circumstances Doctor Roe’s hurry might have passed as genuine, but here in court it seemed monstrously overdone, his self-importance and his vanity painfully obvious.
The repetition of his statement already made to the police went slowly on, the Coroner interpolating an occasional question and writing down the replies with unhurried calm.
Gina tried to fix her mind on the evidence, but the mannerisms of the man, his love of the Latin cherished by his profession, his unction and gratification at his own importance obtruded themselves and all but eclipsed his information.
The Coroner kept him only a very short time, and the police doctor, a wholly unexpected person called Ferdie, appeared upon the stand.
Doctor Ferdie was a Scot from Dundee, and thirty years of work in London had not robbed him of his accent. He was a vast, untidy old person draped in elephant-grey clothes which managed to convey that there was something extraordinary about their cut without being actually peculiar in any definable particular. His face was seamed and rucked like the bark of an oak and from out its mass of indentations two very bright and knowing blue eyes peered at the world.
He cocked an eye at the Coroner with the confiding air of a trusted expert confronting an old client and the whole court became alive.
Preliminaries, the names and addresses of witnesses who had attested to Doctor Ferdie that the body of Paul Redfern Brande was the body of Paul Redfern Brande and not any spare corpse which might have been lying around at the time; the little matter of the warrant for examination and the address of the mortuary were all disposed of with perfunctory speed, and the doctor passed on to the external appearances of the body indicative of the time of death.
‘The body was that of a well-nourished pairson,’ he remarked, his bright inquisitive eyes fixed upon the Coroner. ‘Not sae lean an’ not sae stout. Just ordinary, ye see. There was no death stiffening, or, as ma colleague Doctor Roe here would put it, rigor mortis. I examined the body carefully, and in my opeenion death had taken place within three to five days.’
He paused and added confidentially:
‘There were certain signs, ye see.’
The Coroner nodded comprehendingly and turned to his personal notes.
‘The man was last seen alive on Thursday afternoon, January the twenty-eighth; that is to say, somewhere between ninety-four and ninety-five hours before you saw him,’ he began at last. ‘In your opinion would the condition of the body be consistent with the suggestion that his death took place within an hour or so of his disappearance?’
Doctor Ferdie considered, and Gina found her heart beating suffocatingly fast.
‘Ah, it might,’ he said at last. ‘It might indeed. But I couldn’t commit myself, ye see. There were definite signs of the beginning of decomposition and in ordinary condeetions these do not appear until after the third day. But I wouldn’t go further than that.’
‘Quite.’ The Coroner seemed satisfied, and after he had written for some moments he looked up again. ‘In regard to these ordinary conditions, you have said that the deceased was a well-nourished person of normal weight.’
‘Ah, he was,’ Doctor Ferdie agreed. ‘A healthy normal pairson.’
‘I see. Did you examine the room where the body was found?’
‘I did.’
‘Was there anything about it which might have hastened or retarded the natural decomposition of the body?’
‘No. It was a cool dry room, very badly ventilated, but otherwise nothing extraordinary.’
‘I see.’ The Coroner glanced at the jury, who made a visible effort to appear more intelligent. ‘Would the coolness hurry the termination of the period of death stiffening?’
The doctor cocked an eye again and spoke to the jury rather than to the Coroner.
‘No, ye see, it would rather tend to prolong it.’
‘Death might easily have taken place between eighty-eight and eighty-four hours before you saw him, then?’
‘Ah, it might.’ The Scotsman hesitated. ‘I’d say it was very probable.’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’ The Coroner wrote again. ‘Now, as to the cause of death …’
Doctor Ferdie cleared his throat and launched into a careful and extremely delicate description of the colour of the face and chest, followed by a technical account of the autopsy which he and Doctor Roe had performed.
Gina’s head began to swim. The brutality of the facts related in the soothing Scotch voice produced in her a sense of outrage.
She turned her head and caught a glimpse of Mrs Austin. The woman was watching her with kindly but almost hungry eyes.
‘Feel faint, duck?’ she whispered hopefully.
Gina shook her head and passed her tongue over her dry lips. Mrs Austin seemed disappointed.
Doctor Ferdie was still talking.
‘It’s lairgely a question of the colour of the bluid, ye see. I applied Haldane’s test, and in my opeenion there was between forty and fifty per cent. of carbon monoxide in the bluid. I took a test-tube containing a one per cent. solution of the bluid to be examined. Then in a second tube I put a solution of normal bluid of like strength. Then I took a third tube an’ …’
On and on it went, the details explained with endless patience to the seven self-conscious individuals whose acute embarrassment had given place to a sort of settled discomfort.
By the time Doctor Ferdie left the stand there could have been no reasonable doubt in anybody’s mind that Paul Redfern Brande had died from carbon monoxide poisoning, and no very great question but that he had done so within eight hours of his last appearance in the office.
The doctor lolloped back to his seat and the Coroner’s officer, a plump uniformed person with a sternly avuncular manner, produced the next witness.
At the back of the court Mr Campion sat up as Miss Netley walked hesitantly forward. Her schoolgirl affectation was enhanced to-day and she looked little more than fourteen in her severe blue jacket and sailor hat.
She gave her evidence in a very low voice, but her timidity did not quite ring true, and even Mr Lugg’s sympathetic expression faded into one of doubt as her plaintive answers reached him.
The Coroner was very gentle with her, and she smiled at him confidingly as he helped her through her very simple tale. It transpired that she had been Paul’s secretary and that so far as anybody knew she had been the last person to see him alive.
‘You say Mr Brande went out of the office at about half-past three of the afternoon of Thursday, the twenty-eighth of last month, and that was the last time you saw him alive? Is that so?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you say here’ – the Coroner went on, tapping the statement upon his desk – ‘that when Mr Brande went out he seemed to be excited. Suppose you tell the jury what you meant by that?’
Miss Netley blushed painfully.
‘I don’t know, sir,’ she stammered at last. ‘He just seemed to be excited.’
Some of the Coroner’s tenderness vanished.
‘Was he pleased or worried? Alarmed? Anxious about something?’
‘No, sir. He was just – excited.’
Mr Campion pricked up his ears. There it was again, that same indefinable thing he had noticed about the girl before. She wanted to be tantalizing and did not mind appearing a fool in order to achieve that end.
‘How did you know he was excited?’ the Coroner suggested.
Miss Netley considered.
‘He moved as though he was,’ she said at last.
Mr Lugg nudged his employer and made an expressive depreciatory gesture with his thumb, an indication which in the days of his vulgarity would have been accompanied by the succinct expression ‘Out her!’
The Coroner breathe
d deeply through his nose.
‘You just knew by the way he moved that he was excited?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The Coroner returned to facts.
‘How did you know it was half-past three when Mr Brande went out?’
‘Because,’ said Miss Netley, ‘the afternoon post comes at five-and-twenty minutes past three.’
‘And the post had just come when Mr Brande went out?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Her expectancy was as evident as if she had expressed it in words.
The Coroner looked up.
‘Did anything come by the post for Mr Brande?’
‘Yes, sir. One letter.’
‘Did you see it?’
‘I saw it was addressed to him and I handed it to him,’ she said. ‘It was marked “Personal”.’
The court began to sit up and even the police looked interested.
‘After Mr Brande had read the letter, did he decide to go out?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did he tell you where he was going?’
‘No.’
‘Did he say when he was coming back?’
‘No.’
‘Did he say anything at all?’
‘No, sir.’
The Coroner sighed.
‘You are here to give us all the help you can, Miss Netley,’ he said sternly. ‘To return to this excitement you noticed in Mr Brande; had it anything to do with the letter?’
The girl considered.
‘It may have had,’ she said. ‘I noticed it after he had read the letter. He got up hurriedly, put on his hat and coat and went out.’
‘What did he do with the letter?’
‘He put it in the fire, sir.’
‘And that’s all you know about this business?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The Coroner glanced at the written page in front of him.
‘All you can tell us, then, is that a letter came for your employer at five-and-twenty minutes past three on the twenty-eighth, that it was marked “Personal”, and that after he had read it he thrust it in the fire, put on his hat and coat and went out and was never seen again alive as far as you know?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’ve taken a great deal of time to tell us that, Miss Netley. You’re not hiding anything, are you?’
‘Hiding anything, sir?’ The big dark eyes grew round and shocked. The small mouth trembled. The years dropped away from the girl until she looked a child. ‘Of course not, sir.’
‘All right. You may sit down.’
Miss Netley returned to her seat with all eyes upon her and Mr Campion wondered. She was not quite the ordinary notoriety-seeker, and once again he made a mental note of her name.
The next witness was Detective-Inspector Tanner. He was tall, thick-set, and the possessor of a figure predestined to wear a uniform. His face was expressionless, but forbidding in structure, while his light blue eyes looked shrewd and obstinately honest. He gave his evidence in a flat careful voice, obviously different from the one in which he usually spoke. He made his statement with the awful conviction of the slightly inhuman, while the Coroner nodded to him from time to time and wrote it all down.
In the beginning it was the same story told from yet another angle. Gina glanced restlessly round the court and was startled to catch Mike’s eyes resting upon her. He looked away abruptly, but she had seen and turned back to the witness, her body suddenly cold.
Mrs Austin leant against her.
‘Bear up, dear,’ she murmured.
The Inspector was making a great point of the fact that the body had been moved by the doctor after its discovery. Doctor Roe was recalled and stated amid much self-conscious protestation that the step had been necessary, or so he had been assured by Miss Curley and Mr Michael Wedgwood.
Having successfully shifted the blame from his own shoulders to theirs, he bustled back to his seat and the Inspector was recalled.
As soon as he reappeared a tremor of interest passed through the whole court. The Press men scribbled vigorously and Mr Lugg leaned forward to catch a glimpse of the Barnabas party seated in front of him.
‘After I and my colleague, Sergeant Pillow, had taken statements from the witnesses present on the premises at Number Twenty-three, Horsecollar Yard, I made a detailed search of the said premises.’
The flat voice droned out the words like a child reciting.
‘In the room where the deceased was discovered I noticed a small ventilator beneath one of the shelves which surround the room. The ventilator is situated three feet from the ground and five and a half feet from the ceiling. This ventilator is not easily observed by anyone entering the room because it is hidden by the projection of the shelf beneath which it is situated. I and my colleague removed the ventilator from its position and took it to headquarters as evidence.’
There was a sensation as the ragged piece of iron was produced and solemnly handed round to the jury.
‘I observed,’ Inspector Tanner continued, ‘that two of the centre bars of the ventilator had been recently broken. The sharp metal edges were bright and there were signs indicative of force having been used upon them. I also noticed a quantity of soot of a certain nature sprayed over the papers and other debris on the lower shelf beneath the ventilator. My colleague and I then examined the lock of the door of the room and found that it had not been tampered with in any way. We then traced the outside wall of the building and discovered that the ventilator gave into a garage used by the directors of the firm. In the garage was a twenty horse-power Fiat car, number PQ 348206, which we subsequently discovered belonged to Mr Michael Wedgwood, junior partner in the firm of Barnabas, Ltd., and first cousin to the deceased.
‘Continuing our search, we entered the building next door, known as Twenty-one, Horsecollar Yard, where the residences of Mr Michael Wedgwood, Mr John Barnabas and the deceased are situated. Among some miscellany in the passageway outside the heating plant of these premises we found a length of rubber pipe, eight feet three inches in length and one and a half inches in diameter. As far as we could ascertain it had once formed part of a shower-bath apparatus, but did not appear to have been used for this purpose for some considerable time. One end of the pipe had been hacked off recently and the other end, which was fitted with a nozzle designed to fit over a water-tap, had been considerably stretched and mutilated.
‘This pipe was black with soot on the inside and the nozzle end showed signs of burning.’
He paused again and the length of tubing was passed round.
The inference was obvious and the Inspector proceeded to show how the cut end of the tube had passed through the ventilator and was able to point out the indentation some six inches from the end where it had been held by the ends of the broken bars.
Gina closed her eyes. It seemed to her for a moment that everyone was staring not at the exhibit but at herself. She dared not look at Mike. At her side Mrs Austin was breathing heavily, her eyes snapping with excitement.
The Coroner took the Inspector over his statement very carefully.
‘In your opinion, Inspector, this pipe was passed through the ventilator recently?’ he suggested.
The Inspector stated that in his opinion there was no possible doubt whatever about the matter; he went on to say that the other end of the pipe had been tested in connection with the end of the exhaust pipe on the Fiat and finished up by producing that part of the car.
The jury stared at these three component parts and on their faces there appeared a gleam of something that could only be called satisfaction.
The Inspector stepped down and for a moment the court was full of whispers. Old Mr Scruby was talking to John with an animation and authority quite foreign to his nature. Two or three reporters slipped out of their places and Mr Lugg turned to Campion triumphantly.
‘What did I tell you?’ he murmured. ‘Here it comes.’
Mr Salley restored order and the next witness was thrust forward. He was a sm
all square person with a large head, respectable clothes and innocent baby-blue eyes. It transpired that his name was Henry Cecil Pastern and that he had an expert knowledge of central heating plant.
He made his statement with machine-gun rapidity.
‘On the evening of the third day of this month, at the invitation of Detective-Inspector Tanner, I made a detailed investigation of the boiler situated in the basement of the premises known as Twenty-three, Horsecollar Yard. It is a type of stove well known to me and when I examined it I found no defect of any kind whatsoever. Nor did I find evidences of any repairs having been made to it at any time. The stove is a comparatively new stove, not more than eighteen months installed. I do not see how any water gas or carbon monoxide gas could have escaped from it into the basement at any time.’
Careful and scrupulously fair questioning by the Coroner made it clear to the jury and the court that Mr Pastern knew perfectly well what he was saying and that even if his words had a slightly official flavour they did in fact represent his true and honest opinion.
It was during the interval after this evidence that Gina caught sight of Ritchie leaning forward in his seat, a bewildered expression upon his face. The sight of him almost made her laugh. He was so hopelessly out of place. So were they all, John, Curley and certainly poor Mr Scruby. She found herself wishing desperately that it would end. It was a nightmare which had gone on too long.
The midday adjournment came unexpectedly. Miss Curley came bustling over, consternation on her plain plump face and her tricorne thrust unbecomingly to the back of her head.
‘I’ve got to talk with Mr John and Mr Scruby. They want to talk,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Will you be all right, my dear?’
‘No one shall touch an ’air of ’er ’ead while I’m beside ’er,’ said Mrs Austin valiantly but unnecessarily.
Gina was amazed at herself. One part of her mind was half irritated, half amused by the banality of the woman. But there was another which was timidly grateful for her support.
As she came out of the court clinging to Mrs Austin’s arm she caught a glimpse of Ritchie mooching along, his hands in his pockets, his chin thrust out, and his lean, rangy figure looking unexpectedly distinguished. He did not see her but wandered over to Mr Campion, who was standing in the lobby with a funereal individual whose face was only vaguely familiar to her.
Flowers For the Judge Page 9