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 Dinny eagerly, “will be everything. I can say that Diana suggested going to her doctor and Michael, but that I overruled her, knowing that you were marvellous at tracing things out because of your job, and could get at Uncle Hilary, who was so good at human nature. If we START them right, I don’t believe the mere fact that you knew both of them would matter. It seems to me awfully important that I should be called as early as possible.”

“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 Dinny, “you went there as his friend, and specially interested in mental derangement. After all, you’re supposed to be scientific, Uncle.”

Both smiled, and Hilary said: “All right, Dinny, we’ll speak to the Sergeant, he’s a very decent chap, and get you called early, if possible.” He went to the door.

“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.”

Dinny hauled her bottle out of her bed, and forced it on him. “Shall I speak to Diana, then, about what we’ve been saying?”

“If you will, Dinny.”

“After tomorrow the sun will shine.”

“Will it?” said Adrian.

As the door closed, Dinny sighed. Would it? Diana seemed as if dead to feeling. And—there was Hubert’s business!

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 unnatural in supposing them incapable of judging when it was necessary for them to take action? Their incompetence, therefore, could not well be considered the reason for the preservation of these rites. The cause was, surely, in one’s dread of being deprived of knowledge. Every reader of a newspaper felt that the more he or she heard about what was doubtful, sensational, and unsavoury, the better for his or her soul. One knew that, without coroners’ inquests, there would often be no published enquiry at all into sensational death; and never two enquiries. If, then, in place of no enquiry one could always have one enquiry, and in place of one enquiry sometimes have two enquiries, how much pleasanter! The dislike which one had for being nosy disappeared the moment one got into a crowd. The nosier one could be in a crowd the happier one felt. And the oftener one could find room in a Coroner’s Court, the greater the thankfulness to Heaven. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” could never go up more fervently than from the hearts of such as had been privileged to find seats at an enquiry about death. For an enquiry about death nearly always meant the torture of the living, and than that was anything more calculated to give pleasure?

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, Dinny, both Hilary and I are taken before you. If we keep out of Court till we’re wanted they can’t say we copied each other.”

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 Dinny. Her eyes were fixed on a calendar on the wall opposite; she could not read it, but it seemed necessary.

“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!”

Dinny took a little gulp. It burned her throat, but not too badly.

“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, Dinny. Has that stuff steadied you?”

Dinny nodded.

“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, Dinny felt a sort of inspiration. Uncle Adrian was the man she admired most of any she had ever seen. And she sent up a little illogical prayer for him. Certainly that stuff had steadied her; the sinking, fluttering feeling she had been having was all gone. She took out her pocket mirror and powder-puff. She could go to the stake, anyway, with a nose that did not shine.

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 funny importance. Down there, not far to her left, were the other little niggers; and, behind them, stretching to the blank wall, dozens and dozens and dozens of faces in rows, as of sardines set up on their tails in a huge sardine box. Then aware that she was being addressed, she concentrated on the coroner’s face.