“Your name is Elizabeth Cherrell. You are the daughter, I believe, of Lieutenant–General Sir Conway Cherrell, K.C.B., C.M.G., and Lady Cherrell?”

Dinny bowed. ‘I believe he likes me for that,’ she thought.

“And you live with them at Condaford Grange in Oxfordshire?”

“Yes.”

“I believe, Miss Cherrell, that you were staying with Captain and Mrs. Ferse up to the morning on which Captain Ferse left his house?”

“I was.”

“Are you a close friend of theirs?”

“Of Mrs. Ferse. I had seen Captain Ferse only once, I think, before his return.”

“Ah! his return. Were you staying with Mrs. Ferse when he returned?”

“I had come up to stay with her on that very afternoon.”

“The afternoon of his return from the Mental Home?”

“Yes. I actually went to stay at their house the following day.”

“And were you there until Captain Ferse left his house?”

“I was.”

“During that time what was his demeanour?”

At this question for the first time Dinny realised the full disadvantage of not knowing what has been said already. It almost looked as if she must say what she really knew and felt.

“He seemed to me quite normal, except that he would not go out or see anybody. He looked quite healthy, only his eyes made one feel unhappy.”

“How do you mean exactly?”

“They—they looked like a fire behind bars, they seemed to flicker.”

And, at those words, she noticed that the jury for a moment looked a trifle less disused.

“He would not go out, you say? Was that during the whole time you were there?”

“No; he went out on the day before he left his home. He was out all that day, I believe.”

“You believe? Were you not there?”

“No; that morning I took the two children down to my mother’s at Condaford Grange, and returned in the evening just before dinner. Captain Ferse was not in then.”

“What made you take the children down?”

“Mrs. Ferse asked me to. She had noticed some change in Captain Ferse, and she thought the children would be better away.”

“Could you say that you had noticed a change?”

“Yes. I thought he seemed more restless, and, perhaps, suspicious; and he was drinking more at dinner.”

“Nothing very striking?”

“No. I—”

“Yes, Miss Cherrell?”

“I was going to say something that I don’t know of my own knowledge.”

“Something that Mrs. Ferse had told you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you needn’t tell us that.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Coming back to when you returned from taking the children to your home, Captain Ferse was not in, you say; was Mrs. Ferse in?”

“Yes, she was dressed for dinner. I dressed quickly and we dined alone together. We were very anxious about him.”

“And then?”

“After dinner we went up to the drawing-room, and to distract her I made Mrs. Ferse sing, she was so nervous and anxious. After a little we heard the front door, and Captain Ferse came in and sat down.”

“Did he say anything?”

“No.”

“How was he looking?”

“Dreadful, I thought. Very strange and strained, as if under the power of some terrible thought.”

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Ferse asked him if he had had dinner, and if he would like to go to bed; and if he would see a doctor; but he wouldn’t speak—he sat with his eyes closed, almost as if he might be asleep, until at last I whispered: ‘Is he asleep, d’you think?’ Then suddenly he cried out: ‘Sleep! I’m for it again, and I won’t stand it. By God! I won’t stand it.’”

When she had repeated those words of Ferse, Dinny understood better than hitherto what is meant by the expression ‘sensation in Court’; in some mysterious way she had supplied what had been lacking to the conviction carried by the witnesses who had preceded her. Whether she had been wise in this, she was utterly unable to decide; and her eyes sought Adrian’s face. He gave her an almost imperceptible nod.

“Yes, Miss Cherrell?”

“Mrs. Ferse went towards him, and he cried out: ‘Leave me alone. Go away!’ I think she said: ‘Ronald, won’t you see someone just to give you something to make you sleep?’ but he sprang up and cried out violently: ‘Go away! I’ll see no one—no one!’”

“Yes, Miss Cherrell, what then?”

“We were frightened. We went up to my room and consulted, and I said we ought to telephone.”

“To whom?”

“To Mrs. Ferse’s doctor. She wanted to go, but I prevented her and ran down. The telephone was in the little study on the ground floor, and I was just getting the number when I felt my hand seized, and there was Captain Ferse behind me. He cut the wire with a knife. Then he stood holding my arm, and I said: ‘That’s silly, Captain Ferse; you know we wouldn’t hurt you.’ He let me go, and put his knife away, and told me to put on my shoes, because I had them in my other hand.”

“You mean you had taken them off?”

“Yes, to run down quietly. I put them on. He said: ‘I’m not going to be messed about. I shall do what I like with myself.’ I said: ‘You know we only want your good.’ And he said: ‘I know that good—no more of that for me.’ And then he looked out of the window and said: ‘It’s raining like hell,’ and turned to me and cried: ‘Get out of this room, quick. Get out!’ and I flew back upstairs again.”

Dinny paused and took a long breath. This second living through those moments was making her heart beat. She closed her eyes.

“Yes, Miss Cherrell, what then?”

She opened her eyes. There was the coroner still, and there the jury with their mouths a little open, as it seemed.

“I told Mrs. Ferse. We didn’t know what to do or what was coming—we didn’t see what we could do, and I suggested that we should drag the bed against the door and try to sleep.”

“And did you?”

“Yes; but we were awake a long time. Mrs. Ferse was so exhausted that she did sleep at last, and I think I did towards morning. Anyway the maid woke me by knocking.”

“Did you hear nothing further of Captain Ferse during the night?”

The old school-boy saying ‘If you tell a lie, tell a good ’un,’ shot through her mind, and she said firmly: “No, nothing.”

“What time was it when you were called?”

“Eight o’clock. I woke Mrs. Ferse and we went down at once. Captain Ferse’s dressing-room was in disorder, and he seemed to have lain upon the bed; but he was nowhere in the house; and his hat and overcoat were gone from the chair where he had thrown them down in the hall.”

“What did you do then?”

“We consulted, and Mrs. Ferse wanted to go to her doctor and to her cousin and mine, Mr. Michael Mont, the Member of Parliament; but I thought if I could get my uncles they would be better able to trace Captain Ferse; so I persuaded her to come with me to my Uncle Adrian and ask him to get my Uncle Hilary and see if they could find Captain Ferse. I knew they were both very clever men and very tactful,” Dinny saw the coroner bow slightly towards her uncles, and hurried on, “and they were old family friends; I thought if they couldn’t manage to find him without publicity, nobody could. So we went to my Uncle Adrian, and he agreed to get my Uncle Hilary to help him and try; then I took Mrs. Ferse down with me to the children at Condaford, and that’s all I know, Sir.”

The coroner bowed quite low towards her and said: “Thank you, Miss Cherrell. You have given your evidence admirably.” The jury moved uneasily as if trying to bow too, and Dinny, with an effort, stepped down from the pen and took her seat beside Hilary, who put his hand on hers. She sat very still, and then was conscious that a tear, as it were the last of the sal volatile, was moving slowly down her cheek. Listening dully to what followed, the evidence of the Doctor in charge of the Mental Home, and the coroner’s address, then waiting dumbly for the jury’s verdict, she suffered from the feeling that in her loyalty to the living she had been disloyal to the dead. It was a horrid sensation, that: of having borne evidence of mania against one who could not defend or explain himself; and it was with a fearful interest that she watched the jury file back into their seats, and the foreman stand up in answer to the demand for their verdict.