THE INQUEST
The coroner, who fully realized that for that one day of his life as a
provincial solicitor he was living in the gaze of the world, had
resolved to be worthy of the fleeting eminence. He was a large man of
jovial temper, with a strong interest in the dramatic aspects of his
work, and the news of Manderson's mysterious death within his
jurisdiction had made him the happiest coroner in England. A respectable
capacity for marshaling facts was fortified in him by a copiousness of
impressive language that made juries as clay in his hands and sometimes
disguised a doubtful interpretation of the rules of evidence.
The court was held in a long unfurnished room lately built onto the
hotel, and intended to serve as a ball-room or concert-hall. A regiment
of reporters was entrenched in the front seats, and those who were to be
called on to give evidence occupied chairs to one side of the table
behind which the coroner sat, while the jury, in double row, with
plastered hair and a spurious ease of manner, flanked him on the other
side. An undistinguished public filled the rest of the space, and
listened, in an awed silence, to the opening solemnities. The newspaper
men, well used to these, muttered among themselves. Those of them who
knew Trent by sight, assured the rest that he was not in the court.
The identity of the dead man was proved by his wife, the first witness
called, from whom the coroner, after some inquiry into the health and
circumstances of the deceased, proceeded to draw an account of the last
occasion on which she had seen her husband alive. Mrs. Manderson was
taken through her evidence by the coroner with the sympathy which every
man felt for that dark figure of grief. She lifted her thick veil before
beginning to speak, and the extreme paleness and unbroken composure of
the lady produced a singular impression. This was not an impression of
hardness. Interesting femininity was the first thing to be felt in her
presence. She was not even enigmatic. It was only clear that the force
of a powerful character was at work to master the emotions of her
situation. Once or twice as she spoke she touched her eyes with her
handkerchief, but her voice was low and clear to the end.
Her husband, she said, had come up to his bedroom about his usual hour
for retiring on the Sunday night. His room was really a dressing-room
attached to her own bedroom, communicating with it by a door which was
usually kept open during the night. Both dressing-room and bedroom were
entered by other doors giving on the passage. Her husband had always had
a preference for the greatest simplicity in his bedroom arrangements,
and liked to sleep in a small room. She had not been awake when he came
up, but had been half-aroused, as usually happened, when the light was
switched on in her husband's room. She had spoken to him. She had no
clear recollection of what she had said, as she had been very drowsy at
the time; but she had remembered that he had been out for a moonlight
run in the car, and she believed she had asked whether he had had a good
run, and what time it was. She had asked what the time was because she
felt as if she had only been a very short time asleep, and she had
expected her husband to be out very late. In answer to her question he
had told her it was half-past eleven, and had gone on to say that he had
changed his mind about going for a run.
"Did he say why?" the coroner asked.
"Yes," replied the lady, "he did explain why. I remember very well what
he said, because--" she stopped with a little appearance of confusion.
"Because--" the coroner insisted gently.
"Because my husband was not as a rule communicative about his business
affairs," answered the witness, raising her chin with a faint touch of
defiance. "He did not--did not think they would interest me, and as a
rule referred to them as little as possible. That is why I was rather
surprised when he told me that he had sent Mr. Marlowe to Southampton to
bring back some important information from a man who was leaving for
Paris by the next day's boat. He said that Mr. Marlowe could do it quite
easily if he had no accident. He said that he had started in the car,
and then walked back home a mile or so, and felt all the better for it."
"Did he say any more?"
"Nothing, as well as I remember," the witness said. "I was very sleepy,
and I dropped off again in a few moments. I just remember my husband
turning his light out, and that is all. I never saw him again alive."
"And you heard nothing in the night?"
"No; I never woke until my maid brought my tea in the morning at seven
o'clock. She closed the door leading to my husband's room, as she always
did, and I supposed him to be still there. He always needed a great deal
of sleep. He sometimes slept until quite late in the morning. I had
breakfast in my sitting-room. It was about ten when I heard that my
husband's body had been found." The witness dropped her head and
silently waited for her dismissal.
But it was not to be yet.
"Mrs. Manderson." The coroner's voice was sympathetic, but it had a hint
of firmness in it now. "The question I am going to put to you must, in
these sad circumstances, be a painful one; but it is my duty to ask it.
Is it the fact that your relations with your late husband had not been,
for some time past, relations of mutual affection and confidence? Is it
the fact that there was an estrangement between you?"
The lady drew herself up again and faced her questioner, the color
rising in her cheeks. "If that question is necessary," she said with
cold distinctness, "I will answer it so that there shall be no
misunderstanding. During the last few months of my husband's life his
attitude towards me had given me great anxiety and sorrow. He had
changed towards me; he had become very reserved and seemed mistrustful.
I saw much less of him than before; he seemed to prefer to be alone. I
can give no explanation at all of the change. I tried to work against
it; I did all I could with justice to my own dignity, as I thought.
Something was between us, I did not know what, and he never told me. My
own obstinate pride prevented me from asking what it was in so many
words; I only made a point of being to him exactly as I had always been,
so far as he would allow me. I suppose I shall never know now what it
was." The witness, whose voice had trembled in spite of her
self-control, over the last few sentences, drew down her veil when she
had said this, and stood erect and quiet.
One of the jury asked a question, not without obvious hesitation. "Then
was there never anything of the nature of what they call Words between
you and your husband, ma'am?"
"Never." The word was colorlessly spoken; but everyone felt that a crass
misunderstanding of the possibilities of conduct in the case of a person
like Mrs. Manderson had been visited with some severity.
Did she know, the coroner asked, of any other matter which might have
been preying upon her husband's mind recently?
Mrs. Manderson knew of none whatever. The coroner intimated that her
ordeal was at an end, and the veiled lady made her way to the door. The
general attention, which followed her for a few moments, was now eagerly
directed upon Martin, whom the coroner had proceeded to call.
It was at this moment that Trent appeared at the doorway, and edged his
way into the great room. But he did not look at Martin. He was observing
the well-balanced figure that came quickly toward him along an opening
path in the crowd, and his eye was gloomy. He started, as he stood aside
from the door with a slight bow, to hear Mrs. Manderson address him by
name in a low voice. He followed her a pace or two into the hall.
"I wanted to ask you," she said in a voice now weak and oddly broken,
"if you would give me your arm a part of the way to the house. I could
not see my uncle near the door, and I suddenly felt rather faint.... I
shall be better in the air.... No, no! I cannot stay here--please, Mr.
Trent!" she said, as he began to make an obvious suggestion. "I must go
to the house." Her hand tightened momentarily on his arm as if, for all
her weakness, she could drag him from the place; then again she leaned
heavily upon it, and with that support, and with bent head, she walked
slowly from the hotel and along the oak-shaded path toward White Gables.
Trent went in silence, his thoughts whirling, dancing insanely to a
chorus of "Fool! fool!" All that he alone knew, all that he guessed and
suspected of this affair rushed through his brain in a rout; but the
touch of her unnerved hand upon his arm never for an instant left his
consciousness, filling him with an exaltation that enraged and
bewildered him. He was still cursing himself furiously behind the mask
of conventional solicitude that he turned to the lady when he had
attended her to the house, and seen her sink upon a couch in the morning
room. Raising her veil, she thanked him gravely and frankly, with a look
of sincere gratitude in her eyes. She was much better now, she said, and
a cup of tea would work a miracle upon her. She hoped she had not taken
him away from anything important. She was ashamed of herself; she
thought she could go through with it, but she had not expected those
last questions. "I am glad you did not hear me," she said when he
explained. "But of course you will read it all in the reports. It shook
me so to have to speak of that," she added simply, "and to keep from
making an exhibition of myself took it out of me. And all those staring
men by the door! Thank you again for helping me when I asked you.... I
thought I might," she ended queerly, with a little tired smile; and
Trent took himself away, his hand still quivering from the cool touch of
her fingers.