A Shock for the Mourners
It was on the day of the funeral that the faint, unheeded mutterings
of the approaching storm began to swell into audible and threatening
rumblings, though, even then, the ominous signs failed to deliver
their full significance.
How well do I recall the scene in the darkened dining room where we
sat in our sable raiment, “ready to wenden on our pilgrimage” to the
place of everlasting rest and eternal farewell. There were but four of
us, for Amos Monkhouse had not yet arrived, though it was within a few
minutes of the appointed time to start; quite a small party; for the
deceased had but few relatives, and no outsiders had been bidden.
We were all rather silent. Intimate as we were, there was no need to
make conversation. Each, no doubt, was busy with his or her own
thoughts, and as I recall my own they seem to have been rather trivial
and not very suitable to the occasion. Now and again I stole a look at
Barbara and thought what a fine, handsome woman she was, and dimly
wondered why, in all the years that I had known her, I had never
fallen in love with her. Yet so it was. I had always admired her; we
had been intimate friends, with a certain amount of quiet affection,
but nothing more—at any rate on my part. Of her I was not so sure.
There had been a time, some years before, when I had had an uneasy
feeling that she looked to me for something more than friendship. But
she was always a reticent girl; very self-reliant and self-contained.
I never knew a woman better able to keep her own counsel or control
her emotions.
She was now quite herself again; quiet, dignified, rather reserved and
even a little inscrutable. Seated between Wallingford and Madeline,
she seemed unconscious of either and quite undisturbed by the
secretary’s incessant nervous fidgeting and by his ill-concealed
efforts to bring himself to her notice.
From Barbara my glance turned to the woman who sat by her side, noting
with dull interest the contrast between the two; a contrast as marked
in their bearing as in their appearance. For whereas Barbara was a
rather big woman, dark in colouring, quiet and resolute in manner,
Madeline Norris was somewhat small and slight, almost delicately fair,
rather shy and retiring, but yet with a suggestion of mental alertness
under the diffident manner. If Barbara gave an impression of quiet
strength, Madeline’s pretty, refined face was rather expressive of
subtle intelligence. But what chiefly impressed me at this moment was
the curious inversion of their attitudes towards the existing
circumstances; for whereas Barbara, the person mainly affected,
maintained a quiet, untroubled demeanour, Madeline appeared to be
overcome by the sudden catastrophe. Looking at her set, white face and
the dismay in her wide, grey eyes, and comparing her with the woman at
her side, a stranger would at once have assumed the bereavement to be
hers.
My observations were interrupted by Wallingford once more dragging out
his watch.
“What on earth can have happened to Mr. Amos?” he exclaimed. “We are
due to start in three minutes. If he isn’t here by then we shall have
to start without him. It is perfectly scandalous! Positively indecent!
But there, it’s just like a parson.”
“My experience of parsons,” said I, “is that they are, as a rule,
scrupulously punctual. But certainly, Mr. Amos is unpardonably late.
It will be very awkward if he doesn’t arrive in time. Ah, there he
is,” I added as the bell rang and a muffled knock at the street door
was heard.
At the sound, Wallingford sprang up as if the bell had actuated a
hidden spring in the chair, and darted over to the window, from which
he peered out through the chink beside the blind.
“It isn’t Amos,” he reported. “It’s a stranger, and a fool at that, I
should say, if he can’t see that all the blinds are down.”
We all listened intently. We heard the housemaid’s hurried footsteps,
though she ran on tip-toe; the door opened softly, and then, after an
interval, we heard some one ushered along the hall to the drawing
room. A few moments later, Mabel entered with an obviously scandalized
air.
“A gentleman wishes to speak to you, Ma’am,” she announced.
“But, Mabel,” said Barbara, “did you tell him what is happening in
this house?”
“Yes, Ma’am, I explained exactly how things were and told him that he
must call to-morrow. But he said that his business was urgent and that
he must see you at once.”
“Very well,” said Barbara. “I will go and see what he wants. But it is
very extraordinary.”
She rose, and nearly colliding with Wallingford, who had rushed to
open the door—which was, in fact, wide open—walked out quickly,
closing the door after her. After a short interval—during which
Wallingford paced the room excitedly, peered out of the window, sat
down, got up again and looked at his watch—she came back, and,
standing in the doorway, looked at me.
“Would you come here for a minute, Rupert,” she said, quietly.
I rose at once and walked back with her to the drawing room, on
entering which I became aware of a large man, standing monumentally on
the hearth-rug and inspecting the interior of his hat. He looked to me
like a plainclothes policeman, and my surmise was verified by a
printed card which he presented and which bore the inscription
“Sergeant J. Burton.”
“I am acting as coroner’s officer,” he explained in reply to my
interrogatory glance, “and I have come to notify you that the funeral
will have to be postponed as the coroner has decided to hold an
inquest. I have seen the undertakers and explained matters to them.”
“Do you know what reason there is for an inquest?” I asked. “The cause
of death was certified in the regular way.”
“I know nothing beyond my instructions, which were to notify Mrs.
Monkhouse that the funeral is put off and to serve the summonses for
the witnesses. I may as well do that now.”
With this he laid on the table six small blue papers, which I saw were
addressed respectively to Barbara, Madeline, Wallingford, the
housemaid, the cook and myself.
“Have you no idea at all why an inquest is to be held?” I asked as I
gathered up the papers.
“I have no information,” he replied, cautiously, “but I expect there
is some doubt about the exact cause of death. The certificate may not
be quite clear or it may be that some interested party has
communicated with the coroner. That is what usually happens, you know,
Sir. But at any rate,” he added, cheerfully, “you will know all about
it the day after to-morrow, which, you will observe, is the day fixed
for the inquest.”
“And what have we to do meanwhile?” Barbara asked. “The inquest will
not be held in this house, I presume.”
“Certainly not, Madam,” the sergeant replied. “A hearse will be sent
round to-night to remove the body to the mortuary, where the post
mortem examination will be carried out, and the inquest will be held
in the parish hall, as is stated on the summons. I am sorry that you
should be put to this inconvenience,” he concluded, moving tentatively
towards the door, “but—er—it couldn’t be helped, I suppose. Good
morning, Madam.”
I walked with him to the door and let him out, while Barbara waited
for me in the hall, not unobserved by Wallingford, whose eye appeared
in a chink beside the slightly open dining room door. I pointedly led
her back into the drawing room and closed the door audibly behind us.
She turned a pale and rather shocked face to me but she spoke quite
composedly as she asked:
“What do you make of it, Rupert? Is it Amos?”
I had already reluctantly decided that it must be. I say, reluctantly,
because, if this were really his doing, the resigned tone of his last
words to me would appear no less than sheer, gross hypocrisy.
“I don’t know who else it could be,” I answered. “The fact that he did
not come this morning suggests that he at least knew what was
happening. If he did, I think he might have warned us.”
“Yes, indeed. It will be a horrid scandal; most unpleasant for us all,
and especially for me. Not that I am entitled to any sympathy. Poor
Harold! How he would have hated the thought of a public fuss over his
dead body. I suppose we must go in now and tell the others. Do you
mind telling them, Rupert?”
We crossed the hall to the dining room where we found the two waiting
impatiently, Madeline very pale and agitated while Wallingford was
pacing the room like a wild beast. Both looked at us with eager
interrogation as we entered, and I made the announcement bluntly and
in a dozen words.
The effect on both was electrical. Madeline, with a little cry of
horror, sank, white-faced and trembling, into a chair. As for
Wallingford, his behaviour was positively maniacal. After staring at
me for a few moments with starting eyes and mouth agape, he flung up
his arms and uttered a hoarse shout.
“This,” he yelled, “is the doing of that accursed parson! Now we know
why he kept out of the way—and it is well for him that he did!”
He clenched his fists and glared around him, showing his
tobacco-stained teeth in a furious snarl while the sweat gathered in
beads on his livid face. Then, suddenly, his mood changed and he
dropped heavily on a chair, burying his face in his shaking hands.
Barbara admonished him, quietly.
“Do try to be calm, Tony. There is nothing to get so excited about. It
is all very unpleasant and humiliating, of course, but at any rate you
are not affected. It is I who will be called to account.”
“And do you suppose that doesn’t affect me?” demanded Wallingford, now
almost on the verge of tears.
“I am sure it does, Tony,” she replied, gently, “but if you want to be
helpful to me you will try to be calm and reasonable. Come, now,” she
added, persuasively, “let us put it away for the present. I must tell
the servants. Then we had better have lunch and go our several ways to
think the matter over quietly each of us alone. We shall only agitate
one another if we remain together.”
I agreed emphatically with this sensible suggestion. “Not,” I added,
“that there is much for us to think over. The explanations will have
to come from Dimsdale. It was he who failed to grasp the seriousness
of poor Harold’s condition.”
While Barbara was absent, breaking the news to the servants, I tried
to bring Madeline to a more composed frame of mind. With Wallingford I
had no patience. Men should leave hysterics to the other sex. But I
was sorry for Madeline; and even if she seemed more overwhelmed by the
sudden complications than the occasion justified, I told myself that
the blow had fallen when she was already shaken by Harold’s unexpected
death.
The luncheon was a silent and comfortless function; indeed it was
little more than an empty form. But it had the merit of brevity. When
the last dish had been sent away almost intact, Wallingford drew out
his cigarette case and we all rose.
“What are you going to do, Madeline?” Barbara asked.
“I must go to the school, I suppose, and let the secretary know
that—that I may have to be absent for a day or two. It will be horrid.
I shall have to tell him all about it—after having got leave for the
funeral. But it will sound so strange, so extraordinary. Oh! It is
horrible!”
“It is!” exclaimed Wallingford, fumbling with tremulous fingers at his
cigarette case. “It is diabolical! A fiendish plot to disgrace and
humiliate us. As to that infernal parson, I should like—”
“Never mind that, Tony,” said Barbara; “and we had better not stay
here, working up one another’s emotions. What are you doing, Rupert?”
“I shall go to my chambers and clear off some correspondence.”
“Then you might walk part of the way with Madeline and see if you
can’t make her mind a little more easy.”
Madeline looked at me eagerly. “Will you, Rupert?” she asked.
Of course I assented, and a few minutes later we set forth together.
For a while she walked by my side in silence with an air of deep
reflection, and I refrained from interrupting her thoughts, having no
very clear idea as to what I should say to her. Moreover, my own mind
was pretty busily occupied. Presently she spoke, in a tentative way,
as if opening a discussion.
“I am afraid you must think me very weak and silly to be so much upset
by this new trouble.”
“Indeed, I don’t,” I replied. “It is a most disturbing and humiliating
affair and it will be intensely unpleasant for us all, but especially
for Barbara—to say nothing of Dimsdale.”
“Dr. Dimsdale is not our concern,” said she, “but it will be perfectly
horrible for Barbara. For she really has been rather casual, poor
girl, and they are sure to make things unpleasant for her. It will be
a most horrid scandal. Don’t you think so?”
To be candid, I did. Indeed, I had just been picturing to myself the
possibilities with an officious coroner—and he would not need to be so
very officious, either—and one or two cross-grained jurymen. Barbara
might be subjected to a very unpleasant examination. But I did not
think it necessary to say this to Madeline. Sufficient for the day is
the evil thereof. I contented myself with a vague agreement.
There was another interval of silence. Then, a little to my surprise,
she drew closer to me, and, slipping her hand under my arm, said very
earnestly: “Rupert, I want you to tell me what you really think. What
is it all about?”
I looked down, rather disconcerted, into the face that was turned up
to me so appealingly; and suddenly—and rather irrelevantly—it was
borne in on me that it was a singularly sweet and charming face. I had
never quite realized it before. But then she had never before looked
at me quite in this way; with this trustful, coaxing, appealing
expression.
“I don’t quite understand you, Madeline,” I said, evasively. “I know
no more about it than you do.”
“Oh, but you do, Rupert. You are a lawyer and you have had a lot of
experience. You must have formed some opinion as to why they have
decided to hold an inquest. Do tell me what you think.”
The coaxing, almost wheedling tone, and the entreaty in her eyes,
looking so earnestly into mine, nearly conquered my reserve. But not
quite. Once more I temporized.
“Well, Madeline, we all realize that what Dimsdale has written on the
certificate is little more than a guess, and quite possibly wrong; and
even Detling couldn’t get much farther.”
“Yes, I realize that. But I didn’t think that inquests were held just
to find out whether the doctors’ opinions were correct or not.”
Of course she was perfectly right; and I now perceived that her
thoughts had been travelling along the same lines as my own. An
inquest would not be held merely to clear up an obscure diagnosis.
There was certainly something more behind this affair than Dimsdale’s
failure to recognize the exact nature of the illness. There was only
one simple explanation of the coroner’s action, and I gave it—with a
strong suspicion that it was not the right one.
“They are not, as a rule, excepting in hospitals. But this is a
special case. Amos Monkhouse was obviously dissatisfied with Dimsdale,
and with Barbara, too. He may have challenged the death certificate
and asked for an inquest. The coroner would be hardly likely to
refuse, especially if there were a hint of negligence or malpractice.”
“Did Mr. Amos say anything to you that makes you think he may have
challenged the certificate?”
“He said very little to me at all,” I replied, rather casuistically
and suppressing the fact that Amos had explicitly accepted the actual
circumstances and deprecated any kind of recrimination.
“I can hardly believe that he would have done it,” said Madeline,
“just to punish Barbara and Dr. Dimsdale. It would be so vindictive,
especially for a clergyman.”
“Clergymen are very human sometimes,” I rejoined; and, as, rather to
my relief, we now came in sight of Madeline’s destination, I adverted
to the interview which she seemed to dread so much. “There is no
occasion for you to go into details with the secretary,” I said. “In
fact you can’t. The exact cause of death was not clear to the doctors
and it has been considered advisable to hold an inquest. That is all
you know, and it is enough. You are summoned as a witness and you are
legally bound to attend, so you are asking no favour. Cut the
interview dead short, and when you have done with it, try, like a
sensible girl, to forget the inquest for the present. I shall come
over to-morrow and then we can reconstitute the history of the case,
so that we may go into the witness-box, or its equivalent, with a
clear idea of what we have to tell. And now, good-bye, or rather au
revoir!”
“Good-bye, Rupert.” She took my proffered hand and held it as she
thanked me for walking with her. “Do you know, Rupert,” she added,
“there is something strangely comforting and reassuring about you. We
all feel it. You seem to carry an atmosphere of quiet strength and
security. I don’t wonder that Barbara is so fond of you. Not,” she
concluded, “that she holds a monopoly.”
With this she let go my hand, and, with a slightly shy smile and the
faintest suspicion of a blush, turned away and walked quickly and with
an air quite cheerful and composed towards the gateway of the
institution. Apparently, my society had had a beneficial effect on her
nervous condition.
I watched her until she disappeared into the entry, and then resumed
my journey eastward, rather relieved, I fear, at having disposed of my
companion. For I wanted to think—of her among other matters; and it
was she who first occupied my cogitations. The change from her usual
matter-of-fact friendliness had rather taken me by surprise; and I had
to admit that it was not a disagreeable surprise. But what was the
explanation? Was this intimate, clinging manner merely a passing phase
due to an emotional upset, or was it that the special circumstances
had allowed feelings hitherto concealed to come to the surface? It was
an interesting question, but one that time alone could answer; and as
there were other questions, equally interesting and more urgent, I
consigned this one to the future and turned to consider the others.
What could be the meaning of this inquest? The supposition that Amos
had suddenly turned vindictive and resolved to expose the neglect, to
which he probably attributed his brother’s death, I could not
entertain, especially after what he had said to me. It would have
written him down the rankest of hypocrites. And yet he was in some way
connected with the affair as was proved by his failure to appear at
the funeral. As to the idea that the inquiry was merely to elucidate
the nature of the illness, that was quite untenable. A private autopsy
would have been the proper procedure for that purpose.
I was still turning the question over in my mind when, as I passed the
Griffin at Temple Bar, I became aware of a tall figure some distance
ahead walking in the same direction. The build of the man and his
long, swinging stride seemed familiar. I looked at him more
attentively; and just as he turned to enter Devereux Court I
recognized him definitely as a fellow Templar named Thorndyke.
The chance encounter seemed a singularly fortunate one, and at once I
quickened my pace to overtake him. For Dr. Thorndyke was a medical
barrister and admittedly the greatest living authority on medical
jurisprudence. The whole subject of inquests and Coroners’ Law was an
open book to him. But he was not only a lawyer. He had, I understood,
a professional and very thorough knowledge of pathology and of the
science of medicine in general, so that he was the very man to
enlighten me in my present difficulties.
I overtook him at the Little Gate of the Middle Temple and we walked
through together into New Court. I wasted no time, but, after the
preliminary greetings, asked him if he had a few minutes to spare. He
replied, in his quiet, genial way: “But, of course, Mayfield. I always
have a few minutes to spare for a friend and a colleague.”
I thanked him for the gracious reply, and, as we slowly descended the
steps and sauntered across Fountain Court, I opened the matter without
preamble and gave him a condensed summary of the case; to which he
listened with close attention and evidently with keen interest.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that your family doctor will cut rather a
poor figure. He seems to have mismanaged the case rather badly, to
judge by the fact that the death of the patient took him quite by
surprise. By the way, can you give me any idea of the symptoms—as
observed by yourself, I mean?”
“I have told you what was on the certificate.”
“Yes. But the certified cause of death appears to be contested. You
saw the patient pretty often, I understand. Now what sort of
appearance did he present to you?”
The question rather surprised me. Dimsdale’s opinion might not be
worth much, but the casual and inexpert observations of a layman would
have seemed to me to be worth nothing at all. However, I tried to
recall such details as I could remember of poor Monkhouse’s appearance
and his own comments on his condition and recounted them to Thorndyke
with such amplifications as his questions elicited. “But,” I
concluded, “the real question is, who has set the coroner in motion
and with what object?”
“That question,” said Thorndyke, “will be answered the day after
to-morrow, and there is not much utility in trying to guess at the
answer in advance. The real question is whether any arrangements ought
to be made in the interests of your friends. We are quite in the dark
as to what may occur in the course of the inquest.”
“Yes, I had thought of that. Some one ought to be present to represent
Mrs. Monkhouse. I suppose it would not be possible for you to attend
to watch the case on her behalf?”
“I don’t think it would be advisable,” he replied. “You will be
present and could claim to represent Mrs. Monkhouse so far as might be
necessary to prevent improper questions being put to her. But I do
think that you should have a complete record of all that takes place.
I would suggest that I send Holman, who does most of my shorthand
reporting, with instructions to make a verbatim report of the entire
proceedings. It may turn out to be quite unnecessary; but if any
complications should arise, we shall have the complete depositions
with the added advantage that you will have been present and will have
heard all the evidence. How will that suit you?”
“If you think it is the best plan there is nothing more to say,
excepting to thank you for your help.”
“And give me a written note of the time and place to hand to Holman
when I give him his instructions.”
I complied with this request at once; and having by this time reached
the end of the Terrace, I shook hands with him and walked slowly back
to my chambers in Fig Tree Court. I had not got much out of Thorndyke
excepting a very useful suggestion and some valuable help; indeed, as
I turned over his extremely cautious utterances and speculated on what
he meant by “complications,” I found myself rather more uncomfortably
puzzled than I had been before I met him.