THE INQUEST.
The coroner's inquest, which had been appointed to take place at noon
that day, was postponed until three o'clock in the afternoon, in
compliance with the earnest request of Henry Dunbar.
When ever was the earnest request of a millionaire refused?
The coroner, who was a fussy little man, very readily acceded to Mr.
Dunbar's entreaties.
"I am a stranger in England," the Anglo-Indian said; "I was never in my
life present at an inquest. The murdered man was connected with me. He
was last seen in my company. It is vitally necessary that I should have
a legal adviser to watch the proceedings on my behalf. Who knows what
dark suspicions may arise, affecting my name and honour?"
The banker made this remark in the presence of four or five of the
jurymen, the coroner, and Mr. Cricklewood, the surgeon who had been
called in to examine the body of the man supposed to have been
murdered. Every one of those gentlemen protested loudly and indignantly
against the idea of the bare possibility that any suspicion, or the
shadow of a suspicion, could attach to such a man as Mr. Dunbar.
They knew nothing of him, of course, except that he was Henry Dunbar,
chief of the rich banking-house of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby, and
that he was a millionaire.
Was it likely that a millionaire would commit a murder?
When had a millionaire ever been known to commit a murder? Never, of
course!
The Anglo-Indian sat in his private sitting-room at the George Hotel,
writing, and examining his papers—perpetually writing, perpetually
sorting and re-sorting those packets of letters in the
despatch-box—while he waited for the coming of Mr. Balderby.
The postponement of the coroner's inquest was a very good thing for the
landlord of the Foresters' Arms. People went in and out, and loitered
about the premises, and lounged in the bar, drinking and talking all
the morning, and the theme of every conversation was the murder that
had been done in the grove on the way to St. Cross.
Mr. Balderby and Arthur Lovell arrived at the George a few minutes
before two o'clock. They were shown at once into the apartment in which
Henry Dunbar sat waiting for them.
Arthur Lovell had been thinking of Laura and Laura's father throughout
the journey from London. He had wondered, as he got nearer and nearer
to Winchester, what would be his first impression respecting Mr.
Dunbar.
That first impression was not a good one—no, it was not a good one. Mr.
Dunbar was a handsome man—a very handsome man—tall and
aristocratic-looking, with a certain haughty pace in his manner that
harmonized well with his good looks. But, in spite of all this, the
impression which he made upon the mind of Arthur Lovell was not an
agreeable one.
The young lawyer had heard the story of the forgery vaguely hinted at
by those who were familiar with the history of the Dunbar family; and
he had heard that the early life of Henry Dunbar had been that of a
selfish spendthrift.
Perhaps this may have had some influence upon his feelings in this his
first meeting with the father of the woman he loved.
Henry Dunbar told the story of the murder. The two men were
inexpressibly shocked by this story.
"But where is Sampson Wilmot?" exclaimed Mr. Balderby. "It was he whom
I sent to meet you, knowing that he was the only person in the office
who remembered you, or whom you remembered."
"Sampson was taken ill upon the way, according to his brother's story,"
Mr. Dunbar answered. "Joseph left the poor old man somewhere upon the
road."
"He did not say where?"
"No; and, strange to say, I forgot to ask him the question. The poor
fellow amused me by old memories of the past on the road between
Southampton and this place, and we therefore talked very little of the
present."
"Sampson must be very ill," exclaimed Mr. Balderby, "or he would
certainly have returned to St. Gundolph Lane to tell me what had taken
place."
Mr. Dunbar smiled.
"If he was too ill to go on to Southampton, he would, of course, be too
ill to return to London," he said, with supreme indifference.
Mr. Balderby, who was a good-hearted man, was distressed at the idea of
Sampson Wilmot's desolation; an old man, stricken with sudden illness,
and abandoned to strangers.
Arthur Lovell was silent: he sat a little way apart from the two
others, watching Henry Dunbar.
At three o'clock the inquest commenced. The witnesses summoned were the
two Irishmen, Patrick Hennessy and Philip Murtock, who had found the
body in the stream near St. Cross; Mr. Cricklewood, the surgeon; the
verger, who had seen and spoken to the two men, and who had afterwards
shown the cathedral to Mr. Dunbar; the landlord of the George, and the
waiter who had received the travellers and had taken Mr. Dunbar's
orders for the dinner; and Henry Dunbar himself.
There were a great many people in the room, for by this time the
tidings of the murder had spread far and wide. There were influential
people present, amongst others, Sir Arden Westhorpe, one of the county
magistrates resident at Winchester. Arthur Lovell, Mr. Balderby, and
the Anglo-Indian sat in a little group apart from the rest.
The jurymen were ranged upon either side of a long mahogany table. The
coroner sat at the top.
But before the examination of the witnesses was commenced, the jurymen
were conducted into that dismal chamber where the dead man lay upon one
of the long tap-room tables. Arthur Lovell went with them; and Mr.
Cricklewood, the surgeon, proceeded to examine the corpse, so as to
enable him to give evidence respecting the cause of death.
The face of the dead man was distorted and blackened by the agony of
strangulation. The coroner and the jurymen looked at that dead face
with wondering, awe-stricken glances. Sometimes a cruel stab, that goes
straight home to the heart, will leave the face of the murdered as
calm, as the face of a sleeping child.
But in this case it was not so. The horrible stamp of assassination was
branded upon that rigid brow. Horror, surprise, and the dread agony of
sudden death were all blended in the expression of the face.
The jurymen talked a little to one another in scarcely audible
whispers, asked a few questions of the surgeon, and then walked softly
from the darkened room.
The facts of the case were very simple, and speedily elicited. But
whatever the truth of that awful story might be, there was nothing that
threw any light upon the mystery.
Arthur Lovell, watching the case in the interests of Mr. Dunbar, asked
several questions of the witnesses. Henry Dunbar was himself the first
person examined. He gave a very simple and intelligible account of all
that had taken place from the moment of his landing at Southampton.
"I found the deceased waiting to receive me when I landed," he said.
"He told me that he came as a substitute for another person. I did not
know him at first—that is to say, I did not recognize him as the valet
who had been in my service prior to my leaving England five-and-thirty
years ago. But he made himself known to me afterwards, and he told me
that he had met his brother in London on the sixteenth of this month,
and had travelled with him part of the way to Southampton. He also told
me that, on the way to Southampton, his brother, Sampson Wilmot, a much
older man than the deceased, was taken ill, and that the two men then
parted company."
Mr. Dunbar had said all this with perfect self-possession, and with
great deliberation. He was so very self-possessed, so very deliberate,
that it seemed almost as if he had been reciting something which he had
learned by heart.
Arthur Lovell, watching him very intently, saw this, and wondered at
it. It is very usual for a witness, even the most indifferent witness,
giving evidence about some trifling matter, to be confused, to falter,
and hesitate, and contradict himself, embarrassed by the strangeness of
his position. But Henry Dunbar was in nowise discomposed by the awful
nature of the event which had happened. He was pale; but his firmly-set
lips, his erect carriage, the determined glance of his eyes, bore
witness to the strength of his nerves and the power of his intellect.
"The man must be made of iron," Arthur Lovell thought to himself. "He
is either a very great man, or a very wicked one. I almost fear to ask
myself which."
"Where did the deceased Joseph Wilmot say he left his brother Sampson,
Mr. Dunbar?" asked the coroner.
"I do not remember."
The coroner scratched his chin, thoughtfully.
"That is rather awkward," he said; "the evidence of this man Sampson
might throw some light upon this most mysterious event."
Mr. Dunbar then told the rest of his story.
He spoke of the luncheon at Southampton, the journey from Southampton
to Winchester, the afternoon stroll down to the meadows near St. Cross.
"Can you tell us the exact spot at which you parted with the deceased?"
asked the coroner.
"No," Mr. Dunbar answered; "you must bear in mind that I am a stranger
in England. I have not been in this neighbourhood since I was a boy. My
old schoolfellow, Michael Marston, married and settled at the Ferns
during my absence in India. I found at Southampton that I should have a
few hours on my hands before I could travel express for London, and I
came to this place on purpose to see my old friend. I was very much
disappointed to find that he was dead. But I thought that I would call
upon his widow, from whom I should no doubt hear the history of my poor
friend's last moments. I went with Joseph Wilmot through the cathedral
yard, and down towards St. Cross. The verger saw us, and spoke to us as
we went by."
The verger, who was standing amongst the other witnesses, waiting to be
examined, here exclaimed,—
"Ay, that I did, sir; I remember it well."
"At what time did you leave the George?"
"At a little after four o'clock."
"Where did you go then?"
"I went," answered Mr. Dunbar, boldly, "into the grove with the
deceased, arm-in-arm. We walked together about a quarter of a mile
under the trees, and I had intended to go on to the Ferns, to call upon
Michael Marston's widow; but my habits of late years have been
sedentary; the heat of the day and the walk together were too much for
me. I sent Joseph Wilmot on to the Ferns with a message for Mrs.
Marston, asking at what hour she could conveniently receive me to-day;
and I returned to the cathedral. Joseph Wilmot was to deliver his
message at the Ferns, and rejoin me in the cathedral."
"He was to return to the cathedral?"
"Yes."
"But why should he not have returned to the George Hotel? Why should
you wait for him at the cathedral?"
Arthur Lovell listened, with a strange expression upon his face. If
Henry Dunbar was pale, Henry Dunbar's legal adviser was still more so.
The jurymen stared aghast at the coroner, as if they had been
awe-stricken by his impertinence towards the chief partner of the great
banking-house of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby. How dared he—a man with
an income of five hundred a year at the most—how dared he discredit or
question any assertion made by Henry Dunbar?
The Anglo-Indian smiled, a little contemptuously. He stood in a
careless attitude, playing with the golden trinkets at his watch-chain,
with the hot August sunshine streaming upon his face from a bare
unshaded window opposite him. But he did not attempt to escape that
almost blinding glare. He stood facing the sunlight; facing the gaze of
the coroner and the jurymen; the scrutinizing glance of Arthur Lovell.
Unabashed and _nonchalant_ as if he had been standing in a ball-room,
the hero of the hour, the admired of all who looked upon him, Mr.
Dunbar stood before the coroner and jury, and told the broken history
of his old servant's death.
"Yes," Mr. Lovell thought again, as he watched the rich man's face,
"his nerves must be made of iron."