Heads You Lose (15 page)

Dr. Mear had a flat grey face and his eyes swam like colourless fishes behind his rimless pince-nez. He liked to fancy himself Young at Heart, and consequently treated anyone under thirty years of age with a condescending chumminess extremely hard to bear. Inspector Cockrill mumbled introductions.

Dr. Mear moved immediately into the more youthful division of the little group, smiling benignly upon Fran and Venetia, and holding James familiarly by the arm. James looked down at him with a mildly bewildered air, as though expecting him at any moment to slide back into a rock pool. A press photographer ran backwards and forwards in a sort of ritual dance, bending forward to click his camera, give a satisfied smile, and dart off again. Cockie said reluctantly: “This is not going to be very pleasant, you know. You must all answer the truth and leave it at that.”

“Of course they will,” said Dr. Mear brightly; and added with an air of great humour and originality: “Nothing but the truth!”

This remark appeared to lead nowhere and it met with no response. Mr. Ablett looked at Dr. Mear with loathing. Mr. Plover assured Fran that he knew that sinking feeling well; he had experienced it many a time before throwing the discus, up at Cambridge. At Pigeonsford, Aziz broke away from the restraining hand of the kitchen-maid, and started off down the hill to the village.

The schoolroom had been divided to accommodate, in uncomfortably close proximity, the nine true men of the jury, the police, witnesses and press, and as many of the public as could fight and jostle themselves into two narrow benches at the back of the hall. They all stood up, and there was a good deal of craning and nudging as Dr. Mear strutted in and arranged himself with some quite unnecessary fussing upon the dais usually occupied by a downtrodden schoolmistress, called (to the great delight of the youth of the village) Miss Chambers. He rapped on the desk for order, and clearing his throat which was already perfectly clear, opened the proceedings.

Dr. Newsome had not yet arrived, from which fact it became manifest to the assembled company that Mrs. Porter’s sixth was about to do so. Dr. Mear, however, who could not be expected to care about any addition to the Porter family, was pardonably annoyed. A whispered argument ensued, followed by a loud cry from the Coroner’s officer, which nobody could understand. A small black torpedo launched itself into the hall and on to Francesca’s lap.

Fran and Venetia could not conceal their joy.
“Aziz!
Isn’t he
clever
? Fancy finding his way right down here! …my heavenly one! …”

Dr. Newsome arrived, breathless and apologetic, but with a satisfied grin on his face; he marched up to the stand, gabbled the oath, and looked expectantly at the Coroner. Aziz emitted a joyful bark, for he knew Dr. Newsome well.

Dr. Mear looked over his glasses. “Is there a dog in here?”

“I’m afraid he’s followed us down,” said Fran, beaming proudly.

It made Dr. Mear feel quite a boy again, to see her standing there, clasping the dachshund in her arms, smiling at him over the sleek black head. He said irresolutely: “I don’t think we can have a dog in here.”

“Oh, he’ll be perfectly good,” promised Fran comfortably. “He won’t do anything, now that he’s with us. It’s only because we left him behind.”

A subdued murmur from the back benches caught the Coroner’s ear, and the loudest and most frequent word was “disrespect.” He said, more firmly: “I’m afraid it must be taken outside.”

“He won’t go,” said Fran.

“He must go. Constable, take the dog out and tie him up near the door.”

Aziz departed, looking back anxiously over the policeman’s shoulder. Dr. Newsome embarked upon the history of his first examination and second, more detailed, one.

Dr. Newsome was blessed with an inoffensive self-confidence, and he found general practice in and around a small country town distinctly slow. In the absence of his father, the Police Surgeon, he had spent some happy hours in the mortuary, knife in one hand, text-book in the other, a junior colleague dancing excited attendance; and he was not at all averse to this opportunity of displaying his skill and observation. He had formed the opinion, he said, running his fingers over his bright gold hair, that the victim had been attacked elsewhere than at the spot where the body had been found. There were small abrasions on the shins and knees and he had found gravel embedded in them; this would seem to suggest that the actual assault had taken place on the gravel drive, and not in the ditch—because, you see, there was no gravel in the ditch. He looked up at the Coroner with an air of “what a good boy am I!” Cockie wished he would get on with it; he was not very fond of naive young men.

Dr. Newsome got on with it. The body had been decapitated several minutes after death had occurred; a rather blunt instrument had been used which might well have been the hatchet which he now saw and examined (for the fifth time). He had at first thought that death had been caused by this instrument; but later he found injuries to the tongue and fracture of the laryngeal structures and hyoid bone which, though they might have been caused by the action of the chopper, often had a different significance; he had found the lungs to be engorged with blood… he went off into a dissertation upon the post-mortem appearance which was completely lost upon the jury and, in fact, appreciated by nobody but himself; finally it emerged that the actual cause of death was…

“Yes?” said Dr. Mear, leaning forward eagerly, his white false teeth sunk into his underlip…

“Strangulation,” said Dr. Newsome, and beamed round gaily upon the court.

Bunsen walked uncertainly up to the witness-box and there took the oath with respectful solemnity. He had left his sister’s house in Tenfold village at 11:20 on the night of Grace Morland’s murder. He knew it was 11:20 because as he bicycled out of the village the 11:25 train had left the station and begun its puffing ascent of the gradient that slopes gently up to the downs between Tenfold and Pigeonsford. It had taken him half an hour or a little more to do the four miles home; down in the valleys the snow was melting, but it had still lain, thin and treacherous, over the downs, and he was not as young as he used to be. As he turned in at the gate and pedalled up the drive…

There was a loud, thin wail from outside the hall, and everyone looked up, startled. “He’s begun,” said Fran to Venetia.

Bunsen smiled briefly and went on with his evidence. Ten minutes later Dr. Mear asked helplessly whether that noise could not be stopped.

“He’ll be quite all right if you let him in here with us,” said Fran readily.

This was impossible. She went outside and explained to Aziz that silence was really imperative, and he subsided, lying full length on the ground at the extreme end of his tether, his cold black nose on his forepaws, deeply depressed. Fran went back to her place.

Lady Hart gave a spirited description of her awakening by Bunsen. “He said: ‘I was trying to get Mr. Pendock. There’s a woman lying in the garden, down by the drive, near the gate.’ I said: ‘Who is it?’ and he said that he couldn’t see because her hair was all over her face. But he said: ‘She’s wearing Miss Fran’s hat!’” She was unable to refrain from throwing a little dramatic effect into her recital. Her granddaughters greeted her upon her return to her seat with the declaration that she honestly ought to have been on the stage. They became slightly hysterical. Lady Hart sighed. Aziz lifted up his voice and wept.

Fran got to her feet again with a despairing gesture. “I’m awfully sorry, but if you’ll just let me bring him in here, he can sit on my lap and he won’t make a sound.”

The murmur from the back benches grew into cries of “Shame!” Dr. Mear said testily: “I can’t allow anything so disrespectful.”

“I don’t see anything disrespectful in it,” said Fran heatedly. “What harm can it do Miss Morland to have him here?”

Dr. Mear’s eyes swam like agitated fishes behind his pince-nez. “My dear young lady—that’s not the way to speak. You must think of the feeling of friends and relatives, having such an insult offered to their dear ones.”

“But they
weren’t
dear ones,” said Fran earnestly. Venetia tugged at her skirt. “Oh, well, all right; I’ll take him home then, but I call it absolutely ridiculous. I didn’t want to come in the first place, but I was made to; now it turns out I’m not wanted at all and I’m told to go somewhere else, just for a lot of false sentimentality…” She marched out of the schoolroom, muttering like a schoolgirl. The back benches settled down again, deeply disappointed at so abrupt a termination to a legitimate grievance.

The inquest droned on. The owner of the hatchet deposed to its having been left beneath a tree just the other side of the stream, from where the body was found, and was very much aggrieved at being dismissed after only a minute in the witness-box, for he had bought a new suit entirely for the occasion. Dr. Mear drummed with his stubby fingers upon Miss Chambers’ desk. Trotty was assisted up to the stand.

Trotty appeared to be quite unimpressed by Dr. Mear and his paraphernalia of law. She steadied herself against the edge of the witness-box, and holding the book in her pudgy white hand, took the oath in a voice of matter-of-fact calm. Mr. Ablett, evidently feeling that he must do something to earn his fee, jumped to his feet and suggested that the witness be allowed to take a seat; Cockrill, Dr. Newsome, Pendock, half a dozen policeman, and most of the members of the jury, who had been just about to make the same request, subsided with hurt feelings. The Coroner’s officer tenderly assisted Trotty to a chair.

Trotty had been the last person, apart of course from the murderer, to see Grace Morland alive; that had been at about eleven o’clock, an hour before she had been discovered, dead. “Would you say that at that time she seemed troubled about anything?” asked Dr. Mear, rolling it like a telephone operator.

“Well, she wasn’t herself, and that’s a fact,” said Trotty in her downright way. “She went off in the afternoon with her paints and rubbishes, as gay as you please, to do her picture of the church tower—though what she could want with another one, the dear knows, for if we’ve got one in the house we’ve got a dozen, but it’s my belief and always was that it was nothing more nor less than an excuse to go up to the house…” She ruminated in silence for a moment, and a little smile of kindliness and pity, and perhaps a shade of contempt, played about her lips, “But there—she’s gone.” She seemed to recollect herself, and added more firmly: “I didn’t see her when she came back. A couple of hours later Miss Pippi arrived, and Miss Grace came out of her bedroom; I thought she’d been crying, but she was quite normal for the rest of the evening. At eleven o’clock, or a few minutes after—and don’t ask me more nearly, sir, for I don’t know within five minutes, and so I’ve told the police till I’m sick of the sound of it—I went to her room; she was sitting on the window-sill, with the curtains drawn back, looking out at the moonlight; and she turned round to me and she said, ‘I’ve got her in the hollow of my hand, Trotty,’ she said, but more as if she was talking to herself, and she curled up her hand, as though she held something in it, and she shook it a little, gently, and stared at it…”

A hundred minds conjured up a hundred different settings: rooms with delicate pastel distemper, rooms with nice pink-flowered wall-paper, rooms with a dark-stained picture rail and innumerable water-colour sketches of the Old Church Tower; rooms with chintz-covered furniture, with mahogany, with oak; rooms with a deep soft carpet, with linoleum, with bare boards; but in each room the same little scene was enacted, the same little dumpy cripple stood with her hand on the light switch, the same tall, angular woman moved slowly forward, curling white fingers over something precious and hateful, held in the hollow of her hand; curling white fingers and staring down at them. Trotty got up abruptly and stumbled back to her place.

The press fought like demons for the privilege of being first to telephone to their editors that Miss Morland had met her death by strangulation, at the hands of a person, or persons, unknown.

The nine jurors chosen to attend the inquest upon the body of Miss Pippi le May, had, incited thereto by their wives and families, insisted upon their right to view the body of the victim; and their pea-green faces presented a remarkable spectacle as, after the luncheon interval, they sat wedged tightly together in the makeshift jury-box. Dr. Newsome, stroking his golden head, hopped merrily up to the witness-stand again. He had formed the opinion that decapitation had taken place at least some minutes after death had occurred; he could not say what weapon had been employed to sever the head. All other marks on the neck had been obliterated, but he had found fracture of the laryngeal structures and injuries to the tongue, which suggested throttling; also the lungs and right heart were engorged with blood… At this point one of the jurors rose hastily to his feet, and there was a noisy interlude before he returned from the adjoining room, looking greener than ever and mopping his forehead with his handkerchief. Dr. Newsome went on gaily with the post-mortem findings. A second juror heaved into his handkerchief. “Perhaps we had better turn our attention to establishing the time of death,” suggested Dr. Mear, who foresaw that further medical details were likely to prolong the session indefinitely.

Dr. Newsome had gone very, very carefully into the time of death. The victim had last been seen alive at just before eleven o’clock; he had examined her body at nine o’clock the next morning. He had found, he said, that rigor mortis was present as far down as the waist; the lower limbs were stiff, but this he thought might have been due to the extreme cold. Rigor mortis commenced, as a rule, in the neck and face, but of course in this case… The first juror showed signs of collapse, and Dr. Newsome passed hurriedly over the condition of the neck and face. In ordinary circumstances he thought the spread of rigor through the torso would have established death at about seven or eight hours previous to his examination; on the other hand the muscular state of the body made a difference and the health and strength of deceased would probably have retarded invasion to some extent. Also the low temperature in which the body had remained for at least some hours after death, must have assisted in retarding the stiffening; and all in all, he would say that death had occurred not more than eleven hours and not less than eight hours before his examination. As Pippi was known to have been alive eleven hours previously, and as the snow had stopped falling ten hours previously, this handsome exposition was less helpful than it might have been; and he further confessed that exceptions were so common and variations so incalculable that he could not be at all certain even of that. He nodded to the Coroner and stepped down off the stand. The jurors perked up considerably as they watched him depart.