The Pretty Lady

by Arnold Bennett

Chapter 35

QUEEN DEAD

G.J. emerged from the crowded and malodorous Coroner's Court with a deep sense of the rigour and the thoroughness of British justice, and especially of its stolidity.

There had been four inquests, all upon the bodies of air-raid victims: a road-man, his wife, an orphan baby—all belonging to the thick central mass of the proletariat, for a West End slum had received a bomb full in the face—and Lady Queenie Paulle. The policemen were stolid; the reporters were stolid; the proletariat was stolid; the majority of the witnesses were stolid, and in particular the representatives of various philanthropic agencies who gave the most minute evidence about the habits and circumstances of the slum; and the jurymen were very stolid, and never more so than when, with stubby fingers holding ancient pens, they had to sign quantities of blue forms under the strict guidance of a bareheaded policeman.

The world of Queenie's acquaintances made a strange, vivid contrast to this grey, grim, blockish world; and the two worlds regarded each other with the wonder and the suspicious resentment of foreigners. Queen's world came expecting to [259] behave as at a cause célèbre of, for example, divorce. Its representatives were quite ready to tolerate unpleasing contacts and long stretches of tedium in return for some glimpse of the squalid and the privilege of being able to say that they had been present at the inquest. But most of them had arrived rather late, and they had reckoned without the Coroner, and comparatively few obtained even admittance.

The Coroner had arrived on the stroke of the hour, in a silk hat and frock coat, with a black bag, and had sat down at his desk and begun to rule the proceedings with an absolutism that no High Court Judge would have attempted. He was autocrat in a small, close, sordid room; but he was autocrat. He had already shown his quality in some indirect collisions with the Marquis of Lechford. The Marquis felt that he could not stomach the exposure of his daughter's corpse in a common mortuary with other corpses of he knew not whom. Long experience of the marquisate had taught him to believe that everything could be arranged. He found, however, that this matter could not be arranged. There was no appeal from the ukase of the Coroner. Then he wished to be excused from giving evidence, since his evidence could have no direct bearing on the death. But he was informed by a mere clerk, who had knowledge of the Coroner's ways, that if he did not attend the inquest would probably be adjourned for his attendance. The fact was, the Coroner had appreciated as well as anybody that heaven and the war had sent him a cause célèbre of the first-class. He saw himself the supreme being of a [260] unique assize. He saw his remarks reproduced verbatim in the papers, for, though localities might not be mentioned, there was no censor's ban upon the obiter dicta of coroners. His idiosyncrasy was that he hid all his enjoyment in his own breast. Even had he had the use of a bench, instead of a mere chair, he would never have allowed titled ladies in mirific black hats to share it with him. He was an icy radical, sincere, competent, conscientious and vain. He would be no respecter of persons, but he was a disrespecter of persons above a certain social rank. He said, "Open that window." And that window was opened, regardless of the identity of the person who might be sitting under it. He said: "This court is unhealthily full. Admit no more." And no more could be admitted, though the entire peerage waited without.

The Marquis had considered that the inquest on his daughter might be taken first. The other three cases were taken first, and, even taken concurrently, they occupied an immense period of time. All the bodies were, of course, "viewed" together, and the absence of the jury seemed to the Marquis interminable; he thought the despicable tradesmen were gloating unduly over the damaged face of his daughter. The Coroner had been marvellously courteous to the procession of humble witnesses. He could not have been more courteous to the exalted; and he was not. In the sight of the Coroner all men were equal.

G.J. encountered him first. "I did my best to persuade her ladyship to come down," said G.J. very formally. "I am quite sure you did," [261] said the Coroner with the dryest politeness. "And you failed." The policeman had related events from the moment when G.J. had fetched him in from the street. The policeman could remember everything, what everybody had said, the positions of all objects, the characteristics and extent of the wire-netting, the exact posture of the deceased girl, the exact minute of his visit. He and the Coroner played to each other like well-rehearsed actors. Mrs. Carlos Smith's ordeal was very brief, and the Coroner dismissed her with an expression of sympathy that seemed to issue from his mouth like carved granite. With the doctor alone the Coroner had become human; the Coroner also was a doctor. The doctor had talked about a relatively slight extravasation of blood, and said that death had been instantaneous. Said the Coroner: "The body was found on the wire-netting; it had fallen from the chimney. In your opinion, was the fall a contributory cause of death?" The doctor said, No. "In your opinion death was due to an extremely small piece of shrapnel which struck the deceased's head slightly above the left ear, entering the brain?" The doctor said, Yes.

The Marquis of Lechford had to answer questions as to his parental relations with his daughter. How long had he been away in the country? How long had the deceased been living in Lechford House practically alone? How old was his daughter? Had he given any order to the effect that nobody was to be on the roof of his house during an air-raid? Had he given any orders at all as to conduct during an air-raid? The Coroner [262] sympathised deeply with his lordship's position, and felt sure that his lordship understood that; but his lordship would also understand that the policy of heads of households in regard to air-raids had more than a domestic interest—it had, one might say, a national interest; and the force of prominent example was one of the forces upon which the Government counted, and had the right to count, for help in the regulation of public conduct in these great crises of the most gigantic war that the world had ever seen. "Now, as to the wire-netting," had said the Coroner, leaving the subject of the force of example. He had a perfect plan of the wire-netting in his mind. He understood that the chimney-stack rose higher than the wire-netting, and that the wire-netting went round the chimney-stack at a distance of a foot or more, leaving room so that a person might climb up the perpendicular ladder. If a person fell from the top of the chimney-stack it was a chance whether that person fell on the wire-netting, or through the space between the wire-netting and the chimney on to the roof itself. The jury doubtless understood. (The jury, however, at that instant had been engaged in examining the bit of shrapnel which had been extracted from the brain of the only daughter of a Marquis.) The Coroner understood that the wire-netting did not extend over the [263] whole of the house. "It extends over all the main part of the house," his lordship had replied. "But not over the back part of the house?" His lordship agreed. "The servants' quarters, probably?" His lordship nodded. The Coroner had said: "The wire-netting does not extend over the servants' quarters," in a very even voice. A faint hiss in court had been extinguished by the sharp glare of the Coroner's eyes. His lordship, a thin, antique figure, in a long cloak that none but himself would have ventured to wear, had stepped down, helpless.