“What do you mean by that, sir?”
“Ah, I’d like to think things over a bit.”
“Shall you give evidence or anything to-morrow, Mr. Tempest?”
“Oh, Lord, no! You needn’t be afraid of me getting a rise out of any of your people. I’m not going to do that. To be perfectly frank, Parkyns, I don’t approve altogether of coroner’s inquests. They serve a useful purpose in deciding whether a death is a natural one or not. But I think they ought to stop there. They must hamper your people fearfully, if it is a case that has to come to you. I myself don’t believe in making things public till you can go straight and arrest your man. The coroner’s inquests only too often warn him to keep away.”
“I quite agree with you, sir. But still it’s the law, and we have to put up with it.”
“Yes, I know. But as it is the law, get ’em over, and a verdict given as quickly as possible, to leave your crowd with free hands. That’s what I think.”
The inquest took place in due course the following day. The proceedings were brief and formal. The body had been identified in the meantime as that of Miss Evangeline Stableford, a well-known provincial actress; and after evidence of identity and of the finding of the body, the medical evidence which followed left no room for any doubt as to the cause of death. The verdict of the jury was unanimous and immediate: “Suicide by poisoning with prussic acid during temporary insanity,” in spite of the remarks in the summing up of the coroner, that they had no evidence before them of the state of mind of the deceased. But then a coroner’s jury so often takes the bit in their teeth. The girl was too beautiful to be buried with a stake driven through her body, which many people still believe is even yet the legal consequence of a bare verdict of suicide.
The public and the jury drifted out of the room; and the coroner, as he left, noticing the barrister, said:
“Were you briefed here to-day, Mr. Tempest?”
“No—just curiosity; like the ’busman who takes his holiday by riding on another man’s ’bus.”