The Coroner: "I understand that Lady Mary Wimsey was engaged to be married to the deceased?"
Duke of D.: "Yes."
The Coroner: "He was well known to you?"
Duke of D.: "He was the son of an old friend of my father's; his parents are dead. I believe he lived chiefly abroad. I ran across him during the war, and in 1919 he came to stay at Denver. He became engaged to my sister at the beginning of this year."
The Coroner: "With your consent, and with that of the family?"
Duke of D.: "Oh, yes, certainly."
The Coroner: "What kind of man was Captain Cathcart?"
Duke of D.: "Well—he was a Sahib and all that. I don't know what he did before he joined in 1914. I think he lived on his income; his father was well off. Crack shot, good at games, and so on. I never heard anything against him—till that evening."
The Coroner: "What was that?"
Duke of D.: "Well—the fact is—it was deuced queer. He—If anybody but Tommy Freeborn had said it I should never have believed it." (Sensation.)