The sergeant stepped back, full of offended dignity. The jury were impressed. Mr Mortimer was behaving in accordance with his reputation.
Other evidence followed rapidly. George and Abner leaned forward, listening. George with his head in his hands and his eyes staring out under the arch of his fingers. The second finger of his right hand still beat out the rhythm of the music-hall song that was running in the back of his mind.
‘Dr Hendrie!’
‘I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give to this court shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Arthur Cuthbert Hendrie. Thirty-eight. M.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P. I am a physician and surgeon practising in Lesswardine. I had seen deceased but did not know him. Yesterday evening before ten o’clock I was called to the Pound House. I arrived there between ten and eleven . . . nearer eleven, and found deceased lying on the floor of the bar with blood and serum flowing from ears and nose. Both ears. He was quite dead.’
‘Quite dead. . . . Can you say how long he had been dead?’
‘No.’
‘Very well. Go on.’
‘I immediately formed the opinion . . . they told me that he had had a violent fall . . . that death was due to a fractured base of the skull. There was a bruise over the left temporal region.’
‘You performed a post-mortem examination.’
‘Yes. This morning. I found the fracture that I had suspected in the middle fossa.’