Chapter Ten.
“Ay, marry is’t; Crowner’s Quest Law.”
A jury of men, chosen with the careful selection always made by the coroner’s officer, and with such extraordinary happy results, sat solemnly and listened to the evidence, after hearing the coroner’s preliminary address, and viewing the body of the deceased.
Witness by witness, all were examined. John Whyley told all he knew, and produced the life-preserver; Richmond Chartley, brought from her father’s bedside, where he lay perfectly insensible, gave her account of the proceedings, and directly after joined Janet Heath, who was her companion, and sat down to try once more to disentangle her thoughts, which, from the time she had left the surgery with the bottle of chloral till she was alarmed by the persistent ringing of the doctor’s night-bell, had been in a state of wild confusion.
Hendon Chartley gave his evidence. How he had been spending the evening with a gentleman of his acquaintance, and on letting himself in with his latch-key he had heard voices in the surgery, and gone there.
Mr James Poynter, the gentleman with whom Hendon Chartley had been dining corroborated the last witness, and seemed disgusted that he had not a better part to play, especially after his announcement to the coroner that he was a great friend of the family.
For some reason of their own, the sapient jurymen exchanged glances several times during the evidence of the last two witnesses, and shook their heads, while one man began to make notes on the sheet of paper before him with a very scratchy pen, whereupon two more immediately caught the complaint, and the foreman regretted to himself that he wasn’t as handy with ink as he could wish.
The surgeon was of course a very important witness, and he told how the man upon whose body the inquest was being held had undoubtedly died of an excessive dose of hydrocyanic acid, of which poison there was, naturally enough, a bottle in the doctor’s surgery; but how it had been administered, whether by accident, purposely, or with suicidal intent, it was impossible to say; and apparently the only man who could throw any light upon the subject was Doctor Chartley himself, who was now lying in a precarious state, perfectly insensible from the pressure of bone upon the brain, and too feeble for an operation to be performed.