"Well, I shouldn't like to say they was on the best of terms."
"Were they on bad terms?"
"Yuss." The voice, hitherto so careful, lapsed into slum cockney. "Yuss. She was a bad wife to Bill, was Lucy. Never did nothing for him."
At that his lordship made as though to put a question, and the examiner changed his line. "Now I want to ask you: have you ever heard the dead man complain about his wife?"
"Not till Bob Fielding came to live at the Grove."
"But after Robert Fielding came, he did complain about her?"
"Yuss, often."
"Can you tell us the sort of thing he used to say?"
"Yuss. He said that he could never get nothing done because she was always muckin' about with Bob."
With any other examiner except Brunton, the coarse phrase would have elicited laughter from the spectators. But Brunton was taking no chances. Quickly he carried on his witness's story.