“It occurs to me, Mr. Menticle,” he said, “that such a course may give rise to some difficulty. I understand that you are yourself to give evidence before this inquiry. Under the circumstances would it not, perhaps, be better . . .” he left the sentence unfinished.
Mr. Menticle turned slowly red and then deathly white.
“I . . . I had forgotten, sir,” he stammered. Pulling himself together he turned to his client and after a further consultation, asked leave to have Mr. Raymond Cullen called to represent Mr. Fratten in his place.
“Very well,” said the Coroner, “let it be so. We will adjourn now for the luncheon interval.”
When the Court re-opened, a clean-shaven and acute-looking young man was seen to be sitting next to Ryland Fratten—evidently Mr. Raymond Cullen. Hardly had the Coroner taken his seat when a small, quaintly-dressed woman rose from her seat at the back of the Court.
“Mr. Coroner,” she said, in a high, penetrating voice. “I want to give evidence in this case. I saw the whole thing. A brutal outrage it was, a . . .”
“Order, order,” called the Coroner’s Officer, glaring fiercely at the interrupter.
“If you wish to give evidence, madam,” said the Coroner, “you should communicate with the police, or with my Officer, in the proper manner. In the meantime, I will call the witnesses as I require them. Dr. Percy Vyle.”
Dr. Vyle, the police-surgeon who had been present at the exhumation, described his share in the proceedings at Brooklands. He explained the nature of the marks which he had discovered and his reasons for believing them to have been caused by a blow before death. In his opinion the blow had been a severe one, caused not by the flat of a hand or even a doubled fist, but rather by a blunt instrument, such as the knob of a stick. In answer to a question by Mr. Cullen he had no hesitation in saying that the blow could not have been delivered after death—the appearance of the bruise was not consistent with post-mortem injury.
Dr. Vyle was succeeded by Inspector Poole, who corroborated the surgeon’s account of the exhumation. After him came distinguished Home Office experts enlarging, at an enlarged fee, upon what had already been said about the bruising on the dead man’s back. Cullen’s questions beat upon this weight of official testimony with as much effect as rain upon a steam-engine.