In the Mayor's Parlour

by J. S. Fletcher

"What do you think yourself?" said Brent suddenly. "Come now?"

"I think the Mayor was got rid of—and very cleverly," replied Tansley. "So cleverly that I'm doubtful if to-morrow's inquest will reveal anything. However, it's got to be held."

"Well, you'll watch it for me?" said Brent. "I'm going to spare no expense and no pains to get at the truth."

He sat at Tansley's side when the inquest was opened next morning in the principal court of the old Moot Hall. It struck him as rather a curious fact that, although he had followed the profession of journalist for several years, he had never until then been present at the holding of this—one of the most ancient forms of inquiry known to English law. But he was familiar with the history of the thing—he knew that ever since the days of Edward IV the Coroner had held his sitting, super visum corporis, with the aid of at least twelve jurymen, probi et legales homines, there was scarcely in all the range of English legal economy an office more ancient. He inspected the Coroner and his jury with curious interest—Seagrave, Coroner of the Honour of Hathelsborough, was a keen-faced old lawyer, whose astute looks were relieved by a kindly expression; his twelve good men and true were tradesmen of the town, whose exterior promised a variety of character and temperament, from the sharply alert to the dully unimaginative.

There were other people there in whom Brent was speedily interested, and at whom he gazed with speculative attention in the opening stages of the proceedings. The court was crowded: by the time Seagrave, as Coroner, took his seat, there was not a square foot of even standing space. Brent recognized a good many folk. There was Peppermore, with his sharp-eyed boy assistant; there, ranged alongside of them, were many other reporters, from the various county newspapers, and at least one man whom Brent recognized as being from the Press Association in London. And there was a big array of police, with Hawthwaite at its head, and there were doctors, and officials of the Moot Hall, and, amongst the general public, many men whom Brent remembered seeing the previous day in Bull's Snug. Krevin Crood was among these; in a privileged seat, not far away, sat his brother, the Alderman, with Queenie half-hidden at his side, and his satellites, Mallett and Coppinger, in close attendance. And near them, in another privileged place, sat a very pretty woman, of a distinct and superior type, attired in semi-mourning, and accompanied by her elderly female companion. Brent was looking at these two when Tansley nudged his elbow.

"You see that handsome woman over there—next to the older one?" he whispered. "That's the Mrs. Saumarez you've heard of—that your unfortunate cousin was very friendly with. Rich young widow, she is, and deuced pretty and attractive—Wallingford used to dine with her a good deal. I wonder if she's any ideas about this mystery? However, I guess we shall hear many things before the day's out; of course I haven't the slightest notion what evidence is going to be given. But I've a pretty good idea that Seagrave means to say some pretty straight things to the jury!"

Here Tansley proved to be right. The Coroner, in opening the proceedings, made some forcible remarks on their unusual gravity and importance. Here was a case in which the chief magistrate of one of the most ancient boroughs in England had been found dead in his official room under circumstances which clearly seemed to point to murder. Already there were rumours in the town and neighbourhood of the darkest and most disgraceful sort—that the Mayor of Hathelsborough had been done to death, in a peculiarly brutal fashion, by a man or men who disagreed with the municipal reforms which he was intent on carrying out. It would be a lasting, an indelible blot on the old town's fair fame, never tarnished before in this way, if this inquiry came to naught, if no definite verdict was given, he earnestly hoped that by the time it concluded they would be in possession of facts which would, so to speak, clear the town, and any political party in the town. He begged them to give the closest attention to all that would be put before them, and to keep open minds until they heard all the available evidence.

"A fairly easy matter in this particular case!" muttered Tansley, as the jurymen went out to discharge their distasteful, preliminary task of viewing the body of the murdered man. "I don't suppose there's a single man there who has the ghost of a theory, and I'm doubtful if he'll know much more to-night than he knows now—unless something startling is sprung upon us."

Brent was the first witness called into the box when the court settled down to its business. He formally identified the body of the deceased as that of his cousin, John Wallingford: at the time of his death, Mayor of Hathelsborough, and forty-one years of age. He detailed the particulars of his own coming to the town on the evening of the murder, and told how he and Bunning, going upstairs to the Mayor's Parlour, had found Wallingford lying across his desk, dead. All this every man and woman in the court knew already—but the Coroner desired to know more.

"I believe, Mr. Brent," he said, when the witness had given these particulars, "that you are the deceased's nearest blood-relative?"