In view of the new facts brought out by Captain Ryecroft and his boatman—above all that cry heard by them—suspicions of foul play are rife as ever, though no longer pointed at him.
As everything in the shape of verbal testimony worth taking has been taken, the Coroner calls upon his jury to go with him to the place where the body was taken out of the water. Leaving it in charge of two policemen, they sally forth from the house two and two, he preceding, the crowd pressing close.
First they visit the little dock, in which they see two boats—the Gwendoline and Mary—lying just as they were on that night when Captain Ryecroft stepped across the one to take his seat in the other. He is with the Coroner—so is Wingate—and both questioned give minute account of that embarkation, again in brief résumé going over the circumstances that preceded and followed it.
The next move is to the summer-house, to which the distance from the dock is noted, one of the jurymen stepping it—the object to discover how time will correspond to the incidents as detailed. Not that there is any doubt about the truth of Captain Ryecroft’s statements, nor those of the boatman; for both are fully believed. The measuring is only to assist in making calculation how long time may have intervened between the lovers’ quarrel and the death-like cry, without thought of their having any connection—much less that the one was either cause or consequence of the other.
Again there is consultation at the summer-house, with questions asked, some of which are answered by George Shenstone, who shows the spot where he picked up the ring. And outside, standing on the cliff’s brink, Ryecroft and the waterman point to the place, near as they can fix it, where their boat was when the sad sound reached their ears, again recounting what they did after.
Remaining a while longer on the cliff, the Coroner and jury, with craned necks, look over its edge. Directly below is the little embayment in which the body was found. It is angular, somewhat horse-shoe shaped; the water within stagnant, which accounts for the corpse not having been swept away. There is not much current in the backwash at any part; enough to have carried it off had the drowning been done elsewhere. But beyond doubt it has been there. Such is the conclusion arrived at by the Coroner’s jury, firmly established in their minds, at sight of something hitherto unnoticed by them. For though not in a body, individually each had already inspected the place, negligently. But now in official form, with wits on the alert, one looking over detects certain abrasions on the face of the cliff—scratches on the red sandstone—distinguishable by the fresher tint of the rock—unquestionably made by something that had fallen from above, and what but the body of Gwendoline Wynn? They see, moreover, some branches of a juniper bush near the cliff’s base, broken, but still clinging. Through that the falling form must have descended!
There is no further doubting the fact. There went she over; the only questions undetermined being, whether with her own will, by misadventure, or man’s violence. In other words, was it suicide, accident, or murder?
To the last many circumstances point, and especially the fact of the body remaining where it went into the water. A woman being drowned accidentally, or drowning herself, in the death struggle would have worked away some distance from the spot she had fallen, or thrown herself in. Still the same would occur if thrown in by another; only that this other might by some means have extinguished life beforehand.
This last thought, or surmise, carries Coroner and jury back to the house, and to a more particular examination of the body. In which they are assisted by medical men—surgeons and physicians—several of both being present, unofficially; among them the one who administers to the ailings of Miss Linton. There is none of them who has attended Gwendoline Wynn, who never knew ailment of any kind.
Their post-mortem examining does not extend to dissection. There is no need. Without it there are tests which tell the cause of death—that of drowning.