“Will you relate the circumstances under which you discovered the body?”
I gave a circumstantial account of the manner in which I made the tragic discovery, to which not only the jury but also the spectators listened with eager interest. When I had finished my narrative, the coroner asked: “Did you observe anything which led you, as a medical man, to form any opinion as to the cause of death?”
“No,” I replied. “I saw no injuries or marks of violence or anything which was not consistent with death by drowning.”
This concluded my evidence, and when I had resumed my seat, the name of Marion D’Arblay was called by the coroner, who directed that a chair should be placed for the witness. When she had taken her seat, he conveyed to her, briefly, but feelingly, his own and the jury’s sympathy.
“It has been a terrible experience for you,” he said, “and we are most sorry to have to trouble you in your great affliction, but you will understand that it is unavoidable.”
“I quite understand that,” she replied, “and I wish to thank you and the jury for your kind sympathy.”
She was then sworn, and having given her name and address, proceeded to answer the questions addressed to her, which elicited a narrative of the events substantially identical with that which she had given to the inspector and which I have already recorded.
“You have told us,” said the coroner, “that when Dr. Gray spoke to you, you were searching among the bushes. Will you tell us what was in your mind—what you were searching for, and what induced you to make that search?”
“I was very uneasy about my father,” she replied. “He had not been home that night, and he had not told me that he intended to stay at the studio—as he sometimes did when he was working very late. So, in the morning I went to the studio in Abbey-road to see if he was there; but the caretaker told me that he had started for home about ten o’clock. Then I began to fear that something had happened to him, and as he always came home by the path through the wood, I went there to see if—if anything had happened to him.”
“Had you in your mind any definite idea as to what might have happened to him?”