“And what is your decision, gentlemen?” the coroner asked.
“We find,” was the reply, “that deceased met his death by wilful murder, committed by some person unknown.”
The coroner bowed. “I am in entire agreement with you, gentlemen,” said he. “No other verdict was possible, and I am sure you will join me in the hope that the wretch who committed this dastardly crime may be identified and in due course brought to justice.”
This brought the proceedings to an end. As the Court rose the spectators filed out of the building and the coroner approached Miss D’Arblay to express once more his deep sympathy with her in her tragic bereavement. I stood apart with Miss Boler, whose rugged face was wet with tears, but set in a grim and wrathful scowl.
“Things have taken a terrible turn,” I ventured to observe.
She shook her head and uttered a sort of low growl. “It won’t bear thinking of,” she said gruffly. “There is no possible retribution that would meet the case. One has thought that some of the old punishments were cruel and barbarous, but if I could lay my hands on the villain that did this⸺” She broke off, leaving the conclusion to my imagination, and in an extraordinarily different voice said: “Come, Miss Marion, let us get out of this awful place.”
As we walked away slowly and in silence, I looked at Miss D’Arblay, not without anxiety. She was very pale, and the dazed expression that her face had borne on the fatal day of the discovery had, to some extent, reappeared. But now the signs of bewilderment and grief were mingled with something new. The rigid face, the compressed lips, and lowered brows spoke of a deep and abiding wrath.
Suddenly she turned to me and said, abruptly, almost harshly:
“I was wrong in what I said to you before the inquiry. You remember that I said that the circumstances of the loss could make no difference; but they make a whole world of difference. I had supposed that my dear father had died as he had thought he would die; that it was the course of Nature, which we cannot rebel against. Now I know, from what the doctor said, that he might have lived on happily for the full span of human life but for the malice of this unknown wretch. His life was not lost; it was stolen—from him and from me.”
“Yes,” I said somewhat lamely. “It is a horrible affair.”