Part 17

George’s handsome face was working, against his will. He grasped Abner’s hand in his. It seemed a natural gesture. ‘You’re a proper pal,’ he said, and then, in a debauch of self-pity, ‘By God, you’re the only pal I’ve got that I can trust!’

Morgan came running into the room ahead of Gladys, anxious to be the bearer of exciting news. He ran straight to his father.

‘Well, son?’ said George.

‘Dad . . . dad. . . . There’s a pleeceman comin’ up the drive with a bicycle,’ he cried.

‘A strange one we don’t know,’ Gladys added.

‘Go into the back to your mother,’ said George.

The constable from Lesswardine knocked at the door and handed two summonses to George and Abner. ‘Inquest at the Pound House at two o’clock. You understand it’s important.’

‘Have a drink of beer before you go?’ said George.

‘I don’t mind,’ said the constable, becoming less official.

George went down into the cellar with a jug.

‘This is a bad job,’ said the constable. ‘A bad job, sure enough.’

Abner asked him which way he thought it would go. ‘There’s no saying,’ he replied. ‘As long as they don’t bring it in “murder.”’

He was a fair young man, newly recruited to the force from some Herefordshire village. The ride in the snow had freshened his complexion and made him look healthy and jolly.

‘There’s a nasty drift at the bottom of the hill by the bridge,’ he said. ‘A good six foot of it! Well, here’s luck!’ he said, as he drank off George’s beer.

‘Luck’s the word!’ said George, ‘and God knows I need some!’

Mary came into the room with a set face. ‘Warrants for the inquest,’ said George.

‘Oh, is that all?’ she answered, with relief.

They set off early for the Pound House, fearing that the driven snow might delay them. George was almost gay, and Abner wondered at his friend’s courage. They avoided Chapel Green, being anxious not to pass the Buffalo. In Mainstone a few women came to their doors and stared at them. The Pound House door was open. A number of jurors had already arrived. They were mostly farmers or shopkeepers from Lesswardine and had agreed that the day was a fine one in spite of the snow and that it was lucky that the tragedy had happened at a time when they were not busy on their farms. Susie was nowhere to be seen, but Mr Hind, worried and paler than usual, was doing an excellent trade in hot whisky and water. He was sorry, he told them, that there was no lemon in the house. Indeed he was feverishly anxious to put himself on good terms with the jurors.

When George and Abner entered an awkward silence fell upon the company. Several of those who knew Malpas said good-day to him. The fact that he was greeted by these men who were shortly to sit in judgment on him encouraged him. He took a seat on one of the benches in the corner of the room. Abner went to the bar and asked for a drink. Mr Hind, with hatred shining in his pale eyes, served him.

‘Hope you’re all right to-day, Mr Hind,’ said Abner friendlily.

The landlord trembled with rage. He pushed Abner’s glass at him, spilling a quarter of the whisky. ‘I hope I’ve seen the last of you,’ he said.

The jurymen now congregated in the other corner of the room as though they realised that it was not fitting that they should mix with such important figures in the affair as George and his friend. They talked together in low voices. Abner and George sat quietly listening, but only instinctive glances in their direction told them when George’s name was mentioned. At the end of the bar was another door, leading into the club-room, generally used for the meetings of friendly societies, in which the inquest would be held. Abner wondered if the body of Bastard lay inside it; for heavy steps were heard from time to time through the closed door. At last the door was opened and the sergeant of police from Lesswardine appeared in it.

He stood there very erect and official, bending stiffly to recognise the more important of the group of jurymen. Then his eyes fell on George and Abner. He beckoned to them and called them into the second room. Abner had expected that Bastard’s bony carcass would be revealed lying in state, but instead of this he saw a long deal table with an arm-chair at the head of it and six other ordinary chairs on either side. In front of the coroner’s seat were spread a pile of official papers, ink, blotting-paper, and a selection of equally impossible pens. On the wall above it hung a trophy, the horns of a North American bison with a boss of black hair between them, which, in a more savage age might well have symbolised the official’s power of life and death, but, in fact, represented those that were vested in the master of the local branch of the Ancient Order of Buffaloes. The sergeant looked at his watch. It was already past two o’clock. He went out to look down the road to see if the coroner was in sight. The young constable who had delivered the warrants earlier in the day was busy placing a copy of the New Testament in front of each of the jurymen’s seats. When the sergeant’s back was turned he winked at George and Abner. Then he closed the door and left them alone.

‘They’ve summonsed fourteen for the jury,’ said George. ‘I’ve counted ’em. There’s three good friends to me: Mr Prosser of The Dyke, Jones of Pensilva, and Watkins the tailor. The one I’m frightened of is the big chap with the red face. Williams, his name is. He fell out with mother over a hogshead of cider five years ago and haven’t spoken to me nor her since. He’d be glad enough to see me swing! Well . . . what’s coming’s bound to come. ’Tis no good thinking on it.’

He said no more, but began to beat out the rhythm of a music-hall song on the floor with the end of his stick, staring straight in front of him at the bison’s head. Abner wished that something would happen. He hated this mechanical tapping.

A loud voice was heard in the bar and with it the scraping of feet. The coroner had arrived. The sergeant threw open the doors with a flourish and Mr Mortimer entered. He was a big man, with a handsome, rather heavy face, bushy white eyebrows over pale blue eyes, and a pointed beard in which a yellow, like that of tobacco stains, was mingled with white. He walked quickly to the head of the table, his coat-tails flapping behind. Under his arm he carried a sheaf of papers that he spread out flat in front of him. Then he patted the table on either side of them with his hands and took up a pen. The sergeant stood stiffly at his elbow, and the jury shuffled into their places. Mr Williams, as by common consent, planted himself at the coroner’s right hand.

‘I declare this court open in the King’s name,’ said Mr Mortimer in a deep, impressive voice. The sergeant stood as though hypnotised by the formula. The coroner turned on him suddenly. ‘Now, sergeant,’ he boomed, ‘look alive! We don’t want to stay here all day. Get the jury sworn!’

He dived once more into his papers, yawned, rubbed his hands, glanced behind him at the symbolical buffalo, and then suddenly decided to clean his nails with a pen-knife. Meanwhile, with Testaments lifted in their right hands, the jurymen, one by one in different inflections of the border tongue, repeated the oath which the sergeant administered to them. ‘_I swear by Almighty God_.’ . . . I swear by Almighty God.’ ‘_That I will well and duly inquire_.’ . . . ‘That I will well and duly inquire.’ It was like the chorus that one may hear any morning of the week outside the windows of a country board-school. From time to time the coroner looked up impatiently from his manicure, and the sergeant increased his pace.

‘Finished?’ said Mr Mortimer at last.

‘Yes, sir. All correct,’ said the sergeant.

‘Now, gentlemen, you must choose a foreman. Only be quick about it. We’re late.’

In point of fact the jury had been waiting for him for more than an hour, but the question of choosing a foreman did not detain them for long, since Mrs Malpas’s enemy, Williams of the Pentre, had already virtually chosen himself.

‘Very good . . . very good!’ said the coroner. ‘Take them to view the body, sergeant.’

They filed out behind the policeman, opening their ranks at the door to admit the doctor from Lesswardine, who apologised for his lateness and shook hands with the coroner.

‘You’ve done the post-mortem?’ said the latter.

‘Yes, that’s what kept me.’

‘And found what you expected?’

‘Yes . . . fractured base. I had no doubt about it.’

‘Cheap two-guineas’ worth. You’d better take your money now to save time. Sign for it here.’

The doctor pocketed the sovereigns and placed the florin aside, according to the unwritten law that obtains in such cases, for the sergeant.

‘Sad affair,’ said the coroner, with a yawn. ‘Good man, Bastard. One of the old sort. Conscientious. No brains. Ideal policeman. What the devil are those fellers doing? I’ve promised to call for tea at the Delahays.’

‘I was hoping,’ said the doctor, ‘that you’d come back with me. My wife . . .’

‘No, thanks. . . Very kind of you all the same.’

‘We don’t often see you this way.’

‘No. Not since Condover’s suicide. I believe his son-in-law’s mixed up in this affair?’

‘Yes. . . . He’s over there in the corner. It’s the usual thing, I think. A brawl in an alehouse. Alcohol.’

The coroner nodded his head dolefully. His cellar was the best in Ludlow.

The jurors returned, and with a final glance at the buffalo’s head, as though he expected it to tell him the time, Mr Mortimer began business. First the sergeant identified the body of his subordinate. Standing rigidly at attention he rattled off the oath at a terrific speed, running his evidence on to the end of it without a stop. He could soon show the coroner how to do it. Mr Mortimer never raised his eyes from his papers.

‘I may say, sir . . .’ began the sergeant impressively.

‘You may say what you like, sergeant, when you’re asked for it,’ snapped the coroner. ‘That’s enough.’

The sergeant stepped back, full of offended dignity. The jury were impressed. Mr Mortimer was behaving in accordance with his reputation.

Other evidence followed rapidly. George and Abner leaned forward, listening. George with his head in his hands and his eyes staring out under the arch of his fingers. The second finger of his right hand still beat out the rhythm of the music-hall song that was running in the back of his mind.

‘Dr Hendrie!’

_‘I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give to this court shall be the truth_, _the whole truth_, _and nothing but the truth_. Arthur Cuthbert Hendrie. Thirty-eight. M.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P. I am a physician and surgeon practising in Lesswardine. I had seen deceased but did not know him. Yesterday evening before ten o’clock I was called to the Pound House. I arrived there between ten and eleven . . . nearer eleven, and found deceased lying on the floor of the bar with blood and serum flowing from ears and nose. Both ears. He was quite dead.’

‘Quite dead. . . . Can you say how long he had been dead?’

‘No.’

‘Very well. Go on.’

‘I immediately formed the opinion . . . they told me that he had had a violent fall . . . that death was due to a fractured base of the skull. There was a bruise over the left temporal region.’

‘You performed a post-mortem examination.’

‘Yes. This morning. I found the fracture that I had suspected in the middle fossa.’

‘Will your honour ask’n what that there means?’

‘The witness means the middle part of the base of the skull. FOSSA,’ the coroner explained loftily.

‘Death, no doubt, was instantaneous. The condition was consistent with the story of a violent fall on a stone floor. The same condition might have been caused by a blunt instrument. Deceased was old for his years, as shown by the atheromatous condition of the cerebral arteries.’

‘Very good. Have you any questions to ask the witness?’

The jury all shook their heads.

‘If you are in a hurry, Dr Hendrie, I think we can spare you.’

‘Thank you, sir. Good day.’

‘Daniel Prosser Hind!’

Daniel Prosser Hind, forty-nine, was a licensed victualler and the lessee of the Pound House. The owners were Messrs Astill of North Bromwich. He knew the deceased: couldn’t say that they were friends, as deceased had only lately come to Mainstone. He remembered last night. The bar was middling full. He himself was in the parlour working over accounts, his daughter being in charge of the bar. About nine-thirty he heard a row and ran into the bar. The first thing he saw was Mr Badger on the floor and young Fellows on the top of him. Behind them he saw Bastard lying on his back, with blood coming from his ears and nose. Some one said Bastard was stunned. He felt Bastard’s heart and said: ‘No, he’s dead.’ He did not see deceased fall. He was told. . . . He quite understood and begged his worship’s pardon. If he might say so, nothing of this kind had ever occurred in a house under his management before. What with the cloggers and the navvies it was no easy matter to keep an orderly house. He wished to express regret for what had happened. He could not say if Badger and Fellows had been drinking. Mr Badger was usually a temperate man. A man named Connor had the appearance of being the worse for liquor.

‘Were you not aware of this before?’

No. As he had explained, he was busy with the October accounts.

‘You consider your daughter a fit person to be in charge of a crowded bar?’

Yes. His daughter was quite competent and used to keeping order.

‘How old is she?’

She was twenty years of age. Messrs Astill, he persisted, always expected the accounts to be ready by the end of the month, and he had happened to be a little behind with them. Messrs Astill would speak for him.

‘You consider that you performed your duty as licensee of this inn?’

Yes. Certainly he considered he had done his duty. He had sent for the doctor at once.

‘You really expect me and the jury to believe that a girl of twenty is a fit person to be left in charge of a bar full of those rough men? Very well. . . . You can stand down.’

Susan Hind, twenty, said she was daughter of the previous witness. She did not know deceased, though he was in the habit of looking in of nights. She had never served him in the bar. On the night in question there was nothing unusual. There were near about twenty men in the bar. Mr Badger was sitting alone over in the corner. He was not drunk. Fellows was not drunk. She didn’t think that Connor was drunk. She ought to know when a fellow was drunk! There was no special rule as to when they should be served or not. Yes, that was it, she used her discretion. Certainly Connor was excitable. He had had two or three quarts. No, that was nothing for Connor. He was always quick with his tongue, and the others were laughing at him. She agreed with her father that she could manage men if any one could. She had been used to it for years . . . ever since she was sixteen. She hadn’t noticed anything until Badger dropped his glass on the floor and came over to Connor. She supposed Connor had riled him, but she hadn’t been listening. Connor always went on at people. She saw Badger give Fellows a hit in the face and then the two of them went down. She called her father, and while her back was turned Bastard must have come in. She saw him try to pull Fellows off Badger. She saw Malpas take Bastard by the arm. He didn’t use no violence that she saw. Bastard tried to fix Malpas’s arms. She saw the two of them swaying about together. They must have tripped over something, they went down so sudden. Bastard did not cry out. She remembered nothing more, she was that scared. Malpas had not been drinking. He had had one drink: a small whisky. Of course she couldn’t say if he had got drink anywhere else. In her opinion he was sober. The only man in the room that was drunk was Atwell. She had gone on serving him because she knew by experience that he could behave decent with it. He was like that most nights.

Atwell, who had smiled at this tribute to his powers, was called next. He didn’t remember nothing. He couldn’t say if he was drunk because he didn’t remember. Asked if he wasn’t ashamed of himself, he had nothing to say.

Michael Connor corroborated the evidence of the witness Susan Hind. Anything he had said to Badger was not out of the way. He was only letting on. He admitted having a drop taken. He was nourished, not drunk. Atwell was drunk, more luck to him! That was making the court no impertinent answer. He said it by the way of no harm.

‘Abner Fellows!’

He had been sitting half hypnotised by the progress of the evidence. Each of the witnesses had seemed to him strange and unfamiliar. This subdued, tight-lipped Susan was not the girl who came passionately to his arms. Mr Hind was pale, shabby, shrunken. Even Mick was not the radiant companion that he knew. He heard his own name in a dream. George Malpas pushed him forward as the sergeant took an officious step in his direction. He stood at the foot of the long table, staring at the top of the coroner’s head and the buffalo horns above it. The foreman of the jury was examining him closely, much as on market days he would have examined a likely bullock. The man with the white beard went on writing in a large, fluent hand, while the sergeant thrust the Testament into Abner’s fingers and dictated the oath to him. He had to clear his throat, for his voice had left him. The coroner blotted his notes methodically and looked up.

‘Yes. . . . Abner Fellows. Age?’

‘Twenty.’

‘Occupation?’

‘Labourer.’

‘Tell me all you know of what happened last night . . . not too fast, I have to write it down.’

Slowly Abner told his own story.

‘Very good! You say that Badger hit you in the face. Are you on bad terms with Badger?’

‘I never spoke to him before.’

‘When he struck you you lost your temper?’

‘Any one would.’

‘You say Malpas is a friend of yours?’

‘I lodge with him.’

‘And Malpas was not drunk?’

‘Not that I could see.’

‘Do you know where Malpas had been that evening?’

Abner hesitated. He felt that George’s eyes were on him from behind. ‘No.’

‘Very well.’

Abner went back to his seat. He saw Mr Hind rubbing his hands together nervously, saw the white face of Susie. He flopped down heavily into the seat beside George. Malpas never stirred. He still sat with his hands to his head, drumming with his finger on his temple.

‘William Badger!’

William Badger, gamekeeper in the employment of Sir George Delahay, said he had been to the Pound House on business. His business was to try and pick up information about poaching on his master’s land. Nothing was safe in Lesswardine since the navvies had been working there. He was watching three men.

‘Name them.’

Connor, Fellows, and Atwell. He believed Connor was the ringleader. He had not come there to watch Malpas. Constable Bastard knew that he was there on that business. He had told Bastard that he thought he had recognised Connor in an affray three nights before. He had sat in the corner quietly listening. Connor had been talking ‘at him’ all evening, and at last he had lost his temper. He was a quick-tempered man and couldn’t abide poachers. He had meant to shut Connor’s mouth. He couldn’t say if he had meant to hit him. When he came up to Connor he saw Fellows looking ugly. They were all the same gang. He didn’t remember hitting Fellows in the face, but if he hadn’t done so Fellows would have hit him. The next moment Fellows was on the top of him. He didn’t see Bastard come in. Bastard was a friend of his. He did not see Malpas and Bastard fighting. He could not have seen Bastard fall, as Fellows was on the top of him. In his opinion Bastard had died in the performance of his duty. Bastard had been a great help to him.

‘George Malpas!’

George walked straight to the foot of the table, haggard, tall, handsome as ever. While he gave his evidence he still drummed with his fingers on the board. The tone of Mr Mortimer’s voice sharpened as he questioned him, but George’s account of the affair agreed in every detail with that of the other witnesses.

‘You do not suggest that you attacked Bastard when under the influence of drink?’

‘No. I had not been drinking.’

‘Where had you spent the earlier part of the evening?’

‘At Lesswardine.’

‘In a public-house?’

‘No. With a friend.’

‘Were you and Bastard on good terms?’

‘I had never spoken to him before in my life.’

‘Then why did you suddenly attack him?’

‘I never attacked him. Badger had hit out at Fellows and Fellows had a right to get his own back. I wanted to see fair play. I put my hand on Bastard’s arm.’

‘That’s all very well, you know. It is a serious offence to interfere with a constable in the discharge of his duty.’

‘Fellows was my pal. I never did nothing to Bastard. When I touched his arm he turned on me. He was trying to take me in charge. We must have tripped on something. We fell down together. I had nothing against Bastard.’

‘Very well, you may sit down.’

The sergeant cleared his throat: ‘If I may say a few words, sir . . .’

The coroner finished his notes, then sat back to listen.

‘I may say, sir, that we have been dissatisfied for some time with the conduct of this house. Neither Mr Hind nor his daughter bear a good character with us, and Bastard has had occasion to speak to me about the goings-on here from time to time. He has also said that Mr Badger was a great help to him. Connor, Atwell, and Fellows all have the name of rough characters. We have only been waiting for the necessary evidence . . .’

‘That will do, sergeant.’

‘Very good, sir. On inquiries in Lesswardine, I find that Malpas spent the evening in the house of a young widow woman named . . .’

George rose to his feet and took a step forward.

‘Sit down!’ shouted the coroner.

‘Named . . .’

‘That will do, sergeant.’

‘As you wish, sir.’

Mr Mortimer adjusted his glasses and sat for a moment in silence, turning over his paper:.