Both smiled, and Hilary said: ‘All right, Dinny, we’ll speak to the Sergeant, he’s a very decent chap, and get you called early, if possible.’ He went to the door.
‘Good night, little serpent,’ said Adrian.
‘Goodnight, dear Uncle; you look terribly tired. Have you got a hot water-bottle?’
Adrian shook his head. ‘I’ve nothing but a tooth-brush which I bought today.’
Dinny hauled her bottle out of her bed, and forced it on him. ‘Shall I speak to Diana, then, about what we’ve been saying?’
‘If you will, Dinny.’
‘After tomorrow the sun will shine.’
‘Will it?’ said Adrian.
As the door closed, Dinny sighed. Would it? Diana seemed as if dead to feeling. And – there was Hubert’s business!
Chapter Thirty
THE reflections of Adrian and his niece, when together they entered the Coroner’s Court on the following day, might have been pooled as follows:
A coroner’s inquest was like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on Sundays, devised for other times. When Sunday afternoons were devoted to games, murders infrequent, and suicides no longer buried at cross-roads, neither custom had its initial wisdom. In old days, Justice and its emissaries were regarded as the foes of mankind, so it was natural to interpose a civilian arbiter between death and the Law. In an age in which one called the police ‘a splendid force’ was there not something unnatural in supposing them incapable of judging when it was necessary for them to take action? Their incompetence, therefore, could not well be considered the reason for the preservation of these rites. The cause was, surely, in one’s dread of being deprived of knowledge. Every reader of a newspaper felt that the more he or she heard about what was doubtful, sensational, and unsavoury, the better for his or her soul. One knew that, without coroners’ inquests, there would often be no published inquiry at all into sensational death; and never two inquiries. If, then, in place of no inquiry one could always have one inquiry, and in place of one inquiry sometimes have two inquiries, how much pleasanter! The dislike which one had for being nosy disappeared the moment one got into a crowd. The nosier one could be in a crowd the happier one felt. And the oftener one could find room in a Coroner’s Court, the greater the thankfulness to Heaven. ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow’ could never go up more fervently than from the hearts of such as had been privileged to find seats at an inquiry about death. For an inquiry about death nearly always meant the torture of the living, and than that was anything more calculated to give pleasure?
The fact that the Court was full confirmed these reflections and they passed on into a little room to wait. Adrian saying: ‘You go in fifth wicket down, Dinny, both Hilary and I are taken before you. If we keep out of Court till we’re wanted they can’t say we copied each other.’
They sat very silent in the little bare room. The police, the doctor, Diana and Hilary had all to be examined first.
‘It’s like the ten little nigger boys,’ murmured Dinny. Her eyes were fixed on a calendar on the wall opposite; she could not read it, but it seemed necessary.
‘See, my dear,’ said Adrian, and drew a little bottle from his breast pocket, ‘take a sip or two of this – not more – it’s fifty-fifty sal volatile and water; it’ll steady you no end. Be careful!’
Dinny took a little gulp. It burned her throat, but not too badly.
‘You too, Uncle.’
Adrian also took a cautious gulp.
‘No finer dope,’ he said, ‘before going in to bat, or anything like that.’
And they again sat silent, assimilating the fumes. Presently Adrian said:
‘If spirits survive, as I don’t believe, what is poor Ferse thinking of this farce? We’re still barbarians. There’s a story of Maupassant’s about a Suicide Club that provided a pleasant form of death to those who felt they had to go. I don’t believe in suicide for the sane, except in very rare cases. We’ve got to stick things out; but for the insane, or those threatened with it, I wish we had that Club, Dinny. Has that stuff steadied you?’
Dinny nodded.
‘It’ll last pretty well an hour.’ He got up. ‘My turn, I see. Good-bye, my dear, good luck! Stick in a “Sir”, to the Coroner, now and then.’
Watching him straighten himself as he passed through the door, Dinny felt a sort of inspiration. Uncle Adrian was the man she admired most of any she had ever seen. And she sent up a little illogical prayer for him. Certainly that stuff had steadied her; the sinking, fluttering feeling she had been having was all gone. She took out her pocket mirror and powder-puff. She could go to the stake, anyway, with a nose that did not shine.