The inquest was set for half-past eleven in the village hall. Garth walked down between Miss Sophy and Miss Brown, both wearing black. Miss Brown was silent, Miss Sophy tremulously conversational. She kept a hand on his arm, and clutched him hard as they entered.
Rows of wooden chairs, a narrow aisle up the middle, a platform at the far end, an all-pervading smell of varnish. Memories of village concerts, private theatricals, and jumble sales crowded in upon Garth. To the right of that platform he had sat at the upright piano presented by Miss Doncaster and played his first solo, The Merry Peasant, with leaden fingers and a growing conviction that he was going to be sick. Behind the very table which occupied the centre of the stage his grandfather’s impressive figure had towered as he presented prizes to the more virtuous of the village youth. Where the narrow lane between the chairs now stretched tables groaning with buns had been set for the Christmas Sunday School treat. There was something rather horrid about revisiting the scene for an inquest. One thing there was in common between those past occasions and this gloomy one, the hall was full. Only the two front rows remained unoccupied, but they were farther removed from the platform then they would have been at a concert, and on the right-hand side of the space thus left clear a dozen chairs placed sideways in two rows accommodated nine embarrassed-looking men and three women.
The coroner, who might have sat alone, had chosen to call a jury – half a dozen farmers; Mr Simmonds the butcher; the landlord of the Black Bull; the baker; Mrs Cripps of the general shop; Mrs Mottram, a pretty fair-haired woman with a rolling blue eye; and the elder of the two Miss Doncasters, Miss Lucy Ellen, very thin, upright and grey, with an air of considering that her gentility was being contaminated.
On the left a couple of reporters and a small, efficient elderly man whose face Garth found familiar without being able to place it, until it came to him that he had seen it bent over papers in Sir George’s office. Obviously Sir George was not leaving the reporting of the evidence to chance.
Miss Sophy had led the way to the second row of chairs upon the right. At the far end of the corresponding row on the left there sat a middle-aged gentleman in tweeds which would have looked better if they had not looked quite so new; for the rest a very genial gentleman, not so stout as to be called fat, but a well rounded testimonial to the efficiency of Lord Woolton’s food control. He had a bald patch on the top of his head, a pair of ruddy cheeks, and a roving eye. It lighted upon Miss Sophy, and he immediately beamed and bowed. Miss Sophy’s grip upon Garth’s arm tightened. She said ‘Mr Everton!’ in a fooffly whisper, and returned the bow with a hint of discreet reproof. She had never been to an inquest before, but it felt a good deal like being in church, and though it might be permissible to recognise your friends, she did not feel that it was at all the thing to smile at them. Mrs Mottram now – she really shouldn’t be looking about her like that. To be on a jury was a most responsible and sobering position, and she was wearing that rather bright blue dress which she had bought when she went out of mourning. And turquoise earrings – really most unsuitable, though no doubt very becoming. Lucy Ellen Doncaster looked most disapproving, and no wonder. She was wearing the coat and skirt in which she always attended funerals. It must be quite twenty years old, but it was suitable. Unfortunately her hat, of approximately the same date, had tipped sideways in spite of the two long jet-headed pins with which it was transfixed. But hatpins are of very little use unless you have plenty of hair, and Lucy Ellen, who had never had much, was now decidedly thin on the top. Even at this solemn moment Miss Sophy heaved a sigh of thankfulness at the thought of her own thick, snowy curls. ‘After all, there is nothing like a good head of hair,’ she concluded.
The room, except for the two front rows, was now packed. All at once a party of three came up the central aisle – a man with an angry crooked face and black untidy hair, a woman in whom the same odd features were blurred by plumpness and timidity, and Janice Meade. Garth would have known her anywhere. She really hadn’t altered a bit, and she didn’t look very much older – the little pointed face, the way her hair grew, the very bright eyes. She followed the Madocs up to the second row on the left. Mr Madoc stood aside. Miss Madoc went forward in a hesitating manner and sat down by Mr Everton. Janice followed her. The professor jerked the outside chair as far as possible away from them, threw himself into it, and crossed his legs, right over left, after which he dragged a horrid-looking handkerchief from his pocket and mopped a brow which had every appearance of being heated by some inner conflagration.
Garth got all this as an impression. He wasn’t really looking at Madoc. His eyes were on Janice, and he was thinking how nice and cool she looked in a white tennis frock and a sort of garden hat with a black ribbon round it, whilst Miss Madoc weltered in a heavy grey coat and skirt which dipped and bulged, and Madoc wore his aged flannel trousers, his open-necked shirt, and disreputable green jacket as if they had been forced upon him by the Gestapo.
Garth’s attention came to him and remained. The man’s whole being was a protest. Waves of angry resentment spread out all round him in the most disconcerting manner. He appeared to Garth to be one of those unhappy persons to whom civilisation is at once abhorrent and necessary. As a scientist he required its order. As a man he rebelled, and detested its restraints.
The coroner came in and took his seat to the ancient formula of ‘Oh yes – oh yes – oh yes!’ Immemorial ritual, immemorial routine, and the little grey man with ruffled hair and a lagging step. But the eyes behind his tortoise-shell-rimmed glasses were steady and sharp. He called the medical evidence first. A hollow-cheeked elderly man recited it in a rapid undertone. Garth gathered that the bullet had entered the right temple, that death must have been instantaneous, that everything pointed to the weapon having been actually in contact with the head.
Janice wreathed her hands together in her lap and tried not to listen. She kept telling herself that these things had nothing to do with Mr Harsch. He had been here, and he had been her friend, but now he wasn’t here, and she hoped he was with his daughter and his wife. All this about bullets, and weapons, and the violence that went with them had nothing to do with him at all.
The police surgeon stood down, and a police inspector took his place. He had been called to Bourne church at 12.12 a.m. on Wednesday 9th September. The call was put through by the sexton, Frederick Bush. He found Bush and Miss Janice Meade in the church when he arrived. He also found the body of Mr Harsch, lying on the floor in front of the organ. The weapon lay close to his right hand. The attitude of the body was compatible with the shot having been fired whilst Mr Harsch was sitting at the keyboard. There was no disturbance, and no sign of a struggle. The organist’s bench had not been moved. The body appeared to have slipped from it to the ground.
The moment which Janice had been dreading had arrived. She heard her name – ‘Call Janice Meade!’ She had to squeeze past Evan Madoc, who merely scowled and slewed himself a little sideways without uncrossing his legs. The thought that he was the rudest man in the world passed automatically through her mind. She went up the two steps on to the platform. When she had been sworn, someone gave her a chair and she sat down.
‘Now, Miss Meade – will you tell us in your own words just what happened on Tuesday evening. I believe you were Mr Harsch’s secretary?’
‘I am Mr Madoc’s secretary. I was very pleased to do anything I could for Mr Harsch.’