Adrian met them in the hall of the hotel at Chichester, and she took her chance to say: “Uncle, can I speak to you and Uncle Hilary privately?”
“Hilary had to go back to Town, my dear, but he’ll be down the last thing this evening; we can have a talk then. The inquest’s tomorrow.”
With that she had to be content.
When he had finished his story, determined that Adrian should not take Diana to see Ferse, she said: “If you’ll tell us where to go, Uncle, I’LL go with Diana.”
Adrian nodded. He had understood.
When they reached the mortuary, Diana went in alone, and Dinny waited in a corridor which smelled of disinfectant and looked out on to a back street. A fly, disenchanted by the approach of winter, was crawling dejectedly up the pane. Gazing out into that colourless back alley, under a sky drained of all warmth and light, she felt very miserable. Life seemed exceptionally bleak, and heavy with sinister issues. This inquest, Hubert’s impending fate—no light or sweetness anywhere! Not even the thought of Alan’s palpable devotion gave her comfort.
She turned to see Diana again beside her, and, suddenly forgetting her own woe, threw an arm round her and kissed her cold cheek. They went back to the hotel without speaking, except for Diana’s: “He looked marvellously calm.”
She went early to her room after dinner, and sat there with a book, waiting for her uncles. It was ten o’clock before Hilary’s cab drew up, and a few minutes later they came. She noted how shadowy and worn they both looked; but there was something reassuring in their faces. They were the sort who ran till they dropped, anyway. They both kissed her with unexpected warmth, and sat down sideways, one on each side of her bed. Dinny stood between them at the foot and addressed Hilary.
“It’s about Uncle Adrian, Uncle. I’ve been thinking. This inquest is going to be horrid if we don’t take care.”
“It is, Dinny. I came down with a couple of journalists who didn’t suspect my connection. They’ve got hold of the mental home, and are all agog. I’ve a great respect for journalists, they do their job very thoroughly.”
Dinny addressed Adrian.
“You won’t mind my talking freely, will you, Uncle?”
Adrian smiled. “No, Dinny. You’re a loyal baggage; go ahead!”
“It seems to me, then,” she went on, plaiting her fingers on the bed-rail, “that the chief point is to keep Uncle Adrian’s friendship for Diana out of it, and I thought that the asking of you two to find him ought to be put entirely on to me. You see, I was the last person known to speak to him, when he cut the telephone wire, you know, so, when I’m called, I could get it into their minds that you were entirely my suggestion, as a couple of Uncles who were clever and good at crossword puzzles. Otherwise, why did we go to Uncle Adrian? Because he was SUCH A FRIEND, and then you’d get at once all that they may think that means, especially when they hear that Captain Ferse was away four years.”
There was silence before Hilary said:
“She’s wise, old boy. Four years’ friendship with a beautiful woman in a husband’s absence means only one thing with a jury, and many things with the Public.”
Adrian nodded. “But I don’t see how the fact that I’ve known them both so long can be concealed.”
“First impressions,” said Dinny eagerly, “will be everything. I can say that Diana suggested going to her doctor and Michael, but that I overruled her, knowing that you were marvellous at tracing things out because of your job, and could get at Uncle Hilary, who was so good at human nature. If we START them right, I don’t believe the mere fact that you knew both of them would matter. It seems to me awfully important that I should be called as early as possible.”
“It’s putting a lot on you, my dear.”
“Oh! no. If I’m not called before you and Uncle Hilary, will you both say that it was I who came and asked you, and I can rub it in afterwards?”
“After the doctor and the police, Diana will be the first witness.”
“Yes, but I can speak to her, so that we shall all be saying the same thing.”
Hilary smiled. “I don’t see why not, it’s very white lying. I can put in that I’ve known them as long as you, Adrian. We both met Diana first at that picnic Lawrence gave near the Land’s End, when she was a flapper, and we both met Ferse first at her wedding. Family friendship, um?”
“My visits to the Mental Home will come out,” said Adrian, “the Doctor’s been summoned as witness.”
“Oh! well,” said Dinny, “you went there as his friend, and specially interested in mental derangement. After all, you’re supposed to be scientific, Uncle.”
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.
“Good-night, 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 30
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 enquiry at all into sensational death; and never two enquiries. If, then, in place of no enquiry one could always have one enquiry, and in place of one enquiry sometimes have two enquiries, 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 enquiry about death. For an enquiry about death nearly always meant the torture of the living, and than that was anything more calculated to give pleasure?