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.
Another quarter of an hour, however, passed before she was called, and she spent it, with her eyes still fixed on that calendar, thinking of Condaford and recalling all her pleasantest times there. The old days of its unrestored state, when she was very small, hayfield days, and picnics in the woods; pulling lavender, riding on the retriever, promotion to the pony when Hubert was at school; days of pure delight in a new, fixed home, for, though she had been born there, she had been nomadic till she was four—at Aldershot, and Gibraltar. She remembered with special pleasure winding the golden silk off the cocoons of her silkworms, how they had made her think of creeping, crawling elephants, and how peculiar had been their smell.
“Elizabeth Charwell.”
Nuisance to have a name that everyone pronounced wrong as a matter of course! And she rose, murmuring to herself:
Someone took charge of her on her entry, and, taking her across the Court, placed her in a sort of pen. It was fortunate that she had been in such places lately, for it all felt rather familiar, and even faintly comic. The jury in front of her looked as it were disused, the coroner had a funny importance. Down there, not far to her left, were the other little niggers; and, behind them, stretching to the blank wall, dozens and dozens and dozens of faces in rows, as of sardines set up on their tails in a huge sardine box. Then aware that she was being addressed, she concentrated on the coroner’s face.
“Your name is Elizabeth Cherrell. You are the daughter, I believe, of Lieutenant–General Sir Conway Cherrell, K.C.B., C.M.G., and Lady Cherrell?”
Dinny bowed. ‘I believe he likes me for that,’ she thought.
“And you live with them at Condaford Grange in Oxfordshire?”
“Yes.”
“I believe, Miss Cherrell, that you were staying with Captain and Mrs. Ferse up to the morning on which Captain Ferse left his house?”
“I was.”
“Are you a close friend of theirs?”
“Of Mrs. Ferse. I had seen Captain Ferse only once, I think, before his return.”
“Ah! his return. Were you staying with Mrs. Ferse when he returned?”
“I had come up to stay with her on that very afternoon.”
“The afternoon of his return from the Mental Home?”
“Yes. I actually went to stay at their house the following day.”
“And were you there until Captain Ferse left his house?”
“I was.”
“During that time what was his demeanour?”
At this question for the first time Dinny realised the full disadvantage of not knowing what has been said already. It almost looked as if she must say what she really knew and felt.
“He seemed to me quite normal, except that he would not go out or see anybody. He looked quite healthy, only his eyes made one feel unhappy.”
“How do you mean exactly?”
“They—they looked like a fire behind bars, they seemed to flicker.”
And, at those words, she noticed that the jury for a moment looked a trifle less disused.
“He would not go out, you say? Was that during the whole time you were there?”
“No; he went out on the day before he left his home. He was out all that day, I believe.”
“You believe? Were you not there?”
“No; that morning I took the two children down to my mother’s at Condaford Grange, and returned in the evening just before dinner. Captain Ferse was not in then.”
“What made you take the children down?”
“Mrs. Ferse asked me to. She had noticed some change in Captain Ferse, and she thought the children would be better away.”
“Could you say that you had noticed a change?”
“Yes. I thought he seemed more restless, and, perhaps, suspicious; and he was drinking more at dinner.”
“Nothing very striking?”
“No. I—”
“Yes, Miss Cherrell?”
“I was going to say something that I don’t know of my own knowledge.”
“Something that Mrs. Ferse had told you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you needn’t tell us that.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
“Coming back to when you returned from taking the children to your home, Captain Ferse was not in, you say; was Mrs. Ferse in?”
“Yes, she was dressed for dinner. I dressed quickly and we dined alone together. We were very anxious about him.”
“And then?”
“After dinner we went up to the drawing-room, and to distract her I made Mrs. Ferse sing, she was so nervous and anxious. After a little we heard the front door, and Captain Ferse came in and sat down.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No.”
“How was he looking?”
“Dreadful, I thought. Very strange and strained, as if under the power of some terrible thought.”
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Ferse asked him if he had had dinner, and if he would like to go to bed; and if he would see a doctor; but he wouldn’t speak—he sat with his eyes closed, almost as if he might be asleep, until at last I whispered: ‘Is he asleep, d’you think?’ Then suddenly he cried out: ‘Sleep! I’m for it again, and I won’t stand it. By God! I won’t stand it.’”