Have His Carcase

‘I can only say that I must have been mistaken. You must allow for the effects of a morbid imagination.’

‘You still say that the interview took place at midnight?’

‘Yes; I am confident about that.’

The coroner dismissed Mr Bright with a warning to be more careful with statements he made in court, and recalled Inspector Umpelty with an inquiry into Bright’s movements and character.

He then summed up the evidence. He did not attempt to disguise his own opinion, which was that deceased had taken his own life. (Incoherent protest from Mrs Weldon.) As to why he should have done so, it was not the jury’s business to speculate. Various motives had been suggested, and the jury must bear in mind that deceased’ was Russian by birth, and therefore excitable, and liable to be overcome by feelings; of melancholy and despair. He himself had read a great deal of Russian literature and could assure the jury that suicide was of frequent occurrence among the members of that unhappy nation. We who enjoyed the blessing of being British might find that difficult to understand, but the jury could take it from him that it was so. They had before them clear evidence of how the razor came into the hands of Alexis, and he thought they need not lay too much stress on Bright’s error about the tide. Since Alexis did not shave, what could he have needed a razor for, unless to commit suicide? He (the coroner) would, however, be perfectly fair and enumerate the one or two points which, seemed to throw doubt on the hypothesis of suicide. There was the fact that Alexis had taken a return-ticket. There was the passport. There was the belt full of gold. They might

perhaps think that deceased had contemplated fleeing the country. Even so, was it not likely that he had lost heart at the last moment and taken the shortest way out of the country and out of life itself? There was the odd circumstance that deceased had apparently committed suicide in gloves, but suicides were notoriously odd. And there was, of course, the evidence of Mrs Weldon (for whom they must all feel the deepest sympathy); as to deceased’s state of mind; but this was contradicted by the evidence of William Bright and Mrs Lefranc.

In short, here was a man of Russian birth and temperament, troubled by emotional entanglements and by the receipt of mysterious letters, and obviously in an unstable condition of, mind. He had wound up his worldly affairs and procured a razor. He had been found in a lonely spot, to which he had obviously proceeded unaccompanied, and had been found dead, with the fatal weapon lying close under his hand. There were no footprints upon the sand but his own, and the person who had discovered the body had come upon it so closely after the time of the death as to preclude the possibility of any murderer having, escaped from the scene of the crime by way of the shore. The witness Pollock had sworn that he was out in deep water at the time when the death occurred, and had seen no other boat in the neighbourhood, and his evidence was supported by that of Miss Vane. Further, there was no evidence that anybody had the slightest motive for doing away with the deceased, unless the jury chose to pay attention to the vague suggestions about blackmailers and Bolsheviks, which there was not an atom of testimony to support.

Wimsey, grinned at Umpelty over this convenient summary, with its useful suppressions and assumptions. No mention of clefts in the rock or of horseshoes or of the disposal of Mrs Weldon’s money. The jury whispered together. There was a pause. Harriet looked at Henry Weldon. He was frowning heavily and paying no attention to his mother, who was talking excitedly into his ear.

Presently the foreman rose to his feet a stout person, who looked like a farmer.

‘We’re all agreed, for certain sure,’ he said, ’as deceased come to his death by cutting of his throat, and most of us thinks he took his own life; but there’s some (he glared at the Empire Free-Trader) ‘who will have it as it was Bolsheviks.’

‘A majority verdict is sufficient,’ said the coroner, ‘Am I to understand that the majority is for suicide?’

‘Yes, sir, I told you so, Jim Cobble’,’ added the foreman, in a penetrating whisper.

‘Then your verdict is that deceased came to his end by cutting his own throat.’

‘Yes, sir.’ (A further consultation;) ‘We should like to add as we think the police regulations about: foreigners did ought to be tightened up, like, deceased being a foreigner and suicides and murders being unpleasant in a place where so many visitors come in the summer.’

‘I can’t take that,’ objected the harassed coroner. ‘Deceased was a naturalised Englishman.’

‘That don’t make no difference,’ said the juror, sturdily.

‘We do think as the regulations ought to be tightened up none the more for that, and that’s what we all say. Put it down, sir, as that’s our opinion.’