Lovers Make Moan

“Thank Marcus Lynn, you mean,” Jonathan softly replied. “He has graft in this here town.”

Barbara Bourton (‘pale, but composed’ wrote the reporters) gave evidence of the identity of the dead man, and then the medical witnesses were called. The cause of death was simple and undisputed. The deceased had died from a single blow from a sharp implement which had been driven with considerable force into the heart, by his own hand and accidentally.

It was clear that the coroner was in no mood to hustle the proceedings along. He was the senior partner in a firm of local solicitors and his most interesting enquiry so far had been into a case of treasure trove. This had been turned up by a man using a metal detector and was in the form of a cache of Roman silver found on a farm. It was a moot point whether the finder had been trespassing at the time, so the question of a reward had been a tricky one and the case had proved to be a cause of considerable, although strictly local, interest, since the landowner was unpopular and the find had been made on what had been a public footpath until it had been ploughed up during the war and never replaced.

All the adult members of the Midsummer Night’s Dream cast were present at the inquest on Bourton, some as witnesses, the others merely as onlookers, although, as Tom Woolidge pointed out, some of the witnesses had need to watch their own interests, since, whatever the verdict, blame for the death was certain to be apportioned to somebody, if not by the coroner, then by the general public.

“Because, of course, it should never have happened,” he said, before the inquest opened. “Some slip-up, some crass carelessness somewhere, you know, and somebody will have to take the rap. I suppose it will rest between Lynn and Yorke. Once the props had been sorted out and apportioned at the dress rehearsal, nobody else handled any of the things except us with our own bits and pieces, but those were laid out on the tables in the wings. Any of us could have had access to them.”

“Yes,” said his brother, “but you know what people are. They’re as jealous as kids when it comes to keeping an eye on their own property and not giving a damn about anything which belongs to other people. If a dozen substitutions of daggers had been made, I bet nobody would have noticed, not even Bradley and yourself. So long as each of you was satisfied he’d got his own dagger, he wouldn’t have given a thought to the weapon that was in Bourton’s belt.”

“I know. The tragedy is that if Rinkley had been playing the part on the Saturday instead of making himself ill with all those loathsome, indigestible mussels, he would have known at once that he’d got the wrong dagger.”

“Funny the right one should have got kicked under the trestle table in that way and got lost in the shadows. I wonder whether that will be mentioned?”

“The only effective floodlighting from that point of view is the powerful stuff they use on professional soccer pitches or to light an open-air boxing-ring. The lighting we had in Bradley’s garden cast shadows all over the place. It’s difficult to understand, though, how a dangerous weapon got into the only belt from which the dagger was actually going to be used.”

The conversation had been terminated by the coroner’s opening remarks followed by Barbara Bourton’s identification of the body and the calling of the medical evidence. The first doctor called Jeanne-Marie Delahague. She explained that she had been called backstage towards the end of the play, had been shown the body of Donald Bourton and had had no difficulty in deciding that he was, dead.

“It was the second time that evening that a doctor had been called for,” she said.

“The second time, Doctor?”

“Oh, yes. You see, this dead man should not have been playing the part, but this other actor had been taken ill and I took the precaution of ordering him to hospital, so a substitute had to be found and this man who so unfortunately stabbed himself to death was that substitute.”

She then testified that it was by her orders that neither the body nor anything connected with it was touched until authority took over.

“You mean you suspected foul play?”

“Certainly not. I was in the front row of the audience and saw exactly what happened. There was nothing whatever to cause suspicion. The deceased died by his own hand. Nobody was near him. He took the centre of the stage and in the background were eight other people, four seated, the others standing behind them or slightly to the side, but there was a gap of at least three yards between them and Mr Bourton.”

“Will you describe exactly what happened, Doctor?”

Jeanne-Marie gave a bald, unemotional account of what she had seen.

“What was the dead man wearing?”

“A simple, white tunic. He had removed the breastplate which had formed part of the costume.”

“Did you realise that he had actually stabbed himself with a lethal weapon?”

“No. I saw the dagger sticking up from his body, but I concluded that it had a retractable blade as used in theatricals.”

“Surely the blood from the wound would have shown up on a white tunic?”

“No, because he was almost recumbent when he stabbed himself, so there would be an internal haemorrhage. This has been shown to be the case.” As she was speaking, every eye was directed at the exhibits which had been brought into the courtroom.

“Can you identify the dagger in question?”

“I can speak only of the appearance of its hilt. When the body was removed to the mortuary the dagger was still in position and I had not touched it.”

“I see. Now, Doctor, five sheathed daggers will be put before you. I must ask you not to handle them. You will see that they are numbered. Will you please write (on the paper the clerk will give you) the number of the weapon which killed Mr Bourton?”

The daggers were placed on the ledge which surrounded the witness-box. Dr Jeanne-Marie surveyed them, but made no attempt to write anything down. The coroner prompted her, but she said, “It cannot be a joke that we play here?”

“A joke? Certainly not, Doctor.”