The Inspector was visibly gratified. “I know my business, thank you,” he said. “I say, doctor—it is growing, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, as if it was forced,” Reggie smiled.
“What do you mean?” The Inspector flushed.
“You see, you’re so witty, Mordan,” said the Superintendent.
“And that’s that,” Reggie yawned. “You don’t really want me any more. Goodbye. Oh, Inspector—I don’t want you to be disappointed. The murder wasn’t done in that room where you found the body. Goodbye!”
“Wasn’t done—” The Inspector stared after him. “Good Lord, he’s mad!”
“Better get him to bite you, Mordan,” said the Superintendent.
That party did not meet again till the day of the inquest. Before the court met, Superintendent Bell called on Reggie and found him in a bad temper. This was unusual, and equally unusual in the Superintendent’s experience was a pallor, a certain tension, across Reggie’s solid, amiable face. A civil question about his health brought a snappish answer. It seemed to the Superintendent that Dr. Fortune had been making a night of it.
“Well, what is it?” Reggie snarled. “Got anything to tell me?”
“I’ve been rather disappointed,” the Superintendent said meekly.
“More fool you. I told you to watch Ford.”
“That’s it, sir. Were you pulling my leg?”
“Oh, damn it, man, this is serious! Miss Bolton was a patient of mine. I don’t let anyone but me kill my patients.”
“Very proper, I’m sure,” the Superintendent agreed. “But we have watched him, doctor. Nothing doing.”
“Set a man to stand on his doorstep, I suppose. What’s the good of that?”
“As you say,” the Superintendent agreed. “We’ve picked up one thing, though. Just before the murder his father turned him down for wanting to marry this girl Weston. He hasn’t a penny except from his father. That might have made him desperate—him and the girl. It does grow, you know, doctor.”
“Queer case,” Reggie grunted. “Going to the inquest? Sorry I can’t drive you down. My chauffeur’s taking a day off.”
So they walked to the coroner’s court, and on the way Superintendent Bell used his large experience in the art of extracting confidences in vain. But Reggie mellowed, perceptibly mellowed, as he baffled Superintendent Bell.
The court was crowded to its last inch. The coroner was conscious of his importance, and made the most of it in a long harangue. The divisional surgeon was more pompous than ever, and made it a point of honour to use terms so technical that all his evidence had to be translated to the jury, and the coroner and he argued over the translation.
“What a life, ain’t it?” Mr. Gordon murmured in Reggie’s ear.
At last came what the evening papers called Dramatic Evidence: the housemaid who had found the body and had hysterics over again as she described it; Mrs. Betts, who had found May Weston sleeping beside it, waked her, and heard her say, “I did it—oh, I did it!”
“Sensation in Court” was the crosshead for that. The coroner looked over his glasses at the jury, and the jury muttered together, and May Weston came into the box. With the manner of a chaplain at an execution the coroner warned her that she need not give answers that would incriminate her. “I want to tell you everything,” she said. She was very pale in her black, and listless of manner, but quite calm.
What she told was the queer story she had told Reggie, but she was not allowed to tell it her own way. The coroner badgered her with continual questions designed to make the queerness of it seem queerer. He made her nervous, confused her, frightened her. “You bother me so that I don’t know if I’m telling the truth or not,” she quavered.
Then, in the language of the newspapers, “another sensation.” Mr. Ford, large and red, started up and roared, “I ought to be there, sir. Let her alone. I ought to be there.”
Reggie put his head between his hands and bowed himself, groaning.
Everyone else was much excited by Mr. Ford. He was pulled down in his seat. The coroner rebuked him with awful majesty. The foreman of the jury wanted to know if he would be called. The coroner pronounced that the court would most certainly require Mr. Ford to explain himself—and came back to May Weston.
“The fool that he is, he’s done the trick, though,” Reggie muttered to Mr. Gordon, and Gordon nodded and grinned. For after this interruption the coroner handled May Weston much more gently, almost indulgently, as a good man sorry for a woman’s weakness. And he was soon done with her.
“Any questions?” He looked at the lawyers. Reggie bent forward and whispered to the solicitor appearing for Miss Weston.
That large, bland man stood up. “Now, Miss Weston, about that coffee.” He had his reward. Everyone in the court, and Miss Weston not least, stared surprise at him. Slowly he extracted from her (she seemed bewildered at each question) the whole history of that after-dinner coffee. Coffee had been brought to the boudoir just before Mr. Ford came; no one but she had expected Mr. Ford; another cup was brought for Mr. Ford; Mr. Ford and she had both drunk their coffee. Miss Bolton—why, no, Miss Bolton had not. Miss Bolton had been very gay, and in doing a few steps of a dance had upset her coffee.
“No more questions, sir.” The large solicitor sat down smiling.
The coroner was visibly unable to understand him, and made a great business with his papers. It was now long after teatime. “I suppose we shan’t finish today, gentlemen?” the coroner suggested.
“Quite impossible, sir,” said the large solicitor cheerfully. “I have some long medical evidence. Dr. Fortune, Miss Bolton’s physician. The first medical man who saw the lady. The first medical man who saw Miss Weston.”
The court rose. Reggie, with Gordon at his heels, went out by the solicitor’s door and found Superintendent Bell waiting
