“Yes, but look what he said—The Coroner asked him the same question—when was it he had borrowed the sack—before or after the young woman disappeared. Mr. Egerton said he really didn’t know, because he didn’t know when the young woman had disappeared. … As if we didn’t all know, the very next day. …”
“Pardon me,” said Mr. Dimple, “but I didn’t know myself, not till one day last week—and I live two doors from the Byrnes—”
“Yes, but you’re a man,” said Mrs. Vincent, with a large contempt.
“So is Mr. Egerton.”
Mrs. Vincent should have been a boxer. She recovered nobly.
“Anyhow, he didn’t impress me, and he didn’t impress the Coroner. The Coroner kept at him a long time, trying to get it out of him, how he’d lost the sack and so on. Some of the jury asked questions too. They couldn’t understand about the wood-collecting and what he wanted firewood for in the summer, and—Oh yes, I remember. He said it must have slipped off the boat, you see, and been picked up by somebody. Then they asked him what he did with the wood when he picked it up—did he put it in the sack then and there or what? He said no, he just threw it in the bottom of the boat. Then the Coroner said, ‘When did you put it in the sack?’ Mr. Egerton said, ‘In the garden, of course, to take it indoors.’ And then, you see, the Coroner said, ‘Why on earth did he take the sack out in the boat at all?’ You could have heard a—” Mrs. Vincent thought better of it. “Mr. Egerton couldn’t answer that—he just looked sheepish, and mumbled something about ‘he forgot!’—forgot, indeed!”
Mrs. Vincent looked at Mr. Dimple—a triumphant, merciless look.
Mr. Dimple murmured reflectively, “Yes—that was odd—very odd.”
“And as for that Mrs. Bantam of his, the old frump! She actually swore that there’d never been a sack in the house! Well, it stands to reason, if Mr. Egerton borrowed that sack to collect wood in, she must have seen it, unless he kept it locked up somewhere—and if he did lock it up somewhere—well, he must have had some funny reason for it. …”
Mrs. Vincent shrugged her shoulders expressively.
“So that didn’t do him any good—especially as she cheeked the Coroner.”
“And what was the verdict?”
“Oh, the jury were very quick—I only waited ten minutes or so, you know, just on the chance—and when they came back they said, ‘Wilful murder against somebody unknown’—or something like that. I must say, I was surprised, because the Coroner was very down on Mr. Egerton—”
“And so were you, I gather,” said Mrs. Whittaker, with forced calm; the Whittakers liked Egerton, and Mrs. Vincent was slowly bringing them to the boil.
“Well, if you ask me, I really don’t think he comes out of it very well. Of course, I know the jury didn’t say anything about him, but—”
“And that being so, Mrs. Vincent, if you will allow me”—Mr. Dimple at last cast off his judicial detachment; he spoke with his usual deprecating and kindly air, with a kind of halting fluency that made it seem as if his sentences would never end—“if you will allow me—er, as a lawyer—to ah, venture a little advice—that being so, I think one ought to be careful—not to say anything—which might be—ah, repeated—by perhaps thoughtless people—of course I know we are all friends here—and possibly misinterpreted—as a suggestion—that Mr. Egerton’s part in this affair—though I know, of course, that there were—er—puzzling circumstances—about the evidence—I thought so myself—that Mr. Egerton’s part—was—er—more serious—than one is entitled strictly to deduce—from the verdict—which as you say—Mrs. Vincent—did not refer to him directly in any way. You won’t mind my saying so, will you?—but I almost think—”
Mr. Dimple always talked like that. He was a noble little man, with a thin, peaked, legal countenance and mild eyes that expressed unutterable kindness and impartiality to the whole world. His natural benevolence and a long training in the law had produced in him a complete incapacity for downright censure. His judgments were a tangle of parentheses; and people said that if he were ever raised to the Bench his delivery of the death sentence would generate in the condemned person a positive glow of righteousness and content. He never “thought” or “said”; he only “almost thought” or “ventured to suggest” or “hazarded the opinion, subject of course to—” And this, combined with his habit of parenthesis and periphrasis and polysyllaby (if there is a word like that), made his utterances of almost unendurable duration. He was one of those men during whose anecdotes it is almost impossible to keep awake. Polite people, who knew him well and honoured him for the goodness of his heart and the charity of his life, sometimes rebuked themselves because of this failure, and swore to be better when they met him again. At the beginning of a story (and he had many) they would say to themselves firmly, “I will keep awake during the whole of this anecdote; I will attend to the very end; I will understand it and laugh sincerely about it.” Then Mr. Dimple would ramble off into his genial forest of qualifications and brackets, and the minds of his hearers immediately left him; they thought of their homes, or their work, or the food they were eating, or of the clothes of some other person, or of some story they intended to tell when Mr. Dimple had done; and they came suddenly out of their dreams, to find Mr. Dimple yet labouring onward to his climax; and they said, with shame and mortification, “I have failed again,” and laughed very heartily at the wrong moment.
Yet people loved Mr. Dimple; and if it was impossible sometimes to deduce from what he actually said what it was he actually thought, one was often able to make a good guess on the assumption that he never wittingly said anything cruel or unkind or even mildly censorious
