Chapter VIII: The Inquest

Sheriff Redden scratched his head. “Funny how upset she seemed,” he remarked in his high, whining drawl. “I wonder, now, where I’ve seen that girl before? Christie, her name is? Christie? H’m! Likely, it’s somebody else she favors. Say, they’s a lot o’ queer things about this here shootin’, seems like.”

I agreed with him thoroughly, and one of them was the curious conduct of Miss McGregor’s nurse, both last night and just now.

“F’r instance,” pursued the officer amicably, turned toward his prisoner, “Gaskell’s bein’ out yonder in th’ bushes. Couldn’t of been in th’ path, or you’d of seen him.” It seemed the sheriff accepted Lewis’ story as true, and my heart warmed to him. “I wonder, now----He must of been standin’ right quiet, too, or ye’d of heard him. Don’t seem natural, quite, he’d of let yuh git clost enough t’ shoot ’ithout sayin’ nothin’. Thet gun bar’l must of been right up agin’ him, a’most.”

“It seems as if I’d have seen him from the window, too, unless he was hiding,” I put in. “Those bushes aren’t high enough to hide his head.”

Mr. Redden scratched his head again. “H’m! What you think, Parker?”

Lewis shook his head hopelessly. His black hair, usually sleeked straight back, had fallen over his forehead. He tugged absently at a lock which hung down over his eyes. “I don’t know--I can’t seem to think at all.”

The coroner looked up. He had resumed his seat and was finishing his fourth waffle. “Another possibility,” he suggested, with his mouth full. “Might not have been hiding--he might have been dead already.”

“H’m,” said the sheriff, blinking at him.

My nephew brightened wonderfully. The color crept back into his sallow cheeks. “Do you really think so?”

Dorothy made a little cooing sound, and patted Lewis’ hand. “I knew it would come out all right!” she declared, her big sea-blue eyes upon the coroner.

Under that admiring gaze, Doctor Burgess expanded. “Quite possible,” he repeated. “Can’t fix the time of death exactly--not within an hour or so. You realize that, Doctor Parker. If you saw nothing, heard nothing, not even a fall, it may have been because Gaskell had already fallen. Didn’t you look to see if he was still bleeding or anything?”

Lewis flushed. “I--I was too upset,” he confessed. “I heard the constable yelling, and I turned. I didn’t see Gaskell until then, and it startled me so--that and knowing that Wakefield would surely think I did it, and remembering I’d quarreled with him yesterday, and seeing him, Gaskell, there, and all----” He stumbled and broke off. “Why, all I could see was that Gaskell was dead, and that I must have shot him.”

“H’m! Well, we’ll have a chance to straighten all that out at the inquest.” Sheriff Redden rose and bowed to Dorothy. “We sure are beholden to you, ma’am, f’r yore hospitality. But I reckon we better be shackin’ along now. Gotta git back to th’ jail. I--I reckon I’ll have to take yo’r young man along, ma’am, jus’ f’r to-day. Burgess’ll be holdin’ his inquest to-morrow; hey, doc? An’ then we c’n turn th’ boy loose f’r good. It--it’s just a form, Miss Dorothy, ma’am.”

Dorothy nodded. “You’re awfully good, Mr. Redden--you’re a perfect old dear!” And she kissed him impulsively. “You’ll be real nice to Lewis, won’t you?”

The old man beamed at her, his mahogany face three shades darker than normal. “I sure will, ma’am! Come along, Burgess. All right, Parker. It’s just t’ be my guest overnight, suh!”

And so they departed, leaving Dorothy, now that she need no longer be brave for her man’s sake, to weep forlornly on my shoulder.

Then Peter McGregor appeared, carrying his own satchel. He was inclined to be rather aggrieved that no one had met him at the station; but none of us had so much as heard the New York train pull in.

Peter was told the whole story, and he listened gravely, sitting up very straight, as was his habit, and stroking his little black mustache. Peter was both slight and short, scarcely taller than his sister. But he carried himself so erectly, and his lean, intelligent face was so dignified that he seemed rather above than under the average size.

Now, when we had finished our dismal tale, he kissed Dorothy and patted my shoulder as grandly as though he had been a foot taller than I, instead of six inches shorter.

“I’ll see the old boy through,” he promised. “I’ll take hold of things and get them straightened out in jig time!”

We were vastly relieved, for Peter was a capable, energetic chap, and he was not stunned by this dreadful affair as we were. He had not been here to receive its full, paralyzing shock.

He was off directly, without stopping to see Aunt Mary. “I can’t stop to hear about the knots in her neck just now, Dot,” he declared. “I’ve other more important things to do.”

Before lunch he was back. “I’ve seen the old boy, Dot,” he said. “He’s pretty blue, but I hope I bucked him up a bit. And I’ve talked with the sheriff and Doctor Burgess. Inquest will be here at Pinelands, in the town hall, at ten to-morrow. The coroner’s sure it’ll come out all right; ‘parties unknown,’ maybe, or purely accidental at the worst. He was awfully decent; neither he nor the sheriff believes Lewis knew the fellow was there. Queer proceeding, I must say, for Gaskell to be pussy-footing around in our back yard like that! But it’s all right; Lewis won’t even need a lawyer, Burgess says. They’ll see that he’s cleared. So don’t worry any more, Dot!”

Dorothy promised obediently; and I tried my best not to worry either. But that was a long, long day, and it was very hard to listen patiently to Aunt Mary’s complaints. For now that she knew that Lewis hadn’t killed the quail, after all, their shrill note began to annoy her again. She quivered visibly, almost ostentatiously, at each repetition of “bob_white_! bob_white_!” until I had to bite my lips to keep from reminding her that her complaints about a few quail had caused tragedy enough already.

But the day passed somehow, and the night. Long before ten on Monday morning I sat on a front seat at the town hall, between Dorothy and her brother, waiting for the inquest to begin. Aunt Mary had protested pathetically against our “desertion,” but for once her desires were ignored.

The room began to fill. At last the coroner arrived, then the sheriff, bringing Lewis with him. The boy came straight to us and sat down beside Dorothy, his guard dropping unobtrusively into a seat behind.

“Cheer up, honey!” whispered Lewis. “Hello, unk! Hello, Peter! Old Redden’s a brick; treated me like a son. I slept in his spare bedroom. It’ll all come right.”

Then the coroner rapped for order, and the proceedings began.

I have not the heart, even now, to tell all that happened. Our high hopes were struck to the ground almost at once.

For the district attorney appeared, the “State Solicitor,” as he is called in North Carolina, and he took charge of affairs. Coroner Burgess did his best for Lewis, and he proved himself a kindly and impartial presiding officer. He did more; he even leaned toward us and argued in Lewis’ favor. He was moved, perhaps, by the bond of their common profession; perhaps by a conviction that the boy was innocent; perhaps by Dorothy’s appealing face, and the memory of that excellent breakfast. But, whatever the reason, he did his best for us.

Nevertheless, the solicitor, Toby Vanbrugh, combated all his well-meant efforts. Vanbrugh was a large-bodied young man, with a heavy, dignified face, whose features all seemed two sizes too big for it--except his eyes, which were three sizes too small and an inch too close together. He wore a flapping frock coat and a black string tie, the conventional get-up of the old-fashioned country lawyer. His voice and gestures made him seem like a cheap actor, playing the part of the fearless prosecutor in a melodrama.

He had been a close friend of Doctor Gaskell’s, but I do not think it was that friendship which moved him. No, he saw here the makings of an important murder trial, in which both victim and murderer were people of prominence in the countryside. He saw an opportunity for self-advertisement. The McGregors were rich, he knew, and I was not without means. If Lewis could be indicted for the murder of Doctor Gaskell, there would be a long and hard-fought trial; prominent lawyers would appear for the defense; there would be columns and columns of publicity for the alert young prosecutor, who faced, alone and unaided, this galaxy of legal talent and fought it to a standstill, vindicating the rights of the commonwealth, demanding equal justice for the rich as for the poor. Oh, he was not an uncommon type, this Vanbrugh; every community East and West, North and South, has known his like.

He allowed the coroner to present his case; the discovery of the body upon the heels of a gun shot, with Lewis standing over it, gun in hand. The coroner stated the cause of death and showed his jury a half dozen bird shot. These had been extracted from the wound, and he gave it as his opinion, as he had to us yesterday, that Gaskell might have been lying there dead before Lewis shot. Then the district attorney arose and asked permission to introduce other evidence “for the State.”

He called Olsen, the druggist, to testify, reluctantly enough, to Lewis’ threats in his store. He called Satterfield and the constable and two or three others who had overheard my nephew’s angry talk. With diabolic skill he made it appear that Lewis had not merely spoken against Gaskell, but that he had definitely threatened to shoot him. He demanded the gun Lewis had carried; when it was placed in evidence, he cut open the undischarged cartridge--it was a double-barreled shotgun--and showed the jury that the shot were identical with the shot extracted from Gaskell’s body.

I had already testified, but he recalled me and made an impassioned address to the jury, under the cover of a cross-examination.

“Now, Mr. Uhlman, is it not true that your nephew, after disagreeing with Doctor Gaskell in a question of diagnosis, lost his temper entirely? Did he not make a disgraceful exhibition of himself, abusing this poor dead man, this Doctor Gaskell, a gentleman of the highest professional attainments, of the most scrupulous personal honor, a gentleman known to all in this community, loved by all for his unselfish devotion to his healing work, for the many, many, unobtrusive acts of charity, of loving kindness, to which scores in this very room, aye, hundreds in this town, can testify--and would so testify, though they must walk barefooted over sharp stones to tell of Doctor Gaskell’s noble nature, and to confound his cowardly slayer----”

The coroner rapped sharply. “I will ask you to remember, Mr. Vanbrugh, that you’re supposed to be questioning this witness, not to be making a stump speech!”

“I beg the court’s pardon if my affection for this poor gentleman, so foully done to death, overcame me for the moment. Surely no praise of one, whom we all loved, is out of place here, beside his dead body! But I will refrain.” He wiped his eyes ostentatiously. “Now, Mr. Uhlman, is it not true that your nephew, the prisoner, made threats against Doctor Gaskell at Miss McGregor’s house, even before his outbreak at Olsen’s store Saturday?”

And I had to admit it, cursing Rosina’s loose tongue to myself; for I could guess whence Vanbrugh’s knowledge of the quarrel over Aunt Mary’s health had come.

“And do you believe, sir, remembering that you are upon your oath, do you ask this jury to believe that your nephew, this prisoner, went out into the dawn, armed with a deadly weapon, without knowledge or suspicion of the murdered man’s whereabouts? Do you not know that he had expressed a deadly animosity against my poor, dead friend, that----”

Playing skillfully upon the sectional prejudices of the audience, for my nephew and I had come down from the North, Vanbrugh rolled out a fervid eulogium of the dead man, like Marc Antony beside the bier of Cæsar. Evidently he was enjoying himself thoroughly.

He kept sneering at Lewis, and he continually referred to him as my nephew, doing his best to make it appear that I was suppressing a guilty knowledge because of our relationship. In every way he exercised the arts of an unscrupulous demagogue until I became confused and incoherent and stuttered with wrath, thereby making the case against Lewis blacker than ever.

But I will not repeat all he said. Even now the memory turns me furious. I will only say that when the coroner at last cut him off and turned the case over to the jury the verdict was a foregone conclusion.

Lewis leaned over to me. From the moment he left the stand he had been deathly white; there were dark, bruised rings under his eyes; his features twitched, his hands shook pitiably. “And the worst of it is, unk,” he whispered tragically, “that I really did shoot the poor chap! Oh, I’m sure of it now.” He tugged at his disordered black hair. “And, unk, that fiend Vanbrugh has almost made me think I did it on purpose!”