With a Bare Bodkin by Cyril Hare

Author:Cyril Hare
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
Publisher: Reading Essentials
Published: 1946-05-24T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

THE INQUEST AND AFTER

Mallett looked with an impassive face at the document which Miss Brown had laid on the table. Neither he nor Pettigrew said anything for a moment or two. Then he rose to his feet, rather wearily.

“Well,” he said, “it is what one might expect, isn’t it? Borrowed and returned. I’m only surprised it hasn’t got the usual Civil Service minute, ‘Seen, thank you’, at the end. I don’t suppose the messenger has the slightest idea where he picked it up, either. He just found it in someone’s tray along with a lot of other stuff and brought it along in the ordinary way. And if I hadn’t happened to come in this morning, there’d have been nothing whatever to show that it hadn’t come here straight from the Controller’s room.”

“It makes me wonder how many of my other files have taken the same trip,” said Pettigrew.

“I don’t suppose we shall ever know that. I blame myself for ever letting the report leave my hands, but it’s too late to think about that. Well, it all fits in, doesn’t it, Mr. Pettigrew? We’ve had a very interesting talk, anyway, and I shan’t forget what you have told me. I’ll see you at the inquest this afternoon.”

The inquest was sparsely attended. Besides Pettigrew, the only member of the Control who was present was the Establishment Officer, who presumably had come to ascertain where and by what means his establishment had been reduced by one. The local press was represented by an untidy young woman, from whose lack-lustre expression it was easy to see that no advance information of the morning’s discovery had been allowed to leak out. A jury of seven looked as wooden as juries do all the world over. Apart from these, there were not a dozen people in court, and nobody who had not noticed that at least half of them were plain clothes policemen would have guessed that the proceedings would be of the smallest interest.

A troubled looking middle-aged man with a black tie was the first witness. He proved to be Miss Danville’s brother and only near relation. He gave evidence of identifying his sister’s body in the hospital mortuary and disappeared from the witness-box in a matter of seconds. The untidy young woman jotted down a few words, tapped her pencil against her teeth and yawned. She was still yawning when the doctor whom Pettigrew remembered from Friday afternoon briefly described being called to the offices of the Pin Control and finding Miss Danville already dead. Then the county pathologist came into the box to detail the result of his post-mortem examination. It was couched in language of the severest technicality and it was an appreciable time before the reporter realized its purport. Then she began to scribble furiously.

In plain English, Miss Danville had died from a stab wound in the abdomen. The wound was very small and very deep. It had penetrated the renal artery and caused internal haemorrhage which might be expected to produce death in a matter of minutes.

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