Prelude for War (10 page)

The coroner wagged his head
sympathetically, as if he could feel everything that Fairweather must have
suffered.

“I’m sure that we all
appreciate your feelings,” he said.
He
turned the papers on his table, and went on, as though
apologizing
for bringing back any more painful memories:
“Have
you any idea as to how the fire could have started?”

“None. It may have
been a faulty piece of electric wiring,
or
a cigarette end carelessly dropped somewhere. It must have been something like
that.”

“Thank you, Mr
Fairweather,” said the coroner. “Next
witness,
please.”

There was an interruption.
Before the sergeant could
call out the next name the
little black-bearded juryman
opened his mouth.

” ‘Arf a mo,” he
said. “I’ve got some questions I’d like
to
ask.”

The coroner stared at him
as though he had been guilty
of some indecency. He seemed to find it
extraordinary that
a member of the jury
should wish to ask a question.

The little juryman returned
his stare defiantly. He had
the air of Ajax defying
the lightning.

“And what is your
question?” asked the coroner, in a
supercilious
patronizing tone.

“Didn’t the witness
‘ave no servants?”

“Er—several,”
Fairweather said mildly. “But I had
given
them all leave to attend a dance in Reading, and they
did
not get back until the fire was practically over. The only
one left was my chauffeur, who lives in the lodge, about
three hundred yards away from the main building.”

“Didn’t nobody try to
put the fire out?”

“It was hardly
possible. It spread too rapidly, and we had nothing to tackle it with.”

“Thank you,” said
the coroner. “Next witness, please.”

He contrived to be mildly
apologetic and contemptuously
crushing at the same
time. He seemed to apologize to Fair
weather for the
trouble and distress he had been caused
in
answering two altogether ridiculous and irrelevant ques
tions, and simultaneously to point out the little juryman
as a pest and a nuisance who would be well advised to shut
up and behave himself.

“Kane Luker,”
called the sergeant.

Luker gave his evidence in
a quiet precise voice. He had
been sitting up reading
when he heard the fire alarm. He left his room and went downstairs, where he
discovered
that the fire appeared to have started
in the library, but it was already too fierce for him to be able to get near
it.
He opened the front door, and while he was doing so
Sir
Robert and Lady Sangore came downstairs. He told them
to get outside and shout up at the bedroom windows. He
started to go down to the lodge to telephone for the fire
brigade. He met the chauffeur on the way and sent him
back to make the call, and himself returned to the house.
As he reached it, Knightley carried Lady Valerie out. He
went in and started to climb the stairs, where he met Fair
weather. He was sure that everyone must have heard the
alarms.

“I said ‘Do you know
if the others are all out?’ and I
thought he gave
some affirmative answer. It’s only since then that I’ve realized that he must
have missed my first
words and thought that I
said ‘The others are all out.’
But I agree with him that
it will be hard for us to forgive
ourselves for the
tragic results of our misunderstanding.”

“I don’t think that
any blame can be attached to you,” observed the coroner benignly.
“All of us have made simi
lar mistakes even in normal
circumstances, and in a moment
of excitement like that
they are still more understandable. The tragic results of the mistake were due
to a combination
of causes for which you and Mr
Fairweather can scarcely
be held responsible.”

He turned pointedly and challengingly
towards the jury.

“Any questions?”
he barked.

He seemed to be daring them
to ask any questions.

“Yus,” said the
black-bearded little man.

The coroner discovered him
again with fresh evidence
of distaste. His brows drew
together ominously, as if it
had just occurred to him to
wonder who had been responsible for including such an impossible person in the
quorum,
and as if he were making a mental note to issue a
severe
reprimand to the party concerned. He tapped
impatiently
on the table with his finger tips.

“Well?”

“I suppose you all
‘ad wine with your dinner, and when
you went into the
libry you ‘ad more drinks,” said the little
juryman.
” ‘Ow many drinks did you ‘ave and ‘ow many
did
Mr Kennet ‘ave?”

Luker shrugged.

“Some of us had a
little wine with dinner, certainly; and
after
dinner there was whiskey and soda in the library. I
can’t
say exactly how much we had, but it was certainly a
very
moderate amount.”

“Kennet wasn’t drunk,
was ‘e?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then why didn’t ‘e
‘ear the alarm?”

Luker looked appealingly
at the coroner, who said:
“That is hardly a question which the
witness can be expected
to answer.”

He looked at the jury as if
inviting them to dissociate
themselves from their one
discreditable member; and the foreman, a smeary individual with a lock of hair
plastered
down over his forehead, said
ingratiatingly: “He might ‘ve
been a heavy
sleeper.”

“From the evidence,
that seems to be the only reasonable
explanation,”
said the coroner firmly. “Thank you, Mr Luker.”

General Sangore and his
wife briefly corroborated what
had been told before. They
had been wakened by the fire
alarms, they left the
house, and it was not until later that
they
realized that Kennet was missing. Lady Valerie gave
evidence
of being rescued by Captain Knightley and of
being
the first to notice that Kennet was not outside. The
chauffeur
gave evidence of having met Luker on the drive
and
of having gone back to call the fire brigade. He had
had
a lot of difficulty in getting through, and consequently
had been detained too long to see much of what went on
at the house.

None of these witnesses
were questioned. The black-
bearded juryman,
temporarily discouraged, had relapsed
into frustrated scowling.

The coroner shuffled his
papers again with an air of
returning equanimity. No
doubt he was feeling that he had now got the situation well in hand.

“Next witness,
please.”

“Simon Templar,”
called the sergeant.

III

How Simon Templar Drove to
London,

and General
 
Sangore
 
Experienced
 
an

Impediment in His Speech

T
HERE
was a stir of excitement in the press seats as Simon
Templar
walked up on to the platform and took the oath.
Even
if the party from Whiteways had failed to recognize
his
name, there was no such obtuseness among the reporters.
The Saint had provided them with too many good stories
in the past for them to forget him, and their air of profes
sional boredom gave way to a sudden and unexpected alertness. A
subdued hum of speculation swept over them and
spread
to one or two other parts of the room where the
name
had also revived recollections. The black-bearded
little
juryman sat forward and stared.

While Simon was taking the
oath, he noticed that the
coroner was poring intently
over a scrap of paper which
had somehow come into his
hands. When he raised his eyes from it, they came to rest on the Saint with a
new wariness.
He folded the note and tucked it away
in his breast pocket
without shifting his gaze;
and his manner became very brisk
again.

“I understand, Mr
Templar, that you arrived on the
scene of the fire some time
after it had started.”

“I have no idea,”
said the Saint carefully. “I only saw
it
a very short time before I got there. And I was there
in
time to hear Lady Valerie say that Kennet was missing.”

The coroner rubbed his
chin. He seemed to be weighing
his words with particular
circumspection.

“Then you went into
the house to try to get him out.”

“Yes.”

“In what condition was
the house when you entered it?
I mean, how far had the
fire progressed?”

“The whole place was
blazing,” Simon answered. “It
was
worst in the part which I now gather was called the west wing. There was fire
in the hall, and the stairs had
begun to burn. Part of the
passage I had to go down to
reach Kennet’s room was
also alight.”

“I take it that with
all that fire there would be a great
deal of smoke and
fumes.”

“There was quite a
bit.”

“I understand that
you were quite—er—groggy when
you came out.”

“Only for a moment. It
passed off very quickly.”

“But I take it that if
you had stayed in the house any
longer than you did, you
would inevitably have been over
come by the smoke and
fumes and lost consciousness.”

“I suppose so,
eventually.”

“To look at you, Mr
Templar, one would certainly get
the impression that your
physical condition was exception
ally good.”

“I’ve always got
around all right.”

There was a pause. The
coroner turned to the jury.

“Mr Templar modestly
tells us that he gets around all
right,” he stated.
“You can see for yourselves that he has
the
build and bearing of an unusually strong and athletic
man.
You will therefore agree that his powers of resistance
to
such things as smoke and fumes are probably higher
than
the average, and certainly immeasurably greater than
those
of a slightly built sedentary type such as the late Mr
Kennet,
whose constitution, I am told, was always some
what
delicate. I want you to bear this in mind a little
later
on.”

He turned back to the
Saint.

“You appear to have
acted with singular courage, Mr
Templar,” he said.
“I’m sure that that is quite obvious to
all
of us here in spite of the modest way in which you have
told your story. I should like to compliment you on your
extremely gallant attempt to save this unfortunate young man’s life.
Next witness, please.”

A glint of steel came into
the Saint’s eyes. He knew that the coroner had had a good talk with the party
from White
ways, and it had been evident from the
start of the proceedings that everything was laid out to lead up to a verdict
of
accidental death with as little fuss as possible.
That was
all very well; and the Saint had quite
enjoyed himself while
he was waiting for his
turn. But now he realized that he
was not intended to
have a turn. His own evidence had
been adroitly
manoeuvred towards bolstering up the desired
verdict;
and the coroner, warned about him in time, was
getting
rid of him with a pontifical pat on the back before
he
had a chance to derange the well-oiled machinery.
Which
was not by any means the Saint’s idea.

“Haven’t the jury any
questions?” he asked breezily.

He turned towards them and
looked hard at the black-
bearded little man, who
was sitting slumped disconsolately
in his chair. There
was something compelling about his
direct gaze.

The black-bearded little
man’s figure straightened and
an eager light came into
his eyes. He rose.