The Perfect Daughter (10 page)

I waited until the car was out of sight and strolled slowly back to the yard behind the meeting-room. The black car was parked there with the gardener at the wheel, and no sign of Ben and Alexandra. They must have gone inside. It was twenty to eleven and the doors were open now, with a constable standing outside. I decided to wait until the last possible minute and watched as more people arrived, first in ones and twos and then in a steady stream, mostly men. One man, in his sixties with a neat grey beard and very upright bearing, brought the police constable snapping to attention. He was dressed like Ben in dark suit, armband and bowler, and walked quickly, eyes straight ahead, like a man who was used to people getting out of his way. There was a shiny pink scar down the left side of his face from hat to beard, just missing his eye but dragging the corner of it down. He nodded an acknowledgement to the policeman and went inside without looking round.

A few minutes later a governess cart came skidding into the yard, scattering gravel. It was drawn by a useful-looking bay and driven by a girl about Verona's age. She had a round open-looking face, flushed with anxiety and hurry, dark curls under a schoolgirlish black felt hat. Almost before the cart came to a halt the door at the back opened and a middle-aged man jumped out.

‘That's the doctor,' somebody said.

The man hurried into the building. The girl blew out her cheeks with relief at having got him there in time, slackened the reins and stayed sitting in the cart. Five minutes to eleven. I moved towards the door then took a jump backwards. Somebody was coming out – a woman, hurrying, stumbling. She was dressed in black, head down, with a black motoring veil hiding her face. Alexandra. Beside her, holding her by the arm, practically holding her up, was the man with the scar and grey beard. He was angry now, jostling people aside. A sharp command to the policemen, and the people trying to get in were held back to let them through. The gardener was already holding the door of the motorcar open and together he and the bearded man got Alexandra on to the back seat. She was slumping sideways. They had to prop her up like a doll. The girl in the governess cart was watching horrified, mouth open. She started knotting the reins round the rail of the governess cart, as if with the idea of going to help, then just stood there uncertainly. There was no uncertainty about the bearded man. He grabbed an onlooker by the shoulder and made him help the driver start the car then got in beside Alexandra. She slumped again, letting her weight fall against him. Her black-gloved hand was clamped against her eyes, over the veil.

‘Too much for her,' a woman said. ‘They shouldn't have let her come.'

After what seemed like a long time the car started and they drove off, a policeman clearing the way for them.

*   *   *

Eleven o'clock. I went to the door, asked a constable where the witnesses were supposed to wait and was directed to a room off the corridor. I'd expected to have to face Ben there, assuming that he'd be a witness too, but there was no sign of him. There were just two people apart from myself, the doctor who'd arrived in such a hurry and a sharp-faced man in a grey suit who had a professional air about him. He and the doctor were sitting next to each other, talking in low voices, very much two medical men together. The doctor still looked hot and anxious. They glanced at me, stood up and said good morning, sat down and went on with their conversation. From the room next door we heard chairs scraping, the low boom of a man's voice, probably the coroner's. I knew enough about the procedure to guess what was going on – first the formal opening, name of the deceased and date of her death. The coroner would already have been to view the body, probably days earlier. Then the swearing-in of the jury, followed by evidence of formal identification. Ben would do that and normally it wouldn't take long, but the coroner might decide to question him about Verona's state of mind. After that, it would be the discovery of the body. My turn. The two medical men had finished their talk now and were staring straight ahead, trying not to catch my eye. It was a warm day, with sunshine and the sounds of a town going about its business coming through the open window. I wondered if there was anybody back at the house to look after Alexandra, wished I could do something for her but knew I was the last person in the world she'd want to see.

‘Miss Bray.'

The coroner's officer. I followed him along a corridor, through a door, was sworn in. The coroner was an ordinary conscientious-looking man with a bald patch. The jury were ten respectable tradesmen in their Sunday best, middle-aged mostly, showing no hostility in the way they stared at me. Not yet. Ben was sitting to one side of the front row. He stared too, beyond me, as if at something far out to sea. The room was full, five rows of people. The coroner asked questions about how I came to find Verona, making it easy. I was family after all. Naturally I'd be visiting Alexandra, taking a stroll to the boathouse. We came to finding her hanging, pulling in the body with a boathook. The coroner took a long time writing it down.

To make sure my eyes wouldn't come into contact with Ben's, I looked towards the back of the room – and found myself staring at Bill Musgrave. The last man I'd have expected to see. He should have been in court or in his chambers in Manchester, not travelling hundreds of miles to inquests that had nothing to do with him in Devon. He gave a kind of twisted smile that might have been encouragement, sympathy or even an apology for surprising me. I looked away, trying to give my mind a chance to catch up. There was a woman sitting next to him, small, in her thirties, with glossy dark hair and big beautiful eyes. She was staring at me, lips apart, very intently. I'd never seen her in my life before. It was almost a relief when the coroner stopped writing and started asking questions again, but the relief didn't last long. He wanted to know when I'd last seen Verona alive. I told him about probably seeing her outside Buckingham Palace a week before I found her body, on 21 May. In what circumstances? So, of course, it all came out about the deputation. The coroner managed to keep the disapproval off his face although not out of his voice. A few of the jurors looked downright hostile. In the next pause for writing I couldn't help looking at Bill. He was worried. Had he come all this way to try to protect me, for goodness sake? I wished I could tell him that I was a lot more used to this than he was.

The coroner wanted to know whether I'd seen much of Verona in London. Just twice, I said. Had I formed any judgment about her state of mind? I'd expected this and had my reply ready.

‘As far as I could tell, she was starting to settle down in London, making friends.'

Scratch, scratch, his pen went. Bill was still looking worried. The dark-haired woman next to him was looking even more intent, as if this part of the story mattered a lot to her. But why should it? If she'd been friends or family, she'd have been sitting up at the front near Ben. Press? Just possibly. Her jacket and turban-style hat were more fashionable than you'd expect at a seaside town inquest.

‘Would you have expected her to confide in you if she'd had problems of any kind?'

When the coroner asked that, I felt an electric charge in the air. At the time I had no idea why. It was an obvious enough question after all. We were talking about a suicide. But there was something happening I didn't understand. It had to do with Alexandra's sudden flight, with the bearded man's anger.

‘No,' I said. ‘I shouldn't have expected her to confide in me.'

That was it. I was allowed to step down and listen to the rest of the proceedings. There was a spare seat on the end of the second row, at the far side from Ben.

*   *   *

The next witness was the man I'd seen getting out of the governess cart, the family practitioner, Dr Maidment. He was there because he'd been the one to certify Verona dead. After getting that on record, the coroner asked if he'd known the deceased for some time.

‘Yes, indeed. I took up practice here soon after she was born. I have the pleasure to be doctor to Commodore North and his family.'

‘Had you seen Miss North recently?'

‘Not very recently. The last occasion was back in the autumn. She came to say goodbye to my daughter before going to London.' (Presumably the girl who'd been driving the governess cart.)

‘And you hadn't seen her since then?'

‘No, sir.'

It was all simple enough, and yet the family doctor was clearly unhappy, even more unhappy than you'd expect in the circumstances. The feeling that there was something worse to come was growing. We all felt it. Dr Maidment was allowed to step down and paced heavily to a seat near the back of the court.

Next witness, Dr Stephen White, pathologist. The other man from the waiting-room was sworn in. It seemed to take the coroner for ever to note down his string of professional qualifications. Yes, at the coroner's request, he had carried out a postmortem examination on the body of Miss Verona North on 28 May 1914. Had he formed any opinion as to the cause of death? The pathologist hunched over his notes, reading in a monotone. Chair legs squeaked on the linoleum floor as everybody strained forward to hear him, all except Ben.

‘… congestion of face and cyanosis typical of asphyxia, engorged tongue, burst capillaries in eyes, considerable bruising and abrasions on neck and throat, consistent with pressure from a tight ligature…'

I closed my eyes but still saw the silver light of the water in the estuary, smelt mud and creosote.

‘… some abrasions and bruising on the ankles and over the insteps, also consistent with pressure from ligatures…'

Feet still in their stockings and shoes, green weed trailing.

‘… compression of the jugular vein and trachea, no rupture of spinal cord and no significant displacement of neck vertebrae…'

The hangman's fracture, they called it, that deplacement of the neck vertebrae. But if the hangman got it wrong, the victim died from strangling not a broken neck. That was what had happened to Verona. The coroner wanted to get it quite clear, for the jury.

‘In layman's terms, Dr White, in your opinion death resulted from strangulation.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Feet being pulled out and out by the tide, noose slowly tightening. Her arms weren't tied. Surely she couldn't have helped doing something to relieve the pressure? I was sitting on the edge of my seat. I wanted to stand up and ask Dr White, ‘Were her nails broken? Were there scratch marks on her neck?' The coroner asked Dr White if he had made any more observations the court should know about.

‘Yes, sir.' He turned over another page of his notes, seemed to hesitate, then went on in the same monotone. ‘I observed a deep puncture wound in her upper left arm, some three and a half inches above the elbow joint, surrounded by superficial bruising.'

Whispering and rustling in court. The coroner frowned.

‘Did you form any opinion as to what might have caused the puncture?'

‘In my view, it was consistent with an injection from a hypodermic syringe.'

‘An injection?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Administered by the deceased herself or by some other person?'

‘Either. The position of the puncture would be consistent with self-administration.'

The coroner looked at him steadily for a long time.

‘Is there any evidence of what might have been administered?'

‘Yes. On examination of the internal organs I found distinct traces of morphine.'

Gasps around the court. Ben was staring straight ahead. The coroner had been making a note of what the pathologist was saying but stopped, pen in hand.

‘You've given your opinion that death resulted from strangulation?'

‘Yes, sir, and that remains my opinion. I had further analysis done of the internal organs which confirmed that though morphine was present, it was not in sufficient quantities to have caused death.'

The coroner sighed, then wrote for a long time.

‘Any other observations?'

‘One.' Dr White was on the last page of his notes now. He seemed reluctant to get to the end of them. The court was as quiet as the inside of an ice cave. ‘The deceased was well advanced into the first trimester of pregnancy.'

More gasps. I happened to be looking towards Bill at the time and the dark-haired woman in the turban hat sitting next to him. She wasn't the one who'd gasped, but the expression on her face was more than concern. It was pain.

The coroner said, ‘By first trimester, you mean…?'

‘The deceased was somewhere between two and three months pregnant, in my opinion somewhere between eight and ten weeks.'

Like everyone I couldn't help glancing at Ben. He gave no sign that he'd heard, none at all. They'd warned him, which was why he'd got Alexandra away. The court had been struck silent at first, but now a rustle of whispering started.

The coroner put down his pen.

‘Thank you, Dr Smith. Please call the next witness.'

The next, and last, witness was a young police constable who'd arrived about an hour after Verona's body was discovered. I remembered him asking me a few questions and how he'd seemed awed both by Ben's position and the event itself. Now he gave his evidence stolidly, not looking at Ben. He'd arrived at the house where Dr Maidment was already present and had certified death. He'd spoken to Commodore North and arranged for the removal of the body to the mortuary. Later he'd made a search of the boathouse and taken possession of the following objects.

A hemp rope, one end knotted in a noose, the other cut.

(I'd gone running up to the house for help when I knew I couldn't get Verona down on my own and Ben had run back with me. We'd got her into one of the rowing boats. I'd held her while Ben cut the rope with a sharp seaman's knife. When we'd got her back on the wooden platform Ben had somehow got the noose off and flung it down.)