of cynical indifference in which they had been expressed.
The inquest was held in the School gymnasium the following morning amidst the gathering heat of a typical midsummer day. It began at ten o’clock and was over within the hour. Revell had never seen anything quite so slickly performed. Dr. Roseveare, calm and weightily sorrowful, brooded over the proceedings like some kindly deity whom it would have been ungenerous and even impious to frustrate. Both Coroner and jury seemed anxious to spare the feelings of such a well-known and valued citizen of Oakington. Indeed, it might almost have appeared that general sympathy was as much with the doctor as with the deceased.
Medical evidence was given by Murchiston in a decorous and hardly audible undertone. The injuries (technically specified) were, he declared emphatically, such as might have arisen through a fall from a considerable height on to a hard surface. Wilson, dressed in his Sunday clothes, described his finding of the body and of his later discovery of the wrist-watch on the top diving-platform. The jury, having previously seen the body, were then conducted into the swimming-bath and shown the place where the body had been found. They also climbed (some of them) and examined the diving-platform. On the return of the entire party to the gymnasium, Roseveare was called upon to give evidence; he explained the boy’s habits more or less as he had previously explained them to Revell. No further evidence was called, but one of the jurors insisted on asking at what hour the wrist-watch had stopped. As it had stopped through want of winding and at eleven minutes past three on the afternoon following the boy’s death, it was not easy to see the point of the matter, but it served at any rate to prevent the asking of any further and perhaps less foolish questions.
The jury retired and brought in an almost immediate verdict of “Accidental Death”. Then the Coroner expressed sympathy all round— with the relatives of the boy, with the Head, with the School, and even with the jury for being called upon to investigate such a distressing affair. “It is only too clear how it happened,” he remarked. “Boys will be boys, and we all of us know the temptation of a swim in weather like this.”
“And then,” as Revell remarked to Lambourne afterwards, “the fatuous idiot wiped the sweat off his thick head. Man, it was awful to have to sit there and listen to it all. Roseveare had ‘em absolutely in the hollow of his hand. Of course, I know he’s the biggest pot in Oakington, and half the jury were tradesmen who depended on the School, but still—even THAT doesn’t altogether explain it. Englishmen aren’t really corrupt enough to connive at murder. The trouble is, they never SUSPECTED. They’ve heard all the queer rumours, but when it came to the point, Roseveare simply hypnotised the lot of ‘em!
“ONLY TOO CLEAR HOW IT HAPPENED! God—I nearly laughed when the Coroner said that! Only too clear why a boy should dive into an empty bath in the middle of the night. . . . And I suppose the first inquest was pretty much the same kind of farce?”
“Quite,” replied Lambourne calmly. “Yet I wonder you’re even surprised at it—it’s all so much the sort of thing one has to expect. Most people in this world are incapable of any really critical observation—they won’t and can’t see anything unless they have a previous hint that it’s going to be there. If Scotland Yard men had examined the gas-fittings after the first accident, they might have discovered something rather interesting about them, but as it was, you see, the examiners were merely gas company officials bent on exonerating their own firm. What they may have wondered, among themselves, I’ve often speculated on—though it’s quite possible that they didn’t wonder anything at all. That Tunstall fellow, though, seemed to think
William K. Klingaman, Nicholas P. Klingaman
John McEnroe;James Kaplan