3: The Witness-Box

ADVENTURES were crowding thick and fast on Jennison, but this scrap of paper business was more to his taste than any that had preceded it during that eventful midnight. This, he said to himself, was a bit of all right; it was the sort of thing you read of in newspapers and novels. He read and re-read the nine words, revelling in their mysteriousness, gloating over the fact that it was he, and he only, who had found this paper on which they were written. Suddenly a terrible suspicion over-clouded the brightness of his ideas---how did he know that this bit of writing had anything to do with the dead man? It might have been dropped into the gutter from whence he had rescued it by somebody else; it might have nothing whatever to do with Alfred Jakyn and his strange death. But considering everything, Jennison believed that it had---he cast his doubt aside. No!---the note had probably been thrust by Alfred Jakyn loosely, carelessly, into the edge of a pocket, and had fallen out on the street when he fell. And it might prove a thing of high importance---what, he believed, the detectives call a clue. He began to wonder what Womersley would say when he showed it to him. But at that point temptation assailed Jennison. Why should he tell Womersley anything about this discovery? Why should not he, Albert Jennison, take a hand himself in the solving of the mystery? Why not?---Why not, indeed? He went to bed on that, and turned and turned half the night, inventing theories and planning campaigns.

And when he woke in the morning, Jennison wished that he had nothing to do but to follow up this affair. He would have liked to go round to the police station to find Womersley and persuade that phlegmatic person to let him share in his investigations; perhaps, if Womersley had proved tractable, he might have let him into his own secret and shown him the scrap of paper. But he was a slave!---a miserable, treadmill slave---and nine o’clock found him, as usual, in the city. There he toiled all day, doing his work badly, for once, because his mind was otherwise. A thrill ran through him, however, when, as he entered his lodgings that evening, his landlady came up from her region in the basement bearing an official-looking piece of paper.

“There’s been a policeman here after you, Mr. Jennison,” she said, eyeing him closely. “He said to give you this here as soon as you come in.”

Jennison glanced at the document and held his head a couple of inches higher.

“Ah, yes, Mrs. Canby,” he answered. “Yes! It’s about an inquest to-morrow morning. I’m a witness, you know---the most important witness, I believe. That poor fellow who died outside here last night, you know---I told you about it before I went out, you know.”

“You did, Mr. Jennison, and a turn it did give me, too!” said Mrs. Canby. “To think of a feller-being falling dead outside there, and us all a-warm and snug in our beds, close by! Leastways, you weren’t, Mr. Jennison. And how will it turn, Mr. Jennison, do you think?”

But Jennison didn’t know. His only answer as he repaired to his tea-supper was to shake his head with dark and solemn meaning. What he did know, and highly appreciated, was that he was going to have a whole holiday next day. The inquest was set down for ten-thirty in the morning; of course he would have to be there, and probably the proceedings would last over several hours; anyway, being, as it were, specially commanded by the law to be present, he would certainly not be able to attend to his usual duties. It gave him a thoroughly exquisite pleasure to write a letter to the manager of the warehouse explaining why he should not be at his desk next day, and for the rest of the evening, instead of writing poetry, he rehearsed his evidence, and even studied, before his mirror, the pose and attitude he would adopt in the witness-box. Next morning he spent much time over his toilet, and when he finally reached the Coroner’s Court, a quarter of an hour earlier than he need have done, he was disgusted to find that all the other people assembled there seemed to have arrayed themselves in their oldest instead of their newest clothes: the prevailing tone of things was shabby, sordid.

Jennison had never been in a coroner’s court before. He was not impressed. The Coroner, a barrister, seemed to him too matter of fact and practical in his remarks; the jury, twelve good men and true, looked as if brains were much wanting amongst them; the police, the legal folk, the pressmen, the spectators, were all common, vulgar, material---there was too much of a business about it altogether, and none of that reserve and mystery which Jennison had hoped for. And at first the proceedings were very dull, because Jennison already knew all that came out. He had heard everything that Bradmore could tell, for instance. Bradmore, who gave formal proof of the dead man’s identity, now re-told it; Jennison knew every word that was to come from him. And somehow, when he himself got into the witness-box, his performance there seemed dull and flat, and things weren’t what he’d hoped they’d be. He had wanted to thrill the court with a thoroughly dramatic story; instead of that he found himself giving affirmatives and negatives to cut-and-dried questions. There were no thrills; no sensations; actually some of the reporters present whispered and laughed amongst themselves while he, Jennison, the only man who had actually seen, was being examined. It was all as lifeless and sterile as the voice of the man who thrust a Testament into the hand of a witness and bade him or her repeat a babble of phrases.

But Jennison, once more relegated to inconspicuousness amongst the herd of spectators, became conscious that the court was waking up when the police surgeon went into the witness-box. He had closely watched this functionary on the night of Alfred Jakyn’s death, and had said to himself since that he knew as much about it as he, Jennison, did. What Jennison did not know, however, was that since that hasty examination at the mortuary there had been an autopsy. But the Coroner knew, and the jury knew, and the legal folk present knew; so did the reporters, who, on the medical man’s appearance, took seriously to their pencils and note-books. And in a couple of minutes Jennison found himself gasping at a suddenly-sprung suggestion. It hit him full, as the result of a brief question from the coroner and a sharp reply from the witness. They had already exchanged a good deal in the way of question and answer before this came along, but when it came, the atmosphere changed from heaviness to the quick instinct of surprise.

“And the result of the post-mortem examination, now? Have you formed any opinion as to the cause of death?”

“Yes. I am firmly of opinion as to the cause of death. Poison!”

The Coroner glanced at his jury. But each juryman was attentive enough; the twelve pairs of eyes were fixed steadily on the police surgeon.

“Poison!” repeated the Coroner. “What particular poison?”

“That I cannot say. It is a question for experts. We have already called in their aid. But I am convinced that the man was poisoned.”

“From what you saw, you don’t feel justified in particularising?”

“I may say this. I believe the man was poisoned by something with the nature of which I---and I should say, most medical practitioners---am unfamiliar. Judging from the evidence of the witness, Jennison, I think that the poison was administered to the deceased some time---probably two or three hours---previous to his death, and that the effect came with startling suddenness.”

“Causing instantaneous death?”

“I think so.”

The Coroner hesitated a moment, again glancing at the jury as if he wondered whether any juryman wanted to ask a question. But the jurymen were all staring silently and speculatively at the witness, and to him the Coroner turned once more.

“When will the experts you mentioned be able to report?”

“Possibly in about a week or ten days.”

“We can adjourn for a week, and then again, if necessary,” said the Coroner. “But, there is another witness---oh, two witnesses, eh?---that we had better hear this morning----” he bent from his desk to speak to the chief police official. “Oh, just so!” he added. “A relation of the dead man, eh?---just so.”

The police surgeon stepped down from the witness box; the man who stood by it lifted a loud voice, staring into the crowd.

“Belyna Jakyn!”

Until that moment Jennison had paid little attention to the people around him: he had been too full of himself, too much preoccupied of his own part in this act of the drama. But now, hearing some slight commotion and murmuring amongst the crowded room behind him, he turned and looked in the direction to which the Coroner’s officer had directed his summons. And there he saw four people, sitting together, and was quick-witted enough to set them down at once as the relations of Alfred Jakyn of whom Bradmore had spoken to Womersley and himself. There was a tall, elderly man with a clever, clean-shaven face, a mass of dark hair, turning gray, an aquiline, aggressive nose, and a pair of peculiarly bright and burning black eyes; him he took to be Dr. Syphax, of Brunswick Square. Next him, and closely resembling him, and, if possible, of an even more intent cast of countenance and expression, was a woman who affected an old-fashioned style of dress, and was accordingly conspicuous amongst those about her; this, thought Jennison, must be Mrs. Nicholas Jakyn, aunt-in-law of the dead man. At her side sat a young man, smartly dressed, very ordinary of looks, who was assiduously sucking the knob of his walking-stick and scowling at the things in front, as if he considered the whole affair a rotten bore: he, doubtless, was Mrs. Nicholas Jakyn’s son. And next to him was a young woman, who, as Jennison looked, was rising from her seat in response to the call, and who, of course, was the person called---Belyna Jakyn.

Everybody in court was staring at Belyna Jakyn. There was reason. Nature had been anything but kind to her. She was deformed: it was evident that she had been deformed from birth. She was a hunchback; one leg, it was obvious, was shorter than its fellow; she walked with some difficulty. But she was calm and self-possessed, and the face which she turned full on Coroner and jury was distinguished by good features, superior intelligence, and alert eyes; mis-shapen as the body was, any observant person could see that Belyna Jakyn had excellent brains. And she showed no sign of nervousness as she waited to be questioned; eyes and lips were calm and composed; the thin, white hands which rested on the ledge of the box were wholly at rest: the crowd of people, seeing all this, became as quiet as this new figure in the drama, listening intently.

Belyna Jakyn, daughter of Mrs. Nicholas Jakyn, and niece of Daniel Jakyn, deceased, and therefore cousin of Alfred Jakyn, into the cause of whose death the Court was inquiring---to all this the witness assented, quietly. The Coroner, nodding his head at each answer, bent more confidentially towards the witness-box as he launched into more pertinent questions.

“I understand that you, and your mother, and your brother, live with your uncle---maternal uncle, I think---Dr. Cornelius Syphax, in Brunswick Square, Miss Jakyn?”

“We do!”

“Did Alfred Jakyn come to Dr. Syphax’s house on Monday evening?”

“He did.”

“Were you all at home?”

“No. There was no one at home but myself.”

“You received him?”

“Yes.”

“Did you recognise him as your cousin Alfred?”

“Oh, yes! I remembered him quite well. It is eleven years since he went away---ten or eleven, at any rate---but I was then twelve years old. Yes, I knew him at once.”

“He entered the house?”

“He came first to the surgery, at the side of the house. I was there alone, making up medicines; I act as dispenser to Dr. Syphax. As soon as I saw who it was, I took him into the house, to the dining-room. We sat down there, to talk.”

“Yes---and what did you talk about?”

“He did most of the talking. He told me he had been knocking about all over the world, and had been in some strange places and seen many strange things. He appeared to have heard very little of English, of even of European, affairs, of late years. He said that he had only landed in England, at Liverpool, early that morning, and did not know that his father was dead until he called on Mr. Bradmore on reaching London, in the evening. Then he said that Mr. Bradmore had told him that my uncle---his father---had left no will, and that, of course, everything would come to him, and he added that he would see that my mother, my brother, and myself were not forgotten.”

“He was very friendly then?”

“Very! He seemed in good spirits---high spirits. He joked and laughed about things, and said he would call again next day at a time when we should all be at home, and that then we would go into family matters.”

“Did he tell you anything that made you think he had prospered during his absence?”

“Not particularly. He did say, half jokingly, that he hadn’t come back empty-handed.”

“Did he say whether he had married during his absence?”

“No---he told me nothing of that sort, nothing about his private concerns, beyond what I have told you. He was not with me very long.”

“That’s what I’m coming to, Miss Jakyn. Now, what time was it when he came to your surgery?”

“About a quarter to nine o’clock.”

“And he left the house---when?”

“About ten minutes past nine.”

“Did he give you any address in London?”

“Yes---he said he was staying at the Euston Hotel---simply because it was at hand when he got out of the train, he added, with a laugh. He said he should stay there for a week or two, now he’d got there.”

“Did he mention any appointment for that evening---having to meet anybody?”

“No. He only said he’d come back and stay longer next day.”

This was all that was asked of Belyna Jakyn; she was followed in the witness box by a young man who described himself as a waiter at the Euston Hotel, and testified that, having seen the body of Alfred Jakyn, he recognised it as that of a gentleman who was in and about the hotel on Monday evening last. He had seen him in the dining-room from 6.30 to 7 o’clock that evening: he saw him again in the smoking-room later in the evening.

“Can you be sure of the exact time on the last occasion?” asked the Coroner.

“Yes, sir,” replied the witness. “The gentleman came into the smoking-room about half-past nine; I got him a whisky and soda. He sat down for a while. There was nobody much about just then, and while he was there, I noticed him particularly.”

“For what reason?”

“Well, sir, he seemed restless. He fidgeted, first in one place, then another. He walked about the room, muttering. In the end, a bit before ten o’clock, he pulled a bit of paper out of his waistcoat pocket, and seemed to read something on it.”

“Yes---and what then?”

“Then he suddenly turned on his heel, sir, and went very quickly away. That was the last I saw of him.”