The Mummy

2. Caught In Passing

2

Caught In Passing

The death of this young Scrymgeour excited a good deal of interest, because he was related to several well-known people, and was himself rather a character. I had to perform a post-mortem examination with another medical man, to make a report thereon, and to appear at the inquest.

The only evidence besides my own was given by the three men whom I had met in the Albany.

Seymour, Scrymgeour’s man, stated that he slept in the house, but on the evening before the death he had gone to see The Merry Widow, had returned late, found the lights out, in the dining-room at any rate, and had “retired,” to use his own word, without seeing his master. The next morning, when his master’s guests arrived, he went into the bedroom and found the electric light on. He then saw the body lying on the hearthrug, cried out, and the two gentlemen joined him. Later Captain Maxwell went for the doctor, whose name and address he, Seymour, had supplied. He was not a heavy sleeper, but had heard no noise. He would certainly expect to hear a fall, if it happened after he was in his bedroom. The light might be switched on in the bedroom without his being able to notice it from the lobby. He thought the accident had occurred before he returned from the theatre.

The evidence of Maxwell and his friend Perceval was hardly more than corroborative of Seymour’s. Both said they had arranged on the previous evening to breakfast with Scrymgeour. Scrymgeour had seemed quite well and in good spirits. He left the club before they did, about eleven.

I was examined as to my visit and my post-mortem observations. I annoyed an inquisitive juryman, a druggist, by speaking of the dead man as a heavy man, without having weighed the body. Also no one had measured the precise height of the steps, and I declined to give a dogmatic opinion as to the height from which the fall of a man, say thirteen stone, would cause a broken neck. I said a hangman might be able to say, if the information was absolutely necessary.

Then Perceval rose, and asked whether he might be allowed to make a statement, which he thought might be useful in clearing up the matter, and the coroner agreed.

“My dead friend,” he said, “belonged to an honourable family, and had an amiable weakness. He delighted in genealogy and family histories. He possessed several old family portraits; but his favourite was one of Sir Charles Scrymgeour Scrymgeour, a soldier living in the time of the first and second King Charles.

“This hangs in his bedroom over the mantelpiece, and he was fond of showing it to his acquaintances, and of hearing them comment upon the family likeness. I have known him mount the steps already spoken of, and dust the frame of the portrait himself, calling attention to various characteristics in his ancestor’s face. I have thought it possible that he was examining the picture when the steps broke and caused his fall.”

The jury, after a certain amount of delay, due, everybody was sure, to the druggist, returned a verdict of death by misadventure, in accordance with the medical evidence.

Curiously enough, the medical man himself was not altogether satisfied. I left the place feeling that the verdict was a common-sense verdict, and sure that the druggist was a bumptious ass. Still, I had noticed one or two things which did not precisely square with the general evidence, although they did not contradict it.

For example, Maxwell and Perceval stated that they went by invitation to breakfast with Scrymgeour, and Seymour also referred to it. But there was no breakfast laid in the room, certainly the dining-room, where I went by mistake. Now, were they all three lying, or was Seymour late with breakfast, or were Maxwell and Perceval before time in their appearance?

Perceval’s manner while giving evidence, and particularly while being questioned by the druggist (who obviously thought all men liars and rather wanted us to know it), was conspicuously unconcerned and matter-of-fact. But he passed me on his way back to his seat—and I was surprised to see by the light of a straggling ray of the cold February sun, that his immobile face was covered with little beads of sweat.

The inquiry was closed, and I made my way back to Piccadilly.

A block in the traffic at Piccadilly Circus kept me hanging for a moment on the edge of the pavement, and when I lost patience and made a dash for it I was stopped in mid-stream, between the two currents.

A voice I knew spoke close to my ear. It said, “Well, thank God we kept her name——” and then it stopped suddenly. Half-turning, I found that I stared directly into a motor-brougham, from which Maxwell and Perceval stared back at me. It was Maxwell who had spoken, and Perceval had him clutched by the arm. At that moment the traffic moved on; I had to make a dash for the pavement, and left them without a word or a nod. But we had recognised one another, and I was more puzzled than ever.