The Friday clash of funeral and inquest was a much more serious affair. The Brandon Baker Gallery Club went practically delirious over it, and went so far as to present a petition to the Craven Street coroner demanding that the inquest on their late idol be postponed until a quarter to one, in order to give them a sporting chance of doing both shows.
In vain; and the problem was settled satisfactorily only by those families who numbered two or more members of the Gallery Club in their ranks. In these fortunate cases, Cissie went to the inquest and Agnes to the funeral, and met for tea and kippers at four in the afternoon to exchange their eyewitness accounts.
It also bothered the Wilson family quite a lot. Not because the Wilson family was at all desirous of attending either proceedings, and being crushed to a state worse than death in order to bring home a copy of the order of service for the funeral as a souvenir, or to listen to Mr. Halliwell Ogle, the Craven Street coroner, shedding wisecracks all through in the inquiry into Brandon Baker’s death. But Mr. Wilson, senr., made a point, whenever possible, of putting in an appearance at the funerals and inquests of any unfortunate folk whose departure from this life he was investigating. And Mr. Wilson, junr., had been commanded to show his face and note-book at both performances by an editor who—as editors will—saw no reason why one reporter should not be in more than one place at one time.
“There’s only one thing for it,” said Mr. Wilson, junr., caught once again in the act of stoking himself with coffee and grapefruit. “Toss.”
“Toss?” said Mr. Wilson, senr.
“Toss,” said Derek. “It’s the only satisfactory way of settling anything in this house. Got half a crown on you?”
“Why half a crown?” asked Mr. Wilson, producing the coin named.
“It’s much the best coin for tossing,” said Derek. “Now, listen. Heads you go to the funeral, tails I do. Heads you give me a two-column report of the farewell performance for the Gazette. Tails you give me a half-page verbatim account of what happened at the inquest. Heads I tell you anything that I heard at the inquest that might be in your line. Tails I tell you if I’ve seen anyone behaving suspicious-like at the graveside. Understand?”
“Not a word of it,” said Mr. Wilson. “But never mind. Toss.”
Mr. Wilson, junr., tossed.
“What does that mean?” said Mr. Wilson, senr., removing the half-crown from a perfectly vertical position in the butter-dish and wiping it with his napkin. “Do we both go to both?”
“That was a little slip,” said Derek. “We try again, like Bruce and the burnt cakes. Keep your hand over that pot of marmalade. There…heads. You for the funeral—me for the inquest. Thank God. I haven’t a black tie to my name.”
“You’ll be able to buy one now,” said Mr. Wilson, noticing his half-crown disappear slickly into the pocket of his son and heir’s dressing-gown. “Righto. I’ll go and put on the sad rags. I’ve got to go along to the Yard after it’s over, and see old Anderson about the bullet they pulled out of the plaster. We’ll meet here for a spot of food at sevenish and swap stories, eh?”
“Remember you’re covering the funeral for me,” said Derek. “Don’t miss anything. What all the actresses were wearing, who was sobbing hysterically, all that bunk. Seven o’clock here. Oke.”
“Please…” said Mr. Wilson in a pained voice. “Not oke, Derek. Okay, if you really must give way to these vulgar Americanisms. But not oke.”
“Okay,” said Derek obligingly, and went upstairs to finish his dressing.
From the fortunate position in which we are situated, we can follow both Mr. Wilson, senr., to St. Oswald’s, and Mr. Wilson, junr., to the Craven Street police court.
Wilson père, then, followed his son upstairs, dressed himself tastefully in black jacket, striped trousers, hard collar, black tie, and bowler hat, and went out to the memorial service looking rather like a stockbroker who had just been the victim of a strong bull movement. He arrived outside the church at ten minutes to eleven, exactly forty minutes (if our mathematics are still functioning correctly) before the rites were due to begin. “Outside the church” is perhaps an exaggeration, for Mr. Wilson was unable to get anywhere nearer the main entrance of St. Oswald’s than some fifty yards further south on the opposite pavement.
The membership of the Brandon Baker Gallery Club was reckoned to be slightly over two hundred thousand persons at the last census, and it seemed to Mr. Wilson that every man, woman and child of that two hundred thousand were trying to get inside St. Oswald’s at the moment, having brought with them their husbands, wives, sisters, and next-door neighbours to share in the fun. Mr. Wilson had once had to carry out an investigation during the last day of a remnant sale in a London store, and from what he could remember of it that experience was about as quiet and unexciting (in comparison to this) as a Sabbath evening at the North Pole. He edged his way skilfully through the crowd and arrived on the correct pavement with only his bowler hat missing.
Here, Mr. Wilson found that most of the Metropolitan Police Force had been brought on the scene, and were managing by sheer brute strength to keep a narrow gangway clear leading up to the church door. Mr. Wilson at this point had a heated altercation with a small woman carrying a string-bag, who said (a) that she’d come all the way in from Golder’s Green to see the funeral; (b) that she’d seen every show poor dear Brandon ever acted in; (c) that it was a crying shame if a lifelong supporter of poor dear Brandon couldn’t even get inside the church; (d) that there was no need to push like that; and (e) that this was no place for a man, anyway, and Mr. Wilson would be better employed doing a bit of honest work than wasting his mornings looking at funerals.
Mr. Wilson could have said quite a lot in reply to this last line of argument, but thought better of it and continued to wedge his way towards the cordon of bobbies. Arriving there eventually with his collar and tie pulled out of all connection with each other, Mr. Wilson tapped the nearest bobby on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me.”
“No good, sir,” said the constable. “Church full. Only them what has tickets allowed in now.”
“I’m Inspector Wilson of Scotland Yard,” said Mr. Wilson. “I’m in charge of this case. Don’t you think I really ought to be allowed in?”
“Insp—why, so it is, sir,” said the constable. “Didn’t recognize you, sir. Lost your ’at, ’aven’t you, sir? Certainly, sir. Step underneath, sir.” And pianissimo: “There’s a block of seats still vacant under the west gallery.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Wilson, and stepped under the arms of the law and into the church.
“That’s Douglas B. Douglas, the perducer,” said a large woman, swaying against the police cordon as he passed.
“Don’t talk barmy,” said her neighbour, a complete stranger. “’Enry Hainley, that is. I’d know ’im a mile orf.”
Mr. Wilson walked past, impressed by the second woman’s intelligence. The church was already practically full, though, as the constable had said, three rows of seats were still vacant under the west gallery. Mr. Wilson sat down as reverently as possible in a corner of the back pew, and took a look round. It was certainly going to be a very good funeral. The church was decorated in a lavish fashion with arum lilies, scarlet carnations, and white lilac—all three of which, Mr. Wilson gathered from conversation going on round about him, had been dear Brandon’s favourite flower.
The more expensive wreaths had been grouped tastefully around the altar to add colour to the scene, and were being photographed in close-up by a quick succession of Press photographers. From D.B.D., in affectionate memory of a long and valued acquaintanceship. From the Grosvenor Theatre staff, in appreciation. From Gwen, with all my love. Mr. Wilson recognized a number of well-known stage and screen personalities sitting in what he thought would be better described as the stalls than the pews. There was no mourning—Brandon wouldn’t have liked it—and this had given the audience-c
ongregation an opportunity of displaying their latest and loudest in the way of hats and dresses. Altogether, Mr. Wilson decided, Brandon Baker’s last performance was much more brilliant than his unfortunate first London performance in the musical comedy Blue Music.
The service droned on and finished at last. Mr. Wilson thought he was going to be very sick at what happened after that. The clergy had hardly billowed out through the door leading to the vestry at the end of the service, when the animal instinct in the Gallery Club members who had obtained admission to the church came up to the very top. It could never, Mr. Wilson thought, have been very far down. They stormed the pews like a mass attack going over the top in the trenches. They ripped the church bare of its lilies, carnations, and lilac inside a couple of minutes. Not content with the flowers and the order of service pamphlets, they removed large chunks from the prayer-books and hymnals strewn on the pews. Mr. Wilson, at one time, caught sight of fifteen different celebrities signing fifteen different autograph books in front of the altar. The woman who had recognized him as Henry Ainley must have found or forced her way into the church: she came storming down the aisle and found her victim sitting in a dazed condition at the end of his pew. “Please—there’s a duck,” she said, thrusting her album in front of Mr. Wilson’s nose.
“Delighted,” said Mr. Wilson, and signed it gravely.
“Thanks, ever so,” said the woman, and shot off to conquests new. Mr. Wilson hoped that she would not read what he had written until she got safely home. He waited in his seat until the church had emptied, which it did speedily, the Gallery Club remembering suddenly that they simply mustn’t miss seeing the cortège leave the side door on its way to the cemetery. Mr. Wilson got up sadly, looked for his bowler hat under the seat, and then remembered that it had gone for all time in the big push. He was half-way up the aisle when he noticed that the church was not yet completely empty. A little woman in black was sitting at the end of one of the side pews. Mr. Wilson did not like to look too closely, but imagined that she was crying.
“Not pretty, was it?” said Mr. Wilson.
“No,” said the woman. “Not a bit pretty.”
“Did you know him?” asked Mr. Wilson, not quite knowing why he was asking such a question.
“Not well,” said the woman. “He was my husband.”
Mr. Wilson saw no answer to this at all. He walked quietly out of the church, and commiserated with the caretaker whom he met at the entrance on the results of the battle.
“Give me weddings,” said the man vehemently. “Every blasted time. I used to think that filthy confetti was the last word. But give me weddings rather than this. Any damned day!”
Mr. Wilson agreed that a wedding, even with the many drawbacks, of which confetti is perhaps the least, would have been preferable to the ceremony just ended. He then bought a new bowler and went to the Yard in a very bad temper.
“Jackson,” said Mr. Wilson to the first person he saw on arriving at the Yard, “do you know what I’ve discovered this morning?”
“No, sir,” said Jackson. “What, sir?”
“We arrest all the wrong people.”
And Mr. Wilson shot off to meet Mr. Anderson, the noted expert on firearms, leaving Jackson to puzzle out this remark.
So much for the funeral. They say a celebrity cannot call his life his own. If the case of Brandon Baker is anything like a typical case, it is quite certain that no celebrity would wish to call his death his own.
On to the inquest.
Now an inquest, like a plate of sago, is a dull thing. The reasons for this fact being twofold. One, the regrettably unoriginal way in which most people put an end to their lives. And two, the regrettably unoriginal way in which most coroners conduct their enquiries. Nothing, it seems, can be done about the first of these two, short of inventing a poison which turns you tartan, or a new kind of bullet which makes you swell for a fortnight and then burst. But something can be most definitely done about the second. And was done, in the case of Mr. Halliwell Ogle, the Craven Street coroner.
Mr. Ogle used to preside over a stuffy little courtroom in the wilds of Northumbria, where nothing more exciting happened than a motorcycle smash or a death from using methylated spirits—as a lubricating rather than a cleansing fluid. Even to these paltry affairs Mr. Ogle managed to bring a nice wit, a twinkling eye, a merry wisecrack, and a delightful ingenuity in introducing his own caustic opinions on the world in general, no matter how little they had to do with the case in hand.
He was obviously wasted in Wooler (the village in Northumberland where he held sway). Wasted—until one lucky day a Power That Was happened to enter Mr. Ogle’s little courtroom to give evidence in an inquest where his Daimler had been regrettably bruised and a yokel unavoidably massacred. The Power at once saw how wasted Mr. Ogle was in his present position, went back to London at once, and pulled several strings in several different directions. The result of which string-pulling being that Mr. Ogle was transferred from his stuffy court in Wooler, Northumberland, to a rather stuffier one in Craven Street, London. To the annoyance of Wooler, but to the intense delight of the London Press, who—whenever they had a dull day—went along to Craven Street in a bunch to pick up a few of Mr. Ogle’s witticisms for their middle pages. “London Coroner’s Amusing Sallies.” “Coroner’s Pungent Views on Modern Girl.” “Coroner’s Wit Enlivens London Inquest.” You see that sort of thing in half-inch headlines nearly every day now, and ten times out of ten it refers to Mr. Halliwell Ogle.
Derek Wilson had nearly, but not quite, as much trouble getting inside the Craven Street court buildings as his father had had getting inside St. Oswald’s church. He had a good deal to say later in the day when his father suggested that all the two hundred thousand of the Gallery Club were present at the memorial service, for it was perfectly obvious that nearly a hundred and fifty thousand of the poor saps were here at Craven Street.
“Press,” said Derek, having at last reached the door.
“Press?” said the constable on duty wittily. “I should ruddy well think it is a press. Never seen nothing like it no time, I haven’t! Press, indeed…gorblimey, I’ve been at Arsenal matches what was nothing to this. I should ruddy well think it is a press, and no mistake!”
“Very amusing,” said Derek, and forced his way inside to join the other reporters at the I-should-ruddy-well-think-it-is-a-press benches.
Mr. Ogle appeared punctually at eleven-thirty. He looked benignly round the court. A full house. Newspaper men here in full force. Very satisfactory. A very good opportunity for getting rid of that pithy little soliloquy on the Betting Laws that had come to him suddenly in his bath that morning. Yes, vote of thanks to Mr. Brandon Baker for passing away in his district. First witness, please.
First witness, Mr. John Hackett. Brother of the deceased. A tall, thin man with a moustache which would have been mistaken for an error in shaving if it had been one hair less.
“I was asked to go to Craven Street mortuary on Wednesday morning to identify the body of the deceased. I identified the body as that of my brother, Ernest Hackett, professionally known as Brandon Baker.”
“Why did your brother change his name when he went on the stage, Mr. Hackett?” asked Mr. Ogle for no good reason.
“I don’t know, sir,” said Mr. Hackett. “Hackett isn’t a very suitable name for an actor, I suppose, sir.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mr. Ogle, beaming. “What about Tod Slaughter?”
(Laughter in Court.)
“It’s the same rough idea, surely?” continued Mr. Ogle, well pleased with the house’s reception.
(Renewed Laughter in Court.)
Next witness, Dr. Armitage. Slow and dull. Next, Mr. Douglas B. Douglas himself. Mr. Douglas had been called away to the inquest in the middle of launching rather tricky negotiations with a Broadway musical-comedy star to take the leading part in Blue Music whe
n the show was revived. He was in no mood for Mr. Ogle.
“You are, I believe, connected with the theatrical profession?” asked Mr. Ogle serenely.
“I am the theatrical profession,” said Mr. Douglas.
“Were you at the theatre on the night of the occurrence?”
Mr. Douglas laid his chin on his knuckles and looked Mr. Ogle straight in the eye.
“Considering that I had put over fifty thousand pounds of my own hard-earned money into the show,” said Mr. Douglas, “considering that I had travelled over twelve thousand miles to secure the right cast and scenic designers and composer for the show; considering that I had worked fourteen hours a day for seven days a week during the rehearsals of the show; considering all that,” said Mr. Douglas, rather out of breath, “it is not surprising that I was present on the opening night of Blue Music.”
“Quite,” said Mr. Ogle, rather taken aback. “Now would you tell us what you saw, please? Without, perhaps, quite so much consideration.”
“I saw the beginnings of a damn’ fine show,” said Mr. Douglas, realizing that even an inquest can be good for the box-office.
“I mean—what you saw of the actual happening with which we are concerned?”
“Oh!” said Mr. Douglas. “Well, I was in a box. A stage-box, the one on the prompt side.”
“So termed, I understand, because its occupants invariably arrive late?” observed Mr. Ogle.
“I had a party of five with me,” said Mr. Douglas, ignoring the coroner. “At the beginning of the second act of the show there was a big ensemble number by the chorus. Then Mr. Baker and Miss Turner were left alone on the stage. Mr. Foster had to enter from the O.P. side—”
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