The Sergeant was sworn. He corroborated George in respect to the fishing; detailed the appearance of the corpse—to which the audience listened lovingly—told how he had left the body tied up by the wharf until daylight, removed same with the assistance of a constable to a shed, and summoned the doctor.
The doctor was an heroic figure at the inquest. It was with difficulty that the crowded court refrained from cheering when he stepped into the witness-box. With the greatest urbanity the presiding J.P., who was acting Coroner, requested him to explain the technical terms he used in his evidence. The doctor bowed—a perfectly splendid bow it was generally admitted—and courteously gave the common English of the thing to his audience.
A sigh of satisfaction went round when he swore positively that it would be impossible for deceased to have inflicted upon himself the wounds as detailed.
The district had not had such a sensation for years. The identity of the deceased would have remained a matter of absolute doubt had it not been for an accident. A religious crank, whose name was casually “Joe,” happened to arrive in the place on the morning of the discovery.
Numbers of people had been taken to the shed by the police.
Some thought they might be able to say who it was, and others wanted to tell their friends in future years that they had seen an approved hall-marked murder in cold flesh.
None of those people had thrown the least light on the subject. The body remained unrecognised until the religious crank went in.
He kissed the book with a reverent smack, and stood awaiting the interrogations of the Sergeant and the J.P.
The audience, with bated breath, leaned eagerly forward to catch every word of the religious crank’s low replies.
“It happened quite accidentally,” he said, that he had gone into the shed where the body on which enquiry was being held had been conveyed, he believed, from the wharf. He could not swear that it was the same body which had been taken out of the river in the morning.
He knew Constable Flanagan. He was upon the Lord’s work when he was requested to enter the shed. He had not heard the constable’s evidence.
It was not a fact that he had recognised the body. (Murmur of disappointment ran throughout the court). All he had said to Constable Flanagan was that he believed he had seen deceased before at a meeting in one of the river towns. He would not swear positively that it was deceased, but he believed it was. If he remembered rightly, the man’s name was Gooch-Peter. He could not say what occupation he followed. This happened about six or eight weeks before. That was all he knew about the matter. The name might have been Good; he was not sure.