Read Online Prelude for War by Leslie Charteris - Free Book Online Page B

the air of Ajax defying
the lightning.
    “And what is your
question?” asked the coroner, in a supercilious
patronizing tone.
    “Didn’t the witness
‘ave no servants?”
    “Er—several,”
Fairweather said mildly. “But I had given
them all leave to attend a dance in Reading, and they did
not get back until the fire was practically over. The only one left was my chauffeur, who lives in the lodge, about three hundred yards away from the main building.”
    “Didn’t nobody try to
put the fire out?”
    “It was hardly
possible. It spread too rapidly, and we had nothing to tackle it with.”
    “Thank you,” said
the coroner. “Next witness, please.”
    He contrived to be mildly
apologetic and contemptuously crushing at the same
time. He seemed to apologize to Fair weather for the
trouble and distress he had been caused in
answering two altogether ridiculous and irrelevant ques tions, and simultaneously to point out the little juryman as a pest and a nuisance who would be well advised to shut up and behave himself.
    “Kane Luker,”
called the sergeant.
    Luker gave his evidence in
a quiet precise voice. He had been sitting up reading
when he heard the fire alarm. He left his room and went downstairs, where he
discovered that the fire appeared to have started
in the library, but it was already too fierce for him to be able to get near
it. He opened the front door, and while he was doing so
Sir Robert and Lady Sangore came downstairs. He told them to get outside and shout up at the bedroom windows. He started to go down to the lodge to telephone for the fire brigade. He met the chauffeur on the way and sent him back to make the call, and himself returned to the house. As he reached it, Knightley carried Lady Valerie out. He went in and started to climb the stairs, where he met Fair weather. He was sure that everyone must have heard the alarms.
    “I said ‘Do you know
if the others are all out?’ and I thought he gave
some affirmative answer. It’s only since then that I’ve realized that he must
have missed my first words and thought that I
said ‘The others are all out.’ But I agree with him that
it will be hard for us to forgive ourselves for the
tragic results of our misunderstanding.”
    “I don’t think that
any blame can be attached to you,” observed the coroner benignly.
“All of us have made simi lar mistakes even in normal
circumstances, and in a moment of excitement like that
they are still more understandable. The tragic results of the mistake were due
to a combination of causes for which you and Mr
Fairweather can scarcely be held responsible.”
    He turned pointedly and challengingly
towards the jury.
    “Any questions?”
he barked.
    He seemed to be daring them
to ask any questions.
    “Yus,” said the
black-bearded little man.
    The coroner discovered him
again with fresh evidence of distaste. His brows drew
together ominously, as if it had just occurred to him to
wonder who had been responsible for including such an impossible person in the
quorum, and as if he were making a mental note to issue a
severe reprimand to the party concerned. He tapped
impatiently on the table with his finger tips.
    “Well?”
    “I suppose you all
‘ad wine with your dinner, and when you went into the
libry you ‘ad more drinks,” said the little juryman.
” ‘Ow many drinks did you ‘ave and ‘ow many did
Mr Kennet ‘ave?”
    Luker shrugged.
    “Some of us had a
little wine with dinner, certainly; and after
dinner there was whiskey and soda in the library. I can’t
say exactly how much we had, but it was certainly a very
moderate amount.”
    “Kennet wasn’t drunk,
was ‘e?”
    “Certainly not.”
    “Then why didn’t ‘e
‘ear the alarm?”
    Luker looked appealingly
at the coroner, who said: “That is hardly a question which the
witness can be expected to answer.”
    He looked at the jury as if
inviting them to dissociate themselves from their one
discreditable member; and the foreman, a