The Perfect Daughter by Gillian Linscott Page A

of any kind?’
    When the coroner asked that, I felt an electric charge in the air. At the time I had no idea why. It was an obvious enough question after all. We were talking about a suicide. But there was something happening I didn’t understand. It had to do with Alexandra’s sudden flight, with the bearded man’s anger.
    â€˜No,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t have expected her to confide in me.’
    That was it. I was allowed to step down and listen to the rest of the proceedings. There was a spare seat on the end of the second row, at the far side from Ben.
    *   *   *
    The next witness was the man I’d seen getting out of the governess cart, the family practitioner, Dr Maidment. He was there because he’d been the one to certify Verona dead. After getting that on record, the coroner asked if he’d known the deceased for some time.
    â€˜Yes, indeed. I took up practice here soon after she was born. I have the pleasure to be doctor to Commodore North and his family.’
    â€˜Had you seen Miss North recently?’
    â€˜Not very recently. The last occasion was back in the autumn. She came to say goodbye to my daughter before going to London.’ (Presumably the girl who’d been driving the governess cart.)
    â€˜And you hadn’t seen her since then?’
    â€˜No, sir.’
    It was all simple enough, and yet the family doctor was clearly unhappy, even more unhappy than you’d expect in the circumstances. The feeling that there was something worse to come was growing. We all felt it. Dr Maidment was allowed to step down and paced heavily to a seat near the back of the court.
    Next witness, Dr Stephen White, pathologist. The other man from the waiting-room was sworn in. It seemed to take the coroner for ever to note down his string of professional qualifications. Yes, at the coroner’s request, he had carried out a postmortem examination on the body of Miss Verona North on 28 May 1914. Had he formed any opinion as to the cause of death? The pathologist hunched over his notes, reading in a monotone. Chair legs squeaked on the linoleum floor as everybody strained forward to hear him, all except Ben.
    â€˜â€¦ congestion of face and cyanosis typical of asphyxia, engorged tongue, burst capillaries in eyes, considerable bruising and abrasions on neck and throat, consistent with pressure from a tight ligature…’
    I closed my eyes but still saw the silver light of the water in the estuary, smelt mud and creosote.
    â€˜â€¦ some abrasions and bruising on the ankles and over the insteps, also consistent with pressure from ligatures…’
    Feet still in their stockings and shoes, green weed trailing.
    â€˜â€¦ compression of the jugular vein and trachea, no rupture of spinal cord and no significant displacement of neck vertebrae…’
    The hangman’s fracture, they called it, that deplacement of the neck vertebrae. But if the hangman got it wrong, the victim died from strangling not a broken neck. That was what had happened to Verona. The coroner wanted to get it quite clear, for the jury.
    â€˜In layman’s terms, Dr White, in your opinion death resulted from strangulation.’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    Feet being pulled out and out by the tide, noose slowly tightening. Her arms weren’t tied. Surely she couldn’t have helped doing something to relieve the pressure? I was sitting on the edge of my seat. I wanted to stand up and ask Dr White, ‘Were her nails broken? Were there scratch marks on her neck?’ The coroner asked Dr White if he had made any more observations the court should know about.
    â€˜Yes, sir.’ He turned over another page of his notes, seemed to hesitate, then went on in the same monotone. ‘I observed a deep puncture wound in her upper left arm, some three and a half inches above the elbow joint, surrounded by superficial bruising.’
    Whispering and rustling in