And yet to hold a coroner’s inquiry in a room gay with wedding decorations was almost, if not quite, as ghastly.

But Coroner Benson paid no heed to emotional considerations and conducted himself with the same air of justice and legality as if he had been in a courtroom or the town-hall.

As for the jury he had gathered, the half-dozen men, though filled with righteous indignation at the crime committed in their village, wasted no thought on the incongruity of their surroundings.