CHAPTER FIVEThere is a distinct difference between the state of believing something to be true and knowing it to be so with the paid stamp of an official opinion affixed to the knowledge.
When the embarrassed foreman of the coroner’s jury stood up in the cool dark village hall at Wellferry and stated that he and his confreres were convinced that the skeleton found in the bushes at Eves Hall on the Shelley road was the skeleton of Richard Portland-Smith, who had died by his own hand—a hand which had first thrust the barrel of a revolver into his mouth and then pulled the trigger—and that in their considered opinion he must have been of unsound mind at the time to have done such a thing, Mr Campion felt aware of a distinct wave of relief, a comforting confirmation and a full stop, as it wer
