Quiet Please – Inquest. ep7, 470803

Audio is good, even with the usual record static noises.

Ernest Chapel is Mr Ross, and is facing a coroner’s inquest. Not being a legal counsel, he isn’t granted an attorney, and he begins his testimony concerning his sister.

While they were minors, he and Ilene inherit a fortune. To get $5k per year until age 21, then receive the rest. She gets hers, just in time to lose it in the market crash of 1929. When he got his, he paid her back a loan she made to him, but nothing else. . After getting into a fight, he broke Ilene’s arm. She didn’t seek medical attention, and the arm became deformed, but it wasn’t his fault.

Being a nice guy, when he got his money, he hired his sister as housekeeper, but not giving her a cent, letting her live in the lap of his luxury. When she wanted to get married, 15 years later, he took offense. How dare she… and ruin the comfortable life he set up for himself?

Noticing a multitude of people in the alleged private inquest, Ernest is told it’s the radio audience. Continuing, he defends himself for being offended at the decision to marry a bum who had no job. It didn’t matter that Arthur was a Lt Colonel, was a war hero, and endured being a prisoner of war, he threw the jobless blind bum out.

After a confrontation and struggle, Ilene elopes. Though detectives were hired, the couple couldn’t be found. Then when they return it happens. Tempers flare, a knife comes out, and it ends in justifiable homicide. If that’s the case, then why is Ernest here? Why a finding of guilty? Just who are those jurors, and who is this inquisitor?