Murder most ordinary

Perhaps it is only my nostalgia for the good old days, but I can’t help believing that coroner’s courts used to be less hostile to—or merely less searching of—doctors than they are now.

The first time I ever attended a coroner’s court is etched on my memory. For some reason, the flat and monotonous voice of a pathologist, reading out the findings from his postmortem examination of a murder victim over the public address system in the lobby of the court, was more soothing than, say, pop music.

I realised I had nothing to fear when the coroner assured the family of the deceased in the case before mine, a man who died as a result of …