The Inquest explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Speculation and Ruin

  Melmotte's financial collapse and suicide exemplify the ruinous consequences of speculation, affecting creditors like Mr. Longestaffe and Mr. Brehgert.

• Deception and Hypocrisy

  The inquest's verdict reflects societal hypocrisy: Melmotte is denied a verdict of insanity due to his public disgrace, while more sympathetic suicides are often deemed mad.

• Marriage as Financial Transaction

  Mr. Brehgert's discussion with Mr. Longestaffe about his failed engagement to Georgiana highlights the financial considerations underlying marriage arrangements.

Characters to notice

• Adolphus Longestaffe

  Deals with the financial fallout from Melmotte's death, including the management of his affairs by Mr. Brehgert, and decides to sell his London house and reduce household expenses.

• Ezekiel Brehgert

  Manages Melmotte's affairs with honesty and energy, forms a friendship with Mr. Longestaffe, and discusses his past engagement to Georgiana, explaining his financial losses.

• Augustus Melmotte

  Found dead from prussic acid; the inquest determines he was not insane, leading to a verdict of felo de se.

• Marie Melmotte

  Removed to lodgings in Hampstead with her mother after Melmotte's death, assisted by Lord Nidderdale and Herr Croll.

• Madame Melmotte

  Taken to Hampstead lodgings with Marie, reluctantly leaving Bruton Street, and never returns to the Grosvenor Square house.

• Lord Nidderdale

  Assists Madame Melmotte and Marie in their departure to Hampstead and helps arrange the lodgings.

Key passages

• “carriages and horses, and all that, ought to fetch between twenty and thirty thousand. There were a lot of jewels, but the women have taken them,” said Squercum. “By George, they ought to be made to give up everything.”

  Squercum estimates that the carriages and horses are worth twenty to thirty thousand pounds, but notes that the women have taken the jewels, and insists they should be forced to return everything.

  Squercum's outrage over the dispersal of Melmotte's assets reflects the chaotic aftermath of his death.

• “It was an annoyance added to the elder Mr. Longestaffe that the management of Melmotte’s affairs fell at last almost exclusively into the hands of Mr. Brehgert.”

  Mr. Longestaffe is further annoyed that Mr. Brehgert, the man he had insulted over the engagement to Georgiana, ends up managing Melmotte's affairs.

  The irony of Brehgert's role highlights the social and financial entanglements following Melmotte's ruin.

• “In such cases as this it is for the jury to say whether the unfortunate one who has found his life too hard for endurance, and has rushed away to see whether he could not find an improved condition of things elsewhere, has or has not been mad at the moment.”

  The jury must decide if the suicide was temporarily insane, a verdict often granted to sympathetic figures but denied to those like Melmotte who are despised.

  The narrator critiques the inconsistency of inquest verdicts based on public opinion rather than medical facts.