THE drama was unlike no other witnessed on the Isle of Wight.

Minutes after his father had been buried, coal merchant Percy Brading shot his brother-in-law in a fall out over a will and then fatally turned the weapon on himself.

Bizarrely, he had not attended the funeral but later sought out a meeting with crane driver Abraham Davis who called at his Carisbrooke home to discuss the bone of contention. They went into the back room where Brading immediately put his hand under a cushion on the couch and produced a Webley revolver.

Before his brother-in-law could take evasive action, Brading pulled the trigger, the first misfiring but then a shot rang out and Davis felt blood running down his nose. He then instinctively leapt through the living room window, shattering the glass and woodwork, before rushing across the garden of neighbour Samuel Elliott for sanctuary.

Amazingly Davis survived the shooting, the bullet hitting his nasal bone and deflecting on to a wall. He was treated at the scene for a cut to the bridge of his nose before being taken to the county hospital in a Red Cross ambulance suffering from extreme shock.

Elliott told the Echo: “I heard a rumpus next door but I cannot exactly say I heard a shot. A man rushed in with blood streaming from his face and neck. He gasped, ‘Brading has shot me’.”

Once he had been safely removed from the scene, police closed in on the house in Drill Hall Road where they discovered Brading dead on the couch, a bullet wound in his forehead. The revolver was clenched in his left hand and spent cartridges littered the floor and couch where he lay.

A week later on June 10, 1935, an inquest was opened at the Drill Hall, Newport, ironically just yards from where the former soldier, who had served with the Territorial Artillery in Mesopotamia during the Great War, had lived. Davis was too ill to attend.

Crucial evidence about the cause of the shooting came from Brading’s neighbour, Geoffrey Hatcher, who had seen him pacing up and down in his garden, incensed with the terms of the will.

“I have been left with nothing,” he snapped. “Davis offered me £500 but I don’t think that’s fair as I had helped my father earn his money.”

The Isle of Wight coroner, A F Joyce, asked: “You understand he was left out of his father’s will.” Hatcher replied, “Yes, that was what he was excited about.”

The coroner said: “He thought he would receive money to which he thought he was entitled?” To which Hatcher replied: “I told him he should accept the £500. After that he seemed to turn very funny and said ‘Davis is coming to see me. He will be up against something this time.”

Brading’s widow Florence told the court how he had been badly injured in a road accident ten months ealier and had to give up his job. She confirmed he did not get on with his father and took it badly when he learnt he had been cut out of his will. “He said he did not think it was right.”

Col H G Tomson of the 5th Hampshire Howitzer Battery, acknowledged Brading as a very capable NOO but he was captured at the fall of Kut in the First World War battle between British and Ottoman forces and suffered terrible hardship in captivity.

“I am not surprised that anyone had their mind affected by such treatment. I had only met the deceased once since then a year ago and I formed the opinion his mind was not right.”

The jury returned a verdict of suicide.