A. “Yes.”
Q. “What did you say to Mr. Ballau concerning the dagger?”
A. “I told him I didn’t like it. It had belonged to an ancestor of mine whose deeds I have never admired.”
Q. “You have a revulsion toward such things—daggers of that kind, I take it?”
A. “I fancy I have.”
Q. “Yet you touched it when you leaned over the body of Mr. Ballau?”
De Medici stared again at the detective. A memory focused vividly in his mind. The dead body, the dagger hilt, the moment he had reached forward to embrace the protruding thing in his fingers—the moment of fascination that had left him shuddering. Ah, this reddish-faced man was not stupid. He had surmised that.
A. “I thought of withdrawing the blade from the body but stopped as my fingers encountered it.”
“That will be all,” the coroner announced.
De Medici arose and returned to his seat beside Florence. The coroner and Lieutenant Norton were conferring in whispers again.