His cogitations ran somewhat after this fashion.
The time of the discovery of the body by Mr. Ellersby was about half-past two--the medical evidence at the inquest was to the effect that the deceased had been dead about two hours, so allowing a margin for possible inaccuracies the crime must have been committed about midnight, at which time there would be a certain amount of traffic through Jermyn Street. But then the spectacle of a man talking to a woman in the doorway of a house would hardly attract much attention, and if the murderer had accomplished his purpose by means of poison there was no doubt the fanciful description given by Hash would be tolerably correct. Supposing the assassin to have wounded his victim by means of a poisoned weapon, she would have become confused and giddy, finally passing into a comatose state, in which she would quietly expire. Therefore, there would be no screaming to attract the attention of passers-by, and albeit in any case lying down would have aroused curiosity, yet the fog was so thick on that night that no one would see the position of the criminal and his victim.
Now, the next question was why did Miss Sarschine not make inquiries after her maid--a week had elapsed since the murder, and the girl's absence for that time would certainly seem unaccountable. On her non-appearance her mistress would watch the papers to see if anything had happened to her. She would then notice the Jermyn Street murder, and from the description given would have no difficulty in recognizing her servant. Since though she had without doubt become cognisant of the fact that Lydia Fenny was dead she had not come forward to identify the body, and Dowker pondered over the reason she had for this reticence.
"She can't have committed the crime herself," said Dowker in a puzzled tone, "as she would hardly do so in such a public place, but why has she been so quiet?--again she couldn't know anything about poisoned weapons--no, she must have some other reason for holding her tongue."
At this moment his attention was caught by the display of weapons on the wall, and with a short exclamation he walked across the room and looked sharply at them. They were arranged in a fantastic pattern, each side being the same, but here Dowker noticed with much curiosity that one side was incomplete, a Malay kriss having been removed. He looked at the other side and there were certainly two arranged crossways, but on the other there was only one. Dowker was startled by this discovery as it seemed to point to the fact that the crime had been committed by the missing kriss. He knew the Malays were a savage nation, and without doubt poisoned their daggers, so the absence of one of these would argue that this had been the weapon used. He gingerly touched the point of a kriss with the tip of his finger, and then drew it hastily away.
"It might be poisoned," he muttered, looking at his finger to assure himself he had not broken the skin. "I wonder if it is--I'd like to find out."
Glancing hastily round the room to make sure he was alone, he took a kriss from the wall on the other side so that the pattern was now equalised, and trusted to this fact to hide his abstraction of the weapon. Then he took some old letters out of his pocket, and tearing them up into strips carefully swathed the blade of the kriss to prevent possible accidents, and slipped the parcel into his breast pocket.
"I'll go and see a doctor," he muttered to himself as he buttoned his coat, "and try the effect of this on a dog; if the symptoms of death are the same, that will be proof conclusive that the missing dagger was used to commit the crime. Once I establish that, I'll soon find out the guilty party, as it must have been some one in this house--especially as Lydia Fenny was a servant here."
He walked back again to his chair and had just sat down when the door opened and a woman entered. Not at all pretty, medium height, dark hair and eyes, and a sharp, active-looking face, which, however, was disfigured by marks of the small pox. She was dressed in a well-made dark costume and wore a knot of crimson ribbon round her throat. Dowker surveyed this lady carefully and instantly came to the conclusion that this was a fellow-servant of Lydia Fenny--certainly not Miss Sarschine.
"Hang it," muttered Dowker, "he wouldn't make love to that!"