"No," said the priest calmly; "I think I meant it more or less as a detached study of character."
"You can't mean," cried the actor, "that Mrs. Sands did it herself?"
"I didn't mean a study of her character," said Father Brown.
While they had been exchanging these abrupt reflections, Father Brown had knelt down by the body and ascertained that it was beyond any hope or question a dead body. Lying beside it, though not immediately visible from the doorway, was a dagger of the theatrical sort; lying as if it had fallen from the wound or from the hand of the assassin. According to Jarvis, who recognized the instrument, there was not very much to be learned from it, unless the experts could find some finger-prints. It was a property dagger; that is, it was nobody's property; it had been kicking about the theatre for a long time, and anybody might have picked it up. Then the priest rose and looked gravely round the room.
"We must send for the police," he said; "and for a doctor, though the doctor comes too late.... looking at this room, by the way, I don't see how our Italian friend could manage it."
"The Italian!" cried his friend; "I should think not. I should have thought she had an alibi, if anybody had. Two separate rooms, both locked, at opposite ends of a long passage, with a fixed witness watching it."
"No," said Father Brown. "Not quite. The difficulty is how she could have got in this end. I think she might have got out the other end."
"And why?" asked the other.
"I told you," said Father Brown, "that it sounded as if she was breaking glass; mirrors or windows. Stupidly enough I forgot something I knew quite well; that she is pretty superstitious. She wouldn't be likely to break a mirror; so I suspect she broke a window. It's true that all this is under the ground floor; but it might be a skylight or a window opening on an area. But there don't seem to be any skylights or areas here." And he stared at the ceiling very intently for a considerable time.
Suddenly he came back to conscious life again with a start. "We must go upstairs and telephone and tell everybody, It is pretty painful.... My God, can you hear those actors still shouting and ranting upstairs? The play is still going on. I suppose that's what they mean by tragic irony."