Thus much the lawyer learned, but from the strange lodger himself he learned nothing. For when Krook took him to the room Nemo occupied, they found the latter stretched on his couch, dead (whether by accident or design no one could tell) of an overdose of opium.
Curious to see how Lady Dedlock would receive this news, Mr. Tulkinghorn called on her and told her of the unknown man's death. She pretended to listen with little interest, but his trained eye saw that she was deeply moved by it, and he became more anxious than ever to find out what connection there could be between this proud and titled woman and the miserable copyist who had lived and died in squalor.
Chance favored Mr. Tulkinghorn's object. One night he saw Joe, the ragged crossing sweeper pointing out to a woman whose face was hidden by a veil, and whose form was closely wrapped in a French shawl, the gate of the cemetery where Nemo had been buried. Later, at Sir Leicester's, he saw Lady Dedlock's maid, Hortense—a black-haired, jealous French woman, with wolf-like ways—wearing the same shawl.
He cunningly entrapped the maid into coming to his house one night wearing both veil and shawl, and there brought her unexpectedly face to face with Joe. By the boy's actions Mr. Tulkinghorn decided at once that Joe had never seen Hortense before, and that instant, he guessed the truth—that the veiled woman who had gone to the cemetery was really Lady Dedlock herself, and that she had worn her maid's clothes to mislead any observer.
This was a clever trick in the lawyer, but it proved too clever for his own good, for, finding she had been enticed there for some deeper purpose, Hortense flew into a passion with him. He sneered at her and turned her out into the street, threatening if she troubled him to have her put into prison. Because of this she began to hate him with a fierceness which he did not guess.
Mr. Tulkinghorn felt himself getting nearer to his goal. But he now had to find out who Nemo really had been.
If he had only known it, Krook could have aided him. The old man had found a bundle of old letters in Nemo's room after his death, and these were all addressed to "Captain Hawdon."
Krook himself could not read, except enough to spell out an address, and he had no idea what the letters contained. But he was quick to think the bundle might be worth some money. So he put it carefully away.
But Mr. Tulkinghorn found out nothing from Krook, for one day a strange thing happened. Krook had drunk so much gin in his life that he had become perfectly soaked with alcohol, so that he was just like a big spongeful of it. Now, it is a curious fact that when a great mass of inflammable material is heaped together, sometimes it will suddenly burst into flame and burn up all in a minute, without anything or anybody setting fire to it. This is just what happened to Krook. As he stood in the middle of the dirty shop, without any warning, all in a twinkling, he blazed up and burned, clothes and all, and in less time than it takes to tell it, there was nothing left but a little pile of ashes, a burnt mark in the floor and a sticky smoke that stuck to the window-panes and hung in the air like soot. And this was all the neighbors found when they came to search for him.
This was the end of Krook, and the rag-and-bottle shop was taken possession of by Grandfather Smallweed, a hideous, crippled money-lender, who had been his brother-in-law, and who at once went to work ransacking all the papers he could find on the premises.