Gerard passed into the dusty little den. There was an old easel with an unfinished picture, half-covered with a ragged chintz curtain. Gerard plucked the curtain aside, and looked at the picture. It was crude, but full of a certain melodramatic power. The subject was from a poem of De Musset’s, a Venetian noble, crouching in the shadow of a doorway, at dead of night, dagger in hand, waiting to slay his enemy. There was a deal table, ink-stained, decrepit, scattered with papers, pens, pencils, a battered pewter inkstand, an empty cigar-box, a file of ‘Folly as it Flies,’ and odd numbers of other comic journals. On the old-fashioned window-seat—for these houses in Cibber Street were two hundred years old—there was a large wooden paint-box, full of empty tubes, brushes, a couple of palettes, an old palette-knife, rags, sponges. At the bottom of the box, hidden under rags and rubbish, there lay a long thin dagger, of Italian workmanship, the handle of finely-wrought silver, oxidized with age—just such a dagger as an artist would fancy for his armoury. One glance at the canvas yonder told Gerard that this was the dagger in the picture.
George Gerard took up the dagger and looked at it curiously—a long thin blade, flexible, sharp, a deadly weapon in a strong hand, a weapon to inflict just such a wound as that deep stab which had slain La Chicot.
He examined the blade, the handle—looking at both through his pocket microscope. Both were darkly tarnished, possibly with the recent stain of blood; but the weapon had been carefully cleansed, and there was no actual speck of blood upon either handle or blade.
‘Strange that the detectives should have overlooked this,’ he said to himself, replacing the dagger in the box.
Mrs. Evitt had told him of Jack Chicot’s unaccountable disappearance, how he had gone out to call the police, and had never come back. What could this mean, except guilt? And here in the husband’s colour-box was just such a weapon as that with which the wife had been stabbed.
‘And I know that he was weary of her, I know that he wanted her to die,’ mused Gerard. ‘I read that secret in his face six months ago.’
He left the room presently, without any expression of opinion to the hospital nurse, who was eager to discuss the deed that had been done, and had theories of her own about it. He left the house and walked the neighbouring streets for an hour, waiting for the inquest.
‘Shall I volunteer my opinion before the Coroner?’ he asked himself. ‘To what end? It is but a theory, after all. And a Coroner is rarely a man inclined to give his ear to speculations of that kind. I’d better write to one of the newspapers. Would it do any good if I were to bring the crime home to the husband? Not much, perhaps. Wherever the wretch goes he carries with him a conscience that must be a worse punishment than the condemned cell. And to hang him would not bring her back to life. Poor foolish, lost creature, the only woman I ever loved.’
The Prince of Wales’s Feathers—more popularly known as the Feathers—a public-house at the corner of Cibber Street and Woodpecker Court, was the scene of the inquiry. The witnesses were the doctor, the police-sergeant, the detective who had assisted in the examination of the premises, Desrolles, Mrs. Evitt, and Mrs. Rawber. Jack Chicot, the most important witness of all, had not been seen since he left the house under the pretence of summoning the police. This disappearance of the husband, after giving an alarm which roused the sleeping household—an altogether unnecessary and foolish act, supposing him to be the murderer—was the most remarkable feature in the case, and puzzled the Coroner.
He questioned Mrs. Evitt closely as to the habits of the dancer and her husband.