‘Do you know if Madame Chicot had money or any other valuables in her possession?’
‘I should say she had neither. She was a woman of extravagant habits. It wasn’t in her to save money.’
Mrs. Rawber’s evidence merely confirmed Mrs. Evitt as to the hour at which they had been aroused, and the conduct of Jack Chicot. The two women agreed as to the ghastly look of his face, and the sudden eagerness with which he had caught at the idea of going to fetch a policeman, an idea suggested by Desrolles.
Desrolles was the last witness examined. As he stood up to answer the Coroner, he caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd near the doorway. It was the countenance of Joseph Lemuel, the stock-broker, sorely changed since Desrolles had seen it last. Close by Mr. Lemuel’s side appeared a well-known criminal lawyer. Desrolles’ bistre complexion grew a shade grayer at sight of these two faces, both intently watchful.
The evidence of Desrolles threw no new light upon the mystery. He had known Mr. Chicot and his wife intimately—rarely had passed a day without seeing them. They were both excellent creatures, but not suited to each other. They did not live happily together. He had never seen Jack Chicot guilty of any act of absolute violence towards his wife, but he believed that there was a good deal of bitterness in his mind; in short that they could not have gone on living together peaceably much longer. Mr. Chicot had absented himself from home very much of late. He had kept late hours, and avoided his wife’s company. In a word, it was an ill-assorted marriage, and they were a very unhappy couple—much to be pitied, both.
This was all. The coroner adjourned the inquiry for a week, in the hope that further evidence would be forthcoming. There was a feeling in the court that a very strong suspicion attached to the dead woman’s husband, and that if he did not turn up speedily he would have to be looked for.
George Gerard watched the inquest from a crowded corner of the room, but he held his peace as to that discovery of the dagger in Jack Chicot’s colour-box.
La Chicot was buried two days afterwards, and there was a tremendous crowd at Kensal Green to see the foreign dancing woman laid in her untimely grave. Mr. Smolendo, with his own hands, placed a wreath of white camellias on the coffin. Desrolles stood beside the grave, decently attired in a suit of black, hired for the occasion from a dealer in cast-off clothes, and ‘looking quite the gentleman,’ Mrs. Evitt said to her gossips afterwards. Mrs. Evitt and Mrs. Rawber were both at the funeral; indeed, it may be said that the whole of Cibber Street turned out for the occasion. There had not been such a crowd since the burial of Cardinal Wiseman. All the company from the Prince Frederick was there, besides much more of dramatic and equestrian London.
Poor Mr. Smolendo was in the depth of despair. He had found an all-accomplished lady to take La Chicot’s place in the burlesque; but the public did not believe in the all-accomplished lady—who was old enough to have been La Chicot’s mother,—and Mr. Smolendo saw his theatre a desert of empty benches. No matter that his scenery, his ballet, his orchestra, his lime-lights were the best and most costly in London. The public had run after La Chicot, and her unhappy fate cast a gloom over the house, not easily to be dispersed. The tide of fashion rolled away to other theatres; and the bark that carried Mr. Smolendo’s fortunes was left stranded on the shore.
The press was very vehement upon the case of La Chicot. The more popular of the penny dailies went into convulsions of indignation against everybody concerned. They reviled the coroner; they denounced the surgeon as a simpleton; they insinuated dark things about the landlady; they branded the witnesses as perjurers; but they reserved their most scathing denunciations for the police.