“No.”
“You entered the room after he was dead, I presume?”
“No. I—I hadn’t the courage,” she faltered. “They told me that he was dead—that he had been stabbed to the heart.”
Again the coroner bent to his writing. What, I wondered, would those present think if I produced the little piece of stained chenille which I kept wrapped in tissue paper and hidden in my fusee-box?
To them it, of course, seemed quite natural that a delicate woman should hesitate to view a murdered man. But if they knew of my discovery they would detect that she was an admirable actress—that her horror of the dead was feigned, and that she was not telling the truth. I, who knew her countenance so well, saw even through her veil how agitated she was, and with what desperate resolve she was concealing the awful anxiety consuming her.
“One witness has told us that the deceased was very much afraid of burglars,” observed the coroner. “Had he ever spoken to you on the subject?”
“Often. At his country house some years ago a burglary was committed, and one of the burglars fired at him but missed. I think that unnerved him, for he always kept a loaded revolver in the drawer of a table beside his bed. In addition to this he had electrical contrivances attached to the windows, so as to ring an alarm.”
“But it appears they did not ring,” said the coroner, quickly.
“They were out of order, the servants tell me. The bells had been silent for a fortnight or so.”
“It seems probable, then, that the murderer knew of that,” remarked Dr. Diplock, again writing with his scratchy quill. Turning to the solicitor, he asked, “Have you any questions to put to the witness?”