“What am I to do about laying her out,” asked Mrs. Evitt of the doctor. “I wouldn’t lay a finger upon her for a hundred pounds.”
“I’ll send round a nurse from the workhouse,” said the doctor, after a moment’s thought. “They’re not easily scared.”
Half an hour later the workhouse nurse came, a tall, bony woman, who executed her horrible task in a businesslike manner, which testified to the strength of her nerve and the variety of her experience.
By five o’clock in the morning all was done, and La Chicot lay with meekly folded hands under clean white linen—the heavy lids closed forever on the once lovely eyes, the raven hair parted on the classic brow.
“She’s the handsomest corpse I’ve laid out for the last ten years,” said the nurse, “and I think she does me credit. If you’ve got a kettle on the bile, mum, and can give me a cup of tea, I shall be thankful for it; and I think a teaspoonful of sperrits in it would do me good. I’ve been up all night with a fractious pauper in the smallpox ward.”
“Oh, lor!” cried Mrs. Evitt, with an alarmed countenance.
“You’ve been vaccinated, of course, mum,” said the nurse cheerfully. “You don’t belong to none of them radical anti-vaccinationists, I’m sure. And is to catching complaints of that kind, mum, it’s only your pore-spirited, nervous people as does it. I never have no pity for such weak mortals. I look down on ’em too much.”
XVIII
What the Diamonds Were Worth
The inquest was held at noon next day. The news of the murder had spread far and wide already, and there was a crowd gathered round the house in Cibber Street all the morning, much to Mrs. Evitt’s aggravation. The newspaper reporters forced their way into her house in defiance of her protests, and finding her slow to answer their questions, got hold of Mr. Desrolles, who was very ready to talk and to drink with every comer.
George Gerard called at the house in Cibber Street between nine and ten o’clock. He had heard of the murder on his way from the Blackfriars Road, where he was now living as assistant to a general practitioner, to the hospital where he was still attending the clinical lectures. He had heard an exaggerated version of the event, and came expecting to find a case of murder and suicide, the husband stretched lifeless beside the wife he had sacrificed to his jealous fury.
It was not without some difficulty that he got permission to enter the room where the dead woman lay. The hospital nurse had been put in charge of that chamber by the police, and Gerard was obliged to enforce his arguments with a half-crown, which he could ill afford, before the lady’s conscientious scruples were quieted, and she gave him the key of the room.
He went in with the nurse, and stayed for about a quarter of an hour, engaged in a careful and thoughtful examination of the wound. It was curious wound. La Chicot’s throat had not been cut, in the common acceptation of the phrase. The blow that had slain her was a deep stab; a violent thrust with some sharp, thin, and narrow instrument, which had pierced the hollow of her neck, and penetrated in a slanting direction to the lungs.
What had been the instrument? Was it a dagger? and, if so, what kind of dagger? George Gerard had never seen a dagger thin enough to inflict that fine narrow slit through which the blood had oozed so slowly. The crimson stream that stained coverlet and floor had flowed from the livid lips of the corpse, betokening haemorrhage of the lungs.
There had been a struggle before that fatal wound was given. On the round, white wrist of the dead a purple bruise showed where a savage hand had gripped that lovely arm; on the right shoulder, from which the loose nightdress had fallen, appeared the marks of strong fingers that had fastened their clutch there. The nurse showed Gerard these bruises.
“They tell a tale, don’t they?” she said.
“If we could only read it aright,” sighed Gerard.
“It looks as if she had fought for her life, poor soul,” suggested the nurse.
Gerard made no further remark, but stood beside the bed, looking round him with thoughtful scrutinising gaze, as if he would have asked the very walls to tell him the secret of the crime they had looked upon a few hours before.
“The police have been here and have discovered nothing?” he said, interrogatively.
“Whatever they’ve discovered they’ve kept to themselves,” answered the nurse, “but I don’t believe it’s much.”
“Did they go in there?” asked Gerard, pointing to the open door of that small inner room, a mere den, where Jack Chicot had painted in the days when he cherished the hope of earning his living as a painter. Here of late he had drawn his woodblocks, and here, on a wretched narrow couch, he had slept.
“Yes, they went in,” replied the nurse, “but I’m sure they didn’t find anything particular there.”
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,
