But might it not be possible to trace the weapon? Mealyus, on his return from Prague, had certainly come through Paris. So much was learned—and it was also learned as a certainty that the article was of French—and probably of Parisian manufacture. If it could be proved that the man had bought this weapon, or even such a weapon, in Paris then—so said all the police authorities—it might be worth while to make an attempt to hang him. Men very skilful in unravelling such mysteries were sent to Paris, and the police of that capital entered upon the search with most praiseworthy zeal. But the number of life-preservers which had been sold altogether baffled them. It seemed that nothing was so common as that gentlemen should walk about with bludgeons in their pockets covered with leathern thongs. A young woman and an old man who thought that they could recollect something of a special sale were brought over—and saw the splendour of London under very favourable circumstances;—but when confronted with Mr. Emilius, neither could venture to identify him. A large sum of money was expended—no doubt justified by the high position which poor Mr. Bonteen had filled in the counsels of the nation; but it was expended in vain. Mr. Bonteen had been murdered in the streets at the West End of London. The murderer was known to everybody. He had been seen a minute or two before the murder. The motive which had induced the crime was apparent. The weapon with which it had been perpetrated had been found. The murderer’s disguise had been discovered. The cunning with which he had endeavoured to prove that he was in bed at home had been unravelled, and the criminal purpose of his cunning made altogether manifest. Every man’s eye could see the whole thing from the moment in which the murderer crept out of Mrs. Meager’s house with Mr. Meager’s coat upon his shoulders and the life-preserver in his pocket, till he was seen by Lord Fawn hurrying out of the mews to his prey. The blows from the bludgeon could be counted. The very moment in which they had been struck had been ascertained. His very act in hurling the weapon over the wall was all but seen. And yet nothing could be done. “It is a very dangerous thing hanging a man on circumstantial evidence,” said Sir Gregory Grogram, who, a couple of months since, had felt almost sure that his honourable friend Phineas Finn would have to be hung on circumstantial evidence. The police and magistrates and lawyers all agreed that it would be useless, and indeed wrong, to send the case before a jury. But there had been quite sufficient evidence against Phineas Finn!
In the meantime the trial for bigamy proceeded in order that poor little Lizzie Eustace might be freed from the incubus which afflicted her. Before the end of July she was made once more a free woman, and the Rev. Joseph Emilius—under which name it was thought proper that he should be tried—was convicted and sentenced to penal servitude for five years. A very touching appeal was made for him to the jury by a learned serjeant, who declared that his client was to lose his wife and to be punished with extreme severity as a bigamist, because it was found to be impossible to bring home against him a charge of murder. There was, perhaps, some truth in what the learned serjeant said, but the truth had no effect upon the jury. Mr. Emilius was found guilty as quickly as Phineas Finn had been acquitted, and was, perhaps, treated with a severity which the single crime would hardly have elicited. But all this happened in the middle of the efforts which were being made to trace the purchase of the bludgeon, and when men hoped two or five or twenty-five years of threatened incarceration might be all the same to Mr. Emilius. Could they have succeeded in discovering where he had bought the weapon, his years of penal servitude would have afflicted him but little. They did not succeed; and though it cannot be said that any mystery was attached to the Bonteen murder, it has remained one of those crimes which are unavenged by the flagging law. And so the Rev. Mr. Emilius will pass away from our story.
There must be one or two words further respecting poor little Lizzie Eustace. She still had her income almost untouched, having been herself unable to squander it during her late married life, and having succeeded in saving it from the clutches of her pseudo husband. And she had her title, of which no one could rob her, and her castle down in Ayrshire—which, however, as a place of residence she had learned to hate most thoroughly. Nor had she done anything which of itself must necessarily have put her out of the pale of society. As a married woman she had had no lovers; and, when a widow, very little fault in that line had been brought home against her. But the world at large seemed to be sick of her. Mrs. Bonteen had been her best friend, and, while it was still thought that Phineas Finn had committed the murder, with Mrs. Bonteen she had remained. But it was impossible that the arrangement should be continued when it became known—for it was known—that Mr. Bonteen had been murdered by the man who was still Lizzie’s reputed husband. Not that Lizzie perceived this—though she was averse to the idea of her husband having been a murderer. But Mrs. Bonteen perceived it, and told her friend that she must—go. It was most
