Giuseppe’s murder at Virginia Revel’s home transforms an already threatening blackmail into a criminal trap: Virginia finds him dead, and the small pistol bearing her name points suspicion directly at her. Anthony Cade recognizes that the evidence may have been arranged to incriminate her, but chooses secrecy over immediate police involvement. His disposal of the body and concealment of the weapon carry the crisis beyond the house and make his protection of Virginia inseparable from his own unlawful actions.

The Setup and Discovery

A telegram addressed to Chilvers instructs him to take the household to Virginia’s cottage and prepare it for a weekend party, catching the 5.49 train. The message resembles the sort Virginia has sent on previous occasions, so it does not appear suspicious; Chilvers follows the instruction. Virginia remains behind because Elise knows her mistress will want her to pack. The false message thus clears most of the household from the house while leaving Virginia there.

When Virginia goes to the study intending to telephone the police, she finds a man sitting in the large armchair. She had momentarily forgotten the visitor she expected and first assumes he has fallen asleep. He is dead: a pistol lies on the floor, and the circumstances of the killing make the scene immediately alarming. Virginia pauses before calling for help. She fears that the false telegram, Giuseppe’s earlier blackmail, and letters she says she did not write will combine to make her appear culpable. Her concern is not only what happened, but whether she can persuade others to believe her account.

A Frame-Up Takes Shape

Anthony examines the telegram and points out that it originated in Barnes, where Virginia had been that afternoon at Ranelagh. That detail gives others grounds to suspect she sent it herself. He wraps his hand in a handkerchief before picking up the pistol, handling the scene with deliberate caution even as he remarks on the care criminals must take.

The weapon complicates the picture. It is a small, delicate pistol, engraved with the name Virginia. Anthony asks whether she has seen it before; her genuine astonishment persuades him that the inscription does not establish her involvement. He considers a different explanation: whoever wanted Giuseppe dead may have taken unusual trouble to bring him to Virginia’s home in order to implicate her. The scheme appears to depend on knowledge of her cottage at Datchet, her household arrangements, and her attendance at Ranelagh.

Anthony lays out the available choices: Virginia can call the police and tell the whole story, or he can try to dispose of the body. He acknowledges that reporting everything would probably be the sounder course, then proposes a compromised alternative—contact the police while withholding the pistol and the blackmailing letters, if they are still on Giuseppe. A search of the body finds it stripped of its contents. In its lining, Anthony notices a hole and a scrap of paper left where something has been roughly removed, further suggesting that the scene has been tampered with.

Choosing Concealment

Anthony urges Virginia to put herself in his hands. He argues that involving the police would prevent her from reaching Chimneys that day, or even the following day, and that her arrival there could disconcert the unknown people behind the plot. Virginia agrees to follow his second plan. Before Anthony can move the body, they arrange to get Elise out of the house without alerting her to the danger: Virginia sends her to buy special scent from a shop said to remain open until eight, and tells her to follow by the next train without returning.

Anthony selects a suitable trunk from the basement and packs it while Virginia changes from her tennis clothes into a soft brown travelling dress and an orange hat. He directs her to take a taxi to Paddington with her luggage and the trunk, leave it at the left-luggage office, and drop the ticket as she passes him on the platform. He will retrieve the ticket and handle the trunk; Virginia is to continue to Chimneys. Their plan separates her public journey from his secret task, with the cloakroom ticket serving as the quiet link between them.

The Body and the Pistol

The arrangement works without a hitch. Anthony retrieves the ticket, collects the trunk, and places it in a second-hand Morris Cowley he had acquired earlier for his plans. He drives out of London through Notting Hill, Shepherd’s Bush, Brentford, and Hounslow to a busy road between Hounslow and Staines. After obscuring the car’s number plate with mud, he waits for a break in traffic, removes Giuseppe’s body from the trunk, and leaves it beside the road inside a curve, where passing headlights will not fall on it. The entire operation takes a minute and a half.

Anthony then detours through Burnham Beeches. There he climbs a large tree and hides a small brown-paper parcel containing the pistol in a niche near the trunk, on a high branch. He reasons that searches will focus on the ground and ponds, while few people could reach the hiding place. The weapon marked with Virginia’s name is therefore removed from the house and concealed separately from the body, making Anthony’s intervention a calculated attempt to frustrate the search for evidence.

Afterward, he returns to Paddington and leaves the trunk at the other cloakroom, on the arrivals side. He refuels the Morris and drives north. Shortly after half past eleven he reaches the road beside Chimneys’ park, climbs the wall, and approaches the house. The sequence links the concealed evidence at Burnham Beeches to Anthony’s onward journey: rather than report the murder, he leaves the body and pistol in separate hiding places and continues toward Virginia’s destination.

Consequences and Significance

The murder changes the stakes from blackmail to a coordinated threat against Virginia’s freedom and reputation. The telegram, her absence at Ranelagh, and the engraved pistol all create appearances that could be used against her, while the missing contents of Giuseppe’s pockets and the torn lining indicate that evidence has already been manipulated. Anthony’s inference that she is being framed is supported by those circumstances, though the identity of the plotters is not established in this episode.

His decision offers Virginia immediate protection from discovery at her home, but it also exposes both of them to the consequences of concealment. Anthony does not merely advise or assist her: he transports Giuseppe’s body, hides the pistol, and proceeds toward Chimneys rather than surrendering the evidence. The ordinary mechanisms of household life—a familiar telegram, a servant’s obedience, a trunk, and a cloakroom ticket—become instruments in an improvised evasion. What begins as an apparent murder scene at Virginia’s home becomes a distributed trail of evidence that Anthony has deliberately displaced.