Gun with "Virginia" engraved on it

The pistol engraved with Virginia’s name is both a lethal weapon and a planted clue: discovered beside Giuseppe’s body, it appears to implicate Virginia, but Anthony’s inspection exposes the possibility that it was placed there to frame her. Its inscription makes the weapon seem intimate and conclusive; its concealment in a high branch at Burnham Beeches turns that apparent evidence into a secret Anthony must manage.

Appearance and Discovery

Anthony first handles the pistol with a handkerchief wrapped around his hand. When he asks Virginia whether she has seen it, her denial prompts him to examine it more closely. He holds out a small, delicate-looking weapon, almost toy-like in appearance but capable of deadly work; the name Virginia is engraved on it.

The contrast between its size and its capacity, and between its neat inscription and its violent use, makes the pistol more than a practical weapon. The name seems to supply a direct link between Virginia and Giuseppe’s death. Yet her astonishment at seeing it appears genuine, and Anthony believes her. The object therefore introduces an uncertainty that its inscription alone cannot resolve: a name can point toward a suspect without proving who possessed or used the weapon.

The Competing Explanations

Anthony lays out two possible accounts of the pistol’s presence. Under the first, the woman associated with the Virginia letters tracked Giuseppe down, shot him, left the pistol, took the letters, and went away. Virginia accepts that this is possible, though reluctantly.

Anthony considers another explanation more compelling: whoever wanted Giuseppe dead also wanted Virginia incriminated, perhaps making the accusation the central purpose of bringing him to her home. The killer’s apparent knowledge of her cottage at Datchet, her household arrangements, and her presence at Ranelagh gives the planted weapon a place within a deliberate effort to implicate her. The engraved name supplies the accusation’s most visible prop, while Virginia’s surprise and Anthony’s suspicions keep its meaning unsettled.

From Evidence to Liability

Anthony weighs calling the police and giving the whole account against concealing the body himself. He acknowledges that reporting everything would be the sounder course, but his private inclination is to test whether he can conceal a crime. He also considers a compromise: contact the police while suppressing both the pistol and the blackmailing letters, if the letters remain on Giuseppe.

A search of Giuseppe’s pockets shows that he has been stripped of everything. Anthony finds only a scrap of paper caught in a roughly torn section of the lining, not the missing letters. The pistol thus belongs to a wider problem of absent evidence: it is incriminating in appearance, but the materials that might explain the blackmail and establish what happened have disappeared. Anthony’s decision to hide the weapon makes him responsible for controlling evidence that could otherwise expose Virginia to suspicion—and could also expose his own actions.

Concealment at Burnham Beeches

After arranging for Giuseppe’s body to be transported out of London in a trunk, Anthony leaves the pistol separately. At Burnham Beeches, he climbs a huge tree and fixes a small brown-paper parcel to one of its highest branches, hiding it in a niche near the trunk of the tree. The selected hiding place depends on height and concealment rather than on burying the weapon or dropping it into water: Anthony observes that investigators search the ground and ponds, while few people could climb that tree.

The pistol’s movement from a scene where its inscription could accuse Virginia to a concealed perch far above ordinary searches completes its change in narrative function. It begins as apparent proof against her; after Anthony recognizes the possibility of a frame-up, it becomes evidence he deliberately withholds. The weapon continues to exert pressure even when it is out of sight, because its hidden location is part of Anthony’s attempt to control both the suspicion surrounding Virginia and the consequences of his own interference.