the revolver used to kill Prince Michael

The revolver used to kill Prince Michael is the central physical link between the murder, the effort to frame Herman Isaacstein, and the eventual exposure of Mademoiselle Brun. First hidden in Isaacstein’s suitcase to redirect suspicion, the weapon returns to view during a nighttime search for the diamond, where it is involved in a struggle that ends with Mademoiselle Brun dead.

The murder and the planted evidence

The revolver enters the investigation as a weapon whose location appears to implicate Isaacstein. When Anthony Cade tells him that the revolver used to shoot Prince Michael has been found in his suitcase, Isaacstein reacts with alarm and insists that he neither placed it there nor knows how it got there. He calls the discovery a plot. The physical evidence therefore does not simply identify a weapon: in the wrong place, it creates a false account of who may have committed the crime.

Anthony narrates how the revolver was found, and Isaacstein’s terror makes the accusation’s immediate force plain. But the object’s presence in the suitcase is not proof of Isaacstein’s guilt. The later reconstruction identifies the placement as deliberate, making the weapon an instrument of deception as well as the means of Prince Michael’s death.

The truth of the weapon’s placement

Anthony’s account of the murder explains the frame-up. Mademoiselle Brun shot Prince Michael after he recognized her, then put the revolver in Isaacstein’s suitcase in an attempt to confuse the trial. She also returned the letters associated with the case. The revolver’s location was thus arranged to direct suspicion away from her and toward a politically useful alternative suspect.

This revelation reverses the meaning of the earlier discovery. What looked like a clue pointing to Isaacstein becomes evidence of someone else’s intervention. The weapon preserves the trace of the murder, but its transfer into the suitcase obscures that trace: the same object can support a misleading theory when investigators do not know who moved it or why.

The final appearance

The revolver appears again during a nighttime search in the library. A figure is pulling books from the shelves by torchlight when another person rushes into the room. In the struggle that follows, the torch goes out; after Lord Caterham turns on the lights, two figures are still grappling. A pistol shot sounds, and the smaller figure falls. The other figure is Boris, who says that Mademoiselle Brun had killed his master and then tried to shoot him, and that the pistol went off during their struggle.

The body is identified as Mademoiselle Brun, with the pistol still in her hand. Its presence in this final confrontation connects the concealed murder investigation to her attempt to recover the diamond. The weapon that had been planted to mislead the authorities is now part of the scene in which the person responsible for the original shooting is exposed.

Evidentiary and narrative significance

The revolver’s changing position structures the investigation’s reversals: from Prince Michael’s shooting, to its discovery in Isaacstein’s luggage, to the recognition that it was planted, and finally to its appearance in the struggle with Boris. Each change in location changes what the characters can infer. The suitcase invites suspicion of Isaacstein; the later explanation identifies Mademoiselle Brun as the person who placed it there; its final appearance accompanies the exposure of her role.

The object also makes the difference between possession and responsibility central to the case. Isaacstein possesses the revolver only because it has been planted, while Mademoiselle Brun’s responsibility is established through Anthony’s reconstruction of her actions. As a result, the weapon is not a self-explanatory answer to the mystery. Its meaning depends on the sequence of events that put it in each person’s hands and on the testimony that restores that sequence.