Flagrante delicto

But there was still a pretty show. A thief's hand struck off flagrante delicto; a murdered woman's hair; the Abbot's axe, and other tools of crime.

And just then there came a knock and a scurrying; the police, so lamentably absent from the Calton Hill, appeared upon the scene; and the party, taken flagrante delicto, with their glasses at their elbow, were seized, marched up to the police office, and all duly summoned to appear as witnesses in the consequent case against that arch-shebeener, Colette.