I was up early on the 29th. Snow lay thick on the ground but had
ceased falling, and it was freezing hard, when, while waiting for
breakfast, I walked out as far as my gate on the village street to see
what the weather was like. Suddenly Peters’ housemaid came running
down to the village on her way, as it proved, to the police-station.
Before passing she paused, and breathlessly told me the news. I walked
quickly to Peters’ house. Several neighbours were already gathering
about the gate of the drive but did not enter. I rang the bell, was
admitted by the housekeeper and walked straight up to Peters’ bedroom.
Callaghan and Vane-Cartwright were there already, the former
half-dressed, unshaved and haggard-looking, the latter a neat figure
in bedroom slippers and a dressing-gown. We had only exchanged a few
words when the police-sergeant entered, followed a minute or two later
by a tall and pleasant-faced young constable, who brought with him the
village doctor, an ambitious, up-to-date youth who had lately come to
those parts.
I have some little difficulty in saying what I then observed; for
indeed, though I looked intently enough on the dead face and figure,
and noticed much about them that is not to my present purpose, I took
in for myself very little that bore on that problem of detection which
has since interested me so much. I cannot now distinguish the things
which I really saw upon hearing the others mention them from the
things which I imagine myself seeing because I knew they were
mentioned then or later. In fact I saw chiefly with the eyes of the
Sergeant, who set about his inquiries with a quiet promptitude that
surprised me in one whom I knew only as a burly, steady,
slow-speaking, heavy member of the force.
There was little to note about the barely furnished room which showed
no traces of disorder. On the top of some drawers on the left of the
bed-head lay a curious, old-fashioned gold watch with the watchkey by
it, a pocket-knife, a pencil, a ring of keys and a purse, the last
containing a good deal of money. On a small table on the other side of
the bed stood a candlestick, the candle burnt to the socket; by it lay
two closed books. Under the table near the bed lay, as if it had
fallen from the dead man’s hand or off his bed, a book with several
leaves crumpled and torn, as if, in his first alarm, or as he died,
Peters had caught them in a spasmodic clutch. I looked to see what it
was, merely from the natural wish to know what had occupied my
friend’s mind in his last hour. It was Borrow’s _Bible in Spain_. When
I saw the title an indistinct recollection came to me of some very
recent mention of the book by some one, and with it came a faint sense
that it was important I should make this recollection clear. But
either I was too much stunned as yet to follow out the thought, or I
put it aside as a foolish trick of my brain, and the recollection,
whatever it was, is gone. The position of the body and the arrangement
of the pillows gave no sign of any struggle having taken place. They
looked as if when he was murdered he had been sitting up in bed to
read. He could hardly have fallen asleep so, for his head would have
found but an uncomfortable rest on the iron bedstead. But I repeat, I
did not observe this myself, and I cannot be sure that anybody noted
it accurately at the time.
The surgeon stepped quickly to the body, slightly raised the left arm,
drew aside the already open jacket of the sleeping suit, and silently
indicated the cause of death. This was a knife, a curious, long,
narrow, sharp knife for surgical use, which the murderer had left
there, driven home between two of his victim’s ribs. I say “the
murderer,” for the surgeon’s first words were, “Not suicide”. I had no
suspicion of suicide, but thought that he pronounced this judgment
rather hastily, and that the Sergeant was right when he asked him to
examine the posture of the body more closely. He did so, still, as I
thought, perfunctorily, and gave certain reasons which did not impress
either my judgment or my memory. I was more convinced by his remark
that he had studied in Berlin and was familiar with the appearances of
suicide. I may say at once that it appeared afterwards, at the
inquest, that there was reason to think that Peters had not had such a
knife, for he never locked up drawers or cupboards, and his servants
knew all his few possessions well. It appeared, too, that the owner of
the knife had taken precautions against being traced, by carefully
obliterating the maker’s name and other marks on it with a file.
In the midst of our observations in the room a vexatious interruption
happened. I have forgotten to say that the servants had been sent out
of the room by the police-sergeant, and that, almost immediately
after, the constable who brought the doctor had been sent down to
examine the outside of the house. For some reason he was slow in
setting about this; it is possible that he stopped to talk to the
servants, but in any case, he went out through the kitchen, and
explored first the back of the house, where he thought he knew of an
easy way of making an entrance. Meanwhile the neighbours, who had
collected about the gate, had been drawn by their curiosity into the
garden, and by the time the constable had got round to the front of
the house several were wandering about the drive and the lawn which
lay between it and the road. They had no more harmful intention than
that of gazing and gaping at the windows, but it led to the very
serious consequence that a number of tracks had now been made in the
snow which might very possibly frustrate a search for the traces of
the criminal. This the Sergeant now noticed from the window.
As for the actual carriage-drive I was fortunately able to remember
(and it was the only useful thing that I did observe for myself) that
when I had arrived there had been no footmarks between the gate and
the front door except the unmistakable print of the goloshes worn by
the housemaid on her way to call the police. But the tracks on the
lawns and elsewhere about the house might cause confusion.
Upon seeing what was happening the Sergeant asked Vane-Cartwright,
Callaghan and myself to await him in Peters’ study, while he went out
to drive away the intruders, to make the constable keep others out and
to pursue his own investigations. While we waited Vane-Cartwright, who
had spoken little but seemed to watch all proceedings very
attentively, made the sensible suggestion that we should look for
Peters’ will, as we ought to know who were his executors. We consulted
the housekeeper, who pointed out the drawer in which the few papers of
importance were kept, and there we soon found a will in a sealed
envelope. The first few lines, which were all that we read, showed me
that, as I had expected, I was Peters’ executor along with an old
friend of his whom I had never met but who, I believed, as was the
fact, now lived in America.
The Sergeant now rejoined us; he had discovered nothing outside, and,
though the tracks of the intruders made it difficult to be certain, he
believed that there was nothing to discover; he thought that the
murderer had approached the house before the snow began to fall, and
he found no sign that he had entered the house in the manner of a
housebreaker. He had, I must say, taken a very short time about his
search. He wished now that the servants should be summoned, as of
course it was necessary to make inquiries about the movements of all
persons connected with the house. But he was here delayed by Callaghan
who had matters of importance to relate.
He and Vane-Cartwright had been disturbed during the night in a
notable manner. They had actually had an alarm of murder, and
curiously enough a false and even ludicrous alarm. About 11.30 o’clock
they had been roused by loud shouting outside the house, amid which
Callaghan declared that he had distinguished a cry of murder. He had
come tumbling out of his room, calling Vane-Cartwright, who slept in
the next room, and who immediately joined him in the passage. Without
waiting to call Peters, whose room was some distance from theirs and
from the staircase by which they descended (for there were two
staircases in the main part of the house), they went to the front door
and opened it. The flash of a bull’s-eye lantern in the road, the
policeman’s voice quietly telling some revellers to go home and the
immediate cessation of the noise, showed them that they had been
roused by nothing more serious than the drunken uproar which I had
predicted to Peters would disturb him. The two men had returned to
their rooms after locking the front door again; they had noticed that
the library door was open and the lights out in that room; they had
noticed also as they went upstairs (this time by the other staircase)
light shining through the chink under Peters’ bedroom door; and they
had heard him knock out the ashes of a pipe against the mantelpiece.
The pipe now lay on the mantelpiece; and, of course, that particular
noise is unmistakable. They concluded that, though he was awake and
probably reading, he had not thought the noise outside worth noticing.
Callaghan added that he himself had lain awake some time, and that for
half an hour afterwards there had been occasionally sounds of talking
or shouting in the lane, once even a renewal of something like the
first uproar.
The report subsequently received from the constable who had been on
duty along the road that night confirmed the above, and a little
reflexion made it appear that the disturbance outside had nothing to
do with the murder. In fact the only thing connected with this
incident which much impressed me at the time was Callaghan’s manner in
relating it. He had up to now been very silent, he now began to talk
with furious eagerness. He readily saw and indeed suggested that the
disturbance which he related was of little consequence. But having to
tell of it he did so with a vividness which was characteristic of him,
so that one saw the scene as he described it, saw indeed more than
there was to see, for he spoke of the ground already white and the
snow falling in thick flakes, when he was pulled up by the Sergeant
who said that the snow had not begun to fall till three o’clock that
morning. Callaghan began angrily persisting, and the Sergeant appealed
to Vane-Cartwright, who up till now had said little, merely confirming
Callaghan’s narrative at various points with a single syllable or with
a nod of his head, but who now said that Callaghan was wrong about the
snow. He added the benevolent explanation that Callaghan, who was
really much excited, had combined the impressions of their false alarm
over night with those of their all too real alarm in the morning.