The chapter which I am about to write may well prove dreary. It will
be nothing but a record of two deaths and of much discouragement. Here
was I with my theory (for it had been no more) grown into a fairly
connected history which so appealed at many points to a rational
judgment as to leave little room for doubt of its truth. And yet, as I
could not but see, there was very little in it at present which could
form even a part of the evidence necessary to convict Vane-Cartwright
in a Court of Law. I determined all the same to get advice upon the
matter from a lawyer, who was my friend, thinking that it was now time
to put my materials in the hands of the authorities charged with the
detection of crime, and that, with this to start upon, and with the
skill and resources which they possessed, they could hardly fail
before long to discover the evidence needed for a prosecution. But my
lawyer friend, though he quite agreed with me in my conviction that
Vane-Cartwright was guilty of two murders, doubted whether the facts
which I had got together would move the authorities to take up the
matter actively. Still he undertook, with my approval, to talk about
the subject with some one in the Public Prosecutor’s office or in the
Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, I do not know
which. Nothing resulted from this, and the failure needs little
explanation. Some want of touch between town and country police, some
want of eagerness on the part of a skilled official who had lately
incurred blame and disappointment through the ludicrous failure of a
keen pursuit upon a somewhat similar trail, these might account for it
all. But besides, Callaghan had been beforehand with us, and on this
occasion had managed to raise a spirit of incredulity about it all.
Perhaps too even hardened experts recoiled instinctively from
associating with guilt one of the few great men of finance who were at
once well known to the outside public and respected in the City
itself.
For me then there was nothing but to wait for the further things which
I somehow felt certain would turn up. As for Callaghan it happened
just about this time that he became keenly enamoured of an invention,
made by an engineer friend of his, through which he persuaded himself
that he could make his own and his friend’s fortune. Henceforward for
some time the affair of Peters seems to have passed from his mind, and
he was prevented from meeting me at the few times at which I should
have been able to see him.
In the course of December I had a letter from my old parish from a
friend who was kind enough to keep me posted in the gossip of the
place. He said that the police were now busy over a new clue as to the
murder. It may be remembered that according to Trethewy he had, as he
returned home on the night of the murder, been passed in the lane by a
man riding a horse and leading another. Well, report said now that a
man in a neighbouring parish, who had been greatly excited about the
murder at the time, had been having dreams about it night after night,
which impressed him with the notion that he was to discover the truth.
Rooting about for all the recollections of that time which he could
find among his neighbours, he heard that in the early morning after
the murder a man with two horses had been seen between Peters’ house
and the village, that another man, a stranger to the village, had come
up from the direction of Peters’ house and had mounted the second
horse, and that the two had ridden off together. Report added that the
man whom Trethewy had seen had now been traced by the police, and that
his answers as to the man who had joined him and ridden off with him
were unsatisfactory and suspicious; and it added one more telling
detail. The police (as I may have mentioned) had before I left Long
Wilton noticed one window at the back of the house as in some respects
the readiest way by which the house could have been wrongfully
entered. It belonged to a housemaid’s closet, of which the door did
not shut properly. It was very easy to climb up to it; but then the
window itself was very small, and it was a question whether a man of
ordinary stature could possibly have squeezed himself through it; now
the strange man of this rumour was described as being ridiculously
small and thin. There were many more picturesque details related, but
the whole story professed only to consist of unsifted rumour. I
believed little of it, but I naturally did accept the statement (quite
mistaken) that the police were busy in the matter. With my fixed idea
about Vane-Cartwright, I felt sure that they were upon a false scent.
But I thought it very likely that this would for the present absorb
their attention, and, between this and the great pressure of work in a
new parish and of certain family anxieties, I made no further effort
at this time to secure attention to the discovery which I believed I
had made.
Twice in the few days just before Christmas my hopes of making further
discoveries were vainly aroused. I made a call of civility in my new
parish upon a notable Nonconformist parishioner, and, in my rapid
survey of his sitting-room before he came to me, I noticed several
indications that he had been in Australia, and I saw on the
mantelpiece a framed photograph. It was rather a hazy and faded
photograph which gave me no clear impression of its subject, but under
it was written, “Walter Longhurst, Melbourne, 3rd April, 1875”. Could
that be my Longhurst, and was this one of those relations of his,
whom, as I had heard, Vane-Cartwright had treated with suspicious
generosity? Might he not, in that case, be the possessor of
information more valuable than he knew? He now came in. He was a truly
venerable man, who in spite of great age was still active as a
lay-preacher of one of the Methodist Churches, and I was attracted by
the archaic but evidently sincere piety of his greeting when he
entered the room. But unfortunately, when by adjusting his gold
spectacles he had discovered of what profession I was, a cloud of
suspicion seemed to arise in his mind, and he was more anxious to
testify, in all charity but with all plain dealing, concerning
priestly pretensions and concerning that educational policy which was
then beginning to gather strength, than to enter into any such
conversation as I desired. I made out, nevertheless, that this Walter
Longhurst was probably my Longhurst, and my expectation rose
unreasonably. My new friend (if he will let me call him so) was no
relation of his, but had known him at a time when both were in
Australia. Longhurst was from his point of view outside the fold
besides being a rough kind of man, or, as he put it, a “careless
liver”; but he evidently flattered himself that he had exercised a
good influence over Longhurst, and the latter had given money, which
he could then ill afford, though he made a good deal of money later,
to help religious work with which my lay-preaching friend was
connected. Later on, when my informant had returned to England and was
for some time incapacitated by an accident which happened on the
voyage, Longhurst, to his surprise, had from time to time sent him
presents of money. They came in the form of banknotes, sent by a
mysterious agent in London, who gave no address to which they could be
returned, but who wrote stating Longhurst’s desire that he should use
them for himself, or, if he absolutely would not, should at least use
them in his work. All this the old man’s gratitude obliged him to
relate, but, when I pressed him for information about Longhurst’s
relations or friends, either he knew nothing or his ill-defined
suspicion of me returned and shut his mouth. I did, however, ascertain
that some years before (after Longhurst’s death) a rich gentleman,
whose name the old man had forgotten, though I thought I could supply
it, had heard of him in some way as one of Longhurst’s beneficiaries,
and pressed upon him a pension which he had refused, as he would, if
he could, have refused Longhurst’s bounty.
Two days later, on Christmas Eve, I was urgently summoned to visit
Peters’ aunt, Miss Waterston, whom I had seen at his funeral. I had
called upon her in the summer at her flat in London, but a lady who
was staying with her remained in the room all the time, in spite, as I
thought, of several hints that she might go, and Miss Waterston, when
I left, said how glad she would be to see me again, and, she hoped,
talk with me more fully. I took little note of this at the time, but I
made up my mind to take my wife to see the old lady when I could, and
continued thinking of it and putting it off till I got this summons,
which told me that Miss Waterston was very ill and had something which
she much wished to tell me. When I arrived at her flat she was dead.
The lady who had been looking after her told me that she had several
times shown anxiety that I should come soon, but had at last remarked
that if I did not come in time she would accept it as a sign that what
she had meant to tell me was best untold. She had two weeks before,
when she was not yet ill, remarked that she would like to see me soon.
Various straws of things that were told me about her suggested that
she had lately become concerned afresh about her nephew’s death. She
had been intimate with the Cartwright family, and had to the end seen
something of a rather neglected widowed cousin of William
Vane-Cartwright’s. Of course I have no ground for thinking that she
had any grave disclosure to make to me.
Christmas, that year, came sadly to me. We must in any case have been
full of memories of the last Christmas, at which Peters had joined our
party and added much to the children’s and our own delight. This
Christmas he was dead; the hope, not perhaps consonant with Christmas
thoughts, of avenging him had arisen in my mind and was dying, and I
came home from the deathbed of the last remaining person of his kin
who had loved him better than we did, and who in the little I had seen
of her had reflected to me some indefinable trace of the same noble
qualities as I discovered in him.
I attended her funeral. So did the old cousin who had come with her to
Peters’ funeral. He recognised me and greeted me courteously,
remarking what a charming person that Mr. Vane-Cartwright was whom he
had met at my house. He looked to me older; his grey hair was turning
auburn; he was as unattractive to me as the rest of the appanage of
funerals, but I was grateful to him for being one of the very few who
came to honour the remains of the old woman, almost a stranger to me,
whom I yet so truly respected.
By the time the anniversary of Peters’ death came round I was again
alone; it had been necessary after Christmas that my daughter should
go South, and my wife had taken her. I was busy and therefore happy
enough, and I did not often but I did sometimes ask myself, would
nothing more ever turn up? Yes, before long something did turn up;
something not to help me on but to show me that, in thinking ever to
unravel the dark history of Longhurst’s fate, I had started upon a
hopeless task. Early in February a letter came to me re-directed to
Peters from the dead letter office at Siena, where it had long lain
entombed. It was a letter written by Peters to a certain Reverend
James Verschoyle, D.D., addressing him as a person Peters well knew
and had seen quite lately. It bore the date of Vane-Cartwright’s first
evening at Grenvile Combe. It reminded him of a conversation which he
had had with Peters, at their last meeting, about a very mysterious
event in the Philippines, and of the great surprise which Peters had
expressed at what Verschoyle then told him. “To tell the truth,” said
Peters, “it should have revived a suspicion which I had long ago
entertained against a man who was once my friend. Or rather, it should
have done more than that, it should have convinced me of his guilt and
given me the means of proving it. How I came to put it from my mind I
hardly know. I think that my recollection of what you told me is
precise, but I should be greatly obliged if you would refer to your
journals of the months May to October, 1882, and perhaps you will
oblige me by copying out for me all that has any bearing on this
matter. I am sorry to trouble you, but I am convinced that the ends of
justice may be served by your doing this for me, and I suspect that if
they are to be served, I must act as quickly as I may.”
I lost no time in tracing the Rev. James Verschoyle, D.D., who had
about a year before been at Siena. He had, after a sojourn in Germany,
come back to England. He had, I found, been a missionary in the East.
I managed to trace him to his latest address, only to find that he had
died in the previous August. I had an interview with some of his
family, and found them most obligingly willing to search for the
journals in question. It was strange that the journals for the years
1881 to 1883 could nowhere be found. I was convinced that they had
contained those crucial facts to which Peters had referred in his
letter to Bryanston.
Evidently there had been information in Dr. Verschoyle’s possession
which in Peters’ hands could have led to the conviction of
Vane-Cartwright. Evidently Peters had once seen that information, but
had disregarded it, more or less wilfully, in his determination to
think his old acquaintance innocent, and to put the guilt on Arkell
who had been hanged at Singapore. Evidently the full significance of
Verschoyle’s facts came to his mind when Vane-Cartwright, that evening
at Grenvile Combe, had revived his first suspicion, and he wrote at
once to recover the precise details. But of what nature that
information was, and how Vane-Cartwright, seeing Verschoyle’s name on
an envelope, could have grasped the full extent of the danger to
himself, I could not guess then, and I cannot guess now.