So then the mystery of Longhurst’s fate was not for me to unravel.
Peters had held the clue of it, and had died because he held it;
Verschoyle perhaps had the clue and was dead too, probably from some
other cause; neither had recorded his secret, or the record could not
be found. As for the manner of Peters’ death, what further place was
there to look to for some fresh discovery? I already had heard all
that any of my old parishioners, any grown man or woman among them,
knew, and it was less than I knew, and I had searched the
neighbourhood for news, quietly, but I hoped no less effectively; the
police, I was now ready to believe, had searched as zealously and more
wisely. And so Vane-Cartwright was to go unhanged, and why not, after
all? he was not a homicidal maniac but a wise criminal, rather more
unlikely than most men to commit any further crime. Even his gains,
however ill-gotten, were not likely to be more harmfully spent than
those of many a better man. And no innocent man suffered under
suspicion. Trethewy had been found a good place by some unlooked-for
benefactor, where no memory of the crime would pursue him. Callaghan’s
numerous enough friends understood him far too well to suspect him,
and as for his numerous acquaintances who were not friends, if they
did suspect him, the good man would be rather amused than otherwise.
Let Vane-Cartwright live and adorn society which is adorned by men and
women worse than he, to whom circumstances have never brought the
opportunity of dramatic wrong-doing.
Thus I tried to think, as I left England for a few weeks in the late
spring of 1897 to join my wife and our daughter, who was now much
stronger, in Italy; but, whatever I tried to think, I had always with
me that consciousness of a purpose frustrated or let go, which is
perhaps the hardest thing to bear well and the most enervating thing
to bear ill.
Some ten days later I was in Florence with my wife. The next day we
were to go to Rome, leaving our daughter at the villa of a friend in
Fiesole. I remember at our early breakfast telling my wife the facts
or reports which I had been picking up about that strangely powerful
secret organisation, the Mafia. I repeated to her what I had just
heard, that not only prominent Italian politicians, but even
foreigners who had large commercial dealings with Italy, sometimes
found it convenient to be on good terms with that society. But she was
little interested in political facts which did not connect themselves
with any particular personality, and I thought she had hardly heard
me, though she raised her eyes to listen from the volume of Senator
Villari’s _Savonarola_ which she was finishing. I little imagined that
before another day had closed this chance remark of mine would have
acquired the closest personal interest for her, and have been turned
to very practical account.
Later in the day she was in the Pitti Galleries, and I came there from
Cook’s office to join her. She was looking with puzzled interest at a
picture by Botticelli, when a tall man, dressed like an Englishman,
placed himself with assumed unconsciousness just in front of her, in a
position of vantage for fixing his connoisseur’s gaze upon it. She
turned away and met me, and was saying, half-amused, that after all
there were Englishmen who could be as rude as any foreigner, when,
looking at him again as he moved away to leave the gallery, she
started and said: “Oh, Robert, I know his face”. I too knew his face,
and knew, as she did not, his name. “It is that dreadful man that I
told you about who was at Crema. Do not you remember I told you how he
would keep the only good room at the hotel when I arrived there with
mother so terribly ill, the time she had that first stroke. And oh, I
took such pains to write him the nicest note I could”—and very nice
her notes could be—“and I could just see his horrid face as he glanced
at it and said nothing but ‘tell the lady I cannot’ to the waiter. And
oh, poor mother did suffer in the dreadful hot room with all the
kitchen noises and the smells.” I did remember her story well, an
ordinary story enough, of one of those neglects of courtesy which,
once in fifty times it may be, are neglects of elementary mercy; but I
said little, and I did not tell her that her rediscovered enemy was my
enemy already, William Vane-Cartwright. I said to myself that I would
not tell her because she would feel an unreasonable relenting towards
Vane-Cartwright, if once she realised that she herself owed him a
grudge. Really I did not tell her because I had promptly formed a
design which she would have discovered and disapproved.
That evening I left my wife on some pretext, and having discovered
Vane-Cartwright’s hotel, I paid him a friendly call. I suppose it was
dishonourable; at least, I have often reproached myself for it, but
truly I do not know if it was really dishonourable. I do know that I
was very foolish to dream, as I did, that I should ferret something
out of him. He received me in his private sitting-room with
cordiality, or, I should rather say, effusiveness. He sent a rather
urgent message to his friend who was travelling with him, as if (I
thought) he did not wish to be alone with me, but he was far from
embarrassed. “Tell me, Mr. Driver,” he began, as soon as we were
seated, “has anything further been heard about the murder of our
friend Peters?” I answered that Trethewy had been released and had
left the neighbourhood, having found a situation, through some friends
unknown to me, and that to the best of my belief, the police had
discovered no further clue. “I am glad about Trethewy,” he said. “You
know I always suspected there had been some mistake there, and
besides, I always liked the man. I do not think the police will
discover a clue,” he said, “I rather think that the solution of the
mystery will occur to some of us, his friends, if a solution ever is
found.” I was silent. I could not tell whether he had a design to
allay possible suspicions of mine, or a design to goad me into
betraying whether I had those suspicions, or whether he was merely
keeping himself in practice. I wanted to drop the subject if I could.
“Do you know,” he persisted, “whether they have found any other way in
which the house could be entered from outside except the window of his
room, by which I don’t believe the murderer did enter?” I said there
was a small window to a housemaid’s closet which was not fastened, and
that the housemaid could not be quite certain that the door of the
closet was really locked overnight, for it did not shut properly; but
it was very doubtful whether a man could get through the window. “Who
in the world,” he said, “could have a motive for killing Peters, dear
old Eustace Peters?” I was beginning to lose my head, for I felt I was
playing an unworthy part. “Well,” I said, with no particular purpose,
“it seems certain that it cannot have been Mr. Thalberg.” “Certain, I
should say,” he answered. “Oh, no,” he added, more energetically, “I
know Thalberg well, and he is not the man. As for Callaghan, one might
as well suspect you or me—me, I should say,” and he turned away to
fetch a cigar, or perhaps to watch me for a moment in the mirror. “The
fact is,” he said returning, “it must be far easier than we, who have
never had occasion to give our wits to it, think to commit a murder
and hide one’s tracks absolutely. But here is Mr. Poile, let me
introduce you, and let us, for Heaven’s sake, talk of a more cheerful
subject.” So we did turn to a subject which I should have thought had
no pitfalls, the subject of Italian brocades, of which Vane-Cartwright
was an amateur. He produced a large parcel of ancient and gorgeous
stuffs which had come up on approval from a shop. He talked, in a way
that really held all my interest for the time, about the patterns;
and, starting from the more conventional of the designs before us, he
proceeded to discuss the history of common patterns, telling me
curious things about the patterns and the fabrics of the Eastern
Archipelago and the Malay Peninsula. Suddenly he picked up a really
noble piece of brocade, and turning to me, with a face of winning
simplicity and kindliness which he could not have learnt to assume if
it had not at some time been natural, he said: “Oh, Mr. Driver, I am
so fond of picking up these things, and it is so hard to find any
satisfactory use for them, it would be a real kindness if you would
accept this as an altar-cloth for your church. It will be wasted in a
museum otherwise.” It was too much for me. The proposition that I
should accept an altar-cloth for my church from the man that I was
seeking to convict of murder, sent a visible shudder through my frame,
and all the more because I felt that it was illogical to recoil from
this when I had not recoiled from affecting friendship to him. I said
“No” quite violently, and, when I collected my wits to utter thanks
and explanations, they were at once too effusive and too lame to have
blinded a stupider man than Vane-Cartwright.
I stayed long with him—should have outstayed my welcome, if I had ever
been welcome—for I was demoralised, and had resolved in mere dull
obstinacy both to disarm his suspicions somehow and to get something
out of him. The first would have been impossible for any one, the
second was impossible for me then, and at last I took leave, praying
him not to come down with me, and descended the stairs a very
miserable man. I had behaved stupidly, that was certain. I had behaved
badly, that was possible. I had shown him that I suspected him, that
was certain. I ought to have known beforehand that he would guess it,
for my refusal to visit him in London (as I happened to have promised
I would, before he left Long Wilton) had been marked enough to set him
thinking. Had I done nothing worse than betray vague suspicions? Yes,
in my floundering efforts I had recurred to his Eastern patterns, and
so led him to Eastern travels and towards topics dangerous to him,
only to fall into my own trap. He must have seen that I had somehow
heard before, as not one Englishman in twenty thousand has heard, of
the little island of Sulu.
Wholly sick with myself I stood in the hall of the hotel, absently
watching the porter set out the newly arrived letters in little heaps
on a table. There was one for Vane-Cartwright. Had I not noticed that
handwriting before? Yes, it was a marked hand, one so obviously that
of a servant and yet so well-formed and with such an elegance. I gazed
at the handwriting (somehow I thought of Sunday schools). I had just
time to note the postmark before another letter covered it.
The corner of my eye had half-caught a vision of some one coming
downstairs, coming very quietly but very quickly. A light step on the
rug beside me, an unpleasantly gentle hand taking my arm, the fingers,
I half-fancied, seeming to take measure of the size and hardness of my
muscle, and Vane-Cartwright’s too cultivated voice saying lightly,
“Looking to see if there is any one else that you know coming to the
hotel, Mr. Driver? I always do that. Well, good-night again, and so
many thanks.” “Caught again,” I reflected, as I turned into the
street, and nothing gained by spying and being caught spying. Yes,
something gained, that letter for Vane-Cartwright with the postmark
Crondall is in the handwriting of Mrs. Trethewy.
One question alone occupied me as I walked back: What was the exact
significance of the almost certain fact that the situation which the
Trethewys had obtained was really in Vane-Cartwright’s service? Had I
learnt that fact a day sooner, I might have thought that, murderer or
not, he had done a true and unobtrusive kindness in secretly engaging
them, but the little scene in the Pitti, and the trivial story of the
best bedroom at Crema, shut that explanation out of my mind. I had not
resolved this question when I got to the hotel and to my wife, who was
now anxiously expecting me. I had not even thought of the other
questions, to which it led, but I had at least returned in far too
sensible a mood to think any further of disguising anything from her.
Our talk lasted well into the night. I record so much of the substance
of its close as really concerns my story. “But still I do not see,” I
said, “why you should say I have spoilt our holiday.” “Because you
must go by the first train to-morrow. Not a moment later. Oh, Robert,
cannot you see why I have been so angry? I have looked forward so to
our stay alone together at Rome, and at another time I should be very
angry to lose it; but it is not that. Oh, Robert, I could find it in
my heart to beg you not to do your duty. It is your duty; you would
not be so full of passion against the man if it was not that you knew
it was your duty; and I know it too, and you must follow up that clue
at once before he makes it too late. But, oh, what am I saying, it is
not your duty I am thinking of. I would beg you to let the duty be if
that would save you. But it is too late now; it’s a race for life
between you and him. Peters has been killed, and Verschoyle has been
killed, and oh!”
The thought was not in the least new to me except so far as it
concerned Verschoyle. I had foreseen a time when my life would be in
danger from Vane-Cartwright. Stupid as it may seem, I had not realised
yet that that time was now, and anyway I had resolved to treat it
lightly myself, and hoped that it might not occur to her. We spent a
while without words. Then I said, in the foolish persuasion that it
was a manly utterance: “I do not think that I am brave, but somehow
the idea of being murdered, even if I put the likelihood of it far
higher than I do, is not one which, apart from the thought of you,
would weigh much with me”. Whatever I may have been going to add, I
was allowed to go no further. I was made to see in a minute that the
risk to my life was a real consideration which it was selfish and, in
a man of normal courage, very cheap to overlook; but anyway, the need
for haste was real, and, after a very short rest, I was to start. To
get ahead of Vane-Cartwright, who would probably look out for my
departure, I had resolved to take horses and carriage in the early
morning, post to Prato, and take the railway there. My wife was to go
with our daughter to our friend’s villa. So the next morning found me
on my way to England, sad to go, and yet, I must confess, not a little
exhilarated, against all reason, by the sense that perhaps it really
was a race for life on which I had started, and a race with a
formidable competitor.