Tracks in the snow

by Baron Godfrey Rathbone Benson Charnwood

I had intended to take leave of Callaghan for the time upon our arrival at the station, but I found that this was not to be done, for Callaghan was determined to obey almost to the letter my wife’s behest to him, not to leave me. He took me to luncheon at a restaurant, and then prevailed upon me to come with him by one of our fast trains to my own house, collect there all the papers which I possessed bearing on the affair of Peters, and bring them to his chambers, where he was resolved I should at present stay.

When we arrived there, I was for starting at once to seek out the doctor who had been at Long Wilton, but I was practically overpowered and sent to bed, after handing over to Callaghan, amongst other papers, the notes which Peters had made as to the death of Longhurst.

After some hours Callaghan entered my room to tell me that dinner would be ready in half an hour, that I might get up for it if I liked, or have it brought to my bedroom. He then turned on me reproachfully. “Why had I not shown him these papers long ago, when he came to stay with me?” I was at a loss for an answer, for in fact when I had told him of my suspicions and my reasons for them, I had done the thing by halves, because my want of confidence in him lingered.

“Well, well,” said my good-natured friend, “I daresay I can guess the reason. But these papers explain much to me. You never told me it was the island of Sulu on which Peters discovered the body, or that he went there with Dr. Kuyper. I had heard the name of that island and the doctor before—on the last night of Peters’ life while you were talking music with Thalberg.”

Next morning I set off early to see the doctor who had been at Long Wilton. Callaghan, who at first seemed to think it his duty to be with me everywhere, gave way and consented to go upon some business of his own about which he was very mysterious; but he put me in the charge of his servant, a man singularly fitted to be his servant, an Irishman and an old soldier, who, I discovered, had made himself very useful to him in his spying upon Thalberg, having entered into a close and I daresay bibulous friendship with one of Thalberg’s clerks. My new guardian so far relaxed his precautions as to allow me to be alone with the doctor in his consulting-room; he otherwise looked after me as though he thought me a child, and from the very look of him one could see that I was well protected, though indeed I hardly imagined then that the perils which beset me at Crondall would follow me through the streets of London.

I asked the doctor kindly to give me all his recollections as to what occurred in Peters’ bedroom while he was there. He told me little but what was of a professional nature, and he informed me rather dryly that he made it his practice on all occasions to observe only what concerned him professionally. I therefore put to him with very little hope the main question which I had come to ask—Had he observed anything about the windows. “Certainly,” he said, “that, as it happens, is a professional matter with me. I never enter a sickroom without glancing at the windows, and I did so from force of habit this time, though” (and he laughed with an ugly sense of humour) “it didn’t matter much, as no fresh air could have revived that patient; but the windows were shut, and (for I often notice that too) they were tight shut and latched.” “Are you certain,” I said, “that both of them were latched?” “Certain,” he answered; “they were both latched when I came into the room, and they were latched when I went out, for I happened to have looked again. You see that, once one has the habit of noticing a certain kind of thing, one always notices it and remembers it easily, however little else one may see.” I asked him then whether he happened to remember the order in which the persons who had then been in the room left it. About this he was not so certain, but he had an impression that only two persons were left in the room after him. These were the police-sergeant, who held the door open for a moment while Vane-Cartwright lingered, and who locked it when they had all left. I may say at once that this was afterwards confirmed by the police-sergeant, who added that Vane-Cartwright was standing somewhere not far from the window in question.

I returned by appointment to Callaghan’s chambers some time before eleven. I was immediately taken out by him again upon an errand which he refused to explain. We arrived at length at an office in the City which from the name on the door proved to be that of Mr. Thalberg, Solicitor and Commissioner for Oaths. We were ushered into Mr. Thalberg’s private room, and it immediately appeared that Callaghan had come to give instructions for the making of his will. He explained my being there by saying there was a point in his will about which he desired to consult both of us. I was thus compelled to be present at what for a while struck me as a very tedious farce. Callaghan, after consulting Mr. Thalberg upon the very elementary question whether or not he thought it an advisable thing that a man should make a will, and after beating about the bush in various other ways, went on to detail quite an extraordinary number of bequests, some of them personal, some of a charitable kind, which he desired to make. There was a bequest, for example, of the Sèvres porcelain in his chambers to his cousin, Lady Belinda McConnell (there was no Sèvres porcelain in his chambers, and I have never had the curiosity to look up Lady Belinda McConnell in the Peerage). So he went on, disposing, I should think, of a great deal more property than he possessed, till at last the will appeared to be complete in outline, when he seemed suddenly to bethink him of the really difficult matter for which he had desired my presence. By this time, I should say, it had begun to dawn upon me that the pretended will-making was not quite so idle a performance as I had at first thought. Callaghan must in the course of it have produced on a person, who knew him only slightly, the impression of a good-natured, eccentric fellow, wholly without cunning and altogether unformidable. This was one point gained, but moreover, Mr. Thalberg was rapidly falling into that nervous and helpless condition into which a weak man of business can generally be thrown by the unkind expedient of wasting his time. It now appeared that the real subject on which Mr. Thalberg and I were to be consulted was the disposal of Callaghan’s papers in the event of his death. Callaghan explained that he would leave behind him if he died (and he felt, he said, that he might die suddenly) a great quantity of literary work which he should be sorry should perish. He would leave all his papers to the discretion of certain literary executors (he thought these would perhaps be Mr. George Meredith and Mr. Ruskin), but there were memoirs among them relating to a sad affair in which persons living, including Mr. Thalberg and myself, were in a manner concerned. He referred to the lamented death of Mr. Peters, the circumstances connected with which had been for him a matter of profound and he trusted not unprofitable study. He felt that in any directions he might leave in regard to these memoirs it was only fair that he should consult the gentlemen present. Mr. Thalberg by this time was in a great state of expectation, when Callaghan pulled out his watch and, observing that it was later than he thought, asked if there was a Directory in the office, that he might find the address of a certain person to whom he must telegraph to put off an appointment with him. A clerk brought the London Directory from an outside room, and was about to retire. “Stop a moment, Mr. Clerk, if you don’t mind,” said Callaghan, and he slightly edged back his chair, so as to block the clerk’s going out, “perhaps it is the Suburban Directory that I want. Let us just look,” and he began turning over the leaves. “Ferndale Avenue,” he said, “that’s not it; Ferndale Terrace—you see, Mr. Thalberg,” he said, “I would like to talk this matter out with you before I go—Ferndale Crescent—right side, No. 43, 44, No.” (all this time his finger was running down a column under the letter B in the Trades Directory) “45, 46, 47; I thought he was thereabouts. Here’s the name,” he said. “You see, Mr. Thalberg, your own movements, if they were not explained, would look rather curious—47, 49, no, that’s not it—look rather curious, as I was saying, in connexion with that murder of Peters—look ugly, you know—51 Ferndale Crescent, that’s it. Thank you, Mr. Clerk,” and he shut the Directory with a bang and handed it back to the clerk with a bow, and made way for him to leave the room.

Mr. Thalberg bounded from his chair and collapsed into it again. “Stop, Mr. Manson,” he cried to the clerk, “you must be present at whatever else this gentleman may have to say.” He sat for a moment breathing hard, more I thought with alarm than with anger. He did not seem to me to have any presence of mind or any of the intellectual attributes, at any rate, of guile, and I could not help wondering as I watched him, whether this really was the man whom Vane-Cartwright chose for his agent in employments of much delicacy. “Do you come here to blackmail me, sir?” cried Mr. Thalberg, forcing himself to assume a voice and air of fury. There was never seen anything more innocent or more surprised and pained than the countenance of Callaghan as he replied. He was amazed that his motive could be so misunderstood; it was the simple fact that what he was forced in his memoirs to relate might hereafter suggest suspicions of every one who was in the neighbourhood of the crime, himself and his friend Mr. Driver in particular, and, though in a less degree of course, Mr. Thalberg. He was giving Mr. Thalberg precisely the same opportunity as he had given to Mr. Driver, of explaining those passages in his (Callaghan’s) record, which might seem to him to require explanation. Here he appealed to me (and I confess I backed him up) as to whether he had not approached me in precisely the same way. Mr. Thalberg appeared to pass again under the spell of his eccentric visitor’s childlike innocence, and sat patiently but with an air of increasing discomfort while Callaghan ran on: “You see, in your case, Mr. Thalberg, it’s not only your presence at Long Wilton, which was for golf of course, wasn’t it?—only you went away because of the snow. There is that correspondence with a Dutch legal gentleman at Batavia which occurred a little afterwards, or a little before was it? And there were the messages which I think you sent (though perhaps that was not you) to Bagdad. Of course I shall easily understand if you do not care to enlighten me for the purpose of my memoirs which no one may care to read. Pray tell me if it is so. I daresay it’s enough for you that your correspondence and movements will of course be fully explained at the trial.” “What trial?” exclaimed Thalberg, quite aghast. It was Callaghan’s turn to be astonished. Was it possible that Mr. Thalberg had not heard the news, which was already in two or three evening papers, that there was a warrant out for the arrest of Vane-Cartwright, and that it was rumoured that he had been arrested in an attempt to escape from the country.

In Mr. Thalberg’s countenance increased anguish now struggled ludicrously with the suspicion, which even he could not wholly put aside, that he was being played upon in some monstrous way. He began some uncertain words and desisted, and looked to his clerk appealingly. That gentleman (not, I believe, the same that had fallen under the sway of Callaghan’s faithful servant) seemed the incarnation of the most solid respectability. He was, I should judge, of the age at which he might think of retiring upon a well-earned competence, and he gave Thalberg no help, desiring, I should think, to hear the fullest explanation of the startling and terrible hint which had been thrown out before him against his master’s character. While Thalberg sat irresolute, Callaghan drew a bow at a venture. “At least, Mr. Thalberg,” he said, “I thought you might like to tell me the results of your interview with Dr. Verschoyle when you went to Homburg to see him.” “Sir,” said Thalberg, making a final effort, “do you imagine that I shall tell you what passed at an interview to which I went upon my client’s business.” “Thank you, Mr. Thalberg,” said Callaghan. “I am interested to know that you went to Homburg on your client’s business (I thought it might have been for the gout), and that you did see Dr. Verschoyle, for I had not known that till you told me. I did know, however, about that correspondence with Madrid in the Spanish Consul’s cipher, and I knew that the enquiries you made through him were really addressed to an influential person at Manilla.”

At this point Mr. Thalberg abruptly went over, with horse, foot and artillery, to the enemy. He assured Callaghan of his perfect readiness to answer fully any questions he might ask about his relations with Vane-Cartwright, and if he might he would tell him how they began.