On the 28th my wife was away from home, and I had supper at Grenvile Combe, going there about seven o’clock. There were three other guests at supper, James Callaghan, C.I.E., William Vane-Cartwright, and one Melchior Thalberg. Callaghan was an old school-fellow of Peters, and the two, though for years they must have seen each other seldom, appeared to have always kept up some sort of friendship. I knew Callaghan well by this time, for he had been staying three weeks at Grenvile Combe, and he was easy to know, or rather easy to get on with. I should say that I liked the man, but that I am seldom sure whether I like an Irishman, and that my wife, a far shrewder judge than I, could not bear him. He was a great, big-chested Irishman, of the fair-haired, fresh-coloured type, with light blue eyes. A weather-worn and battered countenance (contrasting with the youthful erectness and agility of his figure), close-cut whiskers and a heavy greyish moustache, a great scar across one cheek-bone and a massive jaw, gave him at first a formidable appearance. The next moment this might seem to be belied by something mobile about his mouth and the softness of his full voice; but still he bore the aspect of a man prone to physical violence. He was plausible; very friendly (was it, one asked, a peculiarly loyal sort of friendliness or just the reverse); a copious talker by fits and starts, with a great wealth of picturesque observation—or invention. Like most of my Irish acquaintance he kept one in doubt whether he would take an exceptionally high or an exceptionally low view of any matter; unlike, as I think, most Irishmen, he was the possessor of real imaginative power. He had (as I gathered from his abundant anecdotes) been at one time in the Army and later in the Indian Civil Service. In that service he seemed to have been concerned with the suppression of crime, and to have been lately upon the North-West Frontier. He was, as I then thought, at home on leave, but, as I have since learned, he had retired. Some notable exploit or escapade of his had procured him the decoration which he wore on every suitable and many unsuitable occasions, but it had also convinced superior authorities that he must on the first opportunity be shelved.
Vane-Cartwright, with nothing so distinctive in his appearance, was obviously a more remarkable man. Something indescribable about him would, I think, if I had heard nothing of him, have made me pick him out as a man of much quiet power. He was in the City, a merchant (whatever that large term may mean) who had formerly had something to do with the far East, and now had considerable dealings with Italy. He had acquired, I knew, quickly but with no whisper of dishonour, very great wealth; and he was about, as I gathered from some remark of Peters, to marry a very charming young lady, Miss Denison, who was then absent on the Riviera. He had about a fortnight before come down to the new hotel in our village for golf, and had then accidentally met Peters who was walking with me. I understood that he had been a little junior to Peters at Oxford, and had since been acquainted with him somewhere in the East. Peters had asked him to dinner at his house, where Callaghan was already staying. I had heard Peters tell him that if he came to those parts again he must stay with him. I had not noted the answer, but was not surprised afterwards to find that Vane-Cartwright, who had returned to London the day after I first met him, had since come back rather suddenly, and this time to stay with Peters. He now struck me as a cultured man, very different from Peters in all else but resembling him in the curious range and variety of his knowledge, reserved and as a rule silent but incisive when he did speak.
Thalberg, though not the most interesting of the company, contributed, as a matter of fact, the most to my enjoyment on that occasion. I tried hard some days later to recall my impressions of that evening, of which every petty incident should by rights have been engraven on my memory, but the recollection, which, so to speak, put all the rest out, was that of songs by Schubert and Schumann which Thalberg sang. I drew him out afterwards on the subject of music, on which he had much to tell me, while Vane-Cartwright and our host were, I think, talking together, and Callaghan appeared to be dozing. Thalberg was of course a German by family, but he talked English as if he had been in England from childhood. He belonged to that race of fair, square-bearded and square-foreheaded German business men, who look so much alike to us, only he was smaller and looked more insignificant than most of them, his eyes were rather near together, and he did not wear the spectacles of his nation. He told me that he was staying at the hotel, for golf he seemed to imply. He too was something in the City, and I remember having for some reason puzzled myself as to how Vane-Cartwright regarded him.
I must at this point add some account of the other persons who were in or about Peters’ house. There were two female servants in the house; an elderly cook and housekeeper, Mrs. Travers, who was sharp-visaged and sharp-tongued, but who made Peters very comfortable, and a housemaid, Edith Summers, a plain, strong and rather lumpish country girl, who was both younger and more intelligent than she looked. It subsequently appeared that these two were in the house the whole evening and night, and, for all that can be known, asleep all night in the servants’ quarters, which formed an annex to the house connected with it by a short covered way. In a cottage near the gate into the lane lived a far more notable person, Reuben Trethewy, the gardener and doer of odd jobs, a short, sturdy, grizzled man, of severe countenance, not over clean. Peters was much attached to him for his multifarious knowledge and skill. He had been a seaman at some time, had been, it seemed, all sorts of things in all sorts of places, and was emphatically a handy man. He was as his name implies a Cornishman, and had come quite recently to our neighbourhood, to which in the course of a roving existence he was attracted by the neighbourhood of his uncle, Silas Trethewy, a farmer who lived some three miles off. He was now a man of Methodistical professions, and most days, to do him justice, of Methodistical practice; but I, who was perhaps prejudiced against him by his hostility to the Church, believed him to be subject to bitter and sullen moods, knew that he was given to outbursts of drinking, and heard from his neighbours that drink took him in a curious way, affecting neither his gait, nor his head, nor his voice, nor his wits, but giving him a touch of fierceness which made men glad to keep out of his way. With him lived his wife and daughter. The wife was, I thought, a decent woman, who kept her house straight and who came to church; but I had then no decided impression about her, though she had for some time taught in my Sunday school, and had once or twice favoured me with a long letter giving her views about it. The daughter was a slight, childish-looking girl, whom I knew well, because she was about to become a pupil teacher, and who was a most unlikely person to play a part in a story of this kind.
Our party that evening broke up when, about ten o’clock, I rose to go; and Thalberg, whose best way to the hotel lay through the village, accompanied me as far as the Rectory, which was a quarter of a mile off and was the nearest house in the village. We walked together talking of German poetry and what not, and I cannot forget the disagreeable sense which came upon me in the course of our talk, that a layer of stupidity or of hard materialism, or both, underlay the upper crust of culture which I had seemed to find in the man when we had spoken of music. However, we parted good friends at the Rectory gate, and I was just going in when I recollected some question about the character of a candidate for Confirmation, on which I had meant to have spoken to Peters that night. I returned to his house and found him still in his library. The two guests who were staying in the house had already gone to bed. I got the information and advice which I had wanted—it was about a wild but rather attractive young fellow who had once looked after a horse which Peters had kept, but who was now a groom in the largest private stables in the neighbourhood. As I was leaving, Peters took up some books, saying that he was going to read in bed. He stood with me for a moment at the front door looking at the frosty starlight. It was a clear but bitterly cold night. I well remember telling him as we stood there that he must expect to be disturbed by unusual noises that night, as a great jollification was taking place at the inn up the road, and my parishioners, who realised the prelate’s aspiration for a free rather than a sober England, would return past his house in various stages of riotous exhilaration. He said that he had more sympathy with them than he ought to have, and that in any case they should not disturb him. Very likely, he added, he would soon be asleep past rousing.
And so, about a quarter to eleven, I parted from him, little dreaming that no friendly eyes would ever meet his again.
Chapter II
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.