I returned to my rectory the day after the funeral hoping to be free from any share in a kind of investigation which consorted ill with the ordinary tenour of my work. But of course I could not remove myself from the atmosphere of the crime. To begin with, I had an important interview with Trethewy (which I will relate later) the day after my return. But, besides, rumours of this clue or that, which had been discovered, came to me in the common talk of my parish, for every supposed step towards the discovery of the criminal seemed to be matter of general knowledge. So the crime went with me in my parish rounds, and in the privacy of my house I was still less able to escape from it, for Callaghan was with me, and Callaghan’s mind was on fire with the subject.

I discovered very soon that Callaghan, whom I had asked to stay for the funeral, was bent upon staying in the village as long as he could. He conceived that, with the knowledge he possessed and his experience in India, he might, if on the spot, be able to contribute to the ends of justice; and he seemed to find a morbid satisfaction, most unlike my own feeling, in being near to the scene of crime and the scene of detection. Moreover, he exhibited an esteem and love for Peters and a desolate grief at his loss which, though I had not known that the two men were quite such friends, I was almost forced to think unaffected. So I readily invited him to stay at the Rectory, and he stayed there some ten days altogether, when he declared that he would put himself upon me no more and would move to the hotel. At the last moment he changed his mind, and said he had taken a fancy to stay at Peters’ house if he might. I was persuaded to acquiesce in this, and there he stayed, with occasional absences in London, till nearly a month later, shortly after the time when, as I shall tell, Trethewy was committed for trial at the Assizes.

Vane-Cartwright, who remained quiet and reserved, thanked me very much the night after the murder for having him at the Rectory, saying, with a feeling that I had not quite expected, that either to hurry away on that day of agitation or to stay a night longer in Peters’ house, would have been a trial for him. He added that he purposed returning to London immediately after the funeral, and after an important City meeting, for which he must stay in England, he was going out to meet his young lady on the Riviera. I suppose that without intending I betrayed before the funeral the fact that I was a little worried by my impending duties as executor, duties which strangely enough I had never had to perform before, and in which I was now a little embarrassed by the absence from England of my fellow-executor and the principal legatees, and by the prospect of having to carry out a charitable bequest which left me a large discretion and might possibly involve litigation. Vane-Cartwright very unobtrusively put me in the way of doing whatever was immediately incumbent on me. I suppose I appeared as grateful as I felt; anyhow, it ended with a delicate suggestion from Vane-Cartwright that he would be very glad to stay at the hotel for a day or two and make himself useful to me in any way that he could. Of course I pressed him to stay at the Rectory, and, in spite of an apparent preference for staying at the hotel, he after a while agreed. I was expecting that I might soon be leaving home for some time, as it might be necessary to take my little daughter for a month abroad in a warmer climate, and after that I knew I should be very busy with Confirmation classes and other matters, so that I was anxious to make immediate progress, if I could, with winding up Peters’ estate, and was very glad that Vane-Cartwright would stay, as he did stay, at the Rectory. On the Saturday however (a week after the murder) he received a telegram which compelled him to leave that afternoon. I had by this time begun to like him, which I confess I did not at first; men of his stamp, who have long relied on themselves alone and been justified in their reliance, often do not show their attractive qualities till the emergency occurs in which we find them useful.

Trethewy was arrested the day that Vane-Cartwright left. I wondered why he was not arrested earlier (for there did not seem to be any real room for doubt that he had made those footmarks), but I have never ascertained, and can only guess that the police felt sure of securing him if he attempted to escape, and hoped that, if left alone, he might betray himself by such an attempt or otherwise. He never did. He sat in his cottage, as I gathered, constantly reading the Bible, but once or twice a day pacing thoughtfully and alone up and down the drive. He did the few necessary jobs for the house with punctuality, but he never lingered in it, never visited the field or the lane, and hardly spoke to any one, except on the day before his arrest, when, to my astonishment (for he was known to be hostile to the Church), he sent for me, and we had the memorable interview to which I have already referred.

During the days before his arrest, as well as after, all sorts of enquiry, of which I knew little, were going on. Thalberg’s movements after the murder were traced. Some attempt was made, I believe, to find the man who, according to Trethewy, had passed him with two horses in the lane. But there seems to have been some bungling about this, and the man, about whom there was no real mystery (he was a farm servant who had started off early to take a horse, which his master had sold, to its new owner), was not then found. Two important discoveries were made about Trethewy. After his arrest his cottage was searched, and he was found to be the possessor of inconceivably miscellaneous articles. Among them were several weapons which he might naturally have picked up on his travels, but among them (which was more to the point) was a small case of surgical instruments. Two instruments were missing from that case, and the instrument used by the murderer might, though not very neatly, have fitted into one of the vacant places. The case was found, as Callaghan, who contrived to be present, told me, at the back of a shelf in a cupboard filled with all sorts of lumber and litter that had lain there who can say how long. Callaghan, however, professed to have observed, from marks on the dust of the shelf, that the contents of the cupboard had been recently disturbed, in order, he had no doubt, to hide the instrument case at the back of everything.

The other new discovery had occurred two days before. Trethewy’s uncle and the guests who had been at his party on that ill-omened night were of course sought and questioned. They all corroborated Trethewy’s own account of his movements, but they added something more. Trethewy it seemed had been normal and cheerful enough as the evening began, but, as the night and the drinking went on, fell first into melancholy, then into sullenness, lastly and a little before he went home into voluble ferocity. He recurred to the topic, to which his uncle said he had more than once alluded on previous days when he had met him, of his quarrel with Peters, against whom he had conceived an irrational resentment, and he actually, though those who heard him did not take him seriously at the time, uttered threats against his life.

Chapter VI

I was told of this behaviour of Trethewy’s by Sergeant Speke the day after the arrest. But it was no surprise to me, for I had come myself to communicate to the police something to the same effect. On mature reflexion I had thought it my duty to report the matter of the interview which I had had with Trethewy some days before. Trethewy had, unsolicited, made a confession to me—not a confession of crime, but a confession of criminal intent.

Unchecked by a warning that I could promise no secrecy as to what he should say, and a reminder of, what he knew full well, that he was in a position of grave danger, he declared to me that he had harboured the thought of killing his master, and, though he had never actually laid hands on him, was as guilty as though he had done so. Starting with this declaration he plunged into a long and uninterrupted discourse of which I should find it impossible, even if I wished it, to give an at all adequate report.

As for the matter of his statement: if one were to accept it as true, it was the tale, common enough two centuries ago, but so rarely told now that modern ears find it very hard to take it in, the tale of the ordinary struggle between good and evil in a man, taking an acute and violent form, so that the man feels day by day the alternate mastery of a religious exaltation, which he believes to be wholly good, and of base passions, which, when they come upon him, seem to be an evil spirit driving him as the steam drives an engine. From the manner of the statement, it was very hard to gather how much of it was sincere, impossible to gather whether or not something worse lay concealed behind that which was so strangely confessed. Self-abasement and self-righteousness, the genuine stuff of Puritan enthusiasm, the adulterated stuff of morbid religiousness, sheer cant, manly straightforwardness, pleasure in the opportunity of preaching and that to the parson,—all these things seemed blended together in Trethewy’s talk.