On the most favourable view the story came to this. A few years before, Trethewy, after a careless life, had become suddenly impressed by deep religious feelings, no less than by precise and inflexible religious views. His conversion, he trusted, had not left his conduct unaffected, but though for a time he walked, as he said, happy in this new light, it had been the beginning, not the end, of his inward warfare. His natural ill-temper, that worst sort of ill-temper which is both sulky and passionate, began to come upon him again in prolonged fits of intense wrath, intensified, I suppose, by reaction from the pitch at which he often strove to live. Besides this, he gave way at times to a keen pleasure in alcohol. He was tempted by what he called a “carnal” pride in the strength of his head for liquor; and I have sometimes observed that drink works its worst havoc upon the very men who may appear to be the least affected by it, bringing about a slow perversion of the deeper motives of action, while for a long time it leaves the judgment unclouded upon those more trivial and obvious matters in which aberration is readily detected. Thus at the time of that altercation with Peters of which Callaghan had been a witness, Trethewy was already brooding perversely over some trumpery or altogether fancied grievance. He was deeply under the influence of drink at that moment, and did not know it, but knew he had had enough to make most men drunk. His very worldly pride had therefore been the more offended at the imputation which Peters threw on him. His spiritual pride was offended too by a rebuke from one, whom, though originally fond of him, he had come to regard as a worldling, steeped in mere profane philosophy. He had been enraged to the point of desiring Peters’ death, and the threat which Callaghan reported had been actually uttered. He had meant, it may be, nearly nothing by his threat when he uttered it; but, when once this almost insane notion, of killing for such a trifle a man whom normally he liked, had taken shape in words, it recurred to him every time that he was put out, or that a third glass of spirits went to his lips. Perhaps it recurred to him with all the more terrible power because in better moments his conscience was horribly alarmed at his having given in, by so much as one thought, to this suggestion of the Devil. On the morning before Peters’ death he had a fresh altercation with him on the occasion of some trifling oversight in the garden to which Peters had called his attention, and I was surprised after what Vane-Cartwright had said to be told that Vane-Cartwright was present on this occasion and had heard the insolent language in which he seems to have addressed Peters. All day and night after that the evil dream had been upon him, and he walked home from his uncle’s that night plotting murder. He awoke in the morning calmer, but his wrath still smouldered, till his wife brought him the news that Peters was murdered, when it gave place in a moment to poignant grief for Peters. He could not stir from the cottage; he sat, he tried to pray, he thought, and he saw himself as he was—perhaps not quite as he was, for he saw himself as a man guilty of blood.
He would gladly, I think, have talked with me of his soul, but, with the suspicion which I had in my mind, I did not see how I could say much to him. So, having heard him out, I got away with some pitifully perfunctory remarks. How was I to take this confession? Was the mental history which the man gave of himself a cunning invention for accounting for the known quarrel and the known threats? Was the story true with this grave correction that Trethewy had carried out his intent? Was it the simple truth all through? Did it even go beyond the truth in this, that the man’s thoughts had never been so black as he made them out? For days these questions occurred frequently to my mind, but my real opinion upon them was fixed almost as soon as I got away from Trethewy. Contrary to my principles I disliked him, I felt strangely little sympathy for his spiritual struggles; but I did not doubt that they were real, and I did not doubt that he was innocent of the crime.
Before Trethewy was brought before the magistrates, a letter arrived which excited my imagination unaccountably, or rather two letters arrived. The day before Vane-Cartwright had left, a letter had arrived for Peters, bearing the postmark of Bagdad. Vane-Cartwright carelessly opened it. He had, I think, at my request, on the day when I was away in London, opened some letters which arrived for Peters’ executors. So he had a good excuse for opening this. “Well, that is very uninforming,” he said, passing the letter over to me, with an apology for his mistake, and laughing more than was usual with him. Uninforming it certainly was. “Dear Eustace,” it ran, “I am sorry I can tell you nothing about it.—Yours, C. B.” Just a week later, after Vane-Cartwright had left, came another letter from the same place, in the same hand, and almost, but not quite, as brief: “Dear Eustace, This time I will not delay my answer. Longhurst sailed in the Eleanor and she did not go down. To the best of my belief she still sails the seas. I never liked C.—Yours ever, Charles Bryanston.”
Chapter VII
After several remands, the proceedings against Trethewy before the magistrates came to a close about the end of February. There was nothing much to note about these proceedings, which ended, as I suppose they must have ended, in his being committed for trial. The reader knows by this time pretty nearly the whole case against him. That Peters had been murdered was certain. The accused had had several altercations with the murdered man. In one of them he had expressed a wish to kill him, and he had repeated this wish to others upon the fatal night. Footprints had been found which, as the reader knows, seemed at first sight plainly indicative of his guilt. Then there was the ladder. It was undoubtedly kept, before the murder, locked up in a place of which only Trethewy had the key. That any one could have had access to it between the murder and the discovery of the ladder was a view supported only by the uncorroborated statement of the accused that he had left the key of the pump-house that morning, when summoned to speak to the police, and had forgotten to go back for it until the next day. Lastly, the finding of the instrument case, though not very important, at any rate disposed of any improbability that Trethewy would have had such an instrument as the knife that was used.
I daresay this would have been enough to hang a man if this was all; and against this there was nothing to be set, except the immovable persistency of Trethewy and his wife from the first in the tale which they told.
Nothing, that is, till after he had been committed for trial. But the very evening after his committal, a slight but almost conclusive circumstance was brought to light, and entirely altered the aspect of the case. That evening I received a visit from Peters’ housemaid, Edith Summers. She had, she said, something on her mind. She had told a falsehood to the police-sergeant on the morning after the murder. She had interrupted the housekeeper to say that the candle by Peters’ bed had been a long candle the night before; she had said this because she had been very severely scolded by the housekeeper for forgetting to put fresh candles in the candlestick; and so she had said what was false, not meaning any harm, but thinking for the moment (as she now tried to explain) that it was true, and that she had done what she had intended. She had confessed to the housekeeper since, but the housekeeper had only said she was an impudent girl to have put in her word then, and had better not put it in again. She had gone to the court expecting to be a witness on some small point and determined to make the matter clear then; but she had not been called. She had spoken to a policeman, and had been told to speak to one of the lawyers. She had tried to get the attention of Trethewy’s lawyer, but he had been too busy to listen to her.
I am ashamed to say that listening to her rather long explanation, I entirely failed to see the significance of what she told me. I said something quite well intentioned about the evil of saying what was not true, and then told the girl kindly, that I did not think there was any harm done. But she had thought about it and was in earnest, and she made me see it in a moment. There were, she explained, other candles in the room, but they were new candles, and they were not lighted that night. From this and what we already knew the conclusion was almost inevitable. Peters was murdered before two inches of ordinary candle, which was burning at 11.30 P.M. on the 28th of January, burnt down.
Stupid as it may seem, I had for some time been convinced of Trethewy’s innocence, and yet had never really drawn the necessary inference from it. Of course with the two premisses in my mind—Peters was murdered, Trethewy did not murder him—I had been aware, in a sense, of the conclusion, but it had taken no hold of my attention. Now, however, I had evidence of Trethewy’s innocence, which was no longer a private intuition of my own, but was something of which every one must appreciate the force. Perhaps it was from this, perhaps it was from the sentimental effect of having the time of the crime fixed within such narrow limits; anyhow the thought, “Some one other than Trethewy murdered Peters,” came upon me with a sudden horror which could hardly have been greater if I had only that moment become aware of the original fact of the murder.