It was important to keep in mind that successful crimes do not as a rule come to light.
Arson to the average mind always conveys a sensation of horror that is perhaps wanting in all other crimes. Suffocation or burning were neither of them pleasant methods, but I was not to be deterred by a sentiment.
The idea, once in my brain, became fixed. I found it impossible to dislodge it. I should have liked to go to the British Museum and read up all the details I could obtain of crime by arson, but this would have been a risky proceeding, and might in the never-to-be-forgotten contingency of my falling under suspicion be exceedingly damning.
I should have to trust to my own invention. Ughtred Gascoyne had asked me to call on him, and early one Sunday morning I did so. He occupied an upper part in Albemarle Street. There was a side door and a flight of stairs leading to his rooms. I immediately grasped the importance of the fact that there was no porter or lift. He had a manservant who slept on the floor above his own, and a woman who came in in the daytime. The establishment was thus conveniently miniature. On the first floor he had a sitting-room that led into his bedroom, with a bathroom beyond. Above this was his dining-room, which was seldom used; also a kitchen and a very small bedroom for his servant. The place was old, curiously so for such a smart quarter of the town, and, I imagined, highly combustible.
The rooms were too solidly furnished for my purpose, but they had muslin curtains and a fair number of knick-knacks. I quite realised that it was an off chance, but at the same time I believed it could be carried out with little or no personal risk. What I particularly wished to do was to enter his rooms with him at night without anybody being aware of it, and to leave them unnoticed.
The Sunday morning I called on him he was, I fancy, a little surprised to see me, but evidently quite pleased.
“I am very fond of young people, and I like to have them about me. Mrs. Goodsall and I agree on that. I cannot understand old people who are content to vegetate with their faded contemporaries.”
“It isn’t everybody who gets on with young people.”
“It is merely a question of mood. You must feel young, and you will get on with them well enough.”
“To feel young. Therein lies the difficulty for most people.”