It was the very next day that Mrs Robinson and myself had agreed to go and see a new exhibition of paintings which some one was starting in London, and tickets were pretty freely given away for it; but the same reason which stopped my wife from going to the Canterbury, stopped her from going to the exhibition. I went, of course, because I couldn't be of any use, under the circumstances, to my married daughter; and a very good exhibition it was too. There were plenty of paintings, and I had gone through all the rooms and entered the last one. There were very few persons, I was sorry to see, in the place, so that you could have an uninterrupted view of any picture you pleased. After glancing carelessly round the room, for one gets a kind of surfeited with pictures after a bit, I was struck by a gloomy-looking painting to the left of the doorway, and which I had not noticed on my first entry. When I came to look closer into it, I was more than struck—I was astounded. It was a picture representing the finding of old Trapbois the miser, in the Fortunes of Nigel. The heavy dull room was lighted only by the candle which the young nobleman held above his head; and it appeared to be excellently painted. But what drew my attention was that, as a part of the confusion in which the struggle between the old man and his murderers had placed the room, the washstand had been upset, had fallen into the fireplace, and the ewer had rolled into the grate, where it was shewn as unbroken, although the water was flooding the boards—all exactly as I had seen the same things five years before—so exactly, that I was perfectly sure no chance coincidence had produced the resemblance, but that whoever had painted this picture had seen the room where Miss Parkway was murdered, and had had the features of the scene stamped on his memory. Who so likely to have the scene so stamped, I instantly thought, as the murderer himself? As this rushed on my mind, I could not repress an exclamation, although pretty well guarded as a rule. The only other person in the room heard me, and came to see what had excited me so strongly. Apparently, he was disappointed, for he looked from the picture to his catalogue, then to the picture again, then at me, back to his catalogue, and then went away with a discontented grunt. I did not move, however, but remained quite absorbed in the study of this mysterious painting; and the more I looked, the more convinced I became that it was copied from the scene of Miss Parkway's murder. There were several little points which I had not at first noticed, and in fact had quite forgotten; such as the position of the fire-irons, the direction in which the water had run, and so forth, which were all faithfully shewn in the picture. To be brief, I had made up my mind before I left the room that I had at last found the real clue to the Combestead murder.
The artist's name was Wyndham; and I determined that I would very soon, as a natural beginning, make some inquiries about this Mr Wyndham; and indeed I began before I left the exhibition. I engaged the hall-keeper to have a glass with me at the nearest tavern, and when I got fairly into conversation with him, asked carelessly where Mr Wyndham lived, as I thought I had known him many years ago, giving a description of some entirely imaginary person. The hall-keeper said: 'No—that was not the sort of man at all. Mr Wyndham was' (here he described him); 'and he doesn't live at the west-end of London, as you said, sir, but at a place in Essex, not very far from Colchester.' He knew where he lived, because he had several times posted letters to him at 'The Mount.' This was about all I got from the hall-keeper, but it was as much as I wanted.
I am not greatly in the habit of taking other people into my confidence, but this was altogether an exceptional case; so, after a little reflection, I went straight to the address John Lytherly had given me, and told him what I had seen. He of course introduced me to his wife, a very pretty dark-eyed young woman; and when I had told all, they exchanged looks less of surprise than triumph. 'Oh, it is coming all right!' he exclaimed. 'I knew the murder would cry out some day. And now you will have a little more respect for Indian fortune-tellers.'
'I am not quite sure about that,' I said. 'But don't you go making so certain that we are going to find out anything, Mr Lytherly: this may be only an accidental resemblance.' Because, as you may suppose, I had not told them how confident I felt in my own mind.
'Accidental! Nonsense!' was all he said to that; and then he asked me what was the first step I proposed to take. I told him that I thought we ought to go down to this village and see if we could learn anything suspicious about Mr Wyndham; and by my old detective habits, and the way in which the officers about would be sure to help me, I thought we might reckon on finding out what was wanted. He was delighted, and asked when we should start, and when I said that very night, he was more delighted still.
It is always my rule to strike the iron while it's hot, and nothing could possibly be got by waiting now; so I had made up my mind just to run home, get a few things in my bag, and go down by the ten o'clock train. My wife, you may be sure, was very much astonished; but, as I expected she would be, was just as confident in the murder being found out as young Lytherly himself. Of course the latter was ready. And we were put down at our destination about twelve o'clock; too late for anything that night, but still we were on the spot to begin the first thing in the morning. And accordingly directly after breakfast we began. John Lytherly would have begun before breakfast, but as an old hand I knew better than that; because the party we were after, allowing he was the right party, after a five years' rest, wasn't going to bolt now; so it was no case for hurrying and driving. Well, soon after breakfast, I sauntered into the bar, and began talking with the landlord, who was an elderly sort of party about my own age, and who bragged—as if it was a thing to be proud of—before we had talked three minutes, that he had lived, man and boy, in Chumpley, which was the name of the lively place, for more than fifty years.
'Then you're just the fellow for me,' I thought; and then began talking of an old master of mine who was now living somewhere down in this neighbourhood, by the name of Wyndham.
'Wyndham? Let me see; Wyndham?' says the landlord, putting on his wisest look. 'No; I can't remember any party of that name. There's Wilkinson, and Wiggins; perhaps it's one of them.'
I told him they would not do; and then added, that the party I meant was something of an artist, painted pictures partly for pleasure and partly for profit. This was only a guess of mine, but it was a pretty safe one.
'Oh! there's lots of them about here!' exclaims the old boy, grinning very much, as if it was a capital idea. 'There's Mr De Lancy Chorkle, Miss Belvidera Smith, Mrs Galloon Whyte, Mr Hardy Canute, and a lot more; but I don't think there's a Wyndham.'