Callaghan and Vane-Cartwright stayed with me for the funeral. A large crowd of merely impertinent people, as I confess I regarded them, collected from the neighbourhood and even from far away for the occasion. Two only of Peters’ family were there, or could have been there. He had two nephews in the Army, but they were then in India. The rest of his near belongings were an old gentleman (a cousin of his father’s, whom I had heard Peters himself describe as a relative whom he had only met at burials, but whom he regarded as an essential part of the funeral ceremony) and a maiden aunt, his mother’s sister. Both of them came; both insisted on staying at the hotel, instead of at the Rectory, for the night before, but they had luncheon and tea at the Rectory after the funeral, and departed by the evening train. The old gentleman was, I believe, a retired stipendiary magistrate. Vane-Cartwright very obligingly devoted himself to entertaining him and took him for a walk after luncheon, while Callaghan roamed about, observing the people who had come for the funeral, expecting, as he told me, that there might be something to discover by watching them. I was thus left alone for a while with Peters’ aunt, who, by the way, appeared to have known Vane-Cartwright as a boy.
Having with some difficulty overcome her formidable reserve and shyness, I learnt from her much that I had not known about my friend, her nephew, how really remarkable had been the promise of his early days, though he had idled a little at Oxford; and how he had left Oxford prematurely and taken up an appointment abroad, because he felt that his parents could not well afford to keep him at the university until he could earn his living in a profession at home. Of his later life too, including his latest projects of study, she had much to tell me, for she had followed him and his pursuits with an affectionate interest. This contrasted strangely both with her evident indifference on her own account to books and such matters as delighted him, and with the strange calmness with which she seemed to regard his death and the manner of his death. I was becoming greatly attracted by this quiet, lonely old lady, when the return of the cousin and Vane-Cartwright and of Callaghan at the same time put an end to our conversation. Probably it was only that she did not feel equal to the company of such a number of gentlemen, but I half-fancied that someone of the number—I could not guess which, but I suspected it was the old cousin—was antipathetic to her.
I went to London myself that night, returning next afternoon. I had to go and see my wife and children. They had gone soon after Christmas to stay with my wife’s father, and she had taken the children for a night to London on their way home. She was compelled to stop there because my daughter, who was delicate, caught a bad chill. It was now so cold for travelling that I urged her to remain in London yet a little longer.
I am not sure why I am being so precise in recording our movements at that time. Perhaps it is merely from an impulse to try and live over again a period of my life which was one of great and of increasing, not diminishing, agitation. But having begun, I will proceed.
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 tenor 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
