But, assuming this about the mails, what a frail edifice my theory still remained! Upon most careful reconsideration, I saw, as the reader may see, that it fitted in easily with all the known facts. It was just as well founded as many things which are taught as established truths of science or history. But as for expecting the law to hang Vane-Cartwright upon this, I myself, fantastically no doubt, refrained a little later from blackballing him at a distinguished club, of which, oddly enough, I had in my ambitious youth become a member. In large part the case, so to call it, against him rested on my observations of his demeanour in my house, and especially of his conduct in regard to my business as executor and my letters. This was precise and cogent enough for me, the observer at first hand; but it was too much matter of general impression to be of use to anyone but me. Then the attribution of that early murder to Vane-Cartwright seemed to me absolutely requisite to make his murder of Peters conceivable. But it was the work of my imagination. In the region of palpable facts, one thing alone was evidence against Vane-Cartwright and not against any other man. It will be remembered that, when Callaghan first denounced Trethewy, Vane-Cartwright said that Trethewy’s behaviour in his presence to Peters had been friendly and respectful. He knew, I now told myself, a better way than expressing suspicion of Trethewy, and while by his stealthy act he fabricated evidence against him, he contrived by his words to cast on Callaghan alone the risk of thereafter appearing as an innocent man’s traducer. But his cunning had made a slip. It was gratuitous in doing so to have uttered a refutable lie as to Trethewy’s conduct in his presence. He was not the man to have seen the imprudence of this. It would have been to him inconceivable that Trethewy should confess the full extent of his wrong conduct to me. And so, not from any want of coolness, he had provided me with the one scrap of ordinary evidence necessary to give firmness to that belief of mine which might otherwise have seemed a mere bubble.
XI
By the time that my wife, who had been again obliged to be in London while I was spelling out this story, had returned, I had long come to the conclusion that my theory had enough in it to be worth submitting to her criticism. But she forestalled me with news of her own, and news which concerned Vane-Cartwright. The young lady, Miss Denison, whom he was to have married had suddenly broken off the engagement within two days of his joining her upon the Riviera. The girl could give no good reason for her conduct, and her own people loudly condemned it; they had been against the engagement, for the difference of age was too great; they were still more against the flighty breach of it; but she was obdurate. She and her people returned home for Easter, and my wife, who had already known her a little, now met her several times at the house of a common friend in London. The foolish or unhappy young lady had given my wife her confidence. Far from having any suspicion about the murder, she had never even heard, when she made her decision, that there had been a murder at all; for she and her mother did not read news of that order, and Vane-Cartwright, though he had said that he had been through a dreadful experience, of which he was anxious to tell her, had not yet said what it was. There had evidently been a quite unaccountable quarrel in which the high-tempered girl had, in all things external, begun, continued and ended in the wrong; and she did not now defend herself. Somehow, she said, he was changed. No, not in his manner to her; she had not doubted his attachment to her. Only she had thought she had loved him before, and she knew now that she did not. Something, which she had seen in him before but not disliked, now jarred upon her feelings in a new way. She had been very, very foolish, very, very wrong; she could explain nothing; she was very unhappy, very angry with herself; but this she knew, and this alone she knew, that it would be wrong for her to become William Vane-Cartwright’s wife.
So much my wife told me. Then, with that precipitancy in travelling to remote conclusions which sometimes seems so perilous in able women, she said, as quietly as if it were the most obvious comment, “Robert, it was Vane-Cartwright that did the murder.” Now she had never even spoken to him.
Accordingly, she received my theory of the murder almost with enthusiasm. None the less, she immediately put her finger upon the weakest part of it. “I wonder, all the same,” she exclaimed, “why he murdered Eustace?” “Why,” I said, “he saw in a moment that Eustace knew he
