XVI
So then the mystery of Longhurst’s fate was not for me to unravel. Peters had held the clue of it, and had died because he held it; Verschoyle perhaps had the clue and was dead too, probably from some other cause; neither had recorded his secret, or the record could not be found. As for the manner of Peters’ death, what further place was there to look to for some fresh discovery? I already had heard all that any of my old parishioners, any grown man or woman among them, knew, and it was less than I knew, and I had searched the neighbourhood for news, quietly, but I hoped no less effectively; the police, I was now ready to believe, had searched as zealously and more wisely. And so Vane-Cartwright was to go unhanged, and why not, after all? he was not a homicidal maniac but a wise criminal, rather more unlikely than most men to commit any further crime. Even his gains, however ill-gotten, were not likely to be more harmfully spent than those of many a better man. And no innocent man suffered under suspicion. Trethewy had been found a good place by some unlooked-for benefactor, where no memory of the crime would pursue him. Callaghan’s numerous enough friends understood him far too well to suspect him, and as for his numerous acquaintances who were not friends, if they did suspect him, the good man would be rather amused than otherwise. Let Vane-Cartwright live and adorn society which is adorned by men and women worse than he, to whom circumstances have never brought the opportunity of dramatic wrongdoing.
Thus I tried to think, as I left England for a few weeks in the late spring of 1897 to join my wife and our daughter, who was now much stronger, in Italy; but, whatever I tried to think, I had always with me that consciousness of a purpose frustrated or let go, which is perhaps the hardest thing to bear well and the most enervating thing to bear ill.
Some ten days later I was in Florence with my wife. The next day we were to go to Rome, leaving our daughter at the villa of a friend in Fiesole. I remember at our early breakfast telling my wife the facts or reports which I had been picking up about that strangely powerful secret organisation, the Mafia. I repeated to her what I had just heard, that not only prominent Italian politicians, but even foreigners who had large commercial dealings with Italy, sometimes found it convenient to be on good terms with that society. But she was little interested in political facts which did not connect themselves with any particular personality, and I thought she had hardly heard me, though she raised her eyes to listen from the volume of Senator Villari’s Savonarola which she was finishing. I little imagined that before another day had closed this chance remark of mine would have acquired the closest personal interest for her, and have been turned to very practical account.
Later in the day she was in the Pitti Galleries, and I came there from Cook’s office to join her. She was looking with puzzled interest at a picture by Botticelli, when a tall man, dressed like an Englishman, placed himself with assumed unconsciousness just in front of her, in a position of vantage for fixing his connoisseur’s gaze upon it. She turned away and met me, and was saying, half-amused, that after all there were Englishmen who could be as rude as any foreigner, when, looking at him again as he moved away to leave the gallery, she started and said: “Oh, Robert, I know his face.” I too knew his face, and knew, as she did not, his name. “It is that dreadful man that I told you about who was at Crema. Do not you remember I told you how he would keep the only good room at the hotel when I arrived there with mother so terribly ill, the time she had that first stroke. And oh, I took such pains to write him the nicest note I could”—and very nice her notes could be—“and I could just see his horrid face as he glanced at it and said nothing but ‘tell the lady I cannot’ to the waiter. And oh, poor mother did suffer in the dreadful hot room with all the kitchen noises and the smells.” I did remember her story well, an ordinary story enough, of one of those neglects of courtesy which, once in fifty times it may be, are neglects of elementary mercy; but I said little, and I did not tell her that her rediscovered enemy was my enemy already, William Vane-Cartwright. I said to myself that I would not tell her because she would feel an unreasonable relenting towards Vane-Cartwright, if once she realised that she herself owed him a grudge. Really I did not tell her because I had promptly formed a design which she would have discovered and disapproved.
That evening I left my wife on some pretext, and having discovered Vane-Cartwright’s hotel, I paid him a friendly call. I suppose it was dishonourable; at least, I have often reproached myself for it, but truly I do not know if it was really dishonourable. I do know that I was very foolish to dream, as I did, that I should ferret something out of him. He received me in his private sitting-room with cordiality, or, I should rather say, effusiveness. He sent a rather urgent message to his friend who was travelling with him, as if (I thought) he did not wish to be alone with me, but he was far from embarrassed. “Tell me, Mr. Driver,” he began, as soon as we were seated, “has anything further been heard about the
