murder of our friend Peters?” I answered that Trethewy had been released and had left the neighbourhood, having found a situation, through some friends unknown to me, and that to the best of my belief, the police had discovered no further clue. “I am glad about Trethewy,” he said. “You know I always suspected there had been some mistake there, and besides, I always liked the man. I do not think the police will discover a clue,” he said, “I rather think that the solution of the mystery will occur to some of us, his friends, if a solution ever is found.” I was silent. I could not tell whether he had a design to allay possible suspicions of mine, or a design to goad me into betraying whether I had those suspicions, or whether he was merely keeping himself in practice. I wanted to drop the subject if I could. “Do you know,” he persisted, “whether they have found any other way in which the house could be entered from outside except the window of his room, by which I don’t believe the murderer did enter?” I said there was a small window to a housemaid’s closet which was not fastened, and that the housemaid could not be quite certain that the door of the closet was really locked overnight, for it did not shut properly; but it was very doubtful whether a man could get through the window. “Who in the world,” he said, “could have a motive for killing Peters, dear old Eustace Peters?” I was beginning to lose my head, for I felt I was playing an unworthy part. “Well,” I said, with no particular purpose, “it seems certain that it cannot have been
Mr. Thalberg.” “Certain, I should say,” he answered. “Oh, no,” he added, more energetically, “I know Thalberg well, and he is not the man. As for Callaghan, one might as well suspect you or me—me, I should say,” and he turned away to fetch a cigar, or perhaps to watch me for a moment in the mirror. “The fact is,” he said returning, “it must be far easier than we, who have never had occasion to give our wits to it, think to commit a murder and hide one’s tracks absolutely. But here is
Mr. Poile, let me introduce you, and let us, for Heaven’s sake, talk of a more cheerful subject.” So we did turn to a subject which I should have thought had no pitfalls, the subject of Italian brocades, of which Vane-Cartwright was an amateur. He produced a large parcel of ancient and gorgeous stuffs which had come up on approval from a shop. He talked, in a way that really held all my interest for the time, about the patterns; and, starting from the more conventional of the designs before us, he proceeded to discuss the history of common patterns, telling me curious things about the patterns and the fabrics of the Eastern Archipelago and the Malay Peninsula. Suddenly he picked up a really noble piece of brocade, and turning to me, with a face of winning simplicity and kindliness which he could not have learnt to assume if it had not at some time been natural, he said: “Oh,
Mr. Driver, I am so fond of picking up these things, and it is so hard to find any satisfactory use for them, it would be a real kindness if you would accept this as an altar-cloth for your church. It will be wasted in a museum otherwise.” It was too much for me. The proposition that I should accept an altar-cloth for my church from the man that I was seeking to convict of murder, sent a visible shudder through my frame, and all the more because I felt that it was illogical to recoil from this when I had not recoiled from affecting friendship to him. I said “No” quite violently, and, when I collected my wits to utter thanks and explanations, they were at once too effusive and too lame to have blinded a stupider man than Vane-Cartwright.
I stayed long with him—should have outstayed my welcome, if I had ever been welcome—for I was demoralised, and had resolved in mere dull obstinacy both to disarm his suspicions somehow and to get something out of him. The first would have been impossible for anyone, the second was impossible for me then, and at last I took leave, praying him not to come down with me, and descended the stairs a very miserable man. I had behaved stupidly, that was certain. I had behaved badly, that was possible. I had shown him that I suspected him, that was certain. I ought to have known beforehand that he would guess it, for my refusal to visit him in London (as I happened to have promised I would, before he left Long Wilton) had been marked enough to set him thinking. Had I done nothing worse than betray vague suspicions? Yes, in my floundering efforts I had recurred to his Eastern patterns, and so led him to Eastern travels and towards topics dangerous to him, only to fall into my own trap. He must have seen that I had somehow heard before, as not one Englishman in twenty thousand has heard, of the little island of Sulu.
Wholly sick with myself I stood in the hall of the hotel, absently watching the porter set out the newly arrived letters in little heaps on a table. There was one for Vane-Cartwright. Had I not noticed that handwriting before? Yes, it was a marked hand, one so obviously that of a servant and yet so well-formed and with such an elegance. I gazed at the handwriting (somehow I thought of Sunday schools). I had just time to note the postmark before another letter covered it.
The corner of my eye had half-caught a vision of someone coming downstairs, coming very quietly but very quickly. A light step on the rug beside me, an
