Why was Trethewy there? Was Trethewy after all an accomplice in the crime? My wife and I were agreed in not inclining to that explanation, though in some ways it looked the most plausible. It followed that one or more of the family was, to the knowledge of Vane-Cartwright, in possession of information which, if it came out, would establish Vane-Cartwright’s guilt. It did not follow that any of them had guilty knowledge; probably they were not aware of the significance of what they knew. Which of them held this dark secret, and how was I to elicit it?
In the call just after their teatime, which I lost no time in paying, I found that each of the family was for a different reason hard to approach on the topic on which I was so impatient to enter. I was welcomed respectfully and cordially enough, but they were evidently puzzled and surprised at my visit. I tried Trethewy first. He struck me as much improved by his season of adversity, by the more active life he now led, or by the rigid abstinence to which, as I soon gathered, he had brought himself; but he told me quite firmly he never spoke, never wished to speak of the question of Peters’ death. He had himself suffered the horror of being accused when he was innocent; he wished to run no risk of bringing the same on some other possibly innocent man. Besides, the guilt of his own thought and motives still weighed on him, and he had no wish to judge any other. Nevertheless, he said plainly, when I asked how he liked his new position, that he was ill at ease to have come and hoped soon to get away. From his impenetrable manner, I began to fancy that, contrary to what I had at first thought, the secret rested with him, and in that case the secret would be very difficult to extract. As for Mrs. Trethewy, from the time of the murder two thoughts had mainly occupied her mind: anxiety for her husband, and anxiety that her daughter, for whose upbringing she was so careful, should know nothing of the suspicion that had rested on her father, and hear as little as possible of the horror that had occurred so near her. The girl had been bundled away, the very day after the discovery, to stay with Mrs. Trethewy’s mother, who lived thirty miles away from their home. And to this day, the mother told me, the girl had no idea that her father had been in prison charged with the crime. Accordingly, Mrs. Trethewy was overflowing with gratitude to Vane-Cartwright, who had found them this new home far away. She told me that he had always seemed to take a fancy to her husband, and had visited their cottage several times during his stay with Peters; and that it was after a talk with him that she sent the girl away to her grandmother’s. That the suggestion had actually come from him she did not say, it was a mere guess of mine that he had contrived to put it into her head. With the girl, whom she sent on an errand to Crondall, I got no opportunity of talk that night, and I had to return to my inn ill-satisfied with my exploration so far, and puzzled how to proceed.
I got my bathe next morning in the pool of which I have spoken (this is not quite so unimportant as it may seem). Trethewy managed to ensure me privacy for the purpose, and after that I called on the Trethewy family again. I have remarked already that I supposed myself to have heard all that any grown-up person in my old parish could tell in regard to the murder and its surrounding circumstances. It had been borne on my mind strongly since my meeting with Vane-Cartwright at Florence, that others besides adults have eyes and memories, that Trethewy’s girl had been near the house at the time of the murder and on the following day, and that I could not count on having heard from her parents all that she might have to say that might be interesting to me. When I called on the Trethewys again, I found it an easy matter to get a walk by the riverside alone with the girl. I had anticipated that, if I were to pay any decent regard to her mother’s hitherto successful wishes for her ignorance, I might have to talk long and roundabout before I could elicit what I wanted. I soon found that it was not so. Ellen Trethewy, though little taller than before, had mentally grown in those fifteen months from a shy and uninteresting schoolgirl to a shy but alert, quick-witted and, as it now struck me, rather interesting young woman.
We had many things belonging to old times to talk over, but I found her anxious herself to talk on the very subject on which I was bent, and I found in a moment that her mother’s precautions had been absolutely vain. Knowing her mother’s wish, she had never alluded to the matter since; but her grandmother, who disliked Trethewy, had taken a keen pleasure in acquainting her with all that she herself knew (and a good deal more besides) about the course of the proceedings against him. The girl, not quite trusting her grandmother, had procured and carefully read the newspaper account of the trial before the magistrates. She had never doubted for one instant, she told me, that her father
