Tracks in the Snow

which ought to have been ascertained long before; still more, facts long known had been digested, as, surely, it should have been somebody’s business to digest them from the first. In particular, tardy attention had been paid to the report of the young constable who, as I mentioned, followed Sergeant Speke into Peters’ room, and who had incurred some blame because his apparent slowness had allowed some trespassers to come and make footprints on the lawn (I fancy his notes had been overlooked when some officer in charge of the case had been superseded by another). The observed movements, just after the crime, of two or three people who were about the scene, had been set down in order. Enquiries, such as only authority could make, had ultimately been made among Vane-Cartwright’s acquaintance in the East, and though disappointing in the main, they yielded one fact of importance. Moreover, the researches which were made by Callaghan shortly after the murder, and which I had supposed at the time were so futile, now appeared in another light. Just before that suspicious flight to Paris, he had given to the police at Exeter some scrappy and ill-explained notes; and on a subsequent visit, which I have mentioned, to Scotland Yard, he had handed in a long and over-elaborate memorandum. These now received justice. I must, therefore, attempt to state, with dry accuracy, the case which was actually presented against the accused.

Upon the fact that he had confessed his guilt, though indeed it reversed the surface improbability that a man in his position was a criminal, I must lay no separate emphasis. Neither judge nor prosecuting counsel did so. The defence dealt with it upon a theory which turned it to positive advantage. I myself can well conceive that a man, to whom his life was little and his reputation much, might have taken the risk of a false confession to us in the hope of binding us to silence.

But, to begin, Peters was without doubt murdered on a certain night, and during that night Vane-Cartwright was one of a few who could easily have had access to him.

Now years before one Longhurst had disappeared; a report had got abroad that he went down in a certain ship which had been lost; the report was false; but he never reappeared; several witnesses (traced out by the enquiry of the police in the East) appeared at the trial, and swore that Vane-Cartwright had often spoken of Longhurst’s sailing in that ship; yet he must, according to Mr. Bryanston’s evidence, have known that this was false; and, according to the same evidence, he had been in Longhurst’s company after the time when the rest of Longhurst’s neighbours last saw him. From this (though the other proved facts of their connection amounted to little more than they were reputed partners) it followed that Vane-Cartwright was in a position in which suspicion of foul play towards Longhurst might easily fall on him.

Next, Peters at the time of his death not merely entertained this suspicion but was taking steps to obtain proof of its truth; for there were his letters to Bryanston and to Verschoyle still extant, and admissible in evidence as res gestae, the actual first steps which he had taken with this aim.

Next, Vane-Cartwright knew of Peters’ suspicion and was greatly perturbed by the knowledge. His whole conduct was in this regard most significant. Callaghan showed that on the first evening when he had seen the two men together their intercourse had at first been easy, but that by the end of the evening something had happened which completely altered their manners; the one became abstracted and aloof, the other eagerly watched him. Of the talk which caused this change Callaghan had only caught Peters’ question, “sailed in what,” but it was evident now to what that question referred. It was in itself strange that after this Vane-Cartwright should have availed himself of a general invitation given by Peters earlier, and have come rather suddenly to his house, putting off (as it was now shown) for that purpose a previous important engagement. It was a sinister fact that, before he did so, he had set on foot mysterious enquiries, some of which related to the two men to whom, in his presence, Peters had written letters about the affair of Longhurst, while the rest, though less obviously, appeared to be connected with the same matter. The first fruits of these enquiries (and they were telling) had been, by his arrangement, brought to him on the very afternoon before the murder. After the murder he had, it now seemed plain, stayed on at my house merely in the hope of intercepting Bryanston’s answer. By what means he knew that the sting of Dr. Verschoyle lay in his journals cannot be conjectured, but there was no mistaking the purpose with which, a little later, he obtained these journals by deceit. Altogether his conduct had been that of a man in whom Peters had aroused an anxiety so intense as to form a possible motive for murdering him.

And altogether his conduct after the murder bore, now that it could be fully traced, the flagrant aspect of guilt. He had unlatched the window; this was now certain, though of course of that act by itself an innocent account might be given. The reader knows too the whole course of his action in regard to Trethewy and his family, beginning with the lie, which made him appear as screening Trethewy when in fact he was plotting his undoing, and ending with his breaking in upon my talk with Ellen Trethewy, who had stood where she might have seen him making those tracks in the snow. The making of the tracks⁠—this, of course, was the key to his whole conduct, the one thing, which, if quite certain, admitted of but one explanation. Only just here, when last we dealt with that matter, a faint haze still hung. Thalberg swore to having seen