But here the late revealed evidence came in. It was certain, first, that those tracks did not exist in the morning. The constable who had let the trespassers come in stopped them when he found them, and noted carefully how far they had gone; he got one of them, an enterprising young journalist, to verify his observation, and it resulted in this, that the part of the lawn where those guilty tracks began was absolutely untrodden then. Next it was certain now that throughout the time when those tracks were made Trethewy had been in his house. Now, when the whole course of events that morning was considered, there could be no doubt that those tracks were made by someone who knew exactly what the situation was. Since it was not Trethewy, it lay between Sergeant Speke, myself, Callaghan and Vane-Cartwright. Sergeant Speke and I could easily give account of our time that day, but I think I mentioned that there had arisen some doubt as to where Callaghan had been just at the critical hour. It was explained now; Callaghan had been too far away; just at that time he had gone again to the hotel, moved by one of his restless impulses to try and spy upon Thalberg. It lay then beyond doubt that the tracks were made by Vane-Cartwright, and it was beyond doubt why he made them.
But the case did not rest there. The front door of Grenvile Combe had been bolted on the inside that night, before Peters died. Presumably Peters did it; anyway Vane-Cartwright and Callaghan, as they had said next morning, found it bolted when they came down disturbed by the noise, and themselves bolted it again; and Peters was then living, for they heard him in his room. The other doors had been bolted in like manner by the servants. Every window but two had also been latched. The doors had remained bolted till the servants were about in the morning, when Peters must have been some hours dead. The fastened windows were still fastened when we came to the house (a window in the back servants’ quarters had been open for a short while in the morning, but the servants had been about all the time), for the constable, before he obeyed the Sergeant and began his search outside, had been in every room and noticed every fastening. The two exceptions were Vane-Cartwright’s own open window, which did not matter, and the little window at the back, already named as a possible means of entrance. Careful experiment had now been made (Callaghan had long ago suggested it), and it showed that, whoever could climb to that window, only an infant could pass through it. No one then had entered the house by night, or, if he had previously entered it, had escaped by night; and it was also certain that no one could have lurked there concealed in the morning. Therefore, Peters was murdered by an inmate of the house, by the housemaid, or by the cook, or by Vane-Cartwright, or by Callaghan. Now the housemaid and the cook had passed a wakeful night; the disturbance in the road had aroused them and left them agitated and alarmed; each was therefore able to swear that the other had remained all night in the bedroom which they shared. Therefore, Peters was murdered either by Vane-Cartwright or by Callaghan.
And why not, it might be asked, by Callaghan, against whom at one time such good grounds of suspicion were to be found? The reader must by this time have seen that the eccentric and desultory proceedings of Callaghan, even his strange whim of staying in that crime-stricken house and the silly talk with which he had put me off about his aim, had, as he once boasted to me, a method, which though odd and over-ingenious, was rational and very acute. The neglected memorandum he had made for the police was enough in itself (without his frankness under cross-examination) to set his proceedings since the murder in a clear light. Callaghan, moreover, was the lifelong friend of Peters. True it was that (as the defence scented out) he had owed Peters £2,000, and Peters’ will forgave the debt. True, but it was now proved no less true, that since that will was made the debt had been paid, and paid in a significant manner. Callaghan had first remitted to Peters £500 from India. Peters, thereupon, had sent Callaghan an acquittance of the whole debt. Callaghan’s response was an immediate payment of £250 more. And the balance, £1,250, had been paid a very few days before Peters was killed. This was what an ill-inspired cross-examination revealed, and if the guilt lay between Vane-Cartwright and Callaghan, there could be no doubt which was the criminal.
So Callaghan and I had gone through tangled enquiries and at least some perilous adventures to solve a puzzle of which the solution lay all the while at our feet, and at the feet of others.
It would be melancholy now to dwell on the daring and brilliance of the defence. No witness was called for it. It opened with a truly impressive treatment of Vane-Cartwright’s confession; and the broken state of his temperament, originally sensitive and now harassed by suspicion and persecution, was described with a tenderness
