Chapter III was up early on the 29th. Snow lay thick on the ground but had ceased falling, and it was freezing hard, when, while waiting for breakfast, I walked out as far as my gate on the village street to see what the weather was like. Suddenly Peters’ housemaid came running down to the village on her way, as it proved, to the police-station. Before passing she paused, and breathlessly told me the news. I walked quickly to Peters’ house. Several neighbours were already gathering about the gate of the drive but did not enter. I rang the bell, was admitted by the housekeeper and walked straight up to Peters’ bedroom. Callaghan and Vane-Cartwright were there already, the former half-dressed, unshaved and haggard-looking, the latter a neat figure in bedroom slippers and a dressing-gown. We had only exchanged a few words when the police-sergeant entered, followed a minute or two later by a tall and pleasant-faced young constable, who brought with him the village doctor, an ambitious, up-to-date youth who had lately come to those parts.I have some little difficulty in saying what I then observed; for indeed, though I looked intently enough on the dead face and figure, and noticed much about them that is not to my present purpose, I took in for myself very little that bore on that problem of detection which has since interested me so much. I cannot now distinguish the things which I really saw upon hearing the others mention them from the things which I imagine myself seeing because I knew they were mentioned then or later. In fact I saw chiefly with the eyes of the Sergeant, who set about his inquiries with a quiet promptitude that surprised me in one whom I knew only as a burly, steady, slow-speaking, heavy member of the force.There was little to note about the barely furnished room which showed no traces of disorder. On the top of some drawers on the left of the bed-head lay a curious, old-fashioned gold watch with the watchkey by it, a pocket-knife, a pencil, a ring of keys and a purse, the last containing a good deal of money. On a small table on the other side of the bed stood a candlestick, the candle burnt to the socket; by it lay two closed books. Under the table near the bed lay, as if it had fallen from the dead man’s hand or off his bed, a book with several leaves crumpled and torn, as if, in his first alarm, or as he died, Peters had caught them in a spasmodic clutch. I looked to see what it was, merely from the natural wish to know what had occupied my friend’s mind in his last hour. It was Borrow’sBible in Spain. When I saw the title an indistinct recollection came to me of some very recent mention of the book by some one, and with it came a faint sense that it was important I should make this recollection clear. But either I was too much stunned as yet to follow out the thought, or I put it aside as a foolish trick of my brain, and the recollection, whatever it was, is gone. The position of the body and the arrangement of the pillows gave no sign of any struggle having taken place. They looked as if when he was murdered he had been sitting up in bed to read. He could hardly have fallen asleep so, for his head would have found but an uncomfortable rest on the iron bedstead. But I repeat, I did not observe this myself, and I cannot be sure that anybody noted it accurately at the time.The surgeon stepped quickly to the body, slightly raised the left arm, drew aside the already open jacket of the sleeping suit, and silently indicated the cause of death. This was a knife, a curious, long, narrow, sharp knife for surgical use, which the murderer had left there, driven home between two of his victim’s ribs. I say “the murderer,” for the surgeon’s first words were, “Not suicide”. I had no suspicion of suicide, but thought that he pronounced this judgment rather hastily, and that the Sergeant was right when he asked him to examine the posture of the body more closely. He did so, still, as I thought, perfunctorily, and gave certain reasons which did not impress either my judgment or my memory. I was more convinced by his remark that he had studied in Berlin and was familiar with the appearances of suicide. I may say at once that it appeared afterwards, at the inquest, that there was reason to think that Peters had not had such a knife, for he never locked up drawers or cupboards, and his servants knew all his few possessions well. It appeared, too, that the owner of the knife had taken precautions against being traced, by carefully obliterating the maker’s name and other marks on it with a file.In the midst of our observations in the room a vexatious interruption happened. I have forgotten to say that the servants had been sent out of the room by the police-sergeant, and that, almost immediately after, the constable who brought the doctor had been sent down to examine the outside of the house. For some reason he was slow in setting about this; it is possible that he stopped to talk to the servants, but in any case, he went out through the kitchen, and explored first the back of the house, where he thought he knew of an easy way of making an entrance. Meanwhile the neighbours, who had collected about the gate, had been drawn by their curiosity into the garden, and by the time the constable had got round to the front of the house several were wandering about the drive and the lawn which lay between it and the road. They had no more harmful intention than that of gazing and gaping at the windows, but it led to the very serious consequence that a number of tracks had now been made in the snow which might very possibly frustrate a search for the traces of the criminal. This the Sergeant now noticed from the window.As for the actual carriage-drive I was fortunately able to remember (and it was the only useful thing that I did observe for myself) that when I had arrived there had been no footmarks between the gate and the front door except the unmistakable print of the goloshes worn by the housemaid on her way to call the police. But the tracks on the lawns and elsewhere about the house might cause confusion.Upon seeing what was happening the Sergeant asked Vane-Cartwright, Callaghan and myself to await him in Peters’ study, while he went out to drive away the intruders, to make the constable keep others out and to pursue his own investigations. While we waited Vane-Cartwright, who had spoken little but seemed to watch all proceedings very attentively, made the sensible suggestion that we should look for Peters’ will, as we ought to know who were his executors. We consulted the housekeeper, who pointed out the drawer in which the few papers of importance were kept, and there we soon found a will in a sealed envelope. The first few lines, which were all that we read, showed me that, as I had expected, I was Peters’ executor along with an old friend of his whom I had never met but who, I believed, as was the fact, now lived in America.The Sergeant now rejoined us; he had discovered nothing outside, and, though the tracks of the intruders made it difficult to be certain, he believed that there was nothing to discover; he thought that the murderer had approached the house before the snow began to fall, and he found no sign that he had entered the house in the manner of a housebreaker. He had, I must say, taken a very short time about his search. He wished now that the servants should be summoned, as of course it was necessary to make inquiries about the movements of all persons connected with the house. But he was here delayed by Callaghan who had matters of importance to relate.He and Vane-Cartwright had been disturbed during the night in a notable manner. They had actually had an alarm of murder, and curiously enough a false and even ludicrous alarm. About 11.30 o’clock they had been roused by loud shouting outside the house, amid which Callaghan declared that he had distinguished a cry of murder. He had come tumbling out of his room, calling Vane-Cartwright, who slept in the next room, and who immediately joined him in the passage. Without waiting to call Peters, whose room was some distance from theirs and from the staircase by which they descended (for there were two staircases in the main part of the house), they went to the front door and opened it. The flash of a bull’s-eye lantern in the road, the policeman’s voice quietly telling some revellers to go home and the immediate cessation of the noise, showed them that they had been roused by nothing more serious than the drunken uproar which I had predicted to Peters would disturb him. The two men had returned to their rooms after locking the front door again; they had noticed that the library door was open and the lights out in that room; they had noticed also as they went upstairs (this time by the other staircase) light shining through the chink under Peters’ bedroom door; and they had heard him knock out the ashes of a pipe against the mantelpiece. The pipe now lay on the mantelpiece; and, of course, that particular noise is unmistakable. They concluded that, though he was awake and probably reading, he had not thought the noise outside worth noticing. Callaghan added that he himself had lain awake some time, and that for half an hour afterwards there had been occasionally sounds of talking or shouting in the lane, once even a renewal of something like the first uproar.The report subsequently received from the constable who had been on duty along the road that night confirmed the above, and a little reflexion made it appear that the disturbance outside had nothing to do with the murder. In fact the only thing connected with this incident which much impressed me at the time was Callaghan’s manner in relating it. He had up to now been very silent, he now began to talk with furious eagerness. He readily saw and indeed suggested that the disturbance which he related was of little consequence. But having to tell of it he did so with a vividness which was characteristic of him, so that one saw the scene as he described it, saw indeed more than there was to see, for he spoke of the ground already white and the snow falling in thick flakes, when he was pulled up by the Sergeant who said that the snow had not begun to fall till three o’clock that morning. Callaghan began angrily persisting, and the Sergeant appealed to Vane-Cartwright, who up till now had said little, merely confirming Callaghan’s narrative at various points with a single syllable or with a nod of his head, but who now said that Callaghan was wrong about the snow. He added the benevolent explanation that Callaghan, who was really much excited, had combined the impressions of their false alarm over night with those of their all too real alarm in the morning.
I was up early on the 29th. Snow lay thick on the ground but had ceased falling, and it was freezing hard, when, while waiting for breakfast, I walked out as far as my gate on the village street to see what the weather was like. Suddenly Peters’ housemaid came running down to the village on her way, as it proved, to the police-station. Before passing she paused, and breathlessly told me the news. I walked quickly to Peters’ house. Several neighbours were already gathering about the gate of the drive but did not enter. I rang the bell, was admitted by the housekeeper and walked straight up to Peters’ bedroom. Callaghan and Vane-Cartwright were there already, the former half-dressed, unshaved and haggard-looking, the latter a neat figure in bedroom slippers and a dressing-gown. We had only exchanged a few words when the police-sergeant entered, followed a minute or two later by a tall and pleasant-faced young constable, who brought with him the village doctor, an ambitious, up-to-date youth who had lately come to those parts.
I have some little difficulty in saying what I then observed; for indeed, though I looked intently enough on the dead face and figure, and noticed much about them that is not to my present purpose, I took in for myself very little that bore on that problem of detection which has since interested me so much. I cannot now distinguish the things which I really saw upon hearing the others mention them from the things which I imagine myself seeing because I knew they were mentioned then or later. In fact I saw chiefly with the eyes of the Sergeant, who set about his inquiries with a quiet promptitude that surprised me in one whom I knew only as a burly, steady, slow-speaking, heavy member of the force.
There was little to note about the barely furnished room which showed no traces of disorder. On the top of some drawers on the left of the bed-head lay a curious, old-fashioned gold watch with the watchkey by it, a pocket-knife, a pencil, a ring of keys and a purse, the last containing a good deal of money. On a small table on the other side of the bed stood a candlestick, the candle burnt to the socket; by it lay two closed books. Under the table near the bed lay, as if it had fallen from the dead man’s hand or off his bed, a book with several leaves crumpled and torn, as if, in his first alarm, or as he died, Peters had caught them in a spasmodic clutch. I looked to see what it was, merely from the natural wish to know what had occupied my friend’s mind in his last hour. It was Borrow’sBible in Spain. When I saw the title an indistinct recollection came to me of some very recent mention of the book by some one, and with it came a faint sense that it was important I should make this recollection clear. But either I was too much stunned as yet to follow out the thought, or I put it aside as a foolish trick of my brain, and the recollection, whatever it was, is gone. The position of the body and the arrangement of the pillows gave no sign of any struggle having taken place. They looked as if when he was murdered he had been sitting up in bed to read. He could hardly have fallen asleep so, for his head would have found but an uncomfortable rest on the iron bedstead. But I repeat, I did not observe this myself, and I cannot be sure that anybody noted it accurately at the time.
The surgeon stepped quickly to the body, slightly raised the left arm, drew aside the already open jacket of the sleeping suit, and silently indicated the cause of death. This was a knife, a curious, long, narrow, sharp knife for surgical use, which the murderer had left there, driven home between two of his victim’s ribs. I say “the murderer,” for the surgeon’s first words were, “Not suicide”. I had no suspicion of suicide, but thought that he pronounced this judgment rather hastily, and that the Sergeant was right when he asked him to examine the posture of the body more closely. He did so, still, as I thought, perfunctorily, and gave certain reasons which did not impress either my judgment or my memory. I was more convinced by his remark that he had studied in Berlin and was familiar with the appearances of suicide. I may say at once that it appeared afterwards, at the inquest, that there was reason to think that Peters had not had such a knife, for he never locked up drawers or cupboards, and his servants knew all his few possessions well. It appeared, too, that the owner of the knife had taken precautions against being traced, by carefully obliterating the maker’s name and other marks on it with a file.
In the midst of our observations in the room a vexatious interruption happened. I have forgotten to say that the servants had been sent out of the room by the police-sergeant, and that, almost immediately after, the constable who brought the doctor had been sent down to examine the outside of the house. For some reason he was slow in setting about this; it is possible that he stopped to talk to the servants, but in any case, he went out through the kitchen, and explored first the back of the house, where he thought he knew of an easy way of making an entrance. Meanwhile the neighbours, who had collected about the gate, had been drawn by their curiosity into the garden, and by the time the constable had got round to the front of the house several were wandering about the drive and the lawn which lay between it and the road. They had no more harmful intention than that of gazing and gaping at the windows, but it led to the very serious consequence that a number of tracks had now been made in the snow which might very possibly frustrate a search for the traces of the criminal. This the Sergeant now noticed from the window.
As for the actual carriage-drive I was fortunately able to remember (and it was the only useful thing that I did observe for myself) that when I had arrived there had been no footmarks between the gate and the front door except the unmistakable print of the goloshes worn by the housemaid on her way to call the police. But the tracks on the lawns and elsewhere about the house might cause confusion.
Upon seeing what was happening the Sergeant asked Vane-Cartwright, Callaghan and myself to await him in Peters’ study, while he went out to drive away the intruders, to make the constable keep others out and to pursue his own investigations. While we waited Vane-Cartwright, who had spoken little but seemed to watch all proceedings very attentively, made the sensible suggestion that we should look for Peters’ will, as we ought to know who were his executors. We consulted the housekeeper, who pointed out the drawer in which the few papers of importance were kept, and there we soon found a will in a sealed envelope. The first few lines, which were all that we read, showed me that, as I had expected, I was Peters’ executor along with an old friend of his whom I had never met but who, I believed, as was the fact, now lived in America.
The Sergeant now rejoined us; he had discovered nothing outside, and, though the tracks of the intruders made it difficult to be certain, he believed that there was nothing to discover; he thought that the murderer had approached the house before the snow began to fall, and he found no sign that he had entered the house in the manner of a housebreaker. He had, I must say, taken a very short time about his search. He wished now that the servants should be summoned, as of course it was necessary to make inquiries about the movements of all persons connected with the house. But he was here delayed by Callaghan who had matters of importance to relate.
He and Vane-Cartwright had been disturbed during the night in a notable manner. They had actually had an alarm of murder, and curiously enough a false and even ludicrous alarm. About 11.30 o’clock they had been roused by loud shouting outside the house, amid which Callaghan declared that he had distinguished a cry of murder. He had come tumbling out of his room, calling Vane-Cartwright, who slept in the next room, and who immediately joined him in the passage. Without waiting to call Peters, whose room was some distance from theirs and from the staircase by which they descended (for there were two staircases in the main part of the house), they went to the front door and opened it. The flash of a bull’s-eye lantern in the road, the policeman’s voice quietly telling some revellers to go home and the immediate cessation of the noise, showed them that they had been roused by nothing more serious than the drunken uproar which I had predicted to Peters would disturb him. The two men had returned to their rooms after locking the front door again; they had noticed that the library door was open and the lights out in that room; they had noticed also as they went upstairs (this time by the other staircase) light shining through the chink under Peters’ bedroom door; and they had heard him knock out the ashes of a pipe against the mantelpiece. The pipe now lay on the mantelpiece; and, of course, that particular noise is unmistakable. They concluded that, though he was awake and probably reading, he had not thought the noise outside worth noticing. Callaghan added that he himself had lain awake some time, and that for half an hour afterwards there had been occasionally sounds of talking or shouting in the lane, once even a renewal of something like the first uproar.
The report subsequently received from the constable who had been on duty along the road that night confirmed the above, and a little reflexion made it appear that the disturbance outside had nothing to do with the murder. In fact the only thing connected with this incident which much impressed me at the time was Callaghan’s manner in relating it. He had up to now been very silent, he now began to talk with furious eagerness. He readily saw and indeed suggested that the disturbance which he related was of little consequence. But having to tell of it he did so with a vividness which was characteristic of him, so that one saw the scene as he described it, saw indeed more than there was to see, for he spoke of the ground already white and the snow falling in thick flakes, when he was pulled up by the Sergeant who said that the snow had not begun to fall till three o’clock that morning. Callaghan began angrily persisting, and the Sergeant appealed to Vane-Cartwright, who up till now had said little, merely confirming Callaghan’s narrative at various points with a single syllable or with a nod of his head, but who now said that Callaghan was wrong about the snow. He added the benevolent explanation that Callaghan, who was really much excited, had combined the impressions of their false alarm over night with those of their all too real alarm in the morning.