Chapter IIIHereupon Callaghan, who had a more important matter to relate, changed the subject abruptly by saying, “Sergeant, have your eye on that man Trethewy”. He told us that, ten days before, Trethewy had quarrelled with his master. Peters, he said, had met Trethewy in the drive, at a point which he indicated, and, noticing a smell of spirits, had firmly but quietly taken him to task, telling him that his occasional drinking was becoming a serious matter. Callaghan had come up at the moment and had heard Trethewy, who was by his account dangerous with drink at the time, answer with surly insolence, making some malicious counter-insinuation against his master’s own habits, exploding for a moment into wild anger, in which he seemed about to strike his master, but to refrain upon catching sight of Callaghan’s powerful frame beside him, then subsiding again into surliness and finally withdrawing to his own cottage with muttered curses and a savage threat. This was the substance of Callaghan’s statement. But there was a great deal in it besides substance; the whole of the conversation, from the moment at which Callaghan came up, was professedly repeated word for word with a slight but dramatic touch of mimicry, and the tone and temper of master and man were vividly rendered. I can never myself remember the words of any conversation, and for that reason I am unable now to set out Callaghan’s narrative, and was unable at the time to put faith in its accuracy. Here and there a phrase was presumably truly given because it was given in Trethewy’s own dialect, but once at least the unhappy Trethewy was made responsible for a remark which he surely never made, for it was pure Irish, and indeed I think it was the very threat of picturesque vengeance which I had myself heard Callaghan address to a big boy in the street who was on the point of thrashing a little boy. One detail of the description was a manifest mistake. Callaghan indicated (truly, I have some reason to think) the spot in the drive where such altercation as did happen took place, but he added that Peters stood watching Trethewy with his hand upon a young tree. Now Peters had planted that tree with Trethewy several days later, just before the frost set in; and other details in the story seemed equally incredible. “Ever since then,” concluded Callaghan, “I have seen murder in that fellow’s eye. Mind you, I have had to do with murderers in India. Three times have I marked that look in a man’s eye, and each time the event has proved me right, though in one case it was long after. I tell you this man Trethewy——” But here Vane-Cartwright stopped him. He had already disconcerted Callaghan a little by pointing out the Hibernicisms that adorned the alleged remarks of Trethewy; and now he quelled him with the just, but, as I thought, unseasonably expressed, sarcasm, that if he had seen murder portended in Trethewy’s glance it would have been a kind attention to have given his host warning of the impending doom. He went on to insist warmly on the totally different impression he had himself gathered from Trethewy’s demeanour to his master. He was not apt to say more than was needed, but this time he ran on, setting forth his own favourable view of Trethewy, till he in turn was stopped by the Sergeant who said, “Really, sir, I do not think I ought to listen now to what any gentleman thinks of a man’s manner of speaking, not if it is nothing more than that”.The Sergeant then sent for Trethewy. I had wondered that we had not seen him before, the explanation was that he had been away at night, had returned home very late, and so had come late to the house in the morning and was still doing the pumping when the Sergeant sent for him. However, he seemed at last to have slept off the effect of whatever his nocturnal potion had been, and he gave a clear account of his movements without hesitation and with a curiously impressive gravity. He had suddenly made up his mind at dusk on the previous evening to go to his uncle’s house, where there was a gathering of friends and kinsfolk, which he had at first intended to avoid. They had made a night of it. He had started home, as several, whom he named, could testify, at four o’clock in the morning (the church clock near his uncle’s was then striking), and the violence of the snowstorm was abating. He had come across the moor by a track of which he knew the bearings well. This track struck into the grass lane which passed near the back of the house at the other side of the pasture, and which curved round into the road joining it close by Trethewy’s cottage. As he came along the lane a man on horseback leading a second horse had overtaken him and exchanged greetings with him. He had seen the man before, but could not tell his name or dwelling or where he was going. The snow had done falling when he reached his cottage. Once home, he had turned in and slept sound till he was roused soon after eight by his wife with the news of the murder. He had seen nothing, heard nothing, guessed nothing which could throw light on the dreadful deed of the night. Trethewy was dismissed with a request from the Sergeant to keep in his house, where he could instantly be found if information was wanted from him. This he did.The two servants were now summoned, and the Sergeant had a number of questions to ask them. The housekeeper in particular had a good deal to say about her master’s ways, the household arrangements and so forth, and seemed to find satisfaction in saying it at length. So a lot of trivial details came forth, which I, who was by this time becoming exhausted, had little patience to follow. Was the candle which was found burnt out a new candle the evening before, or a candle-end, or what? The question was asked of the housekeeper, but the housemaid answered with promptitude that it was a full new candle which she had herself put there last evening, shortly before the master went to bed. We learnt also that Peters was very irregular about going to bed; sometimes he would take a fit of sitting up, working or reading, night after night, and sometimes he would go to bed early, but always he had a book with him and lay awake for a while (often for hours and hours, as he had confessed to her) reading it after he went to bed. Sometimes it would be a story book, but more often one of those dull books of his; and much more on the same subject would have been forthcoming if the housekeeper had not at last been stopped, without, as I thought, having told us anything of importance.At last I went home, to find the churchwarden irate at my lateness for an appointed interview about the accounts of the dole charities, and to have a forgotten but much-needed breakfast pressed upon me. I would rather have been alone, but Callaghan gave me his company as far as my house, and expounded his view about Trethewy all the way. He left me at my door to go in search of Thalberg, whom up to that moment we had all forgotten.In about three-quarters of an hour Callaghan burst in on me. Where he had breakfasted, if at all, I neglected to ascertain, but he had contrived to get shaved at the village barber’s, and he now looked fresh and seemed keen. He was this time in a state of great indignation against Thalberg. He had been unable to see him, but had ascertained that he was still at the hotel, and that he had heard the news of Peters’ murder, but had seemed little interested in it, and had rejected the landlady’s suggestion that he might like to go up to the house to learn the last news of his unhappy friend. It appeared that Thalberg had shut himself up in his room ever since, but had ordered a fly to drive him to the afternoon train at the station five miles off. The landlady and Callaghan seemed to have agreed that there was something peculiarly heartless in his omission to call at Peters’ or to make any inquiries.Callaghan soon left me, returning, as I thought, to Grenvile Combe, while I endeavoured to settle myself to prepare my sermon for the next day, Sunday, with a mind hardly indeed awake as yet to the horror of the morning or to the loss I had sustained, much less able in any connected way to think over the meaning of our observations, but mechanically asking over and over again whether it was reasonable that my now confirmed aversion from Thalberg was somehow associated in my mind with the object of our investigations.I say “our” investigations; as a matter of fact I had no intention whatever at that time of busying myself with investigation at all. In the first place I was quite aware that I had no aptitude for such work, and in the second, and far more important place, I, who hold it most undesirable that a clergyman should be a magistrate, could not but feel it still less fitting that he should be a detective in his own parish. But I could not escape altogether. About 2.45 I received a visit from the Sergeant, a much-embarrassed man now, for he brought with him the Superintendent, who had driven over in hot haste to take charge of the inquiry. The Sergeant had zealously endeavoured to rise to the occasion, and to my unpractised judgment seemed to have shown much sense. Perhaps his zeal did not endear him the more to the keen, and as I guessed, ambitious gentleman who now took over the inquiry, but any way he had been guilty of real negligence in allowing the snow round the house to be trampled over by trespassers, and at this the Superintendent, who had rapidly gathered nearly all that the Sergeant had to tell, seemed greatly exasperated; moreover, the Superintendent had noticed, if the reader has not, that the public-house had been open very late the previous night. His present errand was to ask me to come to the house, not because I was the deceased man’s legal personal representative, but because he foresaw possible explorations in which my topographical knowledge of my large and scattered parish might be of use.We returned to Grenvile Combe, and the Superintendent went straight to the death-chamber where he remained some minutes with the Sergeant and me, taking note with much minuteness and astonishing rapidity of all the details which I have already mentioned. Suddenly he opened the door and called up the housemaid; she arrived at length, the housekeeper, who fetched her, being refused admittance. “Why,” said the Superintendent pointing to the window, “is that window latch unfastened and the other fastened?” The housemaid said shyly but quite decidedly that she did not know, but this she did know, that both had been fastened by her last night, that one of the few matters in which her master showed any fussiness was insisting that a window should be latched whenever it was shut, and that he never neglected this himself. Why had the Sergeant not noticed this in the morning? Poor Sergeant Speke, already crestfallen, had no answer; at least he made none. Our stay in the room was short. The Superintendent, I believe, returned there that evening and spent an hour or two in searching microscopically for traces of the criminal; but now he was in haste to search the garden. “I shall begin,” he said, “at the point under that window. It is past three already. Come on, there is not a minute of daylight to be lost.” At the point under the unlatched window he made a startling discovery, startling in that it had not been made before.
Hereupon Callaghan, who had a more important matter to relate, changed the subject abruptly by saying, “Sergeant, have your eye on that man Trethewy”. He told us that, ten days before, Trethewy had quarrelled with his master. Peters, he said, had met Trethewy in the drive, at a point which he indicated, and, noticing a smell of spirits, had firmly but quietly taken him to task, telling him that his occasional drinking was becoming a serious matter. Callaghan had come up at the moment and had heard Trethewy, who was by his account dangerous with drink at the time, answer with surly insolence, making some malicious counter-insinuation against his master’s own habits, exploding for a moment into wild anger, in which he seemed about to strike his master, but to refrain upon catching sight of Callaghan’s powerful frame beside him, then subsiding again into surliness and finally withdrawing to his own cottage with muttered curses and a savage threat. This was the substance of Callaghan’s statement. But there was a great deal in it besides substance; the whole of the conversation, from the moment at which Callaghan came up, was professedly repeated word for word with a slight but dramatic touch of mimicry, and the tone and temper of master and man were vividly rendered. I can never myself remember the words of any conversation, and for that reason I am unable now to set out Callaghan’s narrative, and was unable at the time to put faith in its accuracy. Here and there a phrase was presumably truly given because it was given in Trethewy’s own dialect, but once at least the unhappy Trethewy was made responsible for a remark which he surely never made, for it was pure Irish, and indeed I think it was the very threat of picturesque vengeance which I had myself heard Callaghan address to a big boy in the street who was on the point of thrashing a little boy. One detail of the description was a manifest mistake. Callaghan indicated (truly, I have some reason to think) the spot in the drive where such altercation as did happen took place, but he added that Peters stood watching Trethewy with his hand upon a young tree. Now Peters had planted that tree with Trethewy several days later, just before the frost set in; and other details in the story seemed equally incredible. “Ever since then,” concluded Callaghan, “I have seen murder in that fellow’s eye. Mind you, I have had to do with murderers in India. Three times have I marked that look in a man’s eye, and each time the event has proved me right, though in one case it was long after. I tell you this man Trethewy——” But here Vane-Cartwright stopped him. He had already disconcerted Callaghan a little by pointing out the Hibernicisms that adorned the alleged remarks of Trethewy; and now he quelled him with the just, but, as I thought, unseasonably expressed, sarcasm, that if he had seen murder portended in Trethewy’s glance it would have been a kind attention to have given his host warning of the impending doom. He went on to insist warmly on the totally different impression he had himself gathered from Trethewy’s demeanour to his master. He was not apt to say more than was needed, but this time he ran on, setting forth his own favourable view of Trethewy, till he in turn was stopped by the Sergeant who said, “Really, sir, I do not think I ought to listen now to what any gentleman thinks of a man’s manner of speaking, not if it is nothing more than that”.
The Sergeant then sent for Trethewy. I had wondered that we had not seen him before, the explanation was that he had been away at night, had returned home very late, and so had come late to the house in the morning and was still doing the pumping when the Sergeant sent for him. However, he seemed at last to have slept off the effect of whatever his nocturnal potion had been, and he gave a clear account of his movements without hesitation and with a curiously impressive gravity. He had suddenly made up his mind at dusk on the previous evening to go to his uncle’s house, where there was a gathering of friends and kinsfolk, which he had at first intended to avoid. They had made a night of it. He had started home, as several, whom he named, could testify, at four o’clock in the morning (the church clock near his uncle’s was then striking), and the violence of the snowstorm was abating. He had come across the moor by a track of which he knew the bearings well. This track struck into the grass lane which passed near the back of the house at the other side of the pasture, and which curved round into the road joining it close by Trethewy’s cottage. As he came along the lane a man on horseback leading a second horse had overtaken him and exchanged greetings with him. He had seen the man before, but could not tell his name or dwelling or where he was going. The snow had done falling when he reached his cottage. Once home, he had turned in and slept sound till he was roused soon after eight by his wife with the news of the murder. He had seen nothing, heard nothing, guessed nothing which could throw light on the dreadful deed of the night. Trethewy was dismissed with a request from the Sergeant to keep in his house, where he could instantly be found if information was wanted from him. This he did.
The two servants were now summoned, and the Sergeant had a number of questions to ask them. The housekeeper in particular had a good deal to say about her master’s ways, the household arrangements and so forth, and seemed to find satisfaction in saying it at length. So a lot of trivial details came forth, which I, who was by this time becoming exhausted, had little patience to follow. Was the candle which was found burnt out a new candle the evening before, or a candle-end, or what? The question was asked of the housekeeper, but the housemaid answered with promptitude that it was a full new candle which she had herself put there last evening, shortly before the master went to bed. We learnt also that Peters was very irregular about going to bed; sometimes he would take a fit of sitting up, working or reading, night after night, and sometimes he would go to bed early, but always he had a book with him and lay awake for a while (often for hours and hours, as he had confessed to her) reading it after he went to bed. Sometimes it would be a story book, but more often one of those dull books of his; and much more on the same subject would have been forthcoming if the housekeeper had not at last been stopped, without, as I thought, having told us anything of importance.
At last I went home, to find the churchwarden irate at my lateness for an appointed interview about the accounts of the dole charities, and to have a forgotten but much-needed breakfast pressed upon me. I would rather have been alone, but Callaghan gave me his company as far as my house, and expounded his view about Trethewy all the way. He left me at my door to go in search of Thalberg, whom up to that moment we had all forgotten.
In about three-quarters of an hour Callaghan burst in on me. Where he had breakfasted, if at all, I neglected to ascertain, but he had contrived to get shaved at the village barber’s, and he now looked fresh and seemed keen. He was this time in a state of great indignation against Thalberg. He had been unable to see him, but had ascertained that he was still at the hotel, and that he had heard the news of Peters’ murder, but had seemed little interested in it, and had rejected the landlady’s suggestion that he might like to go up to the house to learn the last news of his unhappy friend. It appeared that Thalberg had shut himself up in his room ever since, but had ordered a fly to drive him to the afternoon train at the station five miles off. The landlady and Callaghan seemed to have agreed that there was something peculiarly heartless in his omission to call at Peters’ or to make any inquiries.
Callaghan soon left me, returning, as I thought, to Grenvile Combe, while I endeavoured to settle myself to prepare my sermon for the next day, Sunday, with a mind hardly indeed awake as yet to the horror of the morning or to the loss I had sustained, much less able in any connected way to think over the meaning of our observations, but mechanically asking over and over again whether it was reasonable that my now confirmed aversion from Thalberg was somehow associated in my mind with the object of our investigations.
I say “our” investigations; as a matter of fact I had no intention whatever at that time of busying myself with investigation at all. In the first place I was quite aware that I had no aptitude for such work, and in the second, and far more important place, I, who hold it most undesirable that a clergyman should be a magistrate, could not but feel it still less fitting that he should be a detective in his own parish. But I could not escape altogether. About 2.45 I received a visit from the Sergeant, a much-embarrassed man now, for he brought with him the Superintendent, who had driven over in hot haste to take charge of the inquiry. The Sergeant had zealously endeavoured to rise to the occasion, and to my unpractised judgment seemed to have shown much sense. Perhaps his zeal did not endear him the more to the keen, and as I guessed, ambitious gentleman who now took over the inquiry, but any way he had been guilty of real negligence in allowing the snow round the house to be trampled over by trespassers, and at this the Superintendent, who had rapidly gathered nearly all that the Sergeant had to tell, seemed greatly exasperated; moreover, the Superintendent had noticed, if the reader has not, that the public-house had been open very late the previous night. His present errand was to ask me to come to the house, not because I was the deceased man’s legal personal representative, but because he foresaw possible explorations in which my topographical knowledge of my large and scattered parish might be of use.
We returned to Grenvile Combe, and the Superintendent went straight to the death-chamber where he remained some minutes with the Sergeant and me, taking note with much minuteness and astonishing rapidity of all the details which I have already mentioned. Suddenly he opened the door and called up the housemaid; she arrived at length, the housekeeper, who fetched her, being refused admittance. “Why,” said the Superintendent pointing to the window, “is that window latch unfastened and the other fastened?” The housemaid said shyly but quite decidedly that she did not know, but this she did know, that both had been fastened by her last night, that one of the few matters in which her master showed any fussiness was insisting that a window should be latched whenever it was shut, and that he never neglected this himself. Why had the Sergeant not noticed this in the morning? Poor Sergeant Speke, already crestfallen, had no answer; at least he made none. Our stay in the room was short. The Superintendent, I believe, returned there that evening and spent an hour or two in searching microscopically for traces of the criminal; but now he was in haste to search the garden. “I shall begin,” he said, “at the point under that window. It is past three already. Come on, there is not a minute of daylight to be lost.” At the point under the unlatched window he made a startling discovery, startling in that it had not been made before.