Tracks in the Snow: Being the History of a Crime by Godfrey R. Benson

Author:Godfrey R. Benson
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: England -- Fiction, Clergy -- Fiction, Criminal investigation -- Fiction, Detective and mystery stories, Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2025-01-30T00:20:23+00:00

XVI

So then the mys­tery of Longhurst’s fate was not for me to un­ravel. Peters had held the clue of it, and had died be­cause he held it; Ver­schoyle per­haps had the clue and was dead too, prob­ably from some oth­er cause; neither had re­cor­ded his secret, or the re­cord could not be found. As for the man­ner of Peters’ death, what fur­ther place was there to look to for some fresh dis­cov­ery? I already had heard all that any of my old pa­rish­ion­ers, any grown man or wo­man among them, knew, and it was less than I knew, and I had searched the neigh­bour­hood for news, quietly, but I hoped no less ef­fect­ively; the po­lice, I was now ready to be­lieve, had searched as zeal­ously and more wisely. And so Vane-Cartwright was to go un­hanged, and why not, after all? he was not a hom­icid­al ma­ni­ac but a wise crim­in­al, rather more un­likely than most men to com­mit any fur­ther crime. Even his gains, how­ever ill-got­ten, were not likely to be more harm­fully spent than those of many a bet­ter man. And no in­no­cent man suffered un­der sus­pi­cion. Treth­ewy had been found a good place by some un­looked-for be­ne­fact­or, where no memory of the crime would pur­sue him. Callaghan’s nu­mer­ous enough friends un­der­stood him far too well to sus­pect him, and as for his nu­mer­ous ac­quaint­ances who were not friends, if they did sus­pect him, the good man would be rather amused than oth­er­wise. Let Vane-Cartwright live and ad­orn so­ci­ety which is ad­orned by men and wo­men worse than he, to whom cir­cum­stances have nev­er brought the op­por­tun­ity of dra­mat­ic wrong­do­ing.

Thus I tried to think, as I left Eng­land for a few weeks in the late spring of 1897 to join my wife and our daugh­ter, who was now much stronger, in Italy; but, whatever I tried to think, I had al­ways with me that con­scious­ness of a pur­pose frus­trated or let go, which is per­haps the hard­est thing to bear well and the most en­er­vat­ing thing to bear ill.

Some ten days later I was in Florence with my wife. The next day we were to go to Rome, leav­ing our daugh­ter at the villa of a friend in Fiesole. I re­mem­ber at our early break­fast telling my wife the facts or re­ports which I had been pick­ing up about that strangely power­ful secret or­gan­isa­tion, the Mafia. I re­peated to her what I had just heard, that not only prom­in­ent Itali­an politi­cians, but even for­eign­ers who had large com­mer­cial deal­ings with Italy, some­times found it con­veni­ent to be on good terms with that so­ci­ety. But she was little in­ter­ested in polit­ic­al facts which did not con­nect them­selves with any par­tic­u­lar per­son­al­ity, and I thought she had hardly heard me, though she raised her eyes to listen from the volume of Sen­at­or Vil­lari’s Savon­arola which she was fin­ish­ing. I little ima­gined that be­fore an­oth­er day had closed this chance re­mark of mine would have ac­quired the closest per­son­al in­terest for her, and have been turned to very prac­tic­al ac­count.

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