Tracks in the Snow by Godfrey R. Benson — Read

The enquiry upon which I had now stirred myself to enter, could not be an easy one, but it should have seemed for the present to be narrowed down to a question about a single man. Perhaps it was from repugnance against consciously going about to hang a man who had sheltered under my roof, that I did not even then definitely put to myself the question of that man's guilt. By some half-conscious sequence of thought I was led to begin my search far afield. It started with the two letters which had come for Peters from Mr. Charles Bryanston, or rather first with the later letter.

I had some time before written briefly and formally to Mr. Bryanston to acquaint him with the fact of Peters' murder, but had, for a while since, thought no more of him. Now I began to do what one very seldom does, steadily and methodically think. I mooned up and down with a pipe in my garden or in the lanes. I sat, with those letters in my hand, alone before the fire. I sat at my writing-table with paper before me, and made incoherent jottings with a pencil. I should be afraid to say how often and how long I did all these seemingly idle things. Till at last, in the time between tea and dinner, with the children playing in the room, I arrived at actually spelling the matter out.