Tracks in the Snow by Godfrey R. Benson — Read

The chapter which I am about to write may well prove dreary. It will be nothing but a record of two deaths and of much discouragement. Here was I with my theory (for it had been no more) grown into a fairly connected history which so appealed at many points to a rational judgment as to leave little room for doubt of its truth. And yet, as I could not but see, there was very little in it at present which could form even a part of the evidence necessary to convict Vane-Cartwright in a Court of Law. I determined all the same to get advice upon the matter from a lawyer, who was my friend, thinking that it was now time to put my materials in the hands of the authorities charged with the detection of crime, and that, with this to start upon, and with the skill and resources which they possessed, they could hardly fail before long to discover the evidence needed for a prosecution. But my lawyer friend, though he quite agreed with me in my conviction that Vane-Cartwright was guilty of two murders, doubted whether the facts which I had got together would move the authorities to take up the matter actively. Still he undertook, with my approval, to talk about the subject with someone in the Public Prosecutor's office or in the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, I do not know which. Nothing resulted from this, and the failure needs little explanation. Some want of touch between town and country police, some want of eagerness on the part of a skilled official who had lately incurred blame and disappointment through the ludicrous failure of a keen pursuit upon a somewhat similar trail, these might account for it all. But besides, Callaghan had been beforehand with us, and on this occasion had managed to raise a spirit of incredulity about it all. Perhaps too even hardened experts recoiled instinctively from associating with guilt one of the few great men of finance who were at once well known to the outside public and respected in the City itself.

For me then there was nothing but to wait for the further things which I somehow felt certain would turn up. As for Callaghan it happened just about this time that he became keenly enamoured of an invention, made by an engineer friend of his, through which he persuaded himself that he could make his own and his friend's fortune. Henceforward for some time the affair of Peters seems to have passed from his mind, and he was prevented from meeting me at the few times at which I should have been able to see him.