Tracks in the Snow by Godfrey R. Benson — Read

Crondall is a small market town on a chalk stream in a Southern county, and about two miles from it down the valley lies the shooting- and fishing-box which Vane-Cartwright, as I found, had lately taken, with a very considerable shooting in the well-wooded hills, which lay behind it reaching up to the chalk downs, and with a mile or so of fishing in the trout-stream which passed through the garden. People shoot because it is the thing to do, but as a rule they do not hunt or fish unless they like it. So it was for the shooting that Vane-Cartwright had taken this place, a very charming place for a bachelor, and within easy reach of town. Trethewy, however, had been engaged as a sort of water-bailiff and to look after the fishing, which he was more or less competent to do. I found him installed in a queer old thatched cottage which stood on an island, formed by two branches of the stream, at the lower end of the garden. The cottage could be approached by a narrow footbridge from a private footpath which led from Crondall. On the other side of the stream a public footpath led towards the small village and the once famous fishing inn, at which I took up my quarters for a few nights. The bridge just mentioned was formed by two narrow brick arches, and above them were hatches which were now raised; and just below the bridge the stream was spanned by one of the old-fashioned fish-houses which are occasionally found on South-country streams, under the floor of which were large eel traps in which eels migrating down stream were caught. Under the fish-house, which was entered from Trethewy's cottage, the stream rushed in two pent-up channels which joined again in a broad, reed-fringed pool, with a deep dark hole immediately below the fish-house. My eye fastened on this pool at once as the best morning bath which had been offered me for some years.

Why was Trethewy there? Was Trethewy after all an accomplice in the crime? My wife and I were agreed in not inclining to that explanation, though in some ways it looked the most plausible. It followed that one or more of the family was, to the knowledge of Vane-Cartwright, in possession of information which, if it came out, would establish Vane-Cartwright's guilt. It did not follow that any of them had guilty knowledge; probably they were not aware of the significance of what they knew. Which of them held this dark secret, and how was I to elicit it?