V
by Wilkie Collins
The story of my first inquiries in Hampshire is a brief one.
I left London early and arrived at Mr. Dawsonâs house by mid-morning. Unfortunately, our meeting didnât yield any useful information regarding my visit.
Mr. Dawsonâs records indicated when he had resumed his visits to Miss Halcombe at Blackwater Park, but I couldnât accurately trace back from that date without assistance from Mrs. Michelson, which I knew she couldnât provide. She couldnât recall, as most people in similar situations canât, how many days had passed between the doctorâs return to his patient and Lady Glydeâs previous departure. She thought she might have mentioned Lady Glydeâs departure to Miss Halcombe the day after it happened, but she couldnât pinpoint the exact date of that conversation, nor could she remember the day before when Lady Glyde had left for London. She also struggled to estimate the time between her mistressâs departure and when the undated letter from Madame Fosco arrived. To complicate matters further, the doctor had been ill at the time and hadnât recorded the day of the week or month when the gardener from Blackwater Park had come to deliver Mrs. Michelsonâs message.
Realizing I wouldnât get any help from Mr. Dawson, I decided to see if I could find out when Sir Percival had arrived in Knowlesbury.
It felt like a stroke of bad luck! When I reached Knowlesbury, the inn was closed, and notices were plastered on the walls. I learned that the business had been struggling ever since the railway opened. A new hotel at the station had taken over, and the old inn, where Sir Percival had stayed, had shut down about two months ago. The owner had left town with all his belongings, and no one could tell me where he had gone. The four people I asked gave me four different stories about his plans when he left Knowlesbury.
With a few hours to spare before the last train to London, I hired a carriage to take me back to Blackwater Park, hoping to question the gardener and the lodgekeeper. If they couldnât help, Iâd have no choice but to return to the city.
I had the driver drop me off a mile from the park and made my way there on foot.
As I turned off the main road into the lane, I spotted a man with a carpet bag walking briskly toward the lodge. He was a small man in worn black clothes and a notably large hat. I guessed he was a lawyerâs clerk and decided to keep my distance. He didnât notice me and continued on his way, disappearing from view. By the time I reached the gates, he was nowhere to be seenâhe must have gone on to the house.
At the lodge, I found two women. One was elderly, and the other, I recognized from Marianâs description, was Margaret Porcher.
I first asked if Sir Percival was at the Park, and when they said no, I inquired when he had left. Neither woman could tell me much, only that he had departed in the summer. Margaret Porcher offered nothing more than vacant smiles and head shakes. The older woman was slightly more helpful, and I managed to get her talking about Sir Percivalâs departure and the alarm it caused her. She remembered being called out of bed by her master and how he had frightened her with his swearingâbut she honestly admitted that the date of the incident was âquite beyond her.â
As I left the lodge, I noticed the gardener working nearby. At first, he regarded me with suspicion, but when I mentioned Mrs. Michelsonâs name and spoke kindly to him, he opened up. Thereâs no need to recount our conversationâit ended like all my previous attempts to find the date. The gardener knew that his master had driven away at night âsometime in July, the last fortnight or the last ten days of the monthââand that was all he could tell me.
While we were talking, I saw the man in black with the large hat emerge from the house and stand a short distance away, watching us.
I had my suspicions about what was happening at Blackwater Park, and they only grew stronger when the gardener refused to tell me who the man was. I decided I needed to confront him directly. The simplest question I could ask as a stranger was whether the house was open to visitors. I approached the man and asked him just that.
His expression and demeanor made it clear he recognized me and was trying to provoke me into a confrontation. His response was rude enough to have done the trick if I hadnât been so determined to keep my cool. Instead, I responded with calm politeness, apologized for what he called my âtrespass,â and left the grounds. Just as I suspected, my earlier encounter at Mr. Kyrleâs office had been reported to Sir Percival Glyde. The man in black had been sent to the Park, anticipating my inquiries about the house or the area. If I had given him even the slightest opportunity to file a complaint against me, the local magistrate would have likely intervened, creating obstacles that would keep me away from Marian and Laura for several days.
I was ready for someone to be watching me on my way from Blackwater Park to the station, just as I had been watched in London the day before. However, I couldnât tell if I was actually being followed this time. The man in black might have had ways to track me that I wasnât aware of, but I didnât see him at all on my way to the station or when I arrived at the London terminus that evening. I walked home, taking the precaution of going around the quietest street in the neighborhood before approaching my door, stopping several times to look back over the open space behind me. I had learned this tactic against potential threats in the wilds of Central America, and now I was using it again, with the same purpose and even more caution, in the heart of civilized London.
Nothing alarming had happened to Marian while I was gone. She eagerly asked about my progress. When I told her, she couldnât hide her surprise at how casually I spoke about the failure of my investigations so far.
The truth was, the lack of success didnât discourage me at all. I had pursued my inquiries out of a sense of duty and had expected nothing from them. In that moment, it was almost a relief to realize that my struggle had become a direct contest of strength between myself and Sir Percival Glyde. My desire for revenge had intertwined with my other motivations, and I admit it was satisfying to know that the best way to help Laura was to tighten my grip on the villain who had married her.
While I acknowledge that I wasnât strong enough to keep my motives entirely free from that instinct for revenge, I can honestly say that I never entertained any selfish thoughts about the future relationship between Laura and me. I never thought, âIf I succeed, Iâll make sure her husband canât take her away from me again.â I couldnât look at her and think about the future with those kinds of thoughts. The sorrow of seeing how much she had changed made my love for her one of tenderness and compassion, feelings that her father or brother might have shared, and which I felt deeply in my heart. My hopes were focused solely on the day of her recovery. Until she was strong and happy againâuntil she could look at me as she once had and speak to me as she once didâmy dreams and wishes had no further reach.
I write these words not out of idle self-reflection. There are parts of this story coming up that will invite judgment on my actions. Itâs only fair that both the best and worst of me are weighed before that time.
The morning after I returned from Hampshire, I took Marian upstairs to my working room and laid out the plan I had developed so far to tackle the one vulnerable point in Sir Percival Glydeâs life.
The path to uncovering the secret lay through the enigma of the woman in white, a mystery that had eluded us all until now. To navigate this, I realized I needed to reach out to Anne Catherickâs mother. The only way to persuade Mrs. Catherick to cooperate was to gather local and family details first from Mrs. Clements. After careful consideration, I concluded that my inquiries had to start with Anneâs devoted friend and protector.
The first challenge was locating Mrs. Clements.
Thanks to Marianâs sharp thinking, we quickly found a straightforward solution. She suggested we write to the farm near Limmeridge, Toddâs Corner, to ask if Mrs. Clements had been in touch with Mrs. Todd in recent months. We couldnât determine how Mrs. Clements had become separated from Anne, but it seemed likely that once that separation occurred, Mrs. Clements would seek news of the missing woman in the area she was most attached toâLimmeridge. I immediately recognized that Marianâs idea held promise, and she sent a letter to Mrs. Todd that very day.
While we awaited a response, I absorbed all the information Marian could provide about Sir Percivalâs family and his early life. Though her knowledge was based on hearsay, she was fairly confident in the accuracy of what she shared.
Sir Percival was an only child. His father, Sir Felix Glyde, had been born with a painful and incurable deformity, leading him to avoid society from a young age. His only joy came from music, and he married a woman who shared his passion, reputed to be a talented musician herself. He inherited the Blackwater estate while still young, but neither he nor his wife made any efforts to engage with the local community. No one dared to break through their isolation, except for one unfortunate exception: the parish rector.
The rector was the worst kind of meddlerâwell-meaning but misguided. He had heard that Sir Felix left college with a reputation as a political radical and a religious skeptic, and he felt it was his duty to invite the lord of the manor to hear the churchâs teachings. Sir Felix reacted with fierce anger to the clergymanâs interference, insulting him so publicly that families in the area sent letters of protest to the estate, and even the tenants of Blackwater expressed their discontent as best they could. Sir Felix, who had no fondness for the countryside or its people, vowed that society at Blackwater would never have another chance to bother him, and he left the estate for good.
After a brief stay in London, he and his wife moved abroad, never to return to England. They spent part of their time in France and part in Germany, maintaining the strict seclusion that Sir Felix felt was necessary due to his deformity. Their son, Percival, was born overseas and educated by private tutors. His mother was the first of his parents to pass away, followed by his father a few years later, either in 1825 or 1826. Sir Percival had visited England a couple of times as a young man, but his friendship with the late Mr. Fairlie began only after his fatherâs death. They quickly became close, although Sir Percival rarely visited Limmeridge House during that time. Mr. Frederick Fairlie might have seen him once or twice with Mr. Philip Fairlie, but he knew little about him then or at any other time. Sir Percivalâs only close connection in the Fairlie family had been Lauraâs father.
These details, while not immediately useful, were carefully noted for potential significance in the future.
When I went to collect Mrs. Toddâs replyâaddressed, as we requested, to a post office far from usâit had already arrived. At that moment, the tide began to turn in our favor. Mrs. Toddâs letter contained the first piece of information we had been searching for.
Mrs. Clements had, as we suspected, written to Toddâs Corner. In her letter, she first apologized for the abrupt way she and Anne had left their friends at the farmhouse, just after I had encountered the woman in white in the churchyard at Limmeridge. She then informed Mrs. Todd about Anneâs disappearance and begged her to look into the matter, hoping that the missing woman might have returned to Limmeridge.
In her request, Mrs. Clements made sure to include her address, where she could always be reached. Mrs. Todd passed that address along to Marian. It was located in London, just a half-hourâs walk from our own place.
Determined to take action, I resolved not to waste any time. The following morning, I set out to meet with Mrs. Clements. This was my first step in the investigation. The story of the desperate endeavor I was now committed to begins here.