IX

by Wilkie Collins

I stepped out of the house, feeling that Mrs. Catherick had inadvertently pushed me forward, even if she didn’t mean to. Just as I reached the corner that led out of the square, I was startled by the sound of a door closing behind me.

I turned around and spotted a short man in black standing on the doorstep of a house that, as far as I could tell, was right next to Mrs. Catherick’s—on the side closest to me. Without hesitation, he headed straight toward the corner where I had paused. I recognized him as the lawyer’s clerk who had been at Blackwater Park before me and had tried to pick a fight when I asked to see the house.

I decided to wait and see if he intended to approach me this time. To my surprise, he hurried past without saying a word or even glancing my way. This was such a complete reversal of what I expected that it piqued my curiosity—or rather, my suspicion. I resolved to follow him discreetly and find out what he was up to. Without worrying about whether he noticed me, I trailed after him. He never looked back and led me straight to the railway station.

As we arrived, the train was just about to leave, and a few late passengers were gathered around the small window where tickets were issued. I joined them and clearly heard the clerk request a ticket to Blackwater station. I confirmed that he had indeed left on the train before I made my own departure.

There was only one conclusion I could draw from what I had just witnessed. I had clearly seen the man leaving a house right next to Mrs. Catherick’s. He was likely staying there on Sir Percival’s orders, anticipating that my inquiries would eventually lead me to contact Mrs. Catherick. He must have seen me enter and exit, and then rushed off on the first train to report back to Blackwater Park. Sir Percival, knowing my movements, would naturally be waiting there, ready for me if I returned to Hampshire. It seemed inevitable that our paths would cross again soon.

Whatever the outcome of these events might be, I resolved to stay focused on my own path, determined to reach my goal without being sidetracked by Sir Percival or anyone else. The heavy responsibility I had felt in London—the need to carefully manage my every action to avoid accidentally revealing Laura’s hiding place—was lifted now that I was in Hampshire. I could come and go freely in Welmingham, and if I happened to overlook any necessary precautions, the immediate consequences would only affect me.

As I left the station, the winter evening was settling in. There was little chance of making any useful inquiries after dark in an unfamiliar area. So, I headed to the nearest hotel, ordered dinner, and arranged for a room for the night. Once that was taken care of, I wrote to Marian to let her know I was safe and well, and that I had good prospects for success. I had instructed her, before leaving home, to address her first letter to me at “The Post-Office, Welmingham,” and I now asked her to send her second letter to the same address.

I could easily receive it by writing to the postmaster if I happened to be away when it arrived.

As the evening wore on, the coffee room of the hotel became a perfect solitude. I was left to reflect on my accomplishments that afternoon as uninterruptedly as if the place were my own. Before I went to bed, I carefully reviewed my unusual conversation with Mrs. Catherick from start to finish, confirming the conclusions I had hastily drawn earlier in the day.

The vestry of Old Welmingham church was where my thoughts began to retrace all that I had heard and seen from Mrs. Catherick.

When Mrs. Clements first mentioned the vestry in my presence, I couldn’t help but think it was the oddest place for Sir Percival to arrange a secret meeting with the clerk’s wife. That impression stuck with me, and on a whim, I brought up “the vestry of the church” in front of Mrs. Catherick. It was just a random thought that popped into my head as I spoke. I expected her to respond with confusion or anger, but the sheer terror that washed over her when I said those words completely took me by surprise.

I had long suspected that Sir Percival’s secret was tied to a serious crime that Mrs. Catherick was aware of, but I hadn’t delved deeper than that. Now, her overwhelming fear seemed to link the crime—either directly or indirectly—to the vestry, and it convinced me that she was more than just a bystander; she was undoubtedly an accomplice.

What kind of crime could it be? Surely, there was something shameful about it, as well as something dangerous, or she wouldn’t have repeated my words about Sir Percival’s status with such clear disdain. It was a contemptible crime, a dangerous one, and she had been involved, all tied to the vestry of the church.

Next, I had to consider another point that took me further down this path.

Mrs. Catherick’s open contempt for Sir Percival clearly extended to his mother as well. She had spoken with bitter sarcasm about the esteemed family he came from—“especially on his mother’s side.” What did that imply?

There seemed to be two possible explanations. Either his mother came from a lowly background, or there was some hidden flaw in her reputation that both Mrs. Catherick and Sir Percival were privy to. I could only verify the first possibility by checking the marriage register to find out her maiden name and parentage before digging deeper.

If the second scenario was true, what could that flaw in her reputation be? Remembering what Marian had told me about Sir Percival’s parents and their suspiciously reclusive lifestyle, I began to wonder if it was possible that his mother had never been married at all. Again, the register could provide written proof of the marriage, which would dispel any doubts I had. But where would I find that register?

At this point, I revisited my earlier conclusions, and the same thought process that had led me to the location of the hidden crime now placed the register in the vestry of Old Welmingham church.

These were the outcomes of my conversation with Mrs. Catherick—various thoughts all leading to one conclusion that shaped my plans for the next day.

The morning was overcast and gloomy, but thankfully, it wasn’t raining. I left my bag at the hotel, intending to pick it up later, and after asking for directions, I set off on foot toward Old Welmingham church.

It was a walk of just over two miles, with the ground gradually rising all the way.

At the highest point stood the church—an old, weathered structure with sturdy buttresses and a clunky square tower in front. The vestry at the back jutted out from the church and seemed to be just as ancient. Surrounding the building were the remnants of the village that Mrs. Clements had described as her husband’s former home, now long abandoned by its main inhabitants for the new town. Some of the empty houses had been stripped down to their outer walls, some had been left to decay, and a few were still occupied by people clearly of the lowest means. It was a bleak scene, yet, in its worst state, it wasn’t as dismal as the modern town I had just left. Here, the brown, breezy expanse of fields offered a visual respite—here, the trees, though bare, broke the monotony of the landscape and hinted at the promise of summer and shade.

As I moved away from the back of the church and passed some of the dilapidated cottages in search of someone who could direct me to the clerk, I noticed two men sauntering out from behind a wall. The taller of the two—a stocky, muscular man dressed like a gamekeeper—was a stranger to me. The other was one of the men who had followed me in London the day I left Mr. Kyrle’s office. I had taken special note of him then, and I was certain I recognized him now.

Neither he nor his companion made any attempt to speak to me, keeping a respectful distance. But it was clear why they were near the church. Just as I had suspected, Sir Percival was already prepared for my arrival. My visit to Mrs. Catherick had been reported to him the night before, and those two men were stationed by the church, waiting for me to show up at Old Welmingham. If I needed any further proof that my investigation was finally on the right track, their plan to watch me provided it.

I walked away from the church until I reached one of the nearby houses, where a laborer was tending to a small kitchen garden. He pointed me toward the clerk’s cottage, which stood alone on the outskirts of the abandoned village. The clerk was inside, just putting on his greatcoat. He was a cheerful, talkative old man who, as I quickly learned, had a very low opinion of the place he lived in. He also had a sense of superiority over his neighbors, simply because he had once been to London.

“It’s good you came early, sir,” he said as I explained the reason for my visit. “I would have been gone in ten minutes. Parish business, you see, and a long walk ahead for a man my age. But bless you, I’m still strong on my legs! As long as a man can stand, there’s plenty of work left in him. Don’t you think so, sir?”

He grabbed his keys from a hook behind the fireplace and locked the cottage door behind us.

“Nobody at home to keep house for me,” he said, his tone cheerful as if he were free from any family burdens. “My wife’s in the churchyard, and my children are all married. A miserable place this is, isn’t it, sir? But the parish is large—most men couldn’t handle the work like I do. It’s all about learning, and I’ve had my share, and then some. I can speak the Queen’s English (God bless the Queen!), which is more than most folks around here can manage. You’re from London, I suppose? I was in London about twenty-five years ago. What’s the news there now, if you don’t mind me asking?”

As he chatted away, he led me back to the vestry. I glanced around, hoping to see the two men again, but they were nowhere in sight. After discovering my visit to the clerk, they had likely hidden themselves to watch my next move without being seen.

The vestry door was made of sturdy old oak, reinforced with heavy nails. The clerk inserted his large key into the lock with the air of someone who knew he was facing a challenge and wasn’t entirely sure he could overcome it.

“I have to bring you this way, sir,” he said, “because the door from the vestry to the church is bolted on this side. Otherwise, we could have gone in through the church. This lock is a troublesome one, if ever there was one. It’s big enough for a prison door—it’s been jammed more times than I can count, and it really should be replaced. I’ve told the churchwarden about it at least fifty times—he always says, ‘I’ll look into it,’ but he never does. Ah, this place is a bit of a forgotten corner, isn’t it? Not like London, is it, sir? Bless you, we’re all asleep here! We don’t keep up with the times.”

After some twisting and turning of the key, the heavy lock finally gave way, and he opened the door.

The vestry was larger than I expected from the outside. It was a dim, musty, melancholy room with a low, raftered ceiling. Heavy wooden presses lined two sides of the room, worn and gaping with age. In one corner of the presses hung several surplices, all bunched together in a disheveled pile. Below them, on the floor, were three packing cases, their lids half on and half off, with straw spilling out in every direction. Behind them, in a corner, lay a mess of dusty papers—some large and rolled up like architectural plans, others loosely gathered on files like bills or letters. The room had once been lit by a small side window, but that had been bricked up, replaced by a lantern skylight. The atmosphere was heavy and musty, made even more oppressive by the closed door leading into the church. This door, too, was solid oak, bolted at the top and bottom on the vestry side.

“We could definitely be tidier, couldn’t we, sir?” said the cheerful clerk. “But when you’re stuck in a forgotten corner like this, what can you do? Just take a look at these packing cases. They’ve been here for over a year, ready to go to London—just sitting here, and they’ll stay as long as the nails hold them together. Honestly, sir, this isn’t London. We’re all just going through the motions here. We don’t keep up with the times!”

“What’s in the packing cases?” I asked.

“Old wood carvings from the pulpit, panels from the chancel, and images from the organ loft,” the clerk replied. “Portraits of the twelve apostles carved in wood, and not a single nose intact. They’re all broken, worm-eaten, and crumbling at the edges. As fragile as porcelain, sir, and as old as the church itself, if not older.”

“And why were they meant to go to London? To be repaired?”

“Exactly, sir. They were supposed to be repaired, and where they couldn’t be fixed, they were to be copied in solid wood. But, bless you, the funds ran out, and there they sit, waiting for new donations, with no one willing to contribute. It all happened a year ago, sir. Six gentlemen had dinner about it at the hotel in the new town. They made speeches, passed resolutions, signed their names, and printed thousands of prospectuses. Beautiful prospectuses, sir, decorated with Gothic designs in red ink, declaring it a disgrace not to restore the church and repair the famous carvings, and so on. There are the prospectuses that never got distributed, along with the architect’s plans and estimates, and all the correspondence that ended in arguments, all piled up in that corner behind the packing cases. The money trickled in at first—but what can you expect from London? There was just enough to pack the broken carvings, get the estimates, and pay the printer’s bill, and after that, not a penny left. So there they are, just as I said. We have no other place for them—nobody in the new town wants to help us out—we’re in a forgotten corner—and this vestry is a mess—and who can do anything about it? That’s what I want to know.”

My eagerness to check the register didn’t leave me much room to encourage the old man’s chatter. I agreed that the untidiness of the vestry was unavoidable and suggested we get on with our business without further delay.

“Right, the marriage register, of course,” said the clerk, pulling a small bunch of keys from his pocket. “How far back do you want to look, sir?”

Marian had told me Sir Percival’s age when we discussed his engagement to Laura. She had mentioned he was forty-five at the time. Calculating back from that and considering the year that had passed since I got that information, I figured he must have been born in 1804, so I could start my search in the register from that date.

“I want to start with the year 1804,” I said.

“Which way after that, sir?” the clerk asked. “Forward to the present or backward?”

“Backwards from 1804.”

He opened the door of one of the cabinets—the one from which the surplices were hanging—and pulled out a large volume bound in worn brown leather. I was struck by how insecure the register’s storage was. The cabinet door was warped and cracked with age, and the lock was small and flimsy. I could have easily forced it open with the walking stick I had in my hand.

“Is that really a secure place for the register?” I asked. “Surely a book this important should be protected by a better lock and kept in an iron safe?”

"Well, that’s interesting!" the clerk said, snapping the book shut after just opening it, and giving the cover a cheerful pat. "Those were the exact words my old boss used to say back when I was a kid. ‘Why isn’t the register’—meaning this one right here—‘kept in an iron safe?’ If I’ve heard him say that once, I’ve heard him say it a hundred times. He was the solicitor back then, the one who held the position of vestry clerk for this church. A hearty old gentleman, and the most meticulous man you could imagine. He kept a copy of this book in his office in Knowlesbury and made sure it was updated regularly to match the new entries here. You wouldn’t believe it, but he had specific days, once or twice every quarter, when he would ride over to this church on his old white pony just to check the copy against the register himself. ‘How do I know?’ he would say. ‘How do I know that the register in this vestry isn’t going to be stolen or destroyed? Why isn’t it kept in an iron safe? Why can’t I make others as careful as I am? One of these days, something will happen, and when the register’s lost, the parish will realize how valuable my copy is.’ Then he’d take a pinch of snuff and look around like he owned the place. Ah, you don’t find the likes of him in business anymore. You could go to London and not find anyone like him, even there. Which year did you say, sir? Eighteen hundred and what?"

"Eighteen hundred and four," I replied, mentally deciding to give the old man no more chances to talk until I finished looking through the register.

The clerk adjusted his glasses and began flipping through the pages of the register, carefully moistening his fingers and thumbs at every third page. "There it is, sir," he said, giving the open book another cheerful smack. "There’s the year you need."

Not knowing the month Sir Percival was born, I started my search at the beginning of the year. The register was old-fashioned, with entries written in manuscript on blank pages, separated by ink lines drawn across the page at the end of each entry.

I reached the start of eighteen hundred and four without finding the marriage, then moved back through December eighteen hundred and three—through November and October—through—

No! Not September either. Under that month’s heading, I found the marriage.

I examined the entry closely. It was at the bottom of a page and had been squeezed into a smaller space than the marriages above it. The marriage right before it caught my attention because the groom shared my first name. The entry that followed, at the top of the next page, stood out for a different reason—it recorded the marriages of two brothers at the same time. The record for Sir Felix Glyde’s marriage was unremarkable except for how cramped it was at the bottom of the page. His wife was described as “Cecilia Jane Elster, of Park-View Cottages, Knowlesbury, the only daughter of the late Patrick Elster, Esq., formerly of Bath.”

I jotted down these details in my pocketbook, feeling both uncertain and disheartened about what to do next. The secret I had thought was within my grasp now felt more elusive than ever.

What hints of mystery had emerged from my visit to the vestry? I saw none. What progress had I made toward uncovering the rumored stain on Sir Percival’s mother’s reputation? The one fact I had discovered only served to clear her name. New doubts, fresh challenges, and endless delays loomed before me. What was I supposed to do next? The only immediate option I had left was to look into “Miss Elster of Knowlesbury,” hoping that by uncovering the reason behind Mrs. Catherick’s disdain for Sir Percival’s mother, I might advance my investigation.

"Did you find what you were looking for, sir?" the clerk asked as I closed the register.

"Yes," I replied, "but I still have some questions. I assume the clergyman who officiated here in eighteen hundred and three is no longer alive?"

“No, no, sir, he passed away three or four years before I arrived here, and that was back in twenty-seven. I got this position,” my chatty old friend insisted, “because the clerk before me left. They say he was kicked out by his wife—and she’s still living down in the new town. I don’t know the details myself—all I know is that I got the job. Mr. Wansborough got it for me—the son of my old master I mentioned earlier. He’s a good, pleasant gentleman—rides with the hounds, keeps his pointers, and all that. He’s the vestry clerk here now, just like his father was.”

“Didn’t you say your former master lived at Knowlesbury?” I asked, recalling the lengthy tale about the precise gentleman of the old school that my talkative friend had shared before he opened the register book.

“Yes, indeed, sir,” the clerk replied. “Old Mr. Wansborough lived at Knowlesbury, and young Mr. Wansborough lives there too.”

“You mentioned he was the vestry clerk, like his father before him. I’m not entirely sure what a vestry clerk is.”

“Really? And you come from London too! Every parish church has a vestry clerk and a parish clerk. The parish clerk is a man like me—though I’ve got a bit more education than most of them, but I don’t like to brag. The vestry clerk is a sort of position that lawyers take on, and if there’s any business to be done for the vestry, they handle it. It’s the same in London. Every parish church there has its vestry clerk, and you can bet he’s usually a lawyer.”

“So, young Mr. Wansborough is a lawyer, I take it?”

“Of course he is, sir! A lawyer on High Street, Knowlesbury—the same old offices his father had. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve swept those offices and seen the old gentleman trotting in on his white pony, looking around and nodding to everyone! He was quite the character—he would’ve been a hit in London!”

“How far is it to Knowlesbury from here?”

“A long way, sir,” the clerk said, with that typical country perspective on distances and the challenges of traveling from one place to another. “Close to five miles, I can tell you!”

It was still early in the day. I had plenty of time for a walk to Knowlesbury and back to Welmingham. There was likely no one in town better suited to help me understand the character and background of Sir Percival’s mother before her marriage than the local solicitor. Deciding to head to Knowlesbury on foot, I stepped out of the vestry.

“Thank you kindly, sir,” the clerk said as I slipped a small gift into his hand. “Are you really going to walk all the way to Knowlesbury and back? Well! You’re strong on your feet, and what a blessing that is, isn’t it? There’s the road—you can’t miss it. I wish I were going your way—it’s nice to meet gentlemen from London in a place like this. One hears the news. Have a good morning, sir, and thank you again!”

We parted ways. As I left the church behind, I glanced back and saw the two men again on the road below, now joined by a third person—the short man in black I had followed to the railway the night before.

The three of them stood chatting for a moment before separating. The man in black headed off alone toward Welmingham, while the other two stayed together, clearly waiting to follow me as soon as I moved on.

I continued my walk without letting them see that I was paying any special attention to them. They didn’t irritate me at that moment—in fact, they lifted my spirits a bit. In the shock of discovering the evidence of the marriage, I had forgotten the conclusion I had drawn when I first spotted the men near the vestry. Their reappearance reminded me that Sir Percival had anticipated my visit to Old Welmingham church as the next step after my meeting with Mrs. Catherick—otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent his spies to wait for me. Despite how smooth and proper things seemed in the vestry, something felt off beneath the surface—there was likely something in the register book that I hadn’t uncovered yet.