Dr Dilke was finally silenced, uneasy, but not convinced. I could see that he disliked intensely the idea that he had been the victim of an hallucination, and that he equally intensely regretted the impulse which had made him relate his extraordinary adventure of the night. I could only conclude that he must have done so while still, to an extent, under the influence of his delusion, which had been so strong that never for a moment had he questioned the reality of it. Though he was forced at last to allow us to put the whole thing down as a most remarkable dream, I could see that he did not intend to let the matter rest there, and later in the day (out of good manners we had eventually ceased discussing the story) he asked me if I would accompany him on some investigation in the neighbourhood.
“I think I should know the house,” he said, “even though I saw it in the dark. I was impressed by the fish-pond and the low doorway through which I had to stoop in order to pass without knocking my head.”
I did not tell him that Mrs Mahogany had also mentioned a fish-pond and a low door.
We made the excuse of some old brasses we wished to discover in a nearby church to take my car and go out that afternoon on an investigation of the neighbourhood in the hope of discovering Dr Dilke’s dream house.
We covered a good deal of distance and spend a good deal of time without any success at all, and the short day was already darkening when we came upon a row of almshouses in which, for no reason at all that I could discern, Dr Dilke showed an interest and insisted on stopping before them. He pointed out an inscription cut in the centre gable, which said that these had been built by a certain Richard Carwithen in memory of Philadelphia, his wife.
“The people whose tablet you sat next to in the church,” I remarked.
“Yes,” murmured Dr. Dilke, “when I felt the chill,” and he added, “when I first felt the chill. You see the date is 1830. That would be about right.”
We stopped in the little village, which was a good many miles from Verrall, and after some tedious delays because everything was shut up for the holidays we did discover an old man who was willing to tell us something about the almshouses, though there was nothing much to be said about them. They had been founded by a certain Mr Richard Carwithen with his wife’s fortune. He had been a poor man, a kind of adventurer, our informant thought, who had married a wealthy woman; they had not been at all happy. There had been quarrels and disputes, and a separation (at least, so the gossip went, as his father had told it to him). Finally, the Carwithens had taken a house here in this village of Sunford – a large house it was, and it still stood. The Carwithens weren’t buried in this village though, but at Verrall, she had been a Verrall by birth – perhaps that’s why they came to this neighbourhood – it was the name of a great family in those days you know . . . There was another woman in the old story, as it went, and she got hold of Mr Carwithen and was for making him put his wife aside; and so, perhaps, he would have done, but the poor lady died suddenly, and there was some talk about it, having the other woman in the house at the time, and it being so convenient for both of them . . . But he didn’t marry the other woman, because he died six months after his wife . . . By his will he left all his wife’s money to found these almshouses.
Dr Dilke asked if he could see the house where the Carwithens had lived.
“It belongs to a London gentleman,” the old man said, “who never comes here. It’s going to be pulled down and the land sold in building lots; why, it’s been locked up these ten years or more. I don’t suppose it’s been inhabited since – no, not for a hundred years.”
“Well, I’m looking for a house round about here. I don’t mind spending a little money on repairs if that house is in the market.”
The old man didn’t know whether it was in the market or not, but kept repeating that the property was to be sold and broken up for building lots.
I won’t bother you with all our delays and arguments, but merely tell you that we did finally discover the lodge-keeper of the estate, who gave us the key. It was not such a very large estate, nothing to be compared to Verrall, but had been, in its time, of some pretension. Builders’ boards had already been raised along the high road frontage. There were some fine old trees, black and bare, in a little park. As we turned in through the rusty gates and motored towards the house it was nearly dark, but we had our electric torches and the powerful head-lamps of the car. Dr Dilke made no comment on what we had found, but he reconstructed the story of the Carwithens whose names were on that black stone in Verrall church.
“They were quarrelling over money, he was trying to get her to sign a will in his favour; she had some little sickness perhaps – brought on probably by rage – he had got the other woman in the house, remember. I expect he was no good. There was some sort of poison about – perhaps for a face wash, perhaps as a drug. He put it in the milk and gave it to her.”
Here I interrupted: “How do you know it was in the milk?”
The doctor did not reply to this. I had now swung the car round to the front of the ancient mansion – a poor, pretentious place, sinister in the half-darkness.
“And then, when he had done it,” continued Dr Dilke, mounting the steps of the house, “he repented most horribly; he wanted to fly for a doctor to get some antidote for the poison with the idea in his head that if he could have got help he could have saved her himself. The other woman kept on laughing. He couldn’t forgive that – that she could laugh at a moment like that! He couldn’t get help. He couldn’t find a doctor. His wife died. No one suspected foul play – they seldom did in those days as long as the people were respectable, you must remember the state in which medical knowledge was in 1830. He couldn’t marry the other woman, and he couldn’t touch the money; he left it all to found the almshouses; then he died himself, six months afterwards, leaving instructions that his name should be added on that black stone. I dare say he died by his own hand. Probably he loved her through it all, you know – it was only the money, that cursed money, a fortune just within his grasp, but which he couldn’t take!”
“A pretty romance,” I suggested as we entered the house; “I am sure there is a three-volume novel in it of what Mrs Janey would call ‘the good old-fashioned’ sort.”
To this Dr Dilke answered: “Suppose the miserable man can’t rest? Supposing he is still searching for a doctor?”
We passed from one room to another of the dismal, dusty, dismantled house. Dr Dilke opened a damaged shutter which concealed one of the windows at the back, and pointed out in the waning light a decayed garden with stone steps and a fish-pond – dry now, of course, but certainly once a fish-pond; and a low gateway, to pass through which a man of his height would have to stoop. We could just discern this in the twilight. He made no comment. We went upstairs.
Here Cuming paused dramatically to give us the full flavour of the final part of his story. He reminded us, rather unnecessarily, for somehow he had convinced us, that this was all perfectly true:
I am not romancing; I won’t answer for what Dr Dilke said or did, or his adventure of the night before, or the story of the Carwithens as he constructed it, but this is actually what happened . . . We went upstairs by the wide main stairs. Dr Dilke searched about for and found a door which opened on to the back stairs, and then he said: “This must be the room.” It was entirely devoid of any furniture, and stained with damp, the walls stripped of panelling and cheaply covered with decayed paper, peeling, and in parts fallen.