Chapter 21 — Henry dead

Victor recovers in a jail cell on the Irish coast, slowly and incompletely. Henry's body has been brought in for him to identify; the marks at the throat are unmistakable, identical to the marks on William's neck. Victor recognizes them at once. The local magistrate, decent but uncertain, places him in prison until the truth can be sorted out. Victor falls into another extended brain fever; for many weeks he is delirious, raving, certain he is the murderer (because, in the deeper sense, he believes he is).

Months pass. Alphonse, alerted by the consul, travels to Ireland. Father and son have not seen each other in years. Alphonse's gentleness and steadiness slowly bring Victor partly back to himself. The trial is eventually held. Victor's alibi is corroborated by the boatmen of the Orkney island; he was, on the night of the murder, demonstrably on his rock with no boat. He is acquitted. The case against him falls apart. He is released into his father's care.

Victor cannot tell his father what he knows. He cannot tell him what killed Henry. He cannot tell him about the threat — "I shall be with you on your wedding-night" — that has been growing in the back of his mind since the Orkneys. They sail home together. Victor turns over the threat in his mind as the ship crosses the Channel and rolls north toward Geneva. He still believes the threat is against him. He is wrong about that. He spends the journey resigning himself to his own death after the wedding. He does not warn Elizabeth. The next chapter is what that omission costs.