Chapter5

Chapter 5

There was another unknown that happened before the Chief had been called to Mrs. Lewis’ room, and was therefore outside of his authority
He learned from one of the people aboard the George W. Elder, that, on the night of its departure from Callao, a smaller vessel had been detached. This was one of the first days of July of 1891. The smaller vessel had taken to pick up a passenger unknown to the ship’s crew who had waited until the last hour to board because he had arrived by late train from Lima.

Don José Drew, one of Captain Lewis’ friends and compatriots, corroborates the fact and states that after eating on of the George W. Elder, they all came ashore to wait for a passenger named Hewner. Ostensibly, the departure of Isabel and Dockendorff from the Piatti Hall to go to the pier coincided with the arrival of the last train and the plan to meet with Hewner.

This passenger, with the Captain, Isabel and the rest of the crew then headed for the coasts of California, where he separated from his traveling companions and left to settle in one of the most populous cities of the United States.

His departure from Lima, his trip in a merchant steamboat, the time he boarded the train and the time when the George W. Elder sailed taking him to distant beaches, the meeting with Captain Lewis, the wait for Mrs. Lewis and Dockendorff who accompanied him, all sudden and mysterious, also corresponds to the mystery with which Hewner had lived in this capital in recent years, and to the trials in which he was involved before the Courts of Justice of Peru. There were other activities as well, that have been ignored despite the significance they have. Nobody has known or could explain the role of Hewner, who had been a guest of the Hotel Maury, almost always alone. Was he a monomaniac or a suspicious character?

Peter Hewner, an American, is an old man of perhaps eighty years, tall with long bushy beard, completely gray, who looked unexceptional to others, but seemed to have a darker side. He spoke little, and, when he did, it was difficult to comprehend his intentions. In spite of his extraordinary stature, he was always upright, with a certain measure of one who has secrets. Because of his way of dressing that almost never changed, he looked like a ruined man except to the people who shared his secrets and those who knew the important lawsuits that he faced before the Courts of Justice.
If one goes to the recent judicial archives, one will find the appearances of that old man were deceptive. There are, in his life, a series of facts that deserve to be presented to find the relation between his trip and the events surrounding the death of Mrs. Lewis.

He was not allowed by court order to depart. When he set out from Peru probably never to return, he preferred a merchant ship over a faster steamboat. Supposedly he was doing so for lack of resources, and Captain Lewis took him into his charge by grace or charity, as with some helpless foreigner who is going to his homeland to end his painful life next to his own people.

But this is not the case with Peter Hewner. Four months after his departure, he was in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the local newspapers announced the establishment of the capitalist Peter Hewner in one of the most prestigious locations with one million dollars.

Returning to what we find about him in the judicial annals of Peru: one of the lawsuits that followed him was criminal and the other was civil. The first one is for a great amount of jewels amounting to a considerable sum of money. In the other trial that followed, he was demanded to deliver fifty thousand Soles of silver (Ed. Note: Peruvian dollarworth $1.06 American dollars in 1893), a value stipulated in a contract he entered into with Captain Lambert of the United States merchant navy.

In spite of the rulings issued in favor of Hewner, it is unquestionable that he was obliged to give this sum to Captain Lambert for the nature and importance of the services he had rendered. Hewner used the money to make abundant profits including the million dollars that is his fortune as reported in the Philadelphia newspapers.

Indeed, Captain Lambert, an intelligent man of vast spirit, knew well the businesses of Don Enrique Meiggs, more so than those, such as private secretaries who helped him in his enterprises knew them. Upon his death, he remained the depositary of certain secrets whose revelation could be valued at a few million.

Hewner, engineer and architect when coming to Peru, meddled in important businesses. He offered to one of Meiggs’ heirs to get him hidden goods that he could not obtain without the help of Captain Lambert. This is the origin of the contract, whose receipts are documented. The courts did not trust the validity of a contract for provision of services which had the value of 50,000 soles such as Lambert had lent to Hewner.

The moral issue was in conflict with the legal one. They believed a pact of such a considerable sum unreasonable, even though Yankee businesses of all kinds that they have seen, are big and audacious. It is precisely this spirit of great speculation that characterizes the difference between the Latin South American race and the Anglo-Saxon race of North America.

There is no lawsuit in Peru in which an equal sum has ever been claimed for the price of personal services. One can hardly conceive of a payment of such fees by two distinguished lawyers who rendered their professional services to two strong trading houses. The judicial annals do not contain cases followed by the demand of such high fees, only by way of civil reparation

People who have known him circumstantially claim that Hewner is not his real name, but Johnson, which he changed to Hewner to avoid we do not know what kind of responsibilities, and spend his life incognito for as long as necessary, and forget about the causes that lead him to cover up his real name.

Another kind of business undoubtedly fostered Hewner’s current fortune without us actually knowing what it consisted of. But there is no doubt that the American colony in Lima, which practices honest trade, did not hold him in high esteem. This explains his isolation to such an extent that the American Embassy itself did not take an interest in several claims that he tried to make to the Government using diplomatic mediation in order to obtain what he could not achieve otherwise.

In spite of being so little known, he had come to Peru about thirty years ago and had signed several contracts with the Government of the Republic. One of them for the construction of the Penitentiary and the other for the repair of the steamboat Loa of the navy to turn it into a monitor.

Such is the other character who appears in the shadows of mystery, and to whom, according to Drew’s reference, Isabel and Dockendorff went to wait for on the last train to Lima to stealthily embark on the George W. Elder the night it was put to sea. The journey may be a coincidence But bear in mind that Hewner is a man who has become accustomed to unscrupulous business. The scene of the dock can have as much to do with a farewell love interview between Isabel and Dockendorff, as with complicity in the escape of Hewner, who left Perú hastily hiding his name and his person from the inspections passengers are subjected in port-to-port steamboats.

The most unsuspecting spirit is inclined to be suspicious, all the more so considering that Hewner once had business relations with the former Dockendorff House. The history of his life is wrapped in such strange events that his appearance provokes interest.

Justice can take advantage of this in its efforts to discover the points of connection that his trip has with the businesses that Mrs. Lewis was working on, or even the Captain, her husband. We have already seen that she brought a quantity of opium when she returned alone.

In addition, she and Dockendorff protected Hewner’s clandestine evasion of the capital to direct him aboard the George W. Elder in a trip to the United States.

As for Captain Lewis, once he separated from Hewner and had reliable news of his wife’s death, he remarried. He would not have needed the death certificate to verify it because of the fact of his wife having deserted him. According to the law governing marriage in the Republic of North America, this is grounds for divorce. Although the law is not uniform in all States, in most of them the civil contract prevails, leaving the contracting parties complete freedom to perform a marriage subsequently.

Mrs. Lewis was not a Catholic and neither does the Captain seem to be either, so the link between the two lacked the perpetual sacramental bond imposed by the Catholic Church. Divorce then becomes a kind of annulment of the civil contract. It converts a civil marriage into a temporary union leaving the spouses to contract new unions without producing any scandal.

In several States, a separation of one year and the appearance of the one who wishes the divorce before the ordinary Judge is enough. The Judge announces the action in the newspapers and all concerned can be informed without the appearance of the other party. The notary then makes the appropriate notation and immediately a certificate of divorce is granted which can be presented to contract a new marriage.

This explains how Isabel could have married three times to different men, and that she could have left her third husband, giving reason for a legal separation and becoming an independent woman able to marry for the fourth time.

Mrs. Lewis’ ignorance of Dockendorff’s true married status helps to form this presumption. When she speaks of him in the letters addressed to her confidant and friend Kate, she makes no mention of his being married.

Was it the disappointment acquired the reality of that fact that made her decide to take her own life?

Chapter 6