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The tavern-keeper declares that Hill drank nearly two bottles of Tarragona port, in threepenny glasses, during the day." "I should have credited Hill with a better taste in port, with his opportunities as Sir Horace Fewbanks's butler," said Inspector Chippenfield drily. "What you have found out, Rolfe, only goes to bear out my own discovery that Hill is deeply implicated in this affair.
Yet, according to Hill, he suddenly abandons this attitude for one of trusting credulity, meekly accepting the assurance of the man he distrusts that Sir Horace Fewbanks's unexpected return from Scotland on the very night the burglary is to be committed is not a trap to catch him, but a coincidence.
Birchill's idea, after we'd talked this over, was that I should go quietly home to bed, and pay a visit to Riversbrook on Friday as usual, discover Sir Horace Fewbanks's body, and then tell the police. But I didn't like to do that for two reasons.
Walters made no attempt to conceal or extenuate the black page in Hill's past, but he asked the jury to believe that Hill had bitterly repented of his former crime, and would have continued to lead an honest life as Sir Horace Fewbanks's butler, if ill fate had not forged a cruel chain of circumstances to link him to his past life and drag him down by bringing him in contact with the accused man Birchill, whom he had met in prison.
Crewe was genuinely surprised, but his control over his features was so complete that he did not betray it. "Do you know who Sir Horace Fewbanks's murderer is?" he asked, in quiet even tones. "Monsieur, I do. I will tell you the whole story in secret how do you say? in confidence, if you promise me you will help Madame Holymead as I have asked you."
Counsel for the defence called two more witnesses on this point one to prove that supplies of the paper on which the plan was drawn were issued to legal departments of the Government, and an elderly man named Cobb, Sir Horace Fewbanks's former tipstaff, who stated that he took some of the paper in question to Riversbrook on Sir Horace's instructions.
In the first place, he learnt with considerable astonishment that it was Miss Fewbanks's intention to stay at the house until after the funeral, and for that purpose she had brought the housekeeper to keep her company in the lonely old place.
What had Hill to fear, from the threats of a man like Birchill, when he was living under Sir Horace Fewbanks's protection? All that Hill had to do when Birchill tried to induce him, by threats of exposure of his past, to help in a burglary at his master's house, was to threaten to tell everything to Sir Horace.
Assuming that it was the prisoner who travelled to Hampstead by the Euston Road tram a route he would probably prefer because it took him to Hampstead by the most unfrequented way he would have a distance of nearly a mile to walk across Hampstead Heath to Tanton Gardens, where Sir Horace Fewbanks's house was situated.
He lit his pipe, closed the window, opened his pocket-book and sat down to peruse the notes he had taken during his investigation of Sir Horace Fewbanks's murder. He read and re-read them, earnestly searching for a fresh clue in the pencilled pages.
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