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Updated: June 3, 2025
Rolfe quickly discovered that the cigars were of a quality that seldom came his way, and he leaned back in his chair and puffed with steady enjoyment. "Then you are determined to hang Birchill?" said Crewe, as with a cigar in his fingers he faced his visitor with a smile. "We'll hang him right enough," said Rolfe. He pulled the cigar out of his mouth and looked at it approvingly.
His private opinion as to the author of the crime was strengthened by Holymead's admission that Birchill had not confessed to him or to his solicitor at the time of his trial that he had shot Sir Horace Fewbanks.
Crewe explained that Hill was afraid to take the letters and then boldly blackmail Sir Horace. The butler conceived the plan of getting Birchill to break into the house.
No murderer would make such a damning admission, least of all to a man he didn't trust to a man who he believed was capable of entrapping him. Next you have Birchill consenting to a message being sent to Scotland Yard conveying the information that Sir Horace had been murdered. Is that the action of a guilty man?
Didn't Birchill tell Hill, just before he set out for Riversbrook on the night of the murder, that if Hill played him false he'd murder him? Hill did play him false, not then, but afterwards, when he made his confession and Birchill was arrested for the murder in consequence. When Birchill was acquitted at the trial his first thought would be to wreak vengeance on Hill.
But suddenly the light in the library went out and Birchill again hid behind a tree, for he thought Sir Horace was retiring for the night. Then the light in the hall went out and immediately after Birchill heard the hall door being closed. Then he heard a step on the gravel path and saw a woman walking quickly down the path to the gate.
The jemmy found in the flat fits the mark made in the window at Riversbrook, and we've got something more another witness who saw him in Tanton Gardens about the time of the murder. If Birchill can get his neck out of the noose, he's cleverer than I take him for." Crewe did not reply directly to Rolfe's summary of the case.
"Quite so. But could Birchill afford to threaten a man who was under the protection of Sir Horace Fewbanks? Would Birchill pit himself against Sir Horace? I think that Sir Horace, knowing the law pretty thoroughly, would soon have found a way to deal with Birchill.
Hill's participation in the crime was to be confined to preparing a plan of Riversbrook as a guide for Birchill. Birchill said nothing about murder at this time, but there is no doubt he contemplated violence when he first spoke to Hill.
"It's an infernally baffling case," muttered Rolfe, refilling his pipe from a tin of tobacco on the mantelpiece, and walking up and down the cheap lodging-house drugget with rapid strides. "If Birchill is not the murderer who is? Is it Hill?"
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