"
Rolfe was silent for a moment.
"What would you have done with the papers if you had found them?" he
asked suddenly.
"I would have handed them over to the police, sir," said the butler, who
obviously had been prepared for a question of the kind.
"And what explanation would you have given for having found them--for
having come over here in defiance of your orders from Inspector
Chippenfield?"
"The true explanation, sir," said the butler, with a mild note of protest
in his voice. "I would have told Inspector Chippenfield what I have
already told you. And it is the simple truth."
Rolfe was plainly taken back at this rebuke, but he did not reply to it.
"In your statement of what took place when Birchill returned to the flat
after committing the murder, he said something about having seen a woman
leave the house by the front door as he was hiding in the garden--a
fashionably dressed woman I think he said."
"Yes, sir, that was it."
"Do you believe that part of his story was true?"
"Well, sir, with a man like Birchill it is impossible to say when he is
telling the truth, and when he isn't."
"There was no lady with Sir Horace when you left him that night when he
returned from Scotland?"
"No, sir.
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