I do
not ask you to believe the story he told at the inquest in preference to
the story he told here in the witness-box yesterday. I ask you to regard
both stories as the evidence of a man who is too deeply implicated in
this crime to be able to speak the truth.
"I will prove to you, gentlemen of the jury, that the man is a criminal
by instinct and a liar by necessity--the necessity of saving his own
skin. He robbed his former master, Lord Melhurst, and he planned to rob
his late master, Sir Horace Fewbanks. But knowing that his former crime
would be brought against him when the police came to investigate a
robbery at Riversbrook he was too cunning to rob Riversbrook himself. He
looked about him for an accomplice and he selected Birchill. You heard
him say in the witness-box that he drew Birchill a plan of
Riversbrook--the plan I now hold in my hand. I will ask you to inspect
the plan closely. Hill told us that Birchill terrorised him into drawing
this plan by threats of exposure. Exposure of what? His master, Sir
Horace Fewbanks, knew he had been in gaol, so what had he to fear from
exposure? His proper course, if he were an honest man, would have been to
tell his master that Birchill was planning to rob the house and had
endeavoured to draw him into the crime.
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