He would wait until the house was in
darkness and the inmates asleep. To do otherwise would increase
enormously the risks of capture. But the fact that the police found the
body of the murdered man fully dressed shows that Sir Horace was murdered
before he went to bed--before Birchill broke into the house. It shows
conclusively that the murder was committed before dusk. Your only
alternatives to that conclusion are that the murdered man went to bed
with his clothes on, or that the murderer broke into the house before Sir
Horace had gone to bed and after killing Sir Horace went coolly round the
house turning out the lights instead of fleeing in terror at his deed
without even waiting to collect any booty. I am sure that as reasonable
men you will reject both these alternatives as absurd. No evidence has
been produced to show that anything has been stolen from the place. It
was evidently the theory of the prosecution that the prisoner, after
shooting Sir Horace, had fled. The evidence of Hill was that he arrived
at Fanning's flat in a state of great excitement. His excitement would be
consistent with his story of having discovered the body of a murdered
man, but not consistent with the conduct of a cold-blooded calculating
murderer who had broken into the house before Sir Horace had undressed
for bed, had shot him, and had then gone round the house turning out the
lights without having any apparent object in doing so.
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