Is it not extremely probable that the
unexpected return of Sir Horace upset Hill, who was giving a final look
round the house before the burglary took place? That, instead of
answering his master with the suave obsequious humility of the
well-trained servant, he revealed the baffled ferocity of a criminal
whose carefully arranged plan seemed to have miscarried; that his master
angrily rebuked him, and Hill, losing control of himself, sprang at Sir
Horace, and the struggle ended with Hill drawing a revolver and shooting
his master?
"The rest of the story from that point can be constructed without
difficulty. The murderer's first thought was to divert suspicion from
himself, and the best way to do that was to divert suspicion elsewhere.
He locked up the house and went to see Birchill. He urged Birchill to
break into Riversbrook, in which the dead body of the murdered man lay.
It is true that he need not have told Birchill that Sir Horace had
returned unexpectedly; but his object in doing so was to make Birchill
search about the house until he inadvertently stumbled across the dead
body. Had Birchill been under the impression that he had broken into an
entirely empty house he would have collected the valuables and might not
have entered the library in which the dead body lay.
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