Might not Birchill have a friend in His Majesty's Stationery
Office? Was it impossible that the witness Fanning had a friend in that
Office, or in one of the Government Departments to which the paper was
supplied? Was it impossible in view of her relations with the victim of
this crime for Fanning to have obtained some of the paper at Riversbrook
and to have taken it home to her flat? She had sworn in the witness-box
that she had not had paper of that kind in her possession, but with her
lover's life at stake was she likely to stick at a lie if it would help
to get him off?
Counsel for the defence had endeavoured to make much of the fact that the
dead body of Sir Horace Fewbanks was fully dressed when the police
discovered it. He endeavoured to persuade them that such a fact
established the complete innocence of the prisoner and that because of it
they must bring in a verdict of "not guilty." He asked them to accept it
as evidence not only that Sir Horace Fewbanks was dead when the prisoner
broke into the house, but that he was dead when Hill left Riversbrook at
7.30 p. m. to meet Birchill at Fanning's flat. With an ingenuity which
did credit to his imagination, he put before them as his theory of the
crime that a quarrel took place between Sir Horace Fewbanks and Hill at
Riversbrook, that Hill shot his master and then went to Fanning's flat so
as to see that Birchill carried out the burglary as arranged, and at the
same time found Sir Horace's dead body, and thus directed suspicion to
himself.
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