"
"He led Hill into a trap about the plan of Riversbrook," said Rolfe.
"When I saw that Hill had been trapped on that point I felt we had lost
the jury."
"Only because the jury were a pack of fools who knew nothing about
evidence. Granted that Hill lied about the plan--that he drew it up
voluntarily in his spare time to assist Birchill--it proves nothing. It
doesn't prove that Hill committed the murder. It only proves that Hill
was going to share in the proceeds of the burglary; that he was a willing
party to it. The one big outstanding fact in all the evidence, the fact
that towered over all the others, is that Birchill broke into the house
on the night Sir Horace Fewbanks was murdered. The defence made no
attempt to get away from that fact because they could not do so. But
Holymead vamped up all sorts of surmises and suppositions for the purpose
of befogging the jury and getting their minds away from the outstanding
feature of the case for the prosecution. We proved that Birchill was in
the house on a criminal errand. What more could they expect us to prove?
They couldn't expect us to have a man looking through the window or
hiding behind the door when the murder was committed.
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