I put Joe on the
job, and after watching for several nights Joe got him. Hill had made a
hiding place in the loft above the garage. It appears that he subsisted
on the stores that had been left in the house; he was able to make his
way into the main building through one of the kitchen windows. He was on
one of these foraging expeditions when Joe discovered him--emaciated,
dirty, and half demented through terror of the gallows."
"So that is how you got him!" said Rolfe. "I never thought of looking for
him at Riversbrook. Sometimes I am inclined to agree with you that he had
no nerve for murder. But an unpremeditated murder doesn't want much
nerve. He might have done it in a moment of passion." Rolfe was
endeavouring to take advantage of Crewe's communicative mood and to
arrive by a process of elimination at the person against whom Crewe had
accumulated his evidence.
"It was not Hill," said Crewe. "The murder was committed in a moment of
passion, and yet it was far from being unpremeditated."
"You are trying to mystify me," said Rolfe despairingly.
"No; it is the case itself which has mystified you," replied Crewe.
"It has," was Rolfe's candid confession.
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