. With professional
caution he assured Mr. Finnis, who briefly cross-examined him, that it
was impossible for him to state how long Sir Horace Fewbanks had been
dead. _Rigor mortis_, in the case of the human body, set in from eight to
ten hours after death, and it was between three and four o'clock in the
afternoon of the day the crime was discovered that he first saw the
corpse. The body was quite stiff and cold then.

"Is it not possible for death to have taken place nineteen or twenty
hours before you saw the body?" asked Mr. Finnis, eagerly.

"Quite possible," replied Dr. Slingsby.

"Is it not also possible, from the state of the body when you examined
it, that death took place within sixteen hours of your examination of the
body?" asked Mr. Walters, as Mr. Finnis sat down with the air of a man
who had elicited an important point.

"Quite possible," replied Dr. Slingsby, with the prim air of a
professional man who valued his reputation too highly to risk it by
committing himself to anything definite.

Dr. Slingsby was allowed to leave the box, and Inspector Chippenfield
took his place. Inspector Chippenfield did not display any professional
reticence about giving his evidence--at least, not on the surface, though
he by no means took the court completely into his confidence as to all
that had passed between him and Hill. On the other hand he told the judge
and jury everything that his professional experience prompted him as
necessary and proper for them to know in order to bring about a
conviction. In the course of his evidence he made several attempts to
introduce damaging facts as to Birchill's past, but Mr. Holymead
protested to the judge. Counsel for the defence protested that he had
allowed his learned friend in opening the case a great deal of latitude
as to the relations which had previously existed between the witness Hill
and the prisoner, because the defence did not intend to attempt to hide
the fact that the prisoner had a criminal record, but he had no intention
of allowing a police witness to introduce irrelevant matter in order to
prejudice the jury against the prisoner. His Honour told the witness to
confine himself to answering the questions put to him, and not to
volunteer information.

After this rebuke Inspector Chippenfield resumed giving evidence. He
related what Birchill had said when arrested, and declared that he was
positive that the footprints found outside the kitchen window were made