ome information as to
where various articles of value would be found. On the 18th of August
Hill went to Riversbrook to see that everything was in order for the
burglary that night. While he was there his master returned unexpectedly.
Hill then went to the flat in Westminster and told Birchill that Sir
Horace had returned. His own story is that he tried to get Birchill to
abandon the idea of the burglary, but that Birchill, who had been
drinking, swore that he would carry out the plan, and that if he came
across Sir Horace he would shoot him. What grudge had Birchill against
Sir Horace Fewbanks? The fact that Sir Horace had discarded the woman
Fanning because of her association with Birchill. Gentlemen, does a man
commit a murder for a thing of that kind?

"Let us test the credibility of the man who has tried to swear away the
life of the prisoner. You saw him in the witness-box, and I have no doubt
formed your own conclusions as to the type of man he is. Did he strike
you as a man who would stand by the truth above all things, or a man who
would lie persistently in order to save his own skin? That the man cannot
be believed even when on his oath has been publicly demonstrated in the
courts of the land. The story he told the court yesterday in the
witness-box of his movements on the day of the murder is quite different
to the story he told on his oath at the inquest on the body of Sir Horace
Fewbanks. Let me read to you the evidence he gave at the inquest."

Mr. Finnis handed to his leader a copy of Hill's evidence at the inquest,
and Mr. Holymead read it out to the jury. He then read out a shorthand
writer's account of Hill's evidence on the previous day.

"Which of these accounts are we to believe?" he said, turning to the
jury. "The latter one, the prosecution says. But why, I ask? Because it
tallies with the statement extorted from Hill by the police under the
threat of charging him with the murder. Does that make it more credible?
Is a man like Hill, who is placed in that position, likely to tell the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? It is an insult to the
jury as men of intelligence to ask you to believe Hill's evidence. I do
not ask you to believe the story he told at the inquest in preference to
the story he told here in the witness-box yesterday. I ask you to regard
both stories as the evidence of a man who is too deeply implicated in
this crime to be able to speak the truth.

"I will prove