sides, I didn't think Hill would visit his wife or attempt to
communicate with her, for he would think that the police, if they wanted
him, would be sure to watch the shop. I tried to consider what a man like
Hill would do in the circumstances. He had no money--I knew that--and, so
far as I was able to ascertain, he had no friends who were likely to hide
him. Without friends or money he could not go very far. Finally it
occurred to me that he might be hiding somewhere in Riversbrook--either
in that unfinished portion of the third floor, or in one of the
outbuildings. He knew the run of the rambling old place so well. Have you
ever been over it carefully? No. Well, there are several good places in
the upper stories where a man might conceal himself. 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. "The more thought I give it, the
more impossible it seems to see through it. Was Sir Horace killed before
dusk--before the lights were turned on? If he was killed after dark, who
turned out the lights?"

"He was killed between 10 and 10.30 at night," said Crewe. "The lights
were turned out by the woman Birchill saw leaving the house about 10.30.
But she was not the murderer, and she was not present in the room, or
even in the house, when Sir Horace was shot. She arrived a few minutes
too late to prevent the tragedy.