“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 to you, gentlemen of the jury, that the man is a criminal by instinct and a liar by necessity—­the necessity of saving his own skin.  He robbed his former master, Lord Melhurst, and he planned to rob his late master, Sir Horace Fewbanks.  But knowing that his former crime would be brought against him when the police came to investigate a robbery at Riversbrook he was too cunning to rob Riversbrook himself.  He looked about him for an accomplice and he selected Birchill.  You heard him say in the witness-box that he drew Birchill a plan of Riversbrook—­the plan I now hold in my hand.  I will ask you to inspect the plan closely.  Hill told us that Birchill terrorised him into drawing this plan by threats of exposure.  Exposure of what?  His master, Sir Horace Fewbanks, knew he had been in gaol, so what had he to fear from exposure?  His proper course, if he were an honest man, would have been to tell his master that Birchill was planning to rob the house and had endeavoured to draw him into the crime.  But he did nothing of the kind, for the simple reason that the plan to rob Riversbrook was his own, and not Birchill’s.