“So there you are. When I heard the story I felt, I confess, no little admiration for Digby-Coates. He is so thorough! You see, this was not the first time Deacon had given such assistance. And he knew Deacon thought little and cared less about the whole business of cabinetmaking.
III
“It is evidence purely of trivialities which has put Deacon in a cell awaiting trial; yet I am convinced that did I attempt to establish his innocence merely by the means I have employed so far, the very people who already accept his guilt as certain would accuse me of having nothing but trivialities upon which to base my version of the affair. Further, it could be said—and would be—that I have read between the lines writing which was not there; that I have so ingeniously twisted the interpretation of what are, in fact, merely ordinarily meaningless signs as to make them appear a grim and coherent indictment against another man; that I have seen an anarchist bomb in a schoolboy’s snowball and a Bolshevik outrage in a varsity rag.
“So I must strengthen my case; for the truth is that this evidence of trivialities is good, but not nearly good enough. It must have a backing to it.
“Now, there is, if you look at it, a complete absence of any backing to the case against Deacon. ‘What about the money?’ you say. ‘What about that hundred pounds belonging to Hoode? There’s motive for you!’ ‘Nonsense!’ say I. Deacon was paid six hundred pounds a year. He had also an allowance from his only living relative. He had been, it is true, a little shorter of money than usual lately; but to suggest that he would commit a murder for a hundred pounds is absurd. A man in his position could have raised the money in a thousand safer and less energetic ways. No, Deacon’s story that the money was a birthday gift from Hoode is, besides being more likely, true. Further, it is easy of proof that Deacon and Hoode were on the best of terms: for corroboration apply to the Ministry of Imperial Finance and the households of Abbotshall and 12 Seymour Square. Further still, look at Deacon’s record and see how rash it is to condemn him murderer with nothing more to go upon than those too-beautiful fingerprints and a few ragged pieces of circumstantial evidence, the two best of which were supplied—oh! so ingeniously—by Sir Arthur Digby-Coates. For it was from him that the police first learnt that Hoode had drawn a hundred pounds in notes from his bank. And it was through him that it became known that Deacon had asked him the time at ten forty-five on the night of the murder—the time to which the hands of the clock in the study had been moved by the murderer.
“There being no backing to the case of the Crown against Deacon, I saw that if I could find a stout one for mine against Digby-Coates I should score heavily.
“The first thing to be found was motive. What, I asked myself, could it be? Money? No. Digby-Coates is a wealthier man by far than ever was Hoode. Revenge for some particular ill turn? Hardly that, since Hoode, though a politician, bore all his life the stamp of honesty and straight dealing. A woman? I was not prepared to accept one as the sole cause. She might, of course, be contributory, but I wanted something more likely. Middle-aged men of the social and intellectual standing of these two do not often, in this age of decrees nisi and cold love, go about killing each other over a woman if she is only the first blot upon the fair sea of their friendship.
“I was forced back, in this search for motive, upon the deductions I had made from those little material signs, and remembered that I had determined, before ever I thought of putting a name to the murderer, that John Hoode was killed by a man insane; not mad in the gibbering, straws-in-the-hair sense, but mentally unbalanced by a kind of ingrowing, self-nourishing hatred.
“I took this as my starting point and asked myself how I could find corroboration of and reason for this hatred having existed in the heart of a man ostensibly the closest friend of its object. The answer was: look at their past history; as much of it as is available in books of record. I did so, using Hoode’s own books.
“I found soon enough reason for the hatred. Look as I looked. You will see that always, always, always was Digby-Coates beaten by the man he killed. Were the race one of scholarship, sport, politics, social advancement, honours, the result was the same. Hoode first; Digby-Coates second. Look in the Who’s Who, Hansard, the records of Upchester School and Magdalen, the Honours Lists. Look in the minds of the men’s colleagues and contemporaries. Always will you find the same story. Look at this, the slightest extract from the list:—
| John Hoode. | Arthur Digby-Coates. |
|---|---|
| Captain of Upchester (last three years at school). | Senior Monitor (same three years). |
| Won John Halket scholarship to Magdalen. | Second on list. |
| Rowed 2 in Oxford boat (third year). | Rowed 6 in trials (third year). |
| Gaisford (fourth year). | Newdigate (fourth year). |
| Minor office (Admiralty) after three years in Parliament. | Still merely M.P. after six months longer in Parliament. |
| President of Board of |
