If Sir Horace had gone to bed before the murderer entered the house it
would have been natural to expect no lights turned on. But he had
returned unexpectedly; there were no servants in the house, and there was
no bed ready for him. In any case, if he intended stopping in the empty
house instead of going to a hotel he would have been wearing a sleeping
suit when his body was discovered; or, at most, he would be only
partially dressed if he had got up on hearing somebody moving about the
house. But the body was fully dressed, even to collar and tie. It was
absurd to suppose that the victim had been sitting in the darkness when
the murderer appeared.
Another difficult problem Scotland Yard had to face was the discovery of
the person who had sent them the news of the murder. How had Scotland
Yard's anonymous correspondent learned about the murder, and what were
his motives in informing the police in the way he had done? Was he
connected with the crime? Had the murderer a companion with him when he
broke into Riversbrook for the purpose of burglary? That seemed to be the
most probable explanation. The second man had been horrified at the
murder, and desired to disassociate himself from it so that he might
escape the gallows. The only alternative was to suppose that the murderer
had confessed his crime to some one, and that his confidant had lost no
time in informing the police of the tragedy.
The newspaper accounts of the case threw some light on the private and
domestic affairs of the victim. He was a widower with a grown-up
daughter; his wife, a daughter of the late Sir James Goldsworthy, who
changed his ancient family patronymic from Granville to Goldsworthy on
inheriting the great fortune of an American kinsman, had died eight years
before. Sir Horace's Hampstead household consisted of a housekeeper,
butler, chauffeur, cook, housemaid, kitchenmaid and gardener. With the
exception of the butler the servants had been sent the previous week to
Sir Horace's country house in Dellmere, Sussex. It appeared that Miss
Fewbanks spent most of her time at the country house and came up to
London but rarely. She was at Dellmere when the murder was committed, and
had been under the impression that her father was in Scotland. According
to a report received from the police at Dellmere the first intimation
that Miss Fewbanks had received of the tragic death of her father came
from them. Naturally, she was prostrated with grief at the tragedy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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