Sir Horace had an excellent chance of obtaining one if he came to London and used his influence with the Chancellor and the Chief Justice, who were still in town. The writer indicated that he was doing all that was possible in Sir Horace's interests, and that he would meet Sir Horace at Riversbrook at 9.30 on Wednesday night and let him know the exact position. There is nothing suspicious in such a letter, but my inquiries concerning new appointments to the Court of Appeal suggest that the statements in the letter are false. "Now let us consider the conduct of Holymead and his wife since the night of the murder. His course of action has not been that of a man anxious to assist the police in the discovery of the murderer of his old friend. We have first of all his secrecy regarding his visit to Riversbrook that night; the fact of the visit being established by the stick, and the glove he left behind. We have the estrangement of husband and wife. We have Mrs. Holymead's visit to Riversbrook on the morning that the first details of the crime appeared in the newspapers. Ostensibly she came to see you and pay her condolences, but as she knew that you had been away in the country she ought to have telephoned to learn if you had come up to London. Instead of telephoning, she went to Riversbrook direct, and when she found you were not there she was admitted to the presence of my old friend, Inspector Chippenfield. He is an excellent police officer, but I do not think he is a match for a clever woman. And Mrs. Holymead is such a fine-looking woman that I feel sure Chippenfield was so impressed by her appearance that he forgot he was a police officer and remembered only that he was a man. She managed to get him out of the room long enough to enable her to open the secret drawer in Sir Horace's desk and remove the letters. No doubt Sir Horace had shown her where he kept them, as their neat little hiding place was an indication of the value he placed upon them. She was under the impression that no one knew about the letters, and her object in removing them was to prevent the police stumbling across them and so getting on the track of her husband. But as I have already told you, Hill knew about the letters, and on the night of the murder had them in his possession. On the night after the murder, while Inspector Chippenfield was making investigations at Riversbrook, Hill had managed to obtain the opportunity to put the letters back. He naturally thought that if the police discovered some of Sir Horace's private papers in his possession they would conclude that he had had something to do with the murder.