"No, sir. But if any sort of evidence is piled up against Mr. Robert I shall not credit it. No power on earth could make me believe that he would kill his father in cold blood. He respected his father, sir. He's a bit wild, as young men with too much money are apt to be, but he was good-hearted and genuine." "Yet he did speak of blowing his own brains out, and his father's." "That was his silly way of talking, sir. He would say, 'Tomlinson, if you tell the pater what time I came home last night I'll stab you to the heart.' When there was a bit of a family squabble he would threaten to mix a gallon of weed-killer and drink every drop. Everything was rotten, or beastly, or awfully ripping. He was not so well educated as he ought to have been--Mrs. Fenley's fault entirely; and he hadn't the--the words----" "The vocabulary." "That's it, sir. I see you understand." "Tomlinson," interrupted Furneaux, "a famous American writer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, described adjectives of that class as the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy. You have hit on the same great thought." The butler smiled again. He was beginning to like Furneaux. "You have never heard, I suppose, of Mr. Fenley receiving any threatening letters?" continued Winter. "No, sir. Some stupid postcards were sent when he tried to close a right of way through the park; but they were merely ridiculous, and that occurred years ago." "So you, like the rest of us, feel utterly unable to assign a motive for this crime?" "Sir, it's like a thunderbolt from a clear sky." "Were the brothers, or half brothers, on good terms with each other?" Tomlinson started at those words, "or half brothers." He was not prepared for the Superintendent's close acquaintance with the Fenley records. "They're as different as chalk and cheese, sir," he said, after a pause to collect his wits. "Mr. Hilton is clever and well read, and cares nothing about sport, though he has a wonderful steady nerve. Yes, I mean that----" for Winter's prominent eyes showed surprise at the statement. "He's a strange mixture, is Mr. Hilton. He's a fair nailer with a revolver. I've seen him hit a penny three times straight off at twelve paces, and, when in the mind, he would bowl over running rabbits with a rook rifle. Yet he never joined the shooting parties in October. Said it made him ill to see graceful birds shattered by clumsy folk. All the same, he would ill-treat a horse something shameful. I----" The butler bethought himself, and pulled up with a jerk. But Winter smiled encouragingly. "Say what you had in mind," he said. "You are not giving evidence. You may rely on our discretion." "Well, sir, he's that sort of man who must have his own way, and when things went against him at home, he'd take it out of any servant or animal that vexed him afterwards." "It was not an ideally happy household, I take it?"