"'Because,' the witness replied, 'I was naturally rather anxious to know how things were, and because I hoped to get a day on the river with a friend, and to make an early start if possible. However, when I got to the flat, Mrs. Triscott wanted to get away, and so I agreed to stay there and wait until ten o'clock, when, so Mrs. Triscott assured me, my brother would certainly be home. As a matter of fact he always used to get home at that hour with clockwork regularity on the Monday mornings after his holiday. My father was asleep, and Mrs. Triscott left me instructions what to do in case he required anything. At half-past nine he woke. I heard him stirring and I went into his room and gave him some barley-water and sat with him for a little while. He seemed quite cheerful and good-tempered, and, honestly, I did not think that he was any worse than he had been for weeks. Just before ten o'clock he dropped off to sleep again. I knew that my brother would be in within the next half hour and, as this would not be the first time that my father had been left alone in the flat, I did not think that I should be doing anything wrong by leaving him. I went back to my chambers and was busy making arrangements for the day when I had a telephone message from my brother that our father was dead.'
"Questioned by the coroner as to the disagreement which he had had with his father on the previous Wednesday, Mr. Philip Ashley indignantly repudiated the idea that there was any quarrel.
"'My father,' he said, 'had a very violent temper and a very harsh, penetrating voice. He certainly did get periodically angry with me whenever I explained to him that my marriage to Lady Peet-Jackson could not, in all decency, take place for at least another six months. He would storm and shriek for a little while,' the witness went on, 'but we invariably parted the best of friends.'"
The Old Man in the Corner paused for a little while, leaving me both interested and puzzled. I was trying to piece together what I remembered of the case with what he had just told me, and I was longing to hear his explanation of the events which followed that memorable inquest. After a little while the funny creature resumed:
"I told you," he said, "that a wave of hostility had risen in the public mind against Philip Ashley. It came from a sense of sympathy for the other son, who, deformed and afflicted, had been done out of a fortune. True that it would not have been of much use to him, and that in the original will ample provision had been made for his modest wants, but it now seemed as if, at the eleventh hour, the old miser had thought to make reparation toward the son who had given up his whole life to him, whilst the other had led one of leisure, independence, and gaiety. What had caused old Thornton Ashley thus to change his mind was never conclusively proved; there were some rumours already current that Philip Ashley was in debt and had appealed to his father for money, a fatal thing to do with a miser. But this also was never actually proved. The only persons who could have enlightened the jury on the subject were Philip Ashley himself and his brother, Charles, but each of them, for reasons of his own, chose to remain silent.
"And now you will no doubt recall the fact which finally determined the jury to bring in their sensational verdict, in consequence of which Philip Ashley was arrested on the coroner's warrant on a charge of attempted murder. It seemed horrible, ununderstandable, unbelievable, but, nevertheless, a jury of twelve men did arrive at that momentous decision after deliberation lasting less than half an hour. What I believe weighed with them in the end was the fact that the assistant who came with the divisional surgeon to conduct the post-mortem found underneath the bed of the deceased, a walking-stick with a crook-handle, and the crumpled and torn copy of the notes for the new will which Mr. Triscott had prepared. Philip Ashley when confronted with the stick admitted that it was his. He had missed it on the Saturday when he was leaving the flat, as he was under the impression that he had brought one with him; however, he did not want to spend any more time looking for it, as he was obviously so very much in the way.
"Now, both the charwoman and Mrs. Triscott swore that the patient's room had been cleaned and tidied on the Sunday, and that there was no sign of a walking-stick in the room then.
§5
"And so," the Old Man in the Corner went on, with a cynical shrug of his lean shoulders, "Philip Ashley went through the terrible ordeal of being hauled up before the magistrate on the charge of having attempted to murder his father, an old man with one foot in the grave. He pleaded 'Not Guilty,' and reserved his defence. The whole of the evidence was gone through all over again, of course, but nothing new had transpired. The case was universally thought to look very black against the accused, and no one was surprised when he was eventually committed for trial.
"Public feeling remained distinctly hostile to him. It was a crime so horrible and so unique you would have thought that no one would have believed that a well-known, well-educated man could possibly have been guilty of it. Probably, if the event had occurred before the war, public opinion would have repudiated the possibility, but so many horrible crimes have occurred in every country these past few years that one was just inclined to shrug one's shoulders and murmur: 'Perhaps, one never knows!' One thing remained beyond a doubt: old Mr. Thornton Ashley died of shock or fright following a violent and dastardly assault, finger-marks were discovered round his throat, and there were evidences on his face and head that he had been repeatedly struck with what might easily have been the walking-stick which was found under his bed. Add to this the weight of evidence of the new will, about to be signed, and of the quarrel between father and son on the previous Wednesday, and you have as good a motive for the murder as any prosecuting counsel might wish for. Philip Ashley would not, of course, hang for murder, but it was even betting that he would get twenty years.