Once more the hands were lifted. Once more their owner paused in thought. He gave two nods this time, and resumed.
"Monday. Up before eight. Has his breakfast (bacon and eggs), and goes to the Nisi Prius Court. Stays there till past three in the afternoon, tells Kene he must go out of court to keep an appointment that wasn't a particularly pleasant one, and goes out. Arrives at Jones's at half-past four; passes Mrs. Jones in that there small back hall of theirs; she tells him he looks tired; answers that he is tired and has got a headache; court was close. Goes up to his sitting-room and gets his papers about; (papers found afterwards, on examination, to relate to the cause coming on on Tuesday morning). Girl takes up his dinner; he eats it, gets to his papers again, and she fetches things away. Rings for his lamp early, quarter-past six may be, nearly daylight still; while girl puts it on table, draws down blinds himself as if in a hurry to be at work again. Close upon this Mr. Bede Greatorex calls, (good firm that, Greatorex and Greatorex," interspersed Mr. Butterby, with professional candour). "Bede Greatorex has come down direct from London (sent by old Greatorex) to confer with Ollivera on the Tuesday's cause. Stays with him more than an hour. Makes an appointment with him for Tuesday morning. Jones's nephew, going upstairs at the time, hears them making it, and shows Mr. Bede Greatorex out. Might be half-past seven then, or two or three minutes over it; call it half-past. Ollivera never seen again alive. Found dead next morning in arm-chair; pistol fallen from right hand, shot penetrated heart. Same chair he had been sitting in when at his papers, but drawn aside now at corner of table. Alletha Rye finds him. Tells a cock-and-bull of having been frightened by a dream. Dreamt he was in the sitting-room dead, and goes to see (she says) that he was not there, dead. Finds him there dead, however, just as (she says) she saw him in her dream. Servant rushes out for doctor, meets me, and I am the first in the room. Doctor comes, Hurst; Kene comes, Jones's nephew fetching him; then Kene fetches Bede Greatorex. Doctor says death must have took place previous evening not later than eight o'clock. Mrs. Jones says lamp couldn't have burnt much more than an hour: is positive it didn't exceed an hour and a half; but she's one of the positive ones at all times, and women's judgment is fallible. Now then, let's stop."
Mr. Butterby put his hands one over the other, and looked down upon them, pausing before he spoke again.
"It draws the space into an uncommon narrow nutshell. When Bede Greatorex leaves at half-past seven, Ollivera is alive and well--as he and Jones's nephew both testify to--and, according to the evidence of the surgeon, and the negative testimony of the oil in the lamp, he is dead by eight. If he did not draw the pistol on himself, somebody came in and shot him.
"Did he draw it on himself? I say Yes. Coroner and jury say Yes. The public say Yes. Alletha Rye and the Reverend Ollivera say No. If we are all wrong--and I don't say but that there's just a loophole of possibility of it--and them two are right, why then it was murder. And done with uncommon craftiness. Let's look at the writing.
"Those high-class lawyers are not good for much in criminal cases, can't see an inch beyond their noses; they don't practise at the Old Bailey, they don't," remarked Mr. Butterby, as he took from the papers before him the unfinished note found on Mr. Ollivera's table, the loan of which he had begged from Frank Greatorex. "The idea of their proposing to destroy this, because 'they couldn't bear to look at it!' Kene, too; and Bede Greatorex! they might have known better. I'll take care of it now."
Holding it close to one of the candles, the detective scanned it long and intently, comparing the concluding words, uneven, blotted, as if written with an agitated hand, with the plain collected characters of the lines that were undoubtedly Mr. Ollivera's. When he did arrive at a conclusion it was a summary one, and he put down the paper with an emphatic thump.
"May I be shot myself if I believe the two writings is by the same hand!"
Mr. Butterby's surprise may plead excuse for his grammar. He had never, until this moment, doubted that the writing was all done by one person.
"I'll show this to an expert. People don't write the same at all times; they'll make their capitals quite different in the same day, as anybody with any experience knows. But they don't often make their small letters different--neither do men study to alter their usual formation of letters when about to shoot themselves; the pen does its work then, spontaneous; naturally. These small letters are different, several of them, the r, the p, the e, the o, the d; all them are as opposite as light and dark, and I don't think the last was written by Mr. Ollivera."