“(i) That when Hoode was struck, either by the first or all the blows, he was seated at his table.
“(ii) That the appearance of the room had been carefully arranged to convey the impression that a struggle had taken place.
“(iii) That the murderer was well known to Hoode, and was, in all probability, an inmate of the house.
“(iv) That the murderer had worn gloves for most of the time during which he was in the study, there being no finger-prints anywhere except on the wood-rasp.
“(v) That the blows which killed Hoode must have had tremendous strength behind them.
“(vi) That, in all probability, the murderer entered by the window. (I fully endorsed, at that stage of the inquiry, the opinion of the Police that Poole’s evidence was reliable.)
“It will be seen that the cumulative implication of these six points tends to strengthen considerably the case against Deacon, which even without them is by no means weak circumstantially. It is now, therefore, that the keynote of my report must come.
“I met and spoke with Deacon for the first time on the afternoon of the day I arrived at Abbotshall. It needed but three minutes with him to convince me that here was a man who had not been, was not, and never could be a murderer. I cannot defend this statement with logic. It was simply conviction. Like this: In a party of, say, twelve persons there will be eleven about none of whom I could say definitely: ‘That one is incapable of stealing the baby’s marmalade’; but in the twelfth I may find a man—perhaps unknown to me before—of whom I can swear before God or man: ‘He could not have stolen the baby’s marmalade—not even if he had tried to! He is incapable of carrying out such a crime.’
“Deacon was a twelfth man. Before I had seen him, my views were beginning to differ from those of Scotland Yard: after I had seen and spoken with him they became directly opposed. It became my business to prove, in spite of all difficulties, that this man, whatever the appearances, had had no hand in the death of John Hoode. In what follows, they who read will find, I hope, absolute proof of his innocence; or if not that, at least a battering-ram to shake the tower of their belief in his guilt.
“Knowing that Deacon was not the murderer, I nevertheless realised that his innocence—so strong was the case against him—could only be established by definite proof that some one else was. That is to say: a negative defence would be useless.