Inspector Birch, so he told the world, had arrived at the Red
House at 4.42 p.m. on the afternoon in question. He had been
received by Mr. Matthew Cayley, who had made a short statement to
him, and he had then proceeded to examine the scene of the crime.
The French windows had been forced from outside. The door
leading into the hall was locked; he had searched the room
thoroughly and had found no trace of a key. In the bedroom
leading out of the office he had found an open window. There
were no marks on the window, but it was a low one, and, as he
found from experiment, quite easy to step out of without touching
it with the boots. A few yards outside the window a shrubbery
began. There were no recent footmarks outside the window, but
the ground was in a very hard condition owing to the absence of
rain. In the shrubbery, however, he found several twigs on the
ground, recently broken off, together with other evidence that
some body had been forcing its way through. He had questioned
everybody connected with the estate, and none of them had been
into the shrubbery recently. By forcing a way through the
shrubbery it was possible for a person to make a detour of the
house and get to the Stanton end of the park without ever being
in sight of the house itself.

He had made inquiries about the deceased. Deceased had left for
Australia some fifteen years ago, owing to some financial trouble
at home. Deceased was not well spoken of in the village from
which he and his brother had come. Deceased and his brother had
never been on good terms, and the fact that Mark Ablett had come
into money had been a cause of great bitterness between them. It
was shortly after this that Robert had left for Australia.