A look of comic disbelief filled Gleave’s face. He gazed at Pitt, then at Juster, and finally at the jury. As playacting it was superb. Naturally he had long known exactly what Pitt would say.

Juster shrugged. “By whom?” he asked. “Mr. Adinett had already left, and when the butler entered the room there was no one there except Mr. Fetters. Did you disbelieve the butler?”

Pitt chose his words carefully. “I believe he was telling the truth as he knew it.”

Gleave rose to his feet. He was a broad man, heavy shouldered. “My lord, Superintendent Pitt’s thoughts as to the butler’s veracity are irrelevant and out of place. The jury has had the opportunity to hear the butler’s testimony for themselves, and to judge whether he was speaking the truth or not and whether he is an honest and competent person.”

Juster kept his temper with obvious difficulty. There was a high color in his cheeks. “Mr. Pitt, without telling us why, since it seems to annoy my honorable friend so much, will you please tell us what you did after forming this unusual theory of yours?”

“I looked around the room to see if there was anything else that might be of relevance,” Pitt replied, remembering, describing exactly. “I saw a salver on the small table at the far side of the library, and a glass on it half full of port wine. I asked the butler when Mr. Adinett had left the house and he told me. I then asked him to replace the chair where it had been when he came in, and to repeat his actions as exactly as he was able to.” He could see in his mind’s eye the man’s startled expression and his unwillingness. Very obviously he felt it to be disrespectful to the dead. But he had obeyed, self-consciously, his limbs stiff, movement jerking, his face set in determined control of the emotions which raged through him.

“I stood behind the door,” Pitt resumed. “When the butler was obliged to go behind the chair in order to reach Mr. Fetters’s head, I went out of the door and across the hall and in through the doorway opposite.” He stopped, allowing Juster time to react.