The police were quite baffled, and still are, for a matter of that.

And yet see how simple it is! Only the police would not look further than these two men--Lord Brockelsby with a strong motive and the night porter's hesitation against him, and Beddingfield without a motive, but with strong circumstantial evidence and his own disappearance as condemnatory signs.
"If only they would look at the case as I did, and think a little about the dead as well as about the living.

If they had remembered that peerage case, the Hon.

Robert's debts, his last straw which proved a futile claim.
"Only that very day the Earl of Brockelsby had, by quietly showing the original ancient document to his brother, persuaded him how futile were all his hopes.

Who knows how many were the debts contracted, the promises made, the money borrowed and obtained on the strength of that claim which was mere romance?
Ahead nothing but ruin, enmity with his brother, his marriage probably broken off, a wasted life, in fact.
"Is it small wonder that, though ill-feeling against the Earl of Brockelsby may have been deep, there was hatred, bitter, deadly hatred against the man who with false promises had led him into so hopeless a quagmire?
Probably the Hon.