I need only
point out that when the whole company trooped out of the room, Randolph
was the last to leave it, and it is not now difficult to conjecture
why.
'Of what, then, have we convicted Randolph? For one thing, we have
shown that by marks of feet in the snow preparation was made beforehand
for obscuring the cause of the earl's death. That death must therefore
have been at least expected, foreknown. Thus we convict him of
expecting it. And then, by an independent line of deduction, we can
also discover the _means_ by which he expected it to occur. It is clear
that he did not expect it to occur when it did by the hand of Maude
Cibras--for this is proved by his knowledge that she had left the
neighbourhood, by his evidently genuine astonishment at the sight of
the closed window, and, above all, by his truly morbid desire to
establish a substantial, an irrefutable _alibi_ for himself by going to
Plymouth on the day when there was every reason to suppose she would do
the deed--that is, on the 8th, the day of the earl's invitation. On the
fatal night, indeed, the same morbid eagerness to build up a clear
_alibi_ is observable, for he surrounds himself with a cloud of
witnesses in the upper chamber. But that, you will admit, is not nearly
so perfect a one as a journey, say, to Plymouth would have been.
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