The Devil's Advocate by Fred M. White

"Well," Macrae laughed a little unsteadily. "I have got one friend, at any rate. It is very kind of you, Philp, to take all this interest in my affairs, but I can't see how you are going to help me. There is no getting away from the fact that Baines was murdered in my house, at a time when I was alone in it."

"Well, nobody wants to argue that," Philp said. "The man was undoubtedly killed in the Bungalow, but you were not there at that particular moment, because, by a certain grim chance, you were out, actually looking for the man who was found dead by yourself a little later in your conservatory. Now, arguing the matter out as a lawyer, I am going to assume that you did murder Baines. And if you had, you would never have been fool enough to have left the body where it was found, and gone off, almost at once, to notify the police. No, you would have taken the body, and thrown it down somewhere on the common. You could easily have done that, because you are a fairly powerful man, and Baines was only a dried up wisp of humanity. It was very late at night, with nobody about, and therefore you could have adopted that course with absolute security. Again, you had no quarrel with Baines. I know you exposed him in your paper, but then, that was in the ordinary course of business. Of course, Baines was an old blackguard----"