I reiterate. When it came to the 'script' Jeremy held all the cards. As the only member of the family to leave the kitchen alive he was able to furnish the police with details of his actions and their conversation in a way which best suited the eventual outcome. There was no one to challenge him..................unless we could find the rabbits he missed. Crispy was too traumatized.
Indeed
Jeremy had carte blanche to concoct that story any way he wanted.
But like all murderers, they always trip up...
For instance, he claims he heard rabbits outside. Rabbits are hardly noisy, and even if he had done I can’t see him being bothered to go and shoot them. He was lazy & disinterested in the farm.
Secondly, had he really decided to shoot rabbits he’d have had to of gone to the gun cupboard. It’s a fact that Nevill was meticulous in keeping his guns stored securely, especially since one of his friends was accidentally shot whilst out on a shoot (thankfully, he wasn’t too badly injured), and everyone said how Nevill was horrified when that happened and so religiously kept all his guns locked securely every time he came back from shooting.
He also kept them well-maintained to the highest standard, and always, always kept both the silencer and scope attached to the .22 Rifle as unscrewing them was fiddly and time-consuming; and there was simply no need to remove them because he only used the rifle with them attached.
Rabbits have extremely acute hearing, which is why they’re always shot at with a silencer — a rabbit can hear a bullet before it’s had chance to hit it.
When shooting rabbits one has to keep their distance, hence the necessity of a scope.
So that begs the question: why would Jeremy take a rifle that had no scope or silencer on it, when he knew you needed them to shoot rabbits?
He even admitted the rifle didn’t have the silencer/scope attached, yet it’s been proven the silencer was used; it’s been proven Sheila’s blood was inside the silencer; it’s been proven that the silencer was not even in the secured gun cupboard where Nevill kept all his firearms and ammunition in pristine condition. Furthermore, why wasn’t the scope with the silencer too? Had Nevill removed them (and we all know he didn’t) they’d have been together in the secured gun cupboard.
And the only reason the silencer wasn’t found by the police was that they’ve admitted — and it’s in black and white — that they only had a brief look inside the cupboards and didn’t do a proper, thorough search. They obviously thought it unnecessary as at that time they were of the opinion it was a murder/suicide; they didn’t know a silencer was used; and possibly didn’t even know what one would look like even if they had spotted it tucked away where Jeremy had hidden it to the best of his ability.