CHAPTER XXXI


When they reached Riversbrook they entered the carriage drive and
traversed the plantation until they stood on the edge of the Italian
garden facing the house. The gaunt, irregular mansion stood empty and
deserted, for Miss Fewbanks had left the place after her father's
funeral, with the determination not to return to it. The wind whistled
drearily through the nooks and crannies of the unfinished brickwork of
the upper story, and a faint evening mist rose from the soddened garden
and floated in a thin cloud past the library window, as though the ghost
of the dead judge were revisiting the house in search of his murderer.
The garden had lost its summer beauty and was littered with dead leaves
from the trees. The gathering greyness of an autumn twilight added to the
dreariness of the scene.

"Kemp didn't say how far he stood from the house," said Crewe, "but we'll
assume he stood at the edge of the plantation--about where we are
standing now--to begin with. How far are we from that library window,
Chippenfield?"

"About fifty yards, I should say," said the inspector, measuring it
with his eye.

"I should say seventy," said Rolfe.