t for him to
disappear? Some one must have killed Sir Horace after Holymead left, and
before Birchill arrived."

"Whew! I never thought of that," said Rolfe candidly.

"Kemp is a liar from first to last," said Inspector Chippenfield
decisively.

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.

"And I say somewhere midway between the two," said Crewe, with a smile.
"But we will soon see. Just hold down the end of this measuring tape, one
of you." He produced a measuring tape as he spoke, and started to unwind
it, walking rapidly towards the house as he did so. "Sixty-two yards!" he
said, as he returned. He made a note of the distance in his pocket-book.
"So much for that," he said, "but that's not enough. I want you to stand
under the library window, Rolfe, by that chestnut-tree in front of it,
and act as pivot for the measuring tape while I look at that window from
various angles. My idea is to go in a semicircle right round the garden,
starting at the garage by the edge of the wood, so as to see the library
window and measure the distance at every possible point at which Kemp
could have stood."

"You're going to a lot of trouble for nothing, if your object is to try
and prove that he couldn't have seen into the window," grunted Inspector
Chippenfield, in a mystified voice. "Why, I can see plainly into the
wi