Evidently the deceased judge had been in the habit of using the divided
rooms as a single apartment, for the heavier furniture in both halves of
it was of the same pattern. The chairs and tables were of heavy,
ponderous, mid-Victorian make, and they were matched by a number of
old-fashioned mahogany sideboards and presses, arranged methodically at
regular intervals on both sides of the room. Rolfe, as his eye took in
these articles, wondered why Sir Horace Fewbanks had bought so many. One
sideboard, a vast piece of furniture fully eight feet long, had a whisky
decanter and siphon of soda water on it, as though Sir Horace had served
himself with refreshments on his return to the house. The tops of the
other sideboards were bare, and the presses, use in such a room Rolfe was
at a loss to conjecture, were locked up. The antique sombre uniformity
of the furniture as a whole was broken at odd intervals by several
articles of bizarre modernity, including a few daring French prints,
which struck an odd note of incongruity in such a room.
The murdered man had been laid on an old-fashioned sofa at the end of
this double apartment which was furthest from the window.
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