The Inspector, meanwhile, made his way out of Fritton to the Dower House, where he found Harold White, who had just returned from the collieries.
White received him in his study, an uninteresting apartment with an outlook on to a clump of tall evergreens. He seemed rather surprised to see the Inspector, but asked at once what he might have the pleasure of doing for him. "I suppose you've got a lot more tucked up your sleeve than we heard at the Inquest this morning," he remarked. "Queer business, isn't it? I'd have said Carter was the last man in the world anyone would want to put out of the way, but don't anyone tell me he was shot by accident! There was no accident about that." He picked up a box of cigarettes from his desk, and offered it to Hemingway. "Have you come about what my daughter seems to have told you after I'd gone this morning? She's a bit worried about that. Poured it all out to me as soon as I got home. Well," He hesitated, and struck a match, and held it for the Inspector. "It isn't for me to give you advice, but the fact of the matter is my daughter's a bit of a talker. I wouldn't set too much store by what she told you."
"How's that?" inquired Hemingway. "Didn't she invite Mr. Steel here on Sunday?"
"Oh yes, I didn't mean that! She's always trying to get him to come over. Thinks he must be lonely, living by himself. You know what women are. What I meant was, that it didn't strike me that Steel was listening to her with more than half an ear."
"I see," said Hemingway. "Was he listening when you warned him that you'd got Carter coming?"
"Warned him I'd got Carter coming!" repeated White derisively. "Trust my daughter to make a mountain out of a molehill! What I actually did was to say to her, not to him, that as I'd asked Carter over I didn't think Steel would want to come."
"Like that, was it?" said Hemingway. "Would he have been listening to that, by any chance?"
"Lord, I don't know! He might have been."
"Well, that's very interesting," said Hemingway. "What's more, it brings me to what I came to talk to you about."
"Shoot!" invited White, waving him to an armchair, and himself sitting down by his desk.