“What you want are some flowers; how rotten of me not to have thought of it before. I’m so sorry.”
Inez whisked out of the room and returned in a minute with two vases of chrysanthemums—yellow and russet—from her own sitting-room.
Mangane almost blushed with pleasure and stammered his thanks.
“Now, Mr. Mangane,” said Inez, “I want your help. I believe Inspector Poole has asked you about it already—I told him to. It’s about those papers that father was fussing over every night just before he died. Do you know what they were?”
“The Victory Finance Company, I expect you mean. Yes, Poole did ask about them; he’s got them now.”
Inez’s face brightened.
“Has he? Then that means that he’s following up that line!”
“Not necessarily, I’m afraid, Miss Fratten. He took all the Company papers he found in your father’s table, and the Bank papers, and his private accounts. The Victory Finance just happened to be among them; he didn’t seem specially interested in them.”
Inez’s face fell. Then her air of determination returned. “Then we must follow it ourselves,” she said. “Can we get those papers back?”
“I expect so; he said he’d bring them back in a day or two. We shall have to get Mr. Hessel’s leave.”