The girl in the waiting car: was it conceivable—a horrible thought—that she was Inez Fratten herself? Poole realized that he had no knowledge of her whereabouts that evening; he only knew that when her father’s dead body was brought back to the house she was “out.” He made a note to look into the matter—an odious duty but a duty that must be done—and then, shaking the matter from his mind, walked back to Scotland Yard. He found that the Charing Cross taxi-driver had already been traced. The man could give no clear information about his fare; he only knew that a lady and gentleman had engaged him at Charing Cross and paid him off at Piccadilly Circus—a dead end.
Soon after half-past nine the police car pulled up close to the Marines South African Memorial, a hundred yards or so west of the Admiralty Arch, and the experimental party emerged. Poole had brought Sergeant Gower with him to act as a witness and he now directed Detective-Constables Kelly and Rawton to walk slowly arm-in-arm from the Duke’s Steps across the Mall, passing over the “island” on their way. Sergeant Gower was to follow them at about twenty paces distance, representing Mr. Coningsby Smythe, and Poole himself, armed with a walking stick with a rubber ferrule, took up his post in the car.
From where he sat, nearly a hundred yards away from the Duke’s Steps, it was only with difficulty that he could make out the figures of the two detectives; it might be darker now than it was at 6.30 p. m. on the 24th October, but Poole doubted whether the visibility was much worse, especially as there were no other foot-passengers about to distract the eye.
He could just see them as they approached the Mall and at what he considered the appropriate moment, he gave an order to the driver of his car. Acting under previous directions, the man drove slowly to the point where the two detectives were crossing and, as they left the island, pulled in as close behind them as he could, without obviously checking speed or altering direction. As the car passed behind them Poole leant out of the left-hand window and jabbed fiercely at Rawton’s back with his stick. The point of it just reached Rawton, brushing against his right shoulder—Poole cursed himself for his bad aim.
“Pull up, Frinton,” he said. “You’ll have to get closer than that—I only just reached him—no force in the blow at all.”
“Don’t think I can get much closer, sir, without hitting them. You see, my bonnet’s got to clear them first and by the time the window’s behind them they must have taken at least another pace. Any closer would have made them think they were going to be run over and they’d have skipped.”
“It was all pretty obvious, Inspector,” said Sergeant Gower, who had come up. “I can’t believe the gentleman I’m supposed to be impersonating wouldn’t have noticed something odd. The car was going much slower than is natural—unless there’s traffic to check it, which I gather there wasn’t—and even so I thought it would run into them. Seems to me Frinton drove very well and that even so it was obvious.”
“And even so I didn’t hit Rawton,” added Poole, frowning. “I may have to get hold of Smythe and find out if he remembers anything definite about the pace of the car. Meantime, we’ll try it again. Gower, you get in the car; go a shade faster, Frinton, and see if you can get any nearer. I’ll watch.”
The reconstruction was repeated; Frinton drove faster and with great skill, missing the two detectives so narrowly that Sergeant Gower, leaning well out of the window, was able to reach Rawton with the point of the stick; the blow, however, was a glancing one, and did not hurt him.
“Bad shot, I’m afraid, sir,” said the sergeant, getting out of the car. “It isn’t easy to make a good one at that pace.”