Sir Leward opened his mouth to ask another question, but thought better of it and went away, leaving Inez, as he had intended, still wondering about him.
Arriving at his office in Scotland Yard at about ten the next morning, Sir Leward sent for Chief Inspector Barrod. It wouldn’t do to let Barrod know how trivial he thought the matter, so he piled on the interest a bit.
“It’s just possible that there’s something in this Fratten business, Barrod,” he said. “Miss Fratten is a shrewd, level-headed girl, not likely to make a mountain out of a molehill. She’s not at all satisfied with the cause of death; it seems that they’d said nothing to her about an aneurism, which was apparently the trouble—I confess I thought it was heart failure myself—shows how carelessly one reads things when one’s not particularly interested. Sir Garth was a rich man, of course, and a big man—he may have had enemies. Probably there’s nothing in it, but—a wisp of smoke, you know.”
The Chief Inspector was not impressed; he wasn’t even interested. He remained silent. Sir Leward was conscious of the lack, and covered it by a still more decided manner.
“We’ll look into it,” he said. “Put someone on who’s not too heavy in the foot. You know what I mean. Who have you got?”
Chief Inspector Barrod allowed a faint smile to hover on his lips, but he spoke seriously enough.
“I’ve just got the man you want, sir. Poole. Just promoted Inspector—you’ll remember that you put him up yourself, sir, after that Curzon House impersonation case. Well-educated officer, sir—public school and college man.”
The fact of the matter was that Barrod himself thought very little of Detective-Inspector Poole and was delighted to have the opportunity of pushing him off in search of a mare’s nest. Poole was of a type that he did not care for—well-educated, “genteel” (Barrod thought), probably soft, and certainly possessed of a swelled head. A failure—or at any rate, a fiasco—would do him no harm.
“Does he know anything about finance?” asked Sir Leward.
Barrod raised his eyebrows.