“Does Mr. Barrod know about this?” he asked, when Poole had finished.
“No, sir. He told me to report direct to you.”
“Better . . .” Sir Leward checked himself, remembering the Chief Inspector’s obvious lack of interest. “All right, we’ll keep it to ourselves for the moment. Now what’s the next step?”
“That’s as you decide, sir. If I might make a suggestion, I think I ought now to interview Mr. Ryland Fratten and find out whether he knew about that will and the date of its signature.”
“He’d hardly tell you, would he?”
“He might, if he were off his guard; or at any rate he might make some statement which might later be proved false. Assuming, that is, for the moment, that he is guilty. And that’s a big assumption, sir, when we don’t even know that there has been a crime.”
“No. I suppose we don’t. Still, it looks more like it than it did. You’ve done very well, Poole, to get so far with so little to go on.”
Poole shook his head.
“I didn’t do well with the doctor, sir. I don’t know now whether he examined the body for marks of violence or not; he only said that there weren’t any.”
“A different thing, eh?”