“Roughly, perhaps it is.”
“Thank you. Now would you mind telling me, what were your relations with your father?”
Ryland seemed to draw back into himself. He was clearly distressed by the question; but he answered it.
“They were not good, I’m afraid,” he said in a low voice. “I was a pretty rotten son. I got into debt and displeased my father in other ways. He had very little use for me.”
“You had a serious quarrel a week or so before your father’s death?”
At this point Mr. Menticle, who had been showing increasing signs of indignation, scribbled on a piece of paper and had it passed to the Coroner. The latter read it and nodded to him, but, possibly because the Chief Inspector had shifted on to fresh and less dangerous ground, took no immediate action.
Barrod questioned Fratten as to his knowledge of the nature of his father’s disease, as Poole had done, but this time eliciting a quite straightforward reply. He did not touch on the question of the new will. Finally:
“There is just one formal question I must put to you, Mr. Fratten. Where were you personally at the time of your father’s death?”
Ryland Fratten’s hesitation was barely noticeable before he answered.
“As a matter of fact I was in St. James’s Park,” he said.