“Good Lord,” said Inez, “sounds thin doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“But then you don’t know Ryland. He’s a hopeless fool about women. You want me to find out about her?”
“I’m not asking you to, Miss Fratten. But if your brother really has a sound explanation of what certainly sounds like a very poor alibi—the sooner we know about it the better.”
“I’ll do what I can. But look here, Mr. Poole, why should you put so much emphasis on the will as a motive? Surely there may be plenty of others?”
“Plenty. I only gave that as the first step. If you know of anything else—if you can make any other suggestion that would give us a line to work on, I should be only too grateful.”
Inez curled herself into one corner of the big sofa.
“I wish you’d smoke or something,” she said—“while I’m thinking.” Poole did not fall in with this suggestion but he sat down on the nearest chair. He was not sure what his chief would think of the line he was taking, but for the moment, it was very pleasant to sit and look at this delicious young creature, with the attractive frown of thought on her brow.
“There’s just one thing that occurs to me,” she said at last. “For more than a week before he died, my father seemed rather worried about something. He’d given up working after dinner for some time, but during the time I’m speaking of, he used to go off to his study soon after dinner and stay there till nearly bedtime. I went in once to see what he was up to and try to get him out of it—it wasn’t good for him. He’d got a whole pile of papers on his desk—balance sheets and things, and he was making a lot of notes on some foolscap. It wasn’t like him to be worried—he always took business so calmly. I don’t suppose there’s anything in it.”
“You don’t know what the papers were?”