Sir Leward Marradine Takes Interest
The sudden death of Sir Garth Fratten, interesting and, in financial
circles, important as it had been, was not sufficiently sensational to
remain in the public memory more than a day or two after the funeral.
But it was not entirely forgotten. About three days later, Sir Leward
Marradine, the Assistant Commissioner in charge of the Criminal
Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, called the attention of
Chief Inspector Barrod to an advertisement in the Personal Column of
_The Times_.
“Duke of York’s Steps. Miss Inez Fratten will be glad to hear from
the gentleman who accidentally stumbled against her father, Sir
Garth Fratten, on Thursday 24th October, some time after 6 p.m.
Write 168 Queen Anne’s Gate, S.W.”
“Make anything of that, Barrod?” asked the A.C.C.¹ “I wonder if it’s
in any other papers.”
¹ Assistant Commissioner (Crime).
“Yes, sir, a lot of them. Many of the “pennies” have got a paragraph
about it. It’s just the sort of thing they seize on to and try and
work up into a ‘sensation.’”
“I wonder what the girl’s got in her mind,” muttered Sir Leward.
“Hardly a matter for us, is it, sir?” asked his subordinate.
“No, not at—not as far as I know. You needn’t bother about it, Barrod;
I know the girl slightly—I’ll go and see her quietly, just in case
there’s something behind this. Now, about these Treasury note
forgeries; has Murgate reported yet on the Goodge Street plant? I
don’t believe myself that that outfit could have produced such
high-class work. . . .”
Soon after five that evening, Sir Leward emerged from Scotland Yard
and crossed Whitehall in the direction of Storey’s Gate, taking off
his hat to the delicate Cenotaph which lay on his right.
The head of the C.I.D. was a squarely built man of medium height, with
long arms and rather rounded shoulders. In spite of the fact that he
had been a soldier, he was clean-shaven, whilst his mouth, with its
full lips, was intelligent rather than firm. Occupying a succession of
comfortable posts at the War Office during the last three and a half
years of the War, he had been at hand to slip into this plum of
ex-service civilian posts when it fell vacant, being wise enough to
relinquish a better-paid but moribund Army appointment before the
returning flood of warriors from sea and land glutted both service and
civilian markets.
The sight of the Cenotaph reminded Marradine that Remembrance Day was
nearly at hand again. This annual ceremony, the heart of which lay so
close to his own work, always filled him with an intensity of
patriotic and heroic feeling. What a wonderful sight it must be for
those million dead Britons to look down—if they could look down—upon
the dense black and white sea of their comrades and descendants,
motionless and silent in memory of them. To see the King—head of the
greatest Empire the world has ever known—and all his ministers, his
admirals and generals, standing there in reverence, with bared heads.
Quaint in a way, when you thought of some of the million whose memory
they were hallowing—scoundrels, a lot of them, cowards a good many,
and the great bulk only fighting and dying because they had to. Still
it was a noble death. War itself was a noble, an heroic affair, in a
way, bringing out all that was best in a man. Sir Leward felt a thrill
of pride that he himself had been a soldier.
The great Government offices were emptying now and the hurrying crowds
of men and women, all with the eager look of “home and supper” in
their eyes, gave to the familiar scene an air of vitality, slightly
romanticized by the soft haze of autumn twilight.
As Marradine expected, Inez Fratten was at home and in the middle of
tea in the comfortable morning-room next to the front door. She was
looking even more attractive than Sir Leward remembered and he was
glad when a dark young man who was with her, introduced by some name
faintly resembling his own, muttered some excuse and departed.
Marradine accepted a large cup of tea and a muffin.
“How nice of you to call,” said Inez, smiling sweetly—as she would
have called it—at him, after Sir Leward had murmured suitable words of
consolation. As a matter of fact Inez was rather at a loss where to
“place” her visitor; she remembered meeting him at some dinner, that
he was something important under the Government, and that he had paid
her rather heavy-handed attention after dinner, but she was not sure
whether, under his official manner, he was young-old, or old-young,
“rather a dear,” or “a pompous ass.” She didn’t even know whether it
was worth the bother of finding out. His first words, however, quickly
switched her mind off these trivial matters to one of, for her,
intense interest.
“I saw your advertisement in _The Times_, Miss Fratten. I wondered
whether I could help you in any way—I daresay you know that I’m at
Scotland Yard.”
“I hadn’t quite realized it—I knew you were something important,” said
Inez. “I hope you don’t think it was very silly of me to put that
advertisement in.”
“What was in your mind? Don’t tell me, of course, if you don’t want
to—I’m not here officially—but if I’m to help . . .” Marradine left
the sentence unfinished.
Inez thought for a minute. She wasn’t sure that she quite liked what
she saw of her visitor, but obviously he could find out far more for
her than she could herself. Anyhow, she couldn’t very well do any harm
by talking to him.
“I haven’t got anything very definite in my mind,” she replied. “But
it seems to me so odd that that man who knocked into father—who must,
quite accidentally of course, have been the cause of his
death—shouldn’t have shown any sign—written to me, or something.”
Sir Leward waited for a moment or two to see if there was more to
come. It was a curiously lame explanation; he felt that there should
be more in it than that—but evidently there was not.
“Don’t you think, perhaps, that you’re rather exaggerating the man’s
responsibility?” he suggested. “I do remember something about Sir
Garth having been jogged by somebody a little time before he fell. But
the doctor—whoever he was—can’t have thought much of it; or at any
rate, he was evidently expecting your father’s death at any time,
otherwise he would hardly have given a death certificate without an
inquest.”
“Oh yes, of course he expected it,” said Inez, with a touch of
impatience. “At least, he says so now. I knew nothing about it—about
his being seriously ill—till about a fortnight before, and then I
didn’t know for some time that it was an aneurism—we were told it was
heart disease. It’s all come so very suddenly—I feel somehow that
something’s wrong.”
With most women Sir Leward would at this point have said something
soothing and platitudinous, taken a solicitous farewell, and put the
matter out of his mind. The whole thing seemed to him so simple—a
storm in a tea-cup. But Inez attracted him; he liked her pale beauty,
her calm but decided manner—he liked particularly the peculiar droop
at the corners of her mouth when she smiled. It would be easy to see
more of her.
“I expect the chap just hasn’t noticed about your father. Those people
live curiously localized lives—his own office stool and his circle in
Balham. They often are quite unaware of what’s going on in the world
outside that. Probably he’ll see this advertisement, though—or
someone’ll talk about it in front of him. Then he’s sure to turn up or
write. Will you let me know? I might be able to help.”
Marradine rose to go—he knew the importance of brevity in any kind of
visit—it enhanced the value, tantalized the imagination.
“By the way,” he asked, as he shook hands. “Who was the young fellow I
so unkindly drove away? Not your brother, of course?”
“Mr. Mangane? He’s father’s secretary—was, I mean. There’s a good deal
to clear up—he’ll be going soon, of course.”
“Been here long?”
“A month or so, I think.”
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.
“Finance, sir? Do you mean accountancy, or—or what I might call ‘high
finance’?”
“I don’t know that I’d ‘fined’ the subject down so closely, Barrod. I
meant finance generally—accountancy would certainly come into it—stock
markets, bill-broking and so on. Hardly ‘high finance’—that’s more
international banking, isn’t it?”
“That was rather Sir Garth Fratten’s line, wasn’t it, sir? He was a
banker, and certainly had an international reputation.”
“That’s not quite the same thing, I should say, as being an
international banker—Fratten’s was a small private bank.—I should have
thought it was more of a family affair. Still, I confess I’m very
ignorant on the subject.”
“So am I, sir—an abstruse subject. Anyway, I’m afraid Poole won’t have
it. I believe he did go through a course of economics sometime—I’m not
quite sure when. I don’t know what he learnt at it.”
“Probably his way about a balance sheet—which is more than most of us
know. What about women? Can he keep his head or is he liable to be
vamped?”
“That Radinska woman didn’t put it over him in the Curzon case,
anyhow, sir.”
“No, nor she did—I remember. Good-looker, too. Bit of a St. Anthony.
On the whole he sounds the man for the job.”
“I think he is, sir,” agreed the Chief Inspector, with an inward
chuckle.
“Call him up, then, if he’s here. May as well get on with it at once.”
Chief Inspector Barrod pulled the house-telephone towards him.