The Duke of York's Steps

The Duke of York's Steps by Henry Wade

The Duke of York's Steps opens in the City Constitutional Club, where Sir Garth Fratten, a respected banker, lunches with his close friend Leopold Hessel, a fellow director of Fratten's Bank. Fratten reveals he has tentatively agreed to join the board of the Victory Finance Company at the invitation of an old school friend, Major-General Sir Hunter Lorne, despite having a serious heart condition (actually an aneurism) that his doctor has warned must not be strained. Hessel argues against it, citing Fratten's health, his daughter Inez, and the bank's dependence on him, but Fratten will not be moved. Walking afterward, Fratten is nearly struck by a motor-bicycle and suffers a frightening attack. At the Fratten home in Queen Anne's Gate, Inez and her half-brother Ryland (son by Fratten's first wife, though raised as his own) learn from Hessel of their father's illness and his plan to join Lorne's company. Ryland, troubled by a recent quarrel with his father over debts and a broken engagement to a chorus girl, storms out. At the Victory Finance Company's offices, Lorne announces he has invited Fratten onto the board, provoking fury from fellow director Travers Lessingham, who argues Fratten would seize control and ruin the company's speculative character; Lessingham threatens to resign if Fratten joins. Fratten visits the office, is politely received, and takes away papers to study. Some weeks later, walking home with Hessel past the Duke of York's Steps, Fratten is jostled by a hurrying stranger claiming urgent Admiralty business. Shortly after, crossing the Mall, Fratten collapses and dies, his aneurism having burst. He is buried, and at the reading of his will (held by solicitor Septimus Menticle) the estate passes equally to Ryland and Inez, with Hessel as executor. Inez, suspicious of the stranger's failure to come forward despite her newspaper appeal, approaches Assistant Commissioner Sir Leward Marradine at Scotland Yard, who assigns Detective-Inspector John Poole, an Oxford-educated, ambitious young officer, to make discreet inquiries. Poole questions the irritable physician Sir Horace Spavage, interviews Inez, and discovers from Menticle that Fratten had been drafting a new will disinheriting Ryland as residuary legatee (cutting him to an annuity) in favor of Inez, a change never signed because Fratten died one day too soon. Poole also learns Ryland owed £20,000 to a mistress and had borrowed heavily from a moneylender named Silence on the strength of his expected inheritance, with the loan dated between the disinheritance threat and Fratten's death. At the inquest, medical evidence reveals the exhumed body bears bruising consistent with a deliberate blow, establishing murder. Ryland's alibi, that he was waiting in St. James's Park to be picked up by a mysterious woman named "Daphne" whose identity he cannot establish, collapses under questioning, and Menticle's testimony exposes that Ryland is not actually Fratten's biological son, meaning intestacy would have left everything to Inez alone. Poole presses Hessel on whether the stranger on the Steps could have been Ryland in disguise; Hessel insists it was not. Poole canvasses multiple witnesses to the jostling incident on the Steps, gathering conflicting descriptions of the stranger's age, height, coat, and class, and establishes that no Admiralty messenger matching the description existed, proving the man's story was invented. None of the witnesses saw an actual blow struck, leaving the method of the fatal injury unexplained. Poole also examines Fratten's private papers with Hessel's cooperation, including notes on the Victory Finance Company and old letters from Fratten's first wife. Meanwhile, Inez's attempt to trace "Daphne" through a scented handkerchief leads to the discovery that the scent was bought by Ryland himself for a former mistress, seemingly discrediting his alibi story. Confronting him, Inez's accusation provokes a confession of mutual, newly acknowledged love between them, now that they know they are not blood relations; Ryland, shaken, resolves to find the real handkerchief to prove his account. Inez then turns to secretary Laurence Mangane, an old Oxford acquaintance of Poole's, to pursue the investigation further.

By Henry Wade · First published 1929 · Genre: Mystery, Crime Fiction, Financial Thriller · 26 chapters · 98,140 words

First lines

"A glass of the Dow for Mr. Hessel, please, Rogers, and I'll have brown sherry."

The wine waiter retired to execute the order and Sir Garth Fratten turned to his guest.

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mystery novel · detective fiction · crime fiction · murder mystery · London · 1920s setting · British mystery · banker protagonist · inheritance dispute · financial motive · suspicious death · investigation

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