The Silent Dead by Arthur Gask

Now I am quite sure that, if I had been warned beforehand that so important an officer as a Chief Detective-Inspector of Scotland Yard was going to be sent down to find out at whose hands the medium had met his death, I should certainly have been quaking in my shoes and filled with a sickening terror as to what was going to happen next.

Now, however, having actually been confronted with him, my state of mind was not by any means a terrified one, for in appearances he was very different from the grim suspicious accuser I had imagined all detectives who had worked themselves up to a high position must be.