The Duke of York's Steps by Henry Wade — Read

"You see how it is, Inspector," continued Wraile; "when I first came here as manager I was very hard up indeed. We had got married just after the War, when everyone thought they were millionaires and a golden age was just beginning. You know how all that dream crashed; we were driven down into two rooms on a top floor back -- pretty desperate. Then I got this job and saw a chance of getting Miriam one too -- she had been a typist and secretary in a small business before we married. There was a secretary here -- an elderly and incompetent female whom I couldn't stand; I sacked her and put Miriam in her place -- but I didn't dare say she was my wife -- it would have looked too like a plant. I gave out that she had been recommended to me by a friend and as she soon showed herself absolutely efficient no questions were asked. Obviously she couldn't give her real address -- mine -- so she gave the address of an old nurse who keeps a boarding-house in Bloomsbury Lane and who forwards any letters there may be and is generally tactful. There's been nothing criminal about it -- but it was a secret that we could hardly let out -- having gone so far -- and she naturally was embarrassed by your questions."

Poole wondered just how many of those questions Captain Wraile had heard. He realized now that he had not heard the door of the Board Room open but only close -- perhaps deliberately closed to catch his attention just when he had asked that question about the car. He wondered, too, whether that manœuvring of Miss Saverel's had been less to get her back to the light than to get his to the door. Could she have known that Wraile was coming in?