His real passions were esoteric, of little interest to the common man or his colleagues in Bow Street, certainly not to his wife—the Berlin Treaty between Germany and the Soviets (how could that end well?) or a demonstration of a “televisor” to the Royal Society by a chap called Baird (like something from an H. G. Wells novel). He had an enquiring mind. It was a curse. Even sometimes for a detective.
