Towards Zero

  “Take away the niblick,” said Battle, “and what is left? First, motive. Had Nevile Strange really got a motive for doing away with Lady Tressilian? He inherited money—a lot depends to my mind on whether he needed that money. He says not. I suggest we verify that. Find out the state of his finances. If he’s in a hole financially, and needs money, then the case against him is very much strengthened. If, on the other hand, he was speaking the truth and his finances are in a good state, why then—”

  “Well, what then?”

  “Why then, we might have a look at the motives of the other people in the house.”

  “You think, then, that Nevile Strange was framed?”

  Superintendent Battle screwed up his eyes.

  “There’s a phrase I read somewhere that tickled my fancy. Something about a fine Italian hand. That’s what I seem to see in this business. Ostensibly it’s a blunt brutal straightforward crime, but it seems to me I catch glimpses of something else—of a fine Italian hand at work behind the scenes….”

  There was a long pause while the Chief Constable looked at Battle. “You may be right,” he said at last. “Dash it all, there’s something funny about this business. What’s your idea, now, of our plan of campaign?”

  Battle stroked his square jaw.

  “Well, sir,” he said. “I’m always in favour of going about things the obvious way. Everything’s been set to make us suspicious of Mr. Nevile Strange. Let’s go on being suspicious of him. Needn’t go so far as actually to arrest him, but hint at it, question him, put the wind up him—and observe everybody’s reaction generally. Verify his statements, go over his movements that night with a toothcomb. In fact, show our hand as plainly as may be.”

  “Quite Machiavellian,” said Major Mitchell with a twinkle. “Imitation of a heavy-handed policeman by star actor Battle.”

  The Superintendent smiled.

  “I always like doing what’s expected of me, sir. This time I mean to be a bit slow about it—take my time. I want to do some nosing about. Being suspicious of Mr. Nevile Strange is a very good excuse for nosing about. I’ve an idea, you know, that something rather odd has been going on in that house.”

  “Looking for the sex angle?”

  “If you like to put it that way, sir.”

  “Handle it your own way, Battle. You and Leach carry on between you.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Battle stood up. “Nothing suggestive from the solicitors?”

  “No, I rang them up. I know Trelawny fairly well. He’s sending me a copy of Sir Matthew’s will and also of Lady Tressilian’s. She had about five hundred a year of her own—invested in gilt-edged securities. She left a legacy to Barrett and a small one to Hurstall, the rest to Mary Aldin.”

  “That’s three we might keep an eye on,” said Battle.

  Mitchell looked amused.

  “Suspicious fellow, aren’t you?”

  “No use letting oneself be hypnotized by fifty thousand pounds,” said Battle stolidly. “Many a murder has been done for less than fifty pounds. It depends on how much you want the money. Barrett got a legacy—and maybe she took the precaution to dope herself so as to avert suspicion.”

  “She very nearly passed out. Lazenby hasn’t let us question her yet.”

  “Overdid it out of ignorance, perhaps. Then Hurstall may have been in bad need of cash for all we know. And Miss Aldin, if she’s no money of her own, might have fancied a bit of life on a nice little income before she’s too old to enjoy it.”

  The Chief Constable looked doubtful.

  “Well,” he said, “it’s up to you two. Get on with the job.”

  V

  Back at Gull’s Point, the two police officers received Williams’ and Jones’ reports.

  Nothing of a suspicious nature had been found in any of the bedrooms. The servants were clamouring to be allowed to get on with the housework. Should he give them the word?

  “Might as well, I suppose,” said Battle. “I’ll just have a stroll myself first through the two upper floors. Rooms that haven’t been done very often tell you something about their occupants that’s useful to know.”

  Sergeant Jones put down a small cardboard box on the table.

  “From Mr. Nevile Strange’s dark blue coat,” he announced. “The red hairs were on the cuff, blonde hairs on the inside of the collar and the right shoulder.”

  Battle took out the two long red hairs and the half-dozen blonde ones and looked at them. He said, with a faint twinkle in his eye:

  “Convenient. One blonde, one red head and one brunette in this house. So we know where we are at once. Red hair on the cuff, blonde on the collar? Mr. Nevile Strange does seem to be a bit of a Bluebeard. His arm round one wife and the other one’s head on his shoulder.”

  “The blood on the sleeve has gone for analysis, sir. They’ll ring us up as soon as they get the result.”

  Leach nodded.

  “What about the servants?”

  “I followed your instructions, sir. None of them is under notice to leave, or seems likely to have borne a grudge against the old lady. She was strict, but well liked. In any case the management of the servants lay with Miss Aldin. She seems to have been popular with them.”

  “Thought she was an efficient woman the moment I laid eyes on her,” said Battle. “If she’s our murderess, she won’t be easy to hang.”

  Jones looked startled.

  “But those prints on that niblick, sir, were—”

  “I know—I know,” said Battle. “The singularly obliging Mr. Strange’s. There’s a general belief that athletes aren’t overburdened with brains (not at all true, by the way) but I can’t believe Nevile Strange is a complete moron. What about those senna pods of the maid’s?”

  “They were always on the shelf in the servants’ bathroom on the second floor. She used to put ’em in to soak midday, and they stood there until the evening when she went to bed.”

  “So that absolutely anybody could get at them! Anybody inside the house, that is to say.”

  Leach said with conviction:

  “It’s an inside job all right!”

  “Yes, I think so. Not that this is one of those closed circle crimes. It isn’t. Anyone who had a key could have opened the front door and walked in. Nevile Strange had that key last night—but it would probably be a simple matter to have got one cut, or an old hand could do it with a bit of wire. But I don’t see any outsider knowing about the bell and that Barrett took senna at night! That’s local inside knowledge!

  “Come along, Jim, my boy. Let’s go up and see this bathroom and all the rest of it.”

  They started on the top floor. First came a boxroom full of old broken furniture and junk of all kinds.

  “I haven’t looked through this, sir,” said Jones. “I didn’t know—”

  “What you were looking for? Quite right. Only waste of time. From the dust on the floor nobody has been in here for at least six months.”

  The servants’ rooms were all on this floor, also two unoccupied bedrooms with a bathroom, and Battle looked into each room and gave it a cursory glance, noticing that Alice, the pop-eyed housemaid, slept with her window shut; that Emma, the thin one, had a great many relations, photographs of whom were crowded on her chest of drawers, and that Hurstall had one or two pieces of good, though cracked, Dresden and Crown Derby porcelain.

  The cook’s room was severely neat and the kitchen maid’s chaotically untidy. Battle passed on into the bathroom which was the room nearest to the head of the stairs. Williams pointed out the long shelf over the washbasin, on which stood tooth glasses and brushes, various unguents and bottles of salts and hair lotion. A packet of senna pods stood open at one end.

  “No prints on the glass or packet?”

  “Only the maid’s own. I got hers from her room.”

  “He didn’t need to handle the glass,” said Leach. “He’d only have to drop the stuff in.”

  Battle went down the stairs followed by Leach. Halfway
down this top flight was a rather awkwardly placed window. A pole with a hook on the end stood in a corner.

  “You draw down the top sash with that,” explained Leach. “But there’s a burglar screw. The window can be drawn down, only so far. Too narrow for anyone to get in that way.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of anyone getting in,” said Battle. His eyes were thoughtful.

  He went in the first bedroom on the next floor, which was Audrey Strange’s. It was neat and fresh, ivory brushes on the dressing table—no clothes lying about. Battle looked into the wardrobe. Two plain coats and skirts, a couple of evening dresses, one or two summer frocks. The dresses were cheap, the tailor-mades well cut and expensive, but not new.

  Battle nodded. He stood at the writing table a minute or two, fiddling with the pen tray on the left of the blotter.

  Williams said: “Nothing of any interest on the blotting paper or in the waste paper basket.”

  “Your word’s good enough,” said Battle. “Nothing to be seen here.”

  They went on to the other rooms.

  Thomas Royde’s was untidy, with clothes lying about. Pipes and pipe ash on the tables and beside the bed, where a copy of Kipling’s Kim lay half open.

  “Used to native servants clearing up after him,” said Battle. “Likes reading old favourites. Conservative type.”

  Mary Aldin’s room was small but comfortable. Battle looked at the travel books on the shelves and the old-fashioned dented silver brushes. The furnishings and colouring in the room were more modern than the rest of the house.

  “She’s not so conservative,” said Battle. “No photographs either. Not one who lives in the past.”

  There were three or four empty rooms, all well kept and dusted ready for occupation, and a couple of bathrooms. Then came Lady Tressilian’s big double room. After that, reached by going down three little steps, came the two rooms and bathroom occupied by the Stranges.

  Battle did not waste much time in Nevile’s room. He glanced out of the open casement window below which the rocks fell sheer to the sea. The view was to the west, towards Stark Head, which rose wild and forbidding out of the water.

  “Gets the afternoon sun,” he murmured. “But rather a grim morning outlook. Nasty smell of seaweed at low tide, too. And that headland has got a grim look. Don’t wonder it attracts suicides!”

  He passed into the larger room, the door of which had been unlocked.

  Here everything was in wild confusion. Clothes lay about in heaps—filmy underwear, stockings, jumpers tried on and discarded—a patterned summer frock thrown sprawling over the back of a chair. Battle looked inside the wardrobe. It was full of furs, evening dresses, shorts, tennis frocks, playsuits.

  Battle shut the doors again almost reverently.

  “Expensive tastes,” he remarked. “She must cost her husband a lot of money.”

  Leach said darkly:

  “Perhaps that’s why—”

  He left the sentence unfinished.

  “Why he needed a hundred—or rather fifty thousand pounds? Maybe. We’d better see, I think, what he has to say about it.”

  They went down to the library. Williams was despatched to tell the servants they could get on with the housework. The family were free to return to their rooms if they wished. They were to be informed of that fact and also that Inspector Leach would like an interview with each of them separately, starting with Mr. Nevile Strange.

  When Williams had gone out of the room, Battle and Leach established themselves behind a massive Victorian table. A young policeman with notebook sat in the corner of the room, his pencil poised.

  Battle said:

  “You carry on for a start, Jim. Make it impressive.” As the other nodded his head, Battle rubbed his chin and frowned.

  “I wish I knew what keeps putting Hercule Poirot into my head.”

  “You mean that old chap—the Belgian—comic little guy?”

  “Comic my foot,” said Superintendent Battle. “About as dangerous as a black mamba and a she-leopard—that’s what he is when he starts making a mountebank of himself! I wish he was here—this sort of thing would be right up his street.”

  “In what way?”

  “Psychology,” said Battle. “Real psychology—not the half-baked stuff people hand out who know nothing about it.” His memory dwelt resentfully on Miss Amphrey and his daughter Sylvia. “No—the real genuine article—knowing just what makes the wheels go round. Keep a murderer talking—that’s one of his lines. Says everyone is bound to speak what’s true sooner or later—because in the end it’s easier than telling lies. And so they make some little slip they don’t think matters—and that’s when you get them.”

  “So you’re going to give Nevile Strange plenty of rope?”

  Battle gave an absentminded assent. Then he added, in some annoyance and perplexity:

  “But what’s really worrying me is—what put Hercule Poirot into my head? Upstairs—that’s where it was. Now what did I see that reminded me of that little guy?”

  The conversation was put to an end by the arrival of Nevile Strange.

  He looked pale and worried, but much less nervous than he had done at the breakfast table. Battle eyed him keenly. Incredible that a man who knew—and he must know if he were capable of any thought processes at all—that he had left his fingerprints on the instrument of the crime—and who had since had his fingerprints taken by the police—should show neither intense nervousness nor elaborate brazening of it out.

  Nevile Strange looked quite natural—shocked, worried, grieved—and just slightly and healthily nervous.

  Jim Leach was speaking in his pleasant west country voice.

  “We would like you to answer certain questions, Mr. Strange. Both as to your movements last night, and in reference to particular facts. At the same time I must caution you that you are not bound to answer these questions unless you like and that if you prefer to do so you may have your solicitor present.”

  He leaned back to observe the effect of this.

  Nevile Strange looked, quite plainly, bewildered.

  “He hasn’t the least idea what we’re getting at, or else he’s a damned good actor,” Leach thought to himself. Aloud he said, as Nevile did not answer, “Well, Mr. Strange?”

  Nevile said: “Of course, ask me anything you like.”

  “You realize,” said Battle pleasantly, “that anything you say will be taken down in writing and may subsequently be used in a court of law in evidence.”

  A flash of temper showed on Strange’s face. He said sharply:

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “No, no, Mr. Strange. Warning you.”

  Nevile shrugged his shoulders.

  “I suppose all this is part of your routine. Go ahead.”

  “You are ready to make a statement?”

  “If that’s what you call it.”

  “Then will you tell us exactly what you did last night? From dinner onwards, shall we say?”

  “Certainly. After dinner we went into the drawing room. We had coffee. We listened to the wireless—the news and so on. Then I decided to go across to Easterhead Bay Hotel and look up a chap who is staying there—a friend of mine.”

  “That friend’s name is?”

  “Latimer. Edward Latimer.”

  “An intimate friend?”

  “Oh, so-so. We’ve seen a good deal of him since he’s been down here. He’s been over to lunch and dinner and we’ve been over there.”

  Battle said:

  “Rather late, wasn’t it, to go off to Easterhead Bay?”

  “Oh, it’s a gay spot—they keep it up till all hours.”

  “But this is rather an early-to-bed household, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, on the whole. However, I took the latchkey with me. Nobody had to sit up.”

  “Your wife didn’t think of going with you?”

  There was a slight change, a stiffening in Nevile’s tone as he said:

  “No, she
had a headache. She’d already gone up to bed.”

  “Please go on, Mr. Strange.”

  “I was just going up to change—”

  Leach interrupted.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Strange. Change into what? Into evening dress, or out of evening dress?”

  “Neither. I was wearing a blue suit—my best, as it happened, and as it was raining a bit and I proposed to take the ferry and walk the other side—it’s about half a mile, as you know—I changed into an older suit—a grey pinstripe, if you want me to go into every detail.”

  “We do like to get things clear,” said Leach humbly. “Please go on.”

  “I was going upstairs, as I say, when Barrett came and told me Lady Tressilian wanted to see me, so I went along and had a jaw with her for a bit.”

  Battle said gently:

  “You were the last person to see her alive, I think, Mr. Strange?”

  Nevile flushed.

  “Yes—yes—I suppose I was. She was quite all right then.”

  “How long were you with her?”

  “About twenty minutes to half an hour, I should think, then I went to my room, changed my suit and hurried off. I took the latchkey with me.”

  “What time was that?”

  “About half past ten, I should think. I hurried down the hill, just caught the ferry starting and went across to the Easterhead side. I found Latimer at the Hotel, we had a drink or two and a game of billiards. The time passed so quickly that I found I’d lost the last ferry back. It goes at one thirty. So Latimer very decently got out his car and drove me back. That, as you know, means going all the way round by Saltington—sixteen miles. We left the Hotel at two o’clock and got back here somewhere around half past, I should say. I thanked Ted Latimer, asked him in for a drink, but he said he’d rather get straight back, so I let myself in and went straight up to bed. I didn’t see or hear anything amiss. The house seemed all asleep and peaceful. Then this morning I heard that girl screaming and—”

  Leach stopped him.

  “Quite, quite. Now to go back a little—to your conversation with Lady Tressilian—she was quite normal in her manner?”

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Oh, one thing and another.”