Towards Zero

  “Amicably?”

  Nevile flushed.

  “Certainly.”

  “You didn’t, for instance,” went on Leach smoothly, “have a violent quarrel?”

  Nevile did not answer at once. Leach said:

  “You had better tell the truth, you know. I’ll tell you frankly some of your conversation was overheard.”

  Nevile said shortly:

  “We had a bit of a disagreement. It was nothing.”

  “What was the subject of the disagreement?”

  With an effort Nevile recovered his temper. He smiled. “Frankly,” he said, “she ticked me off. That often happened. If she disapproved of anyone she let them have it straight from the shoulder. She was old-fashioned, you see, and she was inclined to be down on modern ways and modern lines of thought—divorce—all that. We had an argument and I may have got a bit heated, but we parted on perfectly friendly terms—agreeing to differ.” He added, with some heat, “I certainly didn’t bash her over the head because I lost my temper over an argument—if that’s what you think!”

  Leach glanced at Battle. Battle leaned forward ponderously across the table. He said:

  “You recognized that niblick as your property this morning. Have you any explanation for the fact that your fingerprints were found upon it?”

  Nevile stared. He said sharply:

  “I—but of course they would be—it’s my club—I’ve often handled it.”

  “Any explanation, I mean, for the fact that your fingerprints show that you were the last person to have handled it?”

  Nevile sat quite still. The colour had gone out of his face.

  “That’s not true,” he said at last. “It can’t be. Somebody could have handled it after me—someone wearing gloves.”

  “No, Mr. Strange—nobody could have handled it in the sense you mean—by raising it to strike—without blurring your own marks.”

  There was a pause—a very long pause.

  “Oh, God,” said Nevile convulsively, and gave a long shudder. He put his hands over his eyes. The two policemen watched him.

  Then he took away his hands. He sat up straight.

  “It isn’t true,” he said quietly. “It simply isn’t true. You think I killed her, but I didn’t. I swear I didn’t. There’s some horrible mistake.”

  “You’ve no explanation to offer about these fingerprints?”

  “How can I have? I’m dumbfounded.”

  “Have you any explanation for the fact that the sleeves and cuffs of your dark blue suit are stained with blood?”

  “Blood?” It was a horror-struck whisper. “It couldn’t be!”

  “You didn’t, for instance, cut yourself—”

  “No. No, of course I didn’t!”

  They waited a little while.

  Nevile Strange, his forehead creased, seemed to be thinking. He looked up at them at last with frightened horror-stricken eyes.

  “It’s fantastic!” he said. “Simply fantastic. It’s none of it true.”

  “Facts are true enough,” said Superintendent Battle.

  “But why should I do such a thing? It’s unthinkable—unbelievable! I’ve known Camilla all my life.”

  Leach coughed.

  “I believe you told us yourself, Mr. Strange, that you come into a good deal of money upon Lady Tressilian’s death?”

  “You think that’s why—But I don’t want money! I don’t need it!”

  “That,” said Leach, with his little cough, “is what you say, Mr. Strange.”

  Nevile sprang up.

  “Look here, that’s something I can prove. That I didn’t need money. Let me ring up my bank manager—you can talk to him yourself.”

  The call was put through. The line was clear and in a very few minutes they were through to London. Nevile spoke:

  “That you, Ronaldson? Nevile Strange speaking. You know my voice. Look here, will you give the police—they’re here now—all the information they want about my affairs—yes—yes, please.”

  Leach took the phone. He spoke quietly. It went on, question and answer.

  He replaced the phone at last.

  “Well?” said Nevile eagerly.

  Leach said impassively:

  “You have a substantial credit balance, and the Bank have charge of all your investments and report them to be in a favourable condition.”

  “So you see it’s true what I said!”

  “It seems so—but again, Mr. Strange, you may have commitments, debts—payment of blackmail—reasons for requiring money of which we do not know.”

  “But I haven’t! I assure you I haven’t. You won’t find anything of that kind.”

  Superintendent Battle shifted his heavy shoulders. He spoke in a kind, fatherly voice.

  “We’ve sufficient evidence, as I’m sure you’ll agree, Mr. Strange, to ask for a warrant for your arrest. We haven’t done so—as yet. We’re giving you the benefit of the doubt, you see.”

  Nevile said bitterly: “You mean, don’t you, that you’ve made up your minds I did it, but you want to get at the motive so as to clinch the case against me?”

  Battle was silent. Leach looked at the ceiling.

  Nevile said desperately:

  “It’s like some awful dream. There’s nothing I can say or do. It’s like—like being in a trap and you can’t get out.”

  Superintendent Battle stirred. An intelligent gleam showed between his half-closed lids.

  “That’s very nicely put,” he said. “Very nicely put indeed. It gives me an idea….”

  VI

  Sergeant Jones adroitly got rid of Nevile through the hall and then brought Kay in by the french window so that husband and wife did not meet.

  “He’ll see all the others, though,” Leach remarked.

  “All the better,” said Battle. “It’s only this one I want to deal with whilst she’s still in the dark.”

  The day was overcast with a sharp wind. Kay was dressed in a tweed skirt and a purple sweater, above which her hair looked like a burnished copper bowl. She looked half frightened, half excited. Her beauty and vitality bloomed against the dark Victorian background of books and saddleback chairs.

  Leach led her easily enough over her account of the previous evening.

  She had had a headache and gone to bed early—about quarter past nine, she thought. She had slept heavily and heard nothing until the next morning, when she was wakened by hearing someone screaming.

  Battle took up the questioning.

  “Your husband didn’t come in to see how you were before he went off for the evening?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t see him from the time you left the drawing room until the following morning. Is that right?”

  Kay nodded.

  Battle stroked his jaw.

  “Mrs. Strange, the door between your room and that of your husband was locked. Who locked it?”

  Kay said shortly: “I did.”

  Battle said nothing—but he waited—waited like an elderly fatherly cat—for a mouse to come out of the hole he was watching.

  His silence did what questions might not have accomplished. Kay burst out impetuously:

  “Oh, I suppose you’ve got to have it all! That old doddering Hurstall must have heard us before tea and he’ll tell you if I don’t. He’s probably told you already. Nevile and I had had a row—a flaming row! I was furious with him! I went up to bed and locked the door, because I was still in a flaming rage with him!”

  “I see—I see,” said Battle, at his most sympathetic. “And what was the trouble all about?”

  “Does it matter? Oh, I don’t mind telling you. Nevile has been behaving like a perfect idiot. It’s all that woman’s fault, though.”

  “What woman?”

  “His first wife. She got him to come here in the first place.”

  “You mean—to meet you?”

  “Yes. Nevile thinks it was all his own idea—poor innocent! But it wasn’t. He never thoug
ht of such a thing until he met her in the Park one day and she got the idea into his head and made him believe he’d thought of it himself. He quite honestly thinks it was his idea, but I’ve seen Audrey’s fine Italian hand behind it from the first.”

  “Why should she do such a thing?” asked Battle.

  “Because she wanted to get hold of him again,” said Kay. She spoke quickly and her breath came fast. “She’s never forgiven him for going off with me. This is her revenge. She got him to fix up that we’d all be here together and then she got to work on him. She’s been doing it ever since we arrived. She’s clever, you know. Knows just how to look pathetic and elusive—yes, and how to play up another man, too. She got Thomas Royde, a faithful old dog who’s always adored her, to be here at the same time, and she drove Nevile mad by pretending she was going to marry him.”

  She stopped, breathing angrily.

  Battle said mildly:

  “I should have thought he’d be glad for her to—er—find happiness with an old friend.”

  “Glad? He’s as jealous as Hell!”

  “Then he must be very fond of her.”

  “Oh, he is,” said Kay bitterly. “She’s seen to that!”

  Battle’s finger still ran dubiously over his jaw.

  “You might have objected to this arrangement of coming here,” he suggested.

  “How could I? It would have looked as though I were jealous!”

  “Well,” said Battle, “after all, you were, weren’t you?”

  Kay flushed.

  “Always! I’ve always been jealous of Audrey. Right from the beginning—or nearly the beginning. I used to feel her there in the house. It was as though it were her house, not mine. I changed the colour scheme and did it all up but it was no good! I’d feel her there like a grey ghost creeping about. I knew Nevile worried because he thought he’d treated her badly. He couldn’t quite forget about her—she was always there—a reproachful feeling at the back of his mind. There are people, you know, who are like that. They seem rather colourless and not very interesting—but they make themselves felt.”

  Battle nodded thoughtfully. He said:

  “Well, thank you, Mrs. Strange. That’s all at present. We have to ask—er—a good many questions—especially with your husband inheriting so much money from Lady Tressilian—fifty thousand pounds—”

  “Is it as much as that? We get it from old Sir Matthew’s will, don’t we?”

  “You know all about it?”

  “Oh yes. He left it to be divided between Nevile and Nevile’s wife after Lady Tressilian’s death. Not that I’m glad the old thing is dead. I’m not. I didn’t like her very much—probably because she didn’t like me—but it’s too horrible to think of some burglar coming along and cracking her head open.”

  She went out on that. Battle looked at Leach.

  “What do you think of her? Good-looking bit of goods, I will say. A man could lose his head over her easy enough.”

  Leach agreed.

  “Doesn’t seem to me quite a lady, though,” he said dubiously.

  “They aren’t nowadays,” said Battle. “Shall we see No. 1? No, I think we’ll have Miss Aldin next, and get an outside angle on this matrimonial business.”

  Mary Aldin came in composedly and sat down. Beneath her outward calmness her eyes looked worried.

  She answered Leach’s questions clearly enough, confirming Nevile’s account of the evening. She had come up to bed about ten o’clock.

  “Mr. Strange was then with Lady Tressilian?”

  “Yes, I could hear them talking.”

  “Talking, Miss Aldin, or quarrelling?”

  She flushed but answered quietly:

  “Lady Tressilian, you know, was fond of discussion. She often sounded acrimonious when she was really nothing of the kind. Also, she was inclined to be autocratic and to domineer over people—and a man doesn’t take that kind of thing as easily as a woman does.”

  “As you do, perhaps,” thought Battle.

  He looked at her intelligent face. It was she who broke the silence.

  “I don’t want to be stupid—but it really seems to me incredible—quite incredible, that you should suspect one of the people in this house. Why shouldn’t it be an outsider?”

  “For several reasons, Miss Aldin. For one thing, nothing was taken and no entry was forced. I needn’t remind you of the geography of your own house and grounds, but just bear this in mind. On the west is a sheer cliff down to the sea, to the south are a couple of terraces with a wall and a drop to the sea, on the east the garden slopes down almost to the shore, but it is surrounded by a high wall. The only ways out are a small door leading through on to the road which was found bolted inside as usual this morning and the main door to the house, which is set on the road. I’m not saying no one could climb that wall, nor that they could not have got in by using a spare key to the front door or even a skeleton key—but I’m saying that as far as I can see no one did anything of the sort. Whoever committed this crime knew that Barrett took senna pod decoction every night, and doped it—that means someone in the house. The niblick was taken from the cupboard under the stairs. It wasn’t an outsider, Miss Aldin.”

  “It wasn’t Nevile! I’m sure it wasn’t Nevile!”

  “Why are you so sure?”

  She raised her hands hopelessly.

  “It just isn’t like him—that’s why! He wouldn’t kill a defence-less old woman in bed—Nevile!”

  “It doesn’t seem very likely,” said Battle reasonably, “but you’d be surprised at the things people do when they’ve got a good enough reason. Mr. Strange may have wanted money very badly.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t. He’s not an extravagant person—he never has been.”

  “No, but his wife is.”

  “Kay? Yes, perhaps—but oh, it’s too ridiculous. I’m sure the last thing Nevile has been thinking of lately is money.”

  Superintendent Battle coughed.

  “He’s had other worries, I understand?”

  “Kay told you, I suppose? Yes, it really has been rather difficult. Still, it’s nothing to do with this dreadful business.”

  “Probably not, but all the same I’d like to hear your version of the affair, Miss Aldin.”

  Mary said slowly: “Well, as I say, it has created a difficult—situation. Whosoever’s idea it was to begin with—”

  He interrupted her deftly.

  “I understood it was Mr. Nevile Strange’s idea?”

  “He said it was.”

  “But you yourself didn’t think so?”

  “I—no—it isn’t like Nevile somehow. I’ve had a feeling all along that somebody else put the idea into his head.”

  “Mrs. Audrey Strange, perhaps?”

  “It seems incredible that Audrey should do such a thing.”

  “Then who else could it have been?”

  Mary raised her shoulders helplessly.

  “I don’t know. It’s just—queer.”

  “Queer,” said Battle thoughtfully. “That’s what I feel about this case. It’s queer.”

  “Everything’s been queer. There’s been a feeling—I can’t describe it. Something in the air. A menace.”

  “Everybody strung up and on edge?”

  “Yes, just that…We’ve all suffered from it. Even Mr. Latimer—” She stopped.

  “I was just coming to Mr. Latimer. What can you tell me, Miss Aldin, about Mr. Latimer? Who is Mr. Latimer?”

  “Well, really, I don’t know much about him. He’s a friend of Kay’s.”

  “He’s Mrs. Strange’s friend. Known each other a long time?”

  “Yes, she knew him before her marriage.”

  “Mr. Strange like him?”

  “Quite well, I believe.”

  “No—trouble there?”

  Battle put it delicately. Mary replied at once and emphatically: “Certainly not!”

  “Did Lady Tressilian like Mr. Latimer?”

  “Not ve
ry much.”

  Battle took warning from the aloof tone of her voice and changed the subject.

  “This maid, now, Jane Barrett, she has been with Lady Tressilian a long time? You consider her trustworthy?”

  “Oh absolutely. She was devoted to Lady Tressilian.”

  Battle leaned back in his chair.

  “In fact you wouldn’t consider for a moment the possibility that Barrett hit Lady Tressilian over the head and then doped herself to avoid being suspected?”

  “Of course not. Why on earth should she?”

  “She gets a legacy, you know.”

  “So do I,” said Mary Aldin.

  She looked at him steadily.

  “Yes,” said Battle. “So do you. Do you know how much?”

  “Mr. Trelawny has just arrived. He told me.”

  “You didn’t know about it beforehand?”

  “No. I certainly assumed, from what Lady Tressilian occasionally let fall, that she had left me something. I have very little of my own, you know. Not enough to live on without getting work of some kind. I thought that Lady Tressilian would leave me at least a hundred a year—but she has some cousins, and I did not at all know how she proposed to leave that money which was hers to dispose of. I knew, of course, that Sir Matthew’s estate went to Nevile and Audrey.”

  “So she didn’t know what Lady Tressilian was leaving her,” Leach said when Mary Aldin had been dismissed. “At least that’s what she says.”

  “That’s what she says,” agreed Battle. “And now for Bluebeard’s first wife.”

  VII

  Audrey was wearing a pale grey flannel coat and skirt. In it she looked so pale and ghostlike that Battle was reminded of Kay’s words, “a grey ghost creeping about the house.”

  She answered his questions simply and without any signs of emotion.

  Yes, she had gone to bed at ten o’clock, the same time as Miss Aldin. She had heard nothing during the night.

  “You’ll excuse me butting into your private affairs,” said Battle, “but will you explain just how it comes about that you are here in the house?”

  “I always come to stay at this time. This year, my—my late husband wanted to come at the same time and asked me if I would mind.”

  “It was his suggestion?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Not yours?”

  “Oh no.”

  “But you agreed?”