Towards Zero (Superintendent Battle 5)

“And nice to see you,” said Audrey.

There was a quality of intangibility about Audrey Strange. She was of medium height with very small hands and feet. Her hair was ash-blonde and there was very little colour in her face. Her eyes were set wide apart and were a clear pale grey. Her features were small and regular, a straight little nose set in a small oval pale face. With such colouring, with a face that was pretty but not beautiful, she had nevertheless a quality about her that could not be denied nor ignored and that drew your eyes to her again and again. She was a little like a ghost, but you felt at the same time that a ghost might be possessed of more reality than a live human being….

She had a singularly lovely voice; soft and clear like a small silver bell.

For some minutes she and the old lady talked of mutual friends and current events. Then Lady Tressilian said:

“Besides the pleasure of seeing you, my dear, I asked you to come because I’ve had rather a curious letter from Nevile.”

Audrey looked up. Her eyes were wide, tranquil and calm. She said:

“Oh yes?”

“He suggests—a preposterous suggestion, I call it!—that he and—and Kay should come here in September. He says he wants you and Kay to be friends and that you yourself think it a good idea?”

She waited. Presently Audrey said in her gentle placid voice:

“Is it—so preposterous?”

“My dear—do you really want this to happen?”

Audrey was silent again for a minute or two, then she said gently:

“I think, you know, it might be rather a good thing.”

“You really want to meet this—you want to meet Kay?”

“I do think, Camilla, that it might—simplify things.”

“Simplify things!” Lady Tressilian repeated the words helplessly.

Audrey spoke very softly.

“Dear Camilla. You have been so good. If Nevile wants this—”

“A fig for what Nevile wants!” said Lady Tressilian robustly. “Do you want it, that’s the question?”

A little colour came in Audrey’s cheeks. It was the soft delicate glow of a sea shell.

“Yes,” she said. “I do want it.”

“Well,” said Lady Tressilian. “Well—”

She stopped.

“But, of course,” said Audrey. “It is entirely your choice. It is your house and—”

Lady Tressilian shut her eyes.

“I’m an old woman,” she said. “Nothing makes sense any more.”

“But of course—I’ll come some other time. Any time will suit me.”

“You’ll come in September as you always do,” snapped Lady Tressilian. “And Nevile and Kay shall come too. I may be old but I can adapt myself, I suppose, as well as anyone else, to the changing phases of modern life. Not another word, that’s settled.”

She closed her eyes again. After a minute or two she said, peering through half-shut lids at the young woman sitting beside her: “Well, got what you want?”

Audrey started.

“Oh, yes, yes. Thank you.”

“My dear,” said Lady Tressilian, and her voice was deep and concerned, “are you sure this isn’t going to hurt you? You were very fond of Nevile, you know. This may reopen old wounds.”

Audrey was looking down at her small gloved hands. One of them, Lady Tressilian noticed, was clenched on the side of the bed.

Audrey lifted her head. Her eyes were calm and untroubled.

She said:

“All that is quite over now. Quite over.”

Lady Tressilian leaned more heavily back on her pillows. “Well, you should know. I’m tired—you must leave me now, dear. Mary is waiting for you downstairs. Tell them to send Barrett to me.”

Barrett was Lady Tressilian’s elderly and devoted maid.

She came in to find her mistress lying back with closed eyes.

“The sooner I’m out of this world the better, Barrett,” said Lady Tressilian. “I don’t understand anything or anyone in it.”

“Ah! don’t say that, my lady, you’re tired.”

“Yes, I’m tired. Take that eiderdown off my feet and give me a dose of my tonic.”

“It’s Mrs. Strange coming that’s upset you. A nice lady, but she could do with a tonic, I’d say. Not healthy. Always looks as though she’s seeing things other people don’t see. But she’s got a lot of character. She makes herself felt, as you might say.”

“That’s very true, Barrett,” said Lady Tressilian. “Yes, that’s very true.”

“And she’s not the kind you forget easily, either. I’ve often wondered if Mr. Nevile thinks about her sometimes. The new Mrs. Strange is very handsome—very handsome indeed—but Miss Audrey is the kind you remember when she isn’t there.”

Lady Tressilian said with a sudden chuckle:

“Nevile’s a fool to want to bring those two women together. He’s the one who’ll be sorry for it!”

May 29th

Thomas Royde, pipe in mouth, was surveying the progress of his packing with which the deft-fingered Malayan No. 1 boy was busy. Occasionally his glance shifted to the view over the plantations. For some six months he would not see that view which had been so familiar for the past seven years.

It would be queer to be in England again.

Allen Drake, his partner, looked in.

“Hullo, Thomas, how goes it?”

“All set now.”

“Come and have a drink, you lucky devil. I’m consumed with envy.”

Thomas Royde moved slowly out of the bedroom and joined his friend. He did not speak, for Thomas Royde was a man singularly economical of words. His friends had learned to gauge his reactions correctly from the quality of his silences.

A rather thickset figure, with a straight solemn face and observant thoughtful eyes, he walked a little sideways, crablike. This, the result of being jammed in a door during an earthquake, had contributed toward his nickname of the Hermit Crab. It had left his right arm and shoulder partially helpless which, added to an artificial stiffness of gait, often led people to think he was feeling shy and awkward when in reality he seldom felt anything of the kind.

Allen Drake mixed the drinks.

“Well,” he said. “Good hunting!”

Royde said something that sounded like “Ah hum.”

Drake looked at him curiously.

“Phlegmatic as ever,” he remarked. “Don’t know how you manage it. How long is it since you went home?”

“Seven years—nearer eight.”

“It’s a long time. Wonder you haven’t gone completely native.”

“Perhaps I have.”

“You always did belong to Our Dumb Friends rather than to the human race! Planned out your leave?”

“Well—yes—partly.”

The bronze impassive face took a sudden and a deeper brick red tinge.

Allen Drake said with lively astonishment:

“I believe there’s a girl! Damn it all, you are blushing!”

Thomas Royde said rather huskily: “Don’t be a fool!”

And he drew very hard on his ancient pipe.

He broke all previous records by continuing the conversation himself.

“Dare say,” he said, “I shall find things a bit changed.”

Allen Drake said curiously:

“I’ve always wondered why you chucked going home last time. Right at the last minute, too.”

Royde shrugged his shoulders.

“Thought that shooting trip might be interesting. Bad news from home about then.”

“Of course. I forgot. Your brother was killed—in that motoring accident.”

Thomas Royde nodded.

Drake reflected that, all the same, it seemed a curious reason for putting off a journey home. There was a mother—he believed a sister also. Surely at such a time—then he remembered something. Thomas had cancelled his passage before the news of his brother’s death arrived.

Allen l

ooked at his friend curiously. Dark horse, old Thomas!

After a lapse of three years he could ask:

“You and your brother great pals?”

“Adrian and I? Not particularly. Each of us always went his own way. He was a barrister.”

“Yes,” thought Drake, “a very different life. Chambers in London, parties—a living earned by the shrewd use of the tongue.” He reflected that Adrian Royde must have been a very different chap from old Silent Thomas.

“Your mother’s alive, isn’t she?”

“The mater? Yes.”

“And you’ve got a sister, too.”

Thomas shook his head.

“Oh, I thought you had. In that snapshot—”

Royde mumbled, “Not a sister. Sort of distant cousin or something. Brought up with us because she was an orphan.”

Once more a slow tide of colour suffused the bronzed skin.

Drake thought, “Hullo—o—?”

He said: “Is she married?”

“She was. Married that fellow Nevile Strange.”

“Fellow who plays tennis and racquets and all that?”

“Yes. She divorced him.”

“And you’re going home to try your luck with her,” thought Drake.