Towards Zero (Superintendent Battle 5)

“Who wanted to kill her, I wonder? A lot of cantankerous old ladies about just asking for a tap on the skull. She doesn’t look that sort. I should think she was liked.” He paused a minute and then asked:

“Well off, wasn’t she? Who gets her money?”

Leach answered the implication of the words.

“You’ve hit it! That will be the answer. It’s one of the first things to find out.”

As they went downstairs together, Battle glanced at the list in his hand. He read out:

“Miss Aldin, Mr. Royde, Mr. Strange, Mrs. Strange, Mrs. Audrey Strange. H’m, seem a lot of the Strange family.”

“Those are his two wives, I understand.”

Battle’s eyebrows rose and he murmured:

“Bluebeard, is he?”

The family were assembled round the dining room table, where they had made a pretence of eating.

Superintendent Battle glanced keenly at the faces turned to him. He was sizing them up after his own peculiar methods. His view of them might have surprised them had they known it. It was a sternly biased view. No matter what the law pretends as to regarding people as innocent until they are proved guilty, Superintendent Battle always regarded everyone connected with a murder case as a potential murderer.

He glanced from Mary Aldin, sitting upright and pale at the head of the table, to Thomas Royde, filling a pipe beside her, to Audrey sitting with her chair pushed back, a coffee cup and saucer in her right hand, a cigarette in her left, to Nevile looking dazed and bewildered, trying with a shaking hand to light a cigarette, to Kay with her elbows on the table and the pallor of her face showing through her makeup.

These were Superintendent Battle’s thoughts:

Suppose that’s Miss Aldin. Cool customer—competent woman, I should say. Won’t catch her off guard easily. Man next to her is a dark horse—got a groggy arm—poker face—got an inferiority complex as likely as not. That’s one of these wives, I suppose—she’s scared to death—yes, she’s scared all right. Funny about that coffee cup. That’s Strange, I’ve seen him before somewhere. He’s got the jitters all right—nerves shot to pieces. Redheaded girl’s a tartar—devil of a temper. Brains as well as temper, though.

Whilst he was thus sizing them up Inspector Leach was making a stiff little speech. Mary Aldin mentioned everyone present by name.

She ended up:

“It has been a terrible shock to us, of course, but we are anxious to help you in any way we can.”

“To begin with,” said Leach, holding it up, “does anybody know anything about this golf club?”

With a little cry, Kay said, “How horrible. Is that what—?” and stopped.

Nevile Strange got up and came round the table.

“Looks like one of mine. Can I just see?”

“It’s quite all right now,” said Inspector Leach. “You can handle it.”

That significant “now” did not seem to produce any reaction in the onlookers. Nevile examined the club.

“I think it’s one of the niblicks out of my bag,” he said. “I can tell you for sure in a minute or two. If you will just come with me.” They followed him to a big cupboard under the stairs. He flung open the door of it and to Battle’s confused eyes it seemed literally crowded with tennis racquets. At the same time, he remembered where he had seen Nevile Strange before. He said quickly:

“I’ve seen you play at Wimbledon, sir.”

Nevile half turned his head. “Oh yes, have you?”

He was throwing aside some of the racquets. There were two golf bags in the cupboard leaning up against fishing tackle.

“Only my wife and I play golf,” explained Nevile. “And that’s a man’s club. Yes, that’s right—it’s mine.”

He had taken out his bag, which contained at least fourteen clubs.

Inspector Leach thought to himself:

“These athletic chaps certainly take themselves seriously. Wouldn’t like to be his caddy.”

Nevile was saying:

“It’s one of Walter Hudson’s niblicks from St. Esbert’s.”

“Thank you, Mr. Strange. That settles one question.”

Nevile said: “What beats me is that nothing was taken. And the house doesn’t seem to have been broken into?” His voice was bewildered—but it was also frightened.

Battle said to himself:

“They’ve been thinking it out, all of them….”

“The servants,” said Nevile, “are so absolutely harmless.”

“I shall talk to Miss Aldin about the servants,” said Inspector Leach smoothly. “In the meantime I wonder if you could give me any idea who Lady Tressilian’s solicitors are?”

“Askwith & Trelawny,” replied Nevile promptly. “St. Loo.”

“Thank you, Mr. Strange. We shall have to find out from them all about Lady Tressilian’s property.”

“Do you mean,” asked Nevile, “who inherits her money?”

“That’s right, sir. Her will, and all that.”

“I don’t know about her will,” said Nevile. “She had not very much of her own to leave so far as I know. I can tell you about the bulk of her property.”

“Yes, Mr. Strange?”

“It comes to me and my wife under the will of the late Sir Matthew Tressilian. Lady Tressilian only had a life interest in it.”

“Indeed, is that so?” Inspector Leach looked at Nevile with the interested attention of someone who spots a possibly valuable addition to his pet collection. The look made Nevile wince nervously. Inspector Leach went on and his voice was impossibly genial.

“You’ve no idea of the amount, Mr. Strange?”

“I couldn’t tell you offhand. In the neighbourhood of a hundred thousand pounds, I believe.”

“Indeed. To each of you?”

“No, divided between us.”

“I see. A very considerable sum.”

Nevile smiled. He said quietly: “I’ve got plenty to live on of my own, you know, without hankering to step into dead people’s shoes.”

Inspector Leach looked shocked at having such ideas attributed to him.

They went back into the dining room and Leach said his next little piece. This was on the subject of fingerprints—a matter of routine—elimination of those of the household in the dead woman’s bedroom.

Everyone expressed willingness—almost eagerness—to have their fingerprints taken. They were shepherded into the library for that purpose, where Detective Sergeant Jones was waiting for them with his little roller.

Battle and Leach began on the servants.

Nothing very much was to be got from them. Hurstall explained his system of locking up the house and swore that he had found it untouched in the morning. There were no signs of any entry by an intruder. The front door, he explained, had been left on the latch. That is to say, it was not bolted, but could be opened from outside with a key. It was left like that because Mr. Nevile had gone over to Easterhead Bay and would be back late.

“Do you know what time he came in?”

“Yes, sir, I think it was about half past two. Someone came back with him, I think. I heard voices and then a car drive away and then I heard the door close and Mr. Nevile come upstairs.”

“What time did he leave here last night for Easterhead Bay?”

“About twenty past ten. I heard the door close.”

Leach nodded. There did not seem to be much more to be got from Hurstall at the moment. He interviewed the others. They were all disposed to be nervous and frightened, but no more so than was natural under the circumstances.

Leach looked questioningly at his uncle as the door closed behind the slightly hysterical kitchenmaid, who had tailed the procession.

Battle said: “Have the housemaid back—not the pop-eyed one—the tall thin bit of vinegar. She knows something.”

Emma Wales was clearly uneasy. It alarmed her that this time it was the big square elderly man who took upon himself the task of questioning her.

&n

bsp; “I’m just going to give you a bit of advice, Miss Wales,” he said pleasantly. “It doesn’t do, you know, to hold anything back from the police. Makes them look at you unfavourably, if you understand what I mean—”

Emma Wales protested indignantly but uneasily:

“I’m sure I never—”

“Now, now.” Battle held up a large square hand. “You saw something or else you heard something—what was it?”

“I didn’t exactly hear it—I mean I couldn’t help hearing it—Mr. Hurstall, he heard it too. And I don’t think, not for a moment I don’t, that it had anything to do with the murder.”

“Probably not, probably not. Just tell us what it was.”

“Well, I was going up to bed. Just after ten it was—and I’d slipped along first to put Miss Aldin’s hot water bottle in her bed. Summer or winter she always has one, and so of course I had to pass right by her ladyship’s door.”

“Go on,” said Battle.

“And I heard her and Mr. Nevile going at it hammer and tongs. Voices right up. Shouting, he was. Oh, it was a proper quarrel!”

“Remember exactly what was said?”

“Well, I wasn’t really listening as you might say.”

“No. But still you must have heard some of the words.”

“Her ladyship was saying as she wouldn’t have something or other going on in her house and Mr. Nevile was saying, ‘Don’t you dare say anything against her.’ All worked up he was.”

Battle, with an expressionless face, tried once more, but he could get no more out of her. In the end he dismissed the woman.

He and Jim looked at each other. Leach said, after a minute or two:

“Jones ought to be able to tell us something about those prints by now.”

Battle asked:

“Who’s doing the rooms?”

“Williams. He’s a good man. He won’t miss anything.”