Towards Zero (Superintendent Battle 5)

“Next morning when all the hullabaloo arose. Once he got back in Ted Latimer’s car, he had all night to clear up his traces and fix things, mend the tennis racquet, etc. By the way, he hit the old lady back-handed, you know. That’s why the crime appeared to be left-handed. Strange’s backhand was always his strong point, remember!”

“Don’t—don’t—” Audrey put up her hands. “I can’t bear any more.”

He smiled at her.

“All the same it’s done you good to talk it all out. Mrs. Strange, may I be impertinent and give you some advice?”

“Yes, please.”

“You lived for eight years with a criminal lunatic—that’s enough to sap any woman’s nerves. But you’ve got to snap out of it now, Mrs. Strange. You don’t need to be afraid any more—and you’ve got to make yourself realize that.”

Audrey smiled at him. The frozen look had gone from her face; it was a sweet, rather timid, but confiding face, with the wide-apart eyes full of gratitude.

She said, hesitating a little: “You told the others there was a girl—a girl who acted as I did?”

Battle slowly nodded his head.

“My own daughter,” he said. “So you see, my dear, that miracle had to happen. These things are sent to teach us!”

III

Angus MacWhirter was packing.

He laid three shirts carefully in his suitcase, and then that dark blue suit which he had remembered to fetch from the cleaners. Two suits left by two different MacWhirters had been too much for the girl in charge.

There was a tap on the door and he called “Come in.”

Audrey Strange walked in. She said:

“I’ve come to thank you—are you packing?”

“Yes. I’m leaving here tonight. And sailing the day after tomorrow.”

“For South America?”

“For Chile.”

She said:

“I’ll pack for you.”

He protested, but she overbore him. He watched her as she worked deftly and methodically.

“There,” she said when she had finished.

“You did that well,” said MacWhirter.

There was a silence. Then Audrey said:

“You saved my life. If you hadn’t happened to see what you did see—”

She broke off.

Then she said: “Did you realize at once, that night on the cliff when you—you stopped me going over—when you said ‘Go home, I’ll see that you’re not hanged’—did you realize then that you’d got some important evidence?”

“Not precisely,” said MacWhirter. “I had to think it out.”

“Then how could you say—what you did say?”

MacWhirter always felt annoyed when he had to explain the intense simplicity of his thought processes.

“I meant just precisely that—that I intended to prevent you from being hanged.”

The colour came up in Audrey’s cheeks.

“Supposing I had done it?”

“That would have made no difference.”

“Did you think I had done it, then?”

“I didn’t speculate on the matter overmuch. I was inclined to believe you were innocent, but it would have made no difference to my course of action.”

“And then you remembered the man on the rope?”

MacWhirter was silent for a few moments. then he cleared his throat.

“You may as well know, I suppose. I did not actually see a man climbing up a rope—indeed I could not have done so, for I was up on Stark Head on Sunday night, not on Monday. I deduced what must have happened from the evidence of the suit and my suppositions were confirmed by the findings of a wet rope in the attic.”

From red Audrey had gone white. She said incredulously:

“Your story was all a lie?”

“Deductions would not have carried weight with the police. I had to say I saw what happened.”

“But—you might have had to swear to it at my trial.”

“Yes.”

“You would have done that?”

“I would.”

Audrey cried incredulously: “And you—you are the man who lost his job and came down to throwing himself off a cliff because he wouldn’t tamper with the truth!”

“I have a great regard for the truth. But I’ve discovered there are things that matter more.”

“Such as?”

“You,” said MacWhirter.

Audrey’s eyes dropped. MacWhirter cleared his throat in an embarrassed manner.

“There’s no need for you to feel under a great obligation or anything of that kind. You’ll never hear of me aga

in after today. The police have got Strange’s confession and they’ll not need my evidence. In any case I hear he’s so bad he’ll maybe not live to come to trial.”

“I’m glad of that,” said Audrey.

“You were fond of him once?”

“Of the man I thought he was.”

MacWhirter nodded. “We’ve all felt that way, maybe.” He went on: “Everything’s turned out well. Superintendent Battle was able to act upon my story and break down the man—”

Audrey interrupted. She said:

“He worked upon your story, yes. But I don’t believe you fooled him. He deliberately shut his eyes.”

“Why do you say that?”

“When he was talking to me he mentioned it was lucky you saw what you did in the moonlight, and then added something—a sentence or two later—about its being a rainy night.”

MacWhirter was taken aback. “That’s true. On Monday night I doubt if I’d have seen anything at all.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Audrey.

“He knew that what you pretended to have seen was what had really happened. But it explains why he worked on Nevile to break him down. He suspected Nevile as soon as Thomas told him about me and Adrian. He knew then that if he was right about the kind of crime—he had fixed on the wrong person—what he wanted was some kind of evidence to use on Nevile. He wanted, as he said, a miracle—you were Superintendent Battle’s answer to prayer.”

“That’s a curious thing for him to say,” said MacWhirter dryly.

“So you see,” said Audrey, “you are a miracle. My special miracle.”

MacWhirter said earnestly:

“I’d not like you to feel you’re under an obligation to me. I’m going right out of your life—”

“Must you?” said Audrey.

He stared at her. The colour came up, flooding her ears and temples.

She said:

“Won’t you take me with you?”

“You don’t know what you’re saying!”

“Yes, I do. I’m doing something very difficult—but that matters to me more than life or death. I know the time is very short. By the way, I’m conventional, I should like to be married before we go!”

“Naturally,” said MacWhirter, deeply shocked. “You don’t imagine I’d suggest anything else.”