Agatha Christie - Towards Zero

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 the 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 me 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 absent-minded 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 realise," 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."