Agatha Christie - Towards Zero

"H'm," said Battle . "Can't be quite a fool, then, if she sells the idea of herself as well as that. All the same, Meadway wasn't the place for you — although I don't know — this might have happened anywhere."

Sylvia twisted her hands together. She looked down. She said: "I'm — I'm sorry, father. I really am."

"So you should be," said Battle shortly. "Come here."

She came slowly and unwillingly across the room to him. He took her chin in his great square hand and looked closely into her face.

"Been through a good deal, haven't you?" he said gently. Tears started into her eyes.

Battle said slowly: "You see, Sylvia, I've known all along with you that there was something. Most people have got a weakness of some kind or another. Usually it's plain enough. You can see when a child's greedy, or bad-tempered, or got a streak of the bully in him. You were a good child, very quiet — very sweet-tempered — no trouble in any way — and sometimes I've worried. Because if there's a flaw you don't see, sometimes it wrecks the whole show when the article is tried out."

"Like me!" said Sylvia.

"Yes, like you. You've cracked under strain — and in a damned queer way, too. It's a way, oddly enough, I've never come across before."

The girl said suddenly and scornfully: "I should think you'd come across thieves often enough!"

"Oh, yes — I know all about them. And that's why, my dear — not because I'm your father (fathers don't know much about their children), but because I'm a policeman I know well enough you're not a thief! You never took a thing in this place. Thieves are of two kinds, the kind that yields to sudden and overwhelming temptation (and that happens damned seldom — it's amazing what temptation the ordinary normal honest human being can withstand) — and there's the kind that just takes what doesn't belong to them almost as a matter of course. You don't belong to either type. You're not a thief. You're a very unusual type of liar."

Sylvia began, "But — " He swept on.

"You've admitted it all? Oh, yes, I know that. There was a Saint once — went out with bread for the poor. Husband didn't like it. Met her and asked what there was in her basket. She lost her nerve and said it was roses — he tore open her basket and roses it was — a miracle! Now, if you'd been Saint Elizabeth and were out with a basket of roses, and your husband had come along and asked you what you'd got, you'd have lost your nerve and said, 'Bread.'"

He paused and then said gently: "That's how it happened, isn't it?" There was a longer pause and then the girl suddenly bent her head. Battle said: "Tell me, child. What happened exactly?"

"She had us all up. Made a speech. And I saw her eyes on me and I knew she thought it was me! I felt myself getting red — and I saw some of the girls looking at me. It was awful. And then the others began looking at me and whispering in corners. I could see they all thought so. And then the Amp had me up here with some of the others one evening and we played a sort of word-game — she said words and we gave answers — "

Battle gave a disgusted grunt.

"And I could see what it meant — and — and I sort of got paralysed. I tried not to give the wrong word — I tried to think of things quite outside — like squirrels or flowers — and the Amp was there watching me with eyes like gimlets — you know, sort of boring inside one. And after that — oh, it got worse and worse, and one day the Amp talked to me quite kindly and so — so understandingly — and — and I broke down and said I had done it — and, oh! Daddy, the relief!"

Battle was stroking his chin.

"I see."

"You do understand?"

"No, Sylvia, I don't understand, because I'm not made that way. If anyone tried to make me say I'd done something I hadn't I'd feel more like giving them a sock on the jaw. But I see how it came about in your case — and that gimlet-eyed Amp of yours has had as pretty an example of unusual psychology shoved under her nose as any half-baked exponent of misunderstood theories could ask for. The thing to do now is to clear up this mess. Where's Miss Amphrey?"

Miss Amphrey was hovering tactfully near at hand. Her sympathetic smile froze on her face as Superintendent Battle said bluntly: "In justice to my daughter, I must ask that you call in your local police over this."

"But, Mr. Battle, Sylvia herself — "

"Sylvia has never touched a thing that didn't belong to her in this place."

"I quite understand that, as a father — "

"I'm not talking as a father, but as a policeman. Get the police to give you a hand over this. They'll be discreet. You'll find the things hidden away somewhere and the right set of fingerprints on them, I expect. Petty pilferers don't think of wearing gloves. I'm taking my daughter away with me now. If the police find evidence — real evidence — to connect her with the thefts, I'm prepared for her to appear in court and take what's coming to her, but I'm not afraid."

As he drove out of the gate with Sylvia beside him some five minutes later, he asked: "Who's a girl with fair hair, rather fuzzy, very pink cheeks and a spot on her chin, blue eyes far apart? I passed her in the passage."

"That sounds like Olive Parsons."

"Ah, well, I shouldn't be surprised if she were the one."

"Did she look frightened?"

"No, looked smug! Calm, smug look I've seen in the police court hundreds of times! I'd bet good money she's the thief — but you won't find her confessing — not much!"

Sylvia said with a sigh: "It's like coming out of a bad dream. Oh, Daddy, I am sorry! Oh, I am sorry! How could I be such a fool, such an utter fool? I do feel awful about it."

"Ah well," said Superintendent Battle, patting her on the arm with a hand he disengaged from the wheel, and uttering one of his pet forms of trite consolation. "Don't you worry. These things are sent to try us. Yes, these things are sent to try us. At least, I suppose so. I don't see what else they can be sent for …"

The sun was pouring down on Nevile Strange's house at Hindhead.

It was an April day such as usually occurs at least once in a month, hotter than most of the June days to follow.

Nevile Strange was coming down the stairs. He was dressed in white flannels and held four tennis racquets under his arm.

If a man could have been selected from amongst other Englishmen as an example of a lucky man with nothing to wish for, a Selection Committee might have chosen Nevile Strange. He was a man well known to the British public, a first-class tennis player and all-round sportsman. Though he had never reached the finals at Wimbledon , he had lasted several of the opening rounds and in the mixed doubles had twice reached the semi-finals. He was, perhaps, too much of an all-round athlete to be a champion tennis player. He was scratch at golf, a fine swimmer and had done some good climbs in the Alps . He was thirty-three, had magnificent health, good looks, plenty of money, an extremely beautiful wife whom he had recently married and, to all appearances, no cares or worries.

Nevertheless as Nevile Strange went downstairs this fine morning a shadow went with him. A shadow perceptible, perhaps, to no eyes but his. But he was aware of it, the thought of it furrowed his brow and made his expression troubled and indecisive.

He crossed the hall, squared his shoulders as though definitely throwing off some burden, passed through the living-room and out on to a glass-enclosed verandah, where his wife, Kay, was curled up amongst cushions drinking orange juice.

Kay Strange was twenty-three and unusually beautiful. She had a slender but subtly voluptuous figure, dark red hair, such a perfect skin that she used only the slightest make-up to enhance it, and those dark eyes and brows which so seldom go with red hair and which are so devastating when they do.