Towards Zero Read online

  The high whinnying voice died away. Nevile slumped down and began to cry quietly.

  “Oh God,” said Mary Aldin. She was white to the lips.

  Battle said gently, in a low voice:

  “I’m sorry, but I had to push him over the edge…There was precious little evidence, you know.”

  Nevile was still whimpering. His voice was like a child’s.

  “I want her to be hanged. I do want her to be hanged….”

  Mary Aldin shuddered and turned to Thomas Royde.

  He took her hands in his.

  II

  “I was always frightened,” said Audrey.

  They were sitting on the terrace. Audrey sat close to Superintendent Battle. Battle had resumed his holiday and was at Gull’s Point as a friend.

  “Always frightened—all the time,” said Audrey.

  Battle said, nodding his head:

  “I knew you were dead scared first moment I saw you. And you’d got that colourless reserved way people have who are holding some very strong emotion in check. It might have been love or hate, but actually it was fear, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded.

  “I began to be afraid of Nevile soon after we were married. But the awful thing is, you see, that I didn’t know why. I began to think that I was mad.”

  “It wasn’t you,” said Battle.

  “Nevile seemed to me when I married him so particularly sane and normal—always delightfully good-tempered and pleasant.”

  “Interesting,” said Battle. “He played the part of the good sportsman, you know. That’s why he could keep his temper so well at tennis. His role as a good sportsman was more important to him than winning matches. But it put a strain upon him, of course; playing a part always does. He got worse underneath.”

  “Underneath,” whispered Audrey with a shudder. “Always underneath. Nothing you could get hold of. Just sometimes a word or a look and then I’d fancy I’d imagined it…Something queer. And then, as I say, I thought I must be queer. And I went on getting more and more afraid—the kind of unreasoning fear, you know, that makes you sick!

  “I told myself I was going mad—but I couldn’t help it. I felt I’d do anything in the world to get away! And then Adrian came and told me he loved me, and I thought it would be wonderful to go away with him, and he said….”

  She stopped.

  “You know what happened? I went off to meet Adrian—he never came…he was killed…I felt as though Nevile had managed it somehow.”

  “Perhaps he did,” said Battle.

  Audrey turned a startled face to him.

  “Oh, do you think so?”

  “We’ll never know now. Motor accidents can be arranged. Don’t brood on it, though, Mrs. Strange. As likely as not, it just happened naturally.”

  “I—I was all broken up. I went back to the Rectory—Adrian’s home. We were going to have written to his mother, but as she didn’t know about us, I thought I wouldn’t tell her and give her pain. And Nevile came almost at once. He was very nice—and—kind—and all the time I talked to him I was quite sick with fear! He said no one need know about Adrian, that I could divorce him on evidence he would send me and that he was going to remarry afterwards. I felt so thankful. I knew he had thought Kay attractive and I hoped that everything would turn out right and that I should get over this queer obsession of mine. I still thought it must be me.

  “But I couldn’t get rid of it—quite. I never felt I’d really escaped. And then I met Nevile in the Park one day and he explained that he did so want me and Kay to be friends and suggested that we should all come here in September. I couldn’t refuse, how could I? After all the kind things he’d done.”

  “‘Will you walk into my parlour? said the spider to the fly,’” remarked Superintendent Battle.

  Audrey shivered.

  “Yes, just that….”

  “Very clever he was about that,” said Battle. “Protested so loudly to everyone that it was his idea, that everyone at once got the impression that it wasn’t.”

  Audrey said:

  “And then I got here—and it was like a kind of nightmare. I knew something awful was going to happen—I knew Nevile meant it to happen—and that it was to happen to me. But I didn’t know what it was. I think, you know, that I nearly did go off my head! I was just paralysed with fright—like you are in a dream when something’s going to happen and you can’t move….”

  “I’ve always thought,” said Superintendent Battle, “that I’d like to have seen a snake fascinate a bird so that it can’t fly away—but now I’m not so sure.”

  Audrey went on:

  “Even when Lady Tressilian was killed, I didn’t realize what it meant. I was puzzled. I didn’t even suspect Nevile. I knew he didn’t care about money—it was absurd to think he’d kill her in order to inherit fifty thousand pounds.

  “I thought over and over again about Mr. Treves and the story he had told that evening. Even then I didn’t connect it with Nevile. Treves had mentioned some physical peculiarity by which he could recognize the child of long ago. I’ve got a scar on my ear but I don’t think anyone else has any sign that you’d notice.”

  Battle said: “Miss Aldin has a lock of white hair. Thomas Royde has a stiff arm which might not have been only the result of an earthquake. Mr. Ted Latimer has rather an odd-shaped skull. And Nevile Strange—” He paused.

  “Surely there was no physical peculiarity about Nevile?”

  “Oh yes, there was. His left-hand little finger is shorter than his right. That’s very unusual, Mrs. Strange—very unusual indeed.”

  “So that was it?”

  “That was it.”

  “And Nevile hung that sign on the lift?”

  “Yes. Nipped down there and back whilst Royde and Latimer were giving the old boy drinks. Clever and simple—doubt if we could ever prove that was murder.”

  Audrey shivered again.

  “Now, now,” said Battle. “It’s all over now, my dear. Go on talking.”

  “You’re very clever…I haven’t talked so much for years!”

  “No! That’s what’s been wrong. When did it first dawn on you what Master Nevile’s game was?”

  “I don’t know exactly. It came to me all at once. He himself had been cleared and that left all of us. And then, suddenly, I saw him looking at me—a sort of gloating look. And I knew! That was when—”

  She stopped abruptly.

  “That was when what—?”

  Audrey said slowly:

  “When I thought a quick way out would be—best.”

  Superintendent Battle shook his head.

  “Never give in. That’s my motto.”

  “Oh, you’re quite right. But you don’t know what it does to you being so afraid for so long. It paralyses you—you can’t think—you can’t plan—you just wait for something awful to happen. And then, when it does happen”—she gave a sudden quick smile—“you’d be surprised at the relief! No more waiting and fearing—it’s come. You’ll think I’m quite demented, I suppose, if I tell you that when you came to arrest me for murder I didn’t mind at all. Nevile had done his worst and it was over. I felt so safe going off with Inspector Leach.”

  “That’s partly why we did it,” said Battle. “I wanted you out of that madman’s reach. And besides, if I wanted to break him down I wanted to be able to count on the shock of the reaction. He’d seen his plan come off, as he thought—so the jolt would be all the greater.”

  Audrey said in a low voice:

  “If he hadn’t broken down would there have been any evidence?”

  “Not too much. There was MacWhirter’s story of seeing a man climb up a rope in the moonlight. And there was the rope itself confirming his story, coiled up in the attic and still faintly damp. It was raining that night, you know.”

  He paused and stared hard at Audrey as though he were expecting her to say something.

  As she merely looked interested he went on:

  “And
there was the pinstripe suit. He stripped, of course, in the dark at that rocky point on the Easterhead Bay side, and thrust his suit into a niche in the rock. As it happened he put it down on a decayed bit of fish washed up by the flood tide. It made a stained patch on the shoulder—and it smelt. There was some talk, I found out, about the drains being wrong in the Hotel. Nevile himself put that story about. He’d got his raincoat on over his suit, but the smell was a pervasive one. Then he got the wind up about that suit afterwards and at the first opportunity he took it off to the cleaners and like a fool, didn’t give his own name. Took a name at random, actually one he’d seen in the Hotel register. That’s how your friend got hold of it and, having a good head on him, he linked it up with the man climbing up the rope. You step on decayed fish but you don’t put your shoulder down on it unless you have taken your clothes off to bathe at night, and no one would bathe for pleasure on a wet night in September. He fitted the whole thing together. Very ingenious man, Mr. MacWhirter.”

  “More than ingenious,” said Audrey.

  “Mm, well, perhaps. Like to know about him? I can tell you something of his history.”

  Audrey listened attentively. Battle found her a good listener.

  She said:

  “I owe a lot to him—and to you.”

  “Don’t owe very much to me,” said Superintendent Battle. “If I hadn’t been a fool I’d have seen the point of that bell.”

  “Bell? What bell?”

  “The bell in Lady Tressilian’s room. Always did feel there was something wrong about that bell. I nearly got it, too, when I came down the stairs from the top floor and saw one of those poles you open windows with.

  “That was the whole point of the bell, see—to give Nevile Strange an alibi. Lady T didn’t remember what she had rung for—of course she didn’t, because she hadn’t rung at all! Nevile rang the bell from outside in the passage with that long pole, the wires ran along the ceiling. So down comes Barrett and sees Mr. Nevile Strange go downstairs and out, and she finds Lady Tressilian alive and well. The whole business of the maid was fishy. What’s the good of doping her for a murder that’s going to be committed before midnight? Ten to one she won’t have gone off properly by then. But it fixes the murder as an inside job, and it allows a little time for Nevile to play his role of first suspect—then Barrett speaks and Nevile is so triumphantly cleared that no one is going to inquire very closely as to exactly what time he got to the Hotel. We know he didn’t cross back by ferry, and no boats had been taken. There remained the possibility of swimming. He was a powerful swimmer, but even then the time must have been short. Up the rope he’s left hanging into his bedroom and a good deal of water on the floor as we noticed (but without seeing the point, I’m sorry to say). Then into his blue coat and trousers, along to Lady Tressilian’s room—we won’t go into that—wouldn’t have taken more than a couple of minutes, he’d fixed that steel ball beforehand—then back, out of his clothes, down the rope and back to Easterhead.”

  “Suppose Kay had come in?”

  “She’d been mildly doped, I’ll bet. She was yawning from dinner on, so they tell me. Besides, he’d taken care to have a quarrel with her so that she’d lock her door and keep out of his way.”

  “I’m trying to think if I noticed the ball was gone from the fender. I don’t think I did. When did he put it back?”

  “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.”