Towards Zero Read online

  “Of course. You and I are Fate. Fate let us meet. Fate brought us together. Do you remember when we met at Cannes and I was going on to Estoril and suddenly, when I got there, the first person I met was lovely Kay! I knew then that it was Fate—and that I couldn’t escape.”

  “It wasn’t exactly Fate,” Kay said. “It was me!”

  “What do you mean by ‘it was me?’”

  “Because it was! You see, I heard you say at Cannes you were going to Estoril, so I set to work on Mums and got her all worked up—and that’s why the first person you saw when you got there was Kay.”

  Nevile looked at her with a rather curious expression. He said slowly: “You never told me that before.”

  “No, because it wouldn’t have been good for you. It might have made you conceited! But I always have been good at planning. Things don’t happen unless you make them! You call me a nitwit sometimes—but in my own way I’m quite clever. I make things happen. Sometimes I have to plan a long way beforehand.”

  “The brainwork must be intense.”

  “It’s all very well to laugh.”

  Nevile said with a sudden curious bitterness:

  “Am I just beginning to understand the woman I’ve married? For Fate—read Kay!”

  Kay said:

  “You’re not cross, are you, Nevile?”

  He said rather absently:

  “No—no, of course not. I was just—thinking….”

  August 10th

  Lord Cornelly, that rich and eccentric peer, was sitting at the monumental desk which was his especial pride and pleasure. It had been designed for him at immense expense and the whole furnishing of the room was subordinated to it. The effect was terrific and only slightly marred by the unavoidable addition of Lord Cornelly himself, an insignificant and rotund little man completely dwarfed by the desk’s magnificence.

  Into this scene of City splendour there entered a blonde secretary, also in harmony with the luxury furnishings.

  Gliding silently across the floor, she laid a slip of paper before the great man.

  Lord Cornelly peered down at it.

  “MacWhirter? MacWhirter? Who’s he? Never heard of him. Has he got an appointment?”

  The blonde secretary indicated that such was the case.

  “MacWhirter, eh? Oh! MacWhirter! That fellow! Of course! Send him in. Send him in at once.”

  Lord Cornelly chuckled gleefully. He was in high good-humour.

  Throwing himself back in his chair, he stared up into the dour unsmiling face of the man he had summoned to an interview.

  “You’re MacWhirter, eh? Angus MacWhirter?”

  “That’s my name.”

  MacWhirter spoke stiffly, standing erect and unsmiling.

  “You were with Herbert Clay? That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  Lord Cornelly began to chuckle again.

  “I know all about you. Clay got his driving licence endorsed, all because you wouldn’t back him up and swear he was going at twenty miles an hour! Livid about it he was!” The chuckle increased. “Told us all about it in the Savoy Grill. ‘That damned pig-headed Scot!’ That’s what he said! Went on and on. D’you know what I was thinking?”

  “I’ve not the least idea.”

  MacWhirter’s tone was repressive. Lord Cornelly took no notice. He was enjoying his remembrance of his own reactions.

  “I thought to myself: ‘That’s the kind of chap I could do with! Man who can’t be bribed to tell lies.’ You won’t have to tell lies for me. I don’t do my business that way. I go about the world looking for honest men—and there are damned few of them!”

  The little peer cackled with shrill laughter, his shrewd monkeylike face wrinkled with mirth. MacWhirter stood solidly, not amused.

  Lord Cornelly stopped laughing. His face became shrewd, alert.

  “If you want a job MacWhirter, I’ve got one for you.”

  “I could do with a job,” said MacWhirter.

  “It’s an important job. It’s a job that can only be given to a man with good qualifications—you’ve got those all right—I’ve been into that—and to a man who can be trusted—absolutely.”

  Lord Cornelly waited. MacWhirter did not speak.

  “Well, man, can I depend upon you absolutely?”

  MacWhirter said dryly:

  “You’ll not know that from hearing me answer that of course you can.”

  Lord Cornelly laughed.

  “You’ll do. You’re the man I’ve been looking for. Do you know South America at all?”

  He went into details. Half an hour later MacWhirter stood on the pavement, a man who had landed an interesting and extremely well-paid job—and a job that promised a future.

  Fate, after having frowned, had chosen to smile upon him. But he was in no mood to smile back. There was no exultation in him, though his sense of humour was grimly tickled when he thought back over the interview. There was a stern poetic justice in the fact that it was his former employer’s diatribes against him that had actually got him his present advancement!

  He was a fortunate man, he supposed. Not that he cared! He was willing to address himself to the task of living, not with enthusiasm, not even with pleasure, but in a methodical day after day spirit. Seven months ago, he had attempted to take his own life; chance, and nothing but chance, had intervened, but he was not particularly grateful. True, he felt no present disposition to do away with himself. That phase was over for good. You could not, he admitted, take your life in cold blood. There had to be some extra fillip of despair, of grief, of desperation or of passion. You could not commit suicide merely because you felt that life was a dreary round of uninteresting happenings.

  On the whole he was glad that his work would take him out of England. He was to sail for South America the end of September. The next few weeks would be busy getting together certain equipment and being put in touch with the somewhat complicated ramifications of the business.

  But there would be a week’s leisure before he left the country. He wondered what he should do with that week? Stay in London? Go away?

  An idea stirred nebulously in his brain.

  Saltcreek?

  “I’ve a damned good mind to go down there,” said MacWhirter to himself.

  It would be, he thought, grimly amusing.

  August 19th

  “And bang goes my holiday,” said Superintendent Battle disgustedly.

  Mrs. Battle was disappointed, but long years as the wife of a police officer had prepared her to take disappointments philosophically.

  “Oh well,” she said, “it can’t be helped. And I suppose it is an interesting case?”

  “Not so that you’d notice it,” said Superintendent Battle. “It’s got the Foreign Office in a twitter—all those tall thin young men rushing about and saying Hush Hush here, there and everywhere. It’ll straighten out easy enough—and we shall save everybody’s face. But it’s not the kind of case I’d put in my Memoirs, supposing I was ever foolish enough to write any.”

  “We could put our holiday off, I suppose—” began Mrs. Battle doubtfully, but her husband interrupted her decisively.

  “Not a bit of it. You and the girls go off to Britlington—the rooms have been booked since March—pity to waste them. I tell you what I’ll do—go down and spend a week with Jim when this blows over.”

  Jim was Superintendent Battle’s nephew, Inspector James Leach.

  “Saltington’s quite close to Easterhead Bay and Saltcreek,” he went on. “I can get a bit of sea air and a dip in the briny.”

  Mrs. Battle sniffed.

  “More likely he’ll rope you in to help him over a case!”

  “They don’t have any cases this time of the year—unless it’s a woman who pinches a few sixpennyworths from Woolworth’s. And anyway Jim’s all right—he doesn’t need his wits sharpening for him.”

  “Oh well,” said Mrs. Battle. “I suppose it will work out all right, but it is disappointin
g.”

  “These things are sent to try us,” Superintendent Battle assured her.

  SNOW WHITE AND RED ROSE

  I

  Thomas Royde found Mary Aldin waiting for him on the platform at Saltington when he got out of the train.

  He had only a dim recollection of her, and now that he saw her again he was rather surprisedly aware of pleasure in her brisk capable way of dealing with things.

  She called him by his Christian name.

  “How nice to see you, Thomas. After all these years.”

  “Nice of you to put me up. Hope it isn’t a bother.”

  “Not at all. On the contrary. You’ll be particularly welcome. Is that your porter? Tell him to bring the things out this way. I’ve got the car right at the end.”

  The bags were stowed in the Ford. Mary took the wheel and Royde got in beside her. They drove off and Thomas noticed that she was a good driver, deft and careful in traffic and with a nice judgement of distance and spaces.

  Saltington was seven miles from Saltcreek. Once they were out of the small market town and on the open road, Mary Aldin reopened the subject of his visit.

  “Really, Thomas, your visit just now is going to be a godsend. Things are rather difficult—and a stranger—or partial stranger is just what is needed.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  His manner, as always, was incurious—almost lazy. He asked the question, it seemed, more from politeness than because he had any desire for the information. It was a manner particularly soothing to Mary Aldin. She wanted badly to talk to someone—but she much preferred to talk to someone who was not too much interested.

  She said:

  “Well—we’ve got rather a difficult situation. Audrey is here, as you probably know?”

  She paused questioningly and Thomas Royde nodded.

  “And Nevile and his wife also.”

  Thomas Royde’s eyebrows went up. He said after a minute or two: “Bit awkward—what?”

  “Yes it is. It was Nevile’s idea.”

  She paused. Royde did not speak, but as though aware of some current of disbelief issuing from him, she repeated assertively: “It was Nevile’s idea.”

  “Why?”

  She raised her hands for a moment from the steering wheel.

  “Oh, some modern reaction! All sensible and friends together. That idea. But I don’t think, you know, it’s working very well.”

  “Possibly it mightn’t.” He added, “What’s the new wife like?”

  “Kay? Good-looking, of course. Really very good-looking. And quite young.”

  “And Nevile’s keen on her?”

  “Oh yes. Of course they’ve only been married a year.”

  Thomas Royde turned his head slowly to look at her. His mouth smiled a little. Mary said hastily:

  “I didn’t mean that exactly.”

  “Come now, Mary. I think you did.”

  “Well, one can’t help seeing that they’ve really got very little in common. Their friends, for instance—” She came to a stop.

  Royde asked:

  “He met her, didn’t he, on the Riviera? I don’t know much about it. Only just the bare facts that the mater wrote.”

  “Yes, they met first at Cannes. Nevile was attracted, but I should imagine he’d been attracted before—in a harmless sort of way. I still think myself that if he’d been left to himself nothing would have come of it. He was fond of Audrey, you know.”

  Thomas nodded.

  Mary went on:

  “I don’t think he wanted to break up his marriage—I’m sure he didn’t. But the girl was absolutely determined. She wouldn’t rest until she’d got him to leave his wife—and what’s a man to do in those circumstances? It flatters him, of course.”

  “Head over heels in love with him, was she?”

  “I suppose it may have been that.”

  Mary’s tone sounded doubtful. She met his inquiring glance with a flush.

  “What a cat I am! There’s a young man always hanging about—good-looking in a gigolo kind of way—an old friend of hers—and I can’t help wondering sometimes whether the fact that Nevile is very well off and distinguished and all that didn’t have something to do with it. The girl hadn’t a penny of her own, I gather.”

  She paused, looking rather ashamed. Thomas Royde merely said: “Uh hum,” in a speculative voice.

  “However,” said Mary, “that’s probably plain cat! The girl is what one would call glamorous—and that probably rouses the feline instincts of middle-aged spinsters.”

  Royde looked thoughtfully at her, but his poker face showed no recognizable reaction. He said, after a minute or two:

  “But what, exactly, is the present trouble about?”

  “Really, you know, I haven’t the least idea! That’s what’s so odd. Naturally we consulted Audrey first—and she seemed to have no feeling against meeting Kay—she was charming about it all. She has been charming. No one could have been nicer. Audrey, of course, in everything she does is always just right. Her manner to them both is perfect. She’s very reserved, as you know, and one never has any idea of what she is really thinking or feeling—but honestly I don’t believe she minds at all.”

  “No reason why she should,” said Thomas Royde. He added, rather belatedly, “After all, it’s three years ago.”

  “Do people like Audrey forget? She was very fond of Nevile.”

  Thomas Royde shifted in his seat.

  “She’s only thirty-two. Got her life in front of her.”

  “Oh, I know. But she did take it hard. She had quite a bad nervous breakdown, you know.”

  “I know. The mater wrote me.”

  “In a way,” said Mary, “I think it was good for your mother to have Audrey to look after. It took her mind off her own grief—about your brother’s death. We were so sorry about that.”

  “Yes. Poor old Adrian. Always did drive too fast.”

  There was a pause. Mary stretched out her hand as a sign she was taking the turn that led down the hill to Saltcreek.

  Presently, as they were slipping down the narrow twisting road, she said:

  “Thomas—you know Audrey very well?”

  “So so. Haven’t seen much of her for the last ten years.”

  “No, but you knew her as a child. She was like a sister to you and Adrian?”

  He nodded.

  “Was she—was she at all unbalanced in any way? Oh I don’t mean that quite the way it sounds. But I’ve a feeling that there is something very wrong with her now. She’s so completely detached, her poise is so unnaturally perfect—but I wonder sometimes what is going on behind the façade. I’ve a feeling, now and then, of some really powerful emotion. And I don’t quite know what it is! But I do feel that she isn’t normal. There’s something! It worries me. I do know that there’s an atmosphere in the house that affects everybody. We’re all nervous and jumpy. But I don’t know what it is. And sometimes, Thomas, it frightens me.”

  “Frightens you?” His slow wondering tone made her pull herself together with a little nervous laugh.

  “It sounds absurd…But that’s what I meant just now—your arrival will be good for us—create a diversion. Ah, here we are.”

  They had slipped round the last corner. Gull’s Point was built on a plateau of rock overlooking the river. On two sides it had sheer cliff going down to the water. The gardens and tennis court were on the left of the house. The garage—a modern afterthought—was actually farther along the road, on the other side of it.

  Mary said:

  “I’ll put the car away now and come back. Hurstall will look after you.”

  Hurstall, the aged butler, was greeting Thomas with the pleasure of an old friend.

  “Very glad to see you, Mr. Royde, after all these years. And so will her ladyship be. You’re in the east room, sir. I think you’ll find everyone in the garden, unless you want to go to your room first.”

  Thomas shook his head. He went through the dra
wing room to the window which opened on to the terrace. He stood there for a moment, watching, unobserved himself.

  Two women were the only occupants of the terrace. One was sitting on the corner of the balustrade looking out over the water. The other woman was watching her.

  The first was Audrey—the other, he knew, must be Kay Strange. Kay did not know she was being overlooked and she took no pains to disguise her expression. Thomas Royde was not, perhaps, a very observant man where women were concerned, but he could not fail to notice that Kay Strange disliked Audrey Strange very much.

  As for Audrey, she was looking out across the river and seemed unconscious of, or indifferent to, the other’s presence.

  It was seven years since Thomas had seen Audrey Strange. He studied her now very carefully. Had she changed, and, if so, in what way?

  There was a change, he decided. She was thinner, paler, altogether more ethereal-looking—but there was something else, something he could not quite define. It was as though she were holding herself tightly in leash, watchful over every movement—and yet all the time intensely aware of everything going on round her. She was like a person, he thought, who had a secret to hide. But what secret? He knew a little of the events that had befallen her in the last few years. He had been prepared for lines of sorrow and loss—but this was something else. She was like a child who, by a tightly clenched hand over a treasure—calls attention to what it wants to hide.

  And then his eyes went to the other woman—the girl who was now Nevile Strange’s wife. Beautiful, yes. Mary Aldin had been right. He rather fancied dangerous, too. He thought: I wouldn’t like to trust her near Audrey if she had a knife in her hand….

  And yet, why should she hate Nevile’s first wife? All that was over and done with. Audrey had no part or parcel in their lives nowadays. Footsteps rang out on the terrace as Nevile came round the corner of the house. He looked warm and was carrying a picture paper.

  “Here’s the Illustrated Review,” he said. “Couldn’t get the other—”

  Then two things happened at precisely the same minute.

  Kay said: “Oh good, give it to me,” and Audrey, without moving her head, held out her hand almost absentmindedly.