Towards Zero - Agatha Christie [29]
“Certainly no one locks their door in the daytime here,” said Mary. “Ours stands wide open all day long—but we do lock it up at night.”
“What’s the Balmoral Court like?” asked Ted Latimer. It looks a queer high Victorian atrocity of a building.”
“It lives up to its name,” said Mr. Treves. “And has good solid Victorian comfort. Good beds, good cooking—roomy, Victorian wardrobes. Immense baths with mahogany surrounds.”
“Weren’t you saying you were annoyed about something at first?” asked Mary.
“Ah yes. I had carefully reserved by letter two rooms on the ground floor. I have a weak heart, you know, and stairs are forbidden me. When I arrived I was vexed to find the rooms were not available. Instead I was allotted two rooms (very pleasant rooms, I must admit) on the top floor. I protested, but it seems that an old resident who had been going to Scotland this month was ill and had been unable to vacate the rooms.”
“Mr. Lucan, I expect?” said Mary.
“I believe that is the name. Under the circumstances, I had to make the best of things. Fortunately there is a good automatic lift—so that I have really suffered no inconvenience.”
Kay said, “Ted, why don’t you come and stay at the Balmoral Court? You’d be much more accessible.”
“Oh, I don’t think it looks my kind of place.”
“Quite right, Mr. Latimer,” said Mr. Treves. “It would not be at all in your line of country.”
For some reason or other Ted Latimer flushed.
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” he said.
Mary Aldin, sensing constraint, hurriedly made a remark about a newspaper sensation of the moment.
“I see they’ve detained a man in the Kentish Town trunk case—” she said.
“It’s the second man they’ve detained,” said Nevile. “I hope they’ve got the right one this time.”
“They may not be able to hold him even if he is,” said Mr. Treves.
“Insufficient evidence?” asked Royde.
“Yes.”
“Still,” said Kay, “I suppose they always get the evidence in the end.”
“Not always, Mrs. Strange. You’d be surprised if you knew how many of the people who have committed crimes are walking about the country free and unmolested.”
“Because they’ve never been found out, you mean?”
“Not only that. There is a man”—he mentioned a celebrated case of two years back—“the police know who committed those child murders—know it without a shadow of doubt—but they are powerless. That man has been given an alibi by two people, and though that alibi is false there is no proving it to be so. Therefore the murderer goes free.”
“How dreadful,” said Mary.
Thomas Royde knocked out his pipe and said in his quiet reflective voice:
“That confirms what I have always thought—that there are times when one is justified in taking the law into one’s own hands.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Royde?”
Thomas began to refill his pipe. He looked thoughtfully down at his hands as he spoke in jerky disconnected sentences.
“Suppose you knew—of a dirty piece of work—knew that the man who did it isn’t accountable to existing laws—that he’s immune from punishment. Then I hold—that one is justified in executing sentence oneself.”
Mr. Treves said warmly: “A most pernicious doctrine, Mr. Royde! Such an action would be quite unjustifiable!”
“Don’t see it. I’m assuming, you know, that the facts are proved—it’s just the law is powerless!”
“Private action is still not to be excused.”
Thomas smiled—a very gentle smile:
“I don’t agree,” he said. “If a man ought to have his neck wrung, I wouldn’t mind taking the responsibility of wringing it for him!”
“And in turn would render yourself liable to the law’s penalties!”
Still smiling, Thomas said: “I’d have to be careful, of course…In fact one would have to go in for a certain amount of low cunning….”
Audrey said in her clear voice:
“You’d be found out, Thomas.”
“Matter of fact,” said Thomas, “I don’t think I should.”
“I knew a case once,” began Mr. Treves, and stopped. He said apologetically: “Criminology is rather a hobby of mine, you know.”
“Please go on,” said Kay.
“I have had a fairly wide experience of criminal cases,” said Mr. Treves. “Only a few of them