Towards Zero - Agatha Christie [44]
“I was sent for by the butler before this was discovered. Lady Tressilian’s maid was found in a coma this morning.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Heavily doped with one of the barbiturates. She’s pretty bad, but she’ll pull round.”
“The maid?” said Battle. His rather oxlike eyes went heavily to the big bell pull, the tassel of which rested on the pillow near the dead woman’s hand.
Lazenby nodded.
“Exactly. That’s the first thing Lady Tressilian would have done if she’d cause to feel alarm—pull that bell and summon the maid. Well, she could have pulled it till all was blue. The maid wouldn’t have heard.”
“That was taken care of, was it?” said Battle. “You’re sure of that? She wasn’t in the habit of taking sleeping draughts?”
“I’m positive she wasn’t. There’s no sign of such a thing in her room. And I’ve found out how it was given to her. Senna pods. She drank a brew of senna pods every night. The stuff was in that.”
Superintendent Battle scratched his chin.
“H’m,” he said. “Somebody knew all about this house. You know, doctor, this is a very odd sort of murder.”
“Well,” said Lazenby, “that’s your business.”
“He’s a good man, our doctor,” said Leach when Lazenby had left the room.
The two men were alone now. The photographs had been taken, and measurements recorded. The two police officers knew every fact that was to be known about the room where the crime had been committed.
Battle nodded in answer to his nephew’s remark. He seemed to be puzzling over something.
“Do you think anyone could have handled that club—with gloves on, say—after those fingerprints were made?”
Leach shook his head.
“I don’t and no more do you. You couldn’t grasp that club—not use it, I mean, without smearing those prints. They weren’t smeared. They were as clear as clear. You saw for yourself.”
Battle agreed.
“And now we ask very nicely and politely if every body will allow us to take their fingerprints—no compulsion, of course. And everyone will say yes—and then one of two things will happen. Either none of these fingerprints will agree, or else—”
“Or else we’ll have got our man?”
“I suppose so. Or our woman, perhaps.”
Leach shook his head.
“No, not a woman. Those prints on the club were a man’s. Too big for a woman’s. Besides, this isn’t a woman’s crime.”
“No.” agreed Battle. “Quite a man’s crime. Brutal, masculine, rather athletic and slightly stupid. Know anybody in the house like that?”
“I don’t know anyone in the house yet. They’re all together in the dining room.”
Battle moved towards the door.
“We’ll go and have a look at them.” He glanced over his shoulder at the bed, shook his head and remarked:
“I don’t like that bell pull.”
“What about it?”
“It doesn’t fit.”
He added as he opened the door:
“Who wanted to kill her, I wonder? A lot of cantankerous old ladies about just asking for a tap on the skull. She doesn’t look that sort. I should think she was liked.” He paused a minute and then asked:
“Well off, wasn’t she? Who gets her money?”
Leach answered the implication of the words.
“You’ve hit it! That will be the answer. It’s one of the first things to find out.”
As they went downstairs together, Battle glanced at the list in his hand. He read out:
“Miss Aldin, Mr. Royde, Mr. Strange, Mrs. Strange, Mrs. Audrey Strange. H’m, seem a lot of the Strange family.”
“Those are his two wives, I understand.”
Battle’s eyebrows rose and he murmured:
“Bluebeard, is he?”
The family were assembled round the dining room table, where they had made a pretence of eating.
Superintendent Battle glanced keenly at the faces turned to him. He was sizing them up after his own peculiar methods. His view of them might have surprised them had they known it. It was a sternly biased view. No matter what the law pretends as to regarding people as innocent until they are proved guilty, Superintendent Battle always regarded everyone connected with a murder case as a potential murderer.
He glanced from Mary Aldin, sitting upright and pale at the head of the table, to Thomas Royde, filling a pipe beside her, to Audrey