Towards Zero - Agatha Christie [48]
“What don’t you like about it, Jim?”
Leach stirred unhappily.
“I’ve always liked Mr. Strange. Seen him on and off down here for years. He’s a nice gentleman—and he’s a sportsman.”
“I don’t see,” said Battle slowly, “why a good tennis player shouldn’t be a murderer as well. There’s nothing against it.” He paused. “What I don’t like is the niblick.”
“The niblick?” asked Mitchell, slightly puzzled.
“Yes, sir, or alternatively, the bell. The bell or the niblick—not both.”
He went on in his slow careful voice.
“What do we think actually happened? Did Mr. Strange go to her room, have a quarrel, lose his temper, and hit her over the head with a niblick? If so, and it was unpremeditated, how did he happen to have a niblick with him? It’s not the sort of thing you carry about with you in the evenings.”
“He might have been practising swings—something like that.”
“He might—but nobody says so. Nobody saw him doing it. The last time anybody saw him with a niblick in his hand was about a week previously when he was practising sand shots down on the sands. As I look at it, you see, you can’t have it both ways. Either there was a quarrel and he lost his temper—and, mind you, I’ve seen him on the courts, and in one of these tournament matches these tennis stars are all het up and a mass of nerves, and if their tempers fray easily it’s going to show. I’ve never seen Mr. Strange ruffled. I should say he’d got an excellent control over his temper—better than most—and yet we’re suggesting that he goes berserk and hits a frail old lady over the head.”
“There’s another alternative, Battle,” said the Chief Constable.
“I know, sir. The theory that it was premeditated. He wanted the old lady’s money. That fits in with the bell—which entailed the doping of the maid—but it doesn’t fit in with the niblick and the quarrel! If he’d made up his mind to do her in, he’d be very careful not to quarrel with her. He could dope the maid, creep into her room in the night—crack her over the head and stage a nice little robbery, wiping the niblick and putting it carefully back where it belonged! It’s all wrong, sir—it’s a mixture of cold premeditation and unpremeditated violence—and the two don’t mix!”
“There’s something in what you say, Battle—but—what’s the alternative?”
“It’s the niblick that takes my fancy, sir.”
“Nobody could have hit her over the head with that niblick without disturbing Nevile’s prints—that’s quite certain.”
“In that case,” said Superintendent Battle, “she was hit over the head with something else.”
Major Mitchell drew a deep breath.
“That’s rather a wild assumption, isn’t it?”
“I think it’s common sense, sir. Either Strange hit her with that niblick or nobody did. I plump for nobody. In that case that niblick was put there deliberately and blood and hair smeared on it. Dr. Lazenby doesn’t like the niblick much—had to accept it because it was the obvious thing and because he couldn’t say definitely that it hadn’t been used.”
Major Mitchell leaned back in his chair.
“Go on, Battle,” he said. “I’m giving you a free hand. What’s the next step?”
“Take away the niblick,” said Battle, “and what is left? First, motive. Had Nevile Strange really got a motive for doing away with Lady Tressilian? He inherited money—a lot depends to my mind on whether he needed that money. He says not. I suggest we verify that. Find out the state of his finances. If he’s in a hole financially, and needs money, then the case against him is very much strengthened. If, on the other hand, he was speaking the truth and his finances are in a good state, why then—”
“Well, what then?”
“Why then, we might have a look at the motives of the other people in the house.”
“You think, then, that Nevile Strange was framed?”
Superintendent Battle screwed up his eyes.
“There’s a phrase I read somewhere that tickled my fancy. Something about a fine Italian hand. That’s what I seem to see in this business. Ostensibly it’s a blunt brutal straightforward crime, but it seems to me I catch glimpses of something else—of a fine Italian hand at work behind