Towards Zero - Agatha Christie [50]
Jones looked startled.
“But those prints on that niblick, sir, were—”
“I know—I know,” said Battle. “The singularly obliging Mr. Strange’s. There’s a general belief that athletes aren’t overburdened with brains (not at all true, by the way) but I can’t believe Nevile Strange is a complete moron. What about those senna pods of the maid’s?”
“They were always on the shelf in the servants’ bathroom on the second floor. She used to put ’em in to soak midday, and they stood there until the evening when she went to bed.”
“So that absolutely anybody could get at them! Anybody inside the house, that is to say.”
Leach said with conviction:
“It’s an inside job all right!”
“Yes, I think so. Not that this is one of those closed circle crimes. It isn’t. Anyone who had a key could have opened the front door and walked in. Nevile Strange had that key last night—but it would probably be a simple matter to have got one cut, or an old hand could do it with a bit of wire. But I don’t see any outsider knowing about the bell and that Barrett took senna at night! That’s local inside knowledge!
“Come along, Jim, my boy. Let’s go up and see this bathroom and all the rest of it.”
They started on the top floor. First came a boxroom full of old broken furniture and junk of all kinds.
“I haven’t looked through this, sir,” said Jones. “I didn’t know—”
“What you were looking for? Quite right. Only waste of time. From the dust on the floor nobody has been in here for at least six months.”
The servants’ rooms were all on this floor, also two unoccupied bedrooms with a bathroom, and Battle looked into each room and gave it a cursory glance, noticing that Alice, the pop-eyed housemaid, slept with her window shut; that Emma, the thin one, had a great many relations, photographs of whom were crowded on her chest of drawers, and that Hurstall had one or two pieces of good, though cracked, Dresden and Crown Derby porcelain.
The cook’s room was severely neat and the kitchen maid’s chaotically untidy. Battle passed on into the bathroom which was the room nearest to the head of the stairs. Williams pointed out the long shelf over the washbasin, on which stood tooth glasses and brushes, various unguents and bottles of salts and hair lotion. A packet of senna pods stood open at one end.
“No prints on the glass or packet?”
“Only the maid’s own. I got hers from her room.”
“He didn’t need to handle the glass,” said Leach. “He’d only have to drop the stuff in.”
Battle went down the stairs followed by Leach. Halfway down this top flight was a rather awkwardly placed window. A pole with a hook on the end stood in a corner.
“You draw down the top sash with that,” explained Leach. “But there’s a burglar screw. The window can be drawn down, only so far. Too narrow for anyone to get in that way.”
“I wasn’t thinking of anyone getting in,” said Battle. His eyes were thoughtful.
He went in the first bedroom on the next floor, which was Audrey Strange’s. It was neat and fresh, ivory brushes on the dressing table—no clothes lying about. Battle looked into the wardrobe. Two plain coats and skirts, a couple of evening dresses, one or two summer frocks. The dresses were cheap, the tailor-mades well cut and expensive, but not new.
Battle nodded. He stood at the writing table a minute or two, fiddling with the pen tray on the left of the blotter.
Williams said: “Nothing of any interest on the blotting paper or in the waste paper basket.”
“Your word’s good enough,” said Battle. “Nothing to be seen here.”
They went on to the other rooms.
Thomas Royde’s was untidy, with clothes lying about. Pipes and pipe ash on the tables and beside the bed, where a copy of Kipling’s Kim lay half open.
“Used to native servants clearing up after him,” said Battle. “Likes reading old favourites. Conservative type.”
Mary Aldin’s room was small but comfortable. Battle looked at the travel books on the shelves and the old-fashioned dented silver brushes. The furnishings and colouring in the room were more modern than the rest of the house.