Towards Zero - Agatha Christie [55]
“How could I? It would have looked as though I were jealous!”
“Well,” said Battle, “after all, you were, weren’t you?”
Kay flushed.
“Always! I’ve always been jealous of Audrey. Right from the beginning—or nearly the beginning. I used to feel her there in the house. It was as though it were her house, not mine. I changed the colour scheme and did it all up but it was no good! I’d feel her there like a grey ghost creeping about. I knew Nevile worried because he thought he’d treated her badly. He couldn’t quite forget about her—she was always there—a reproachful feeling at the back of his mind. There are people, you know, who are like that. They seem rather colourless and not very interesting—but they make themselves felt.”
Battle nodded thoughtfully. He said:
“Well, thank you, Mrs. Strange. That’s all at present. We have to ask—er—a good many questions—especially with your husband inheriting so much money from Lady Tressilian—fifty thousand pounds—”
“Is it as much as that? We get it from old Sir Matthew’s will, don’t we?”
“You know all about it?”
“Oh yes. He left it to be divided between Nevile and Nevile’s wife after Lady Tressilian’s death. Not that I’m glad the old thing is dead. I’m not. I didn’t like her very much—probably because she didn’t like me—but it’s too horrible to think of some burglar coming along and cracking her head open.”
She went out on that. Battle looked at Leach.
“What do you think of her? Good-looking bit of goods, I will say. A man could lose his head over her easy enough.”
Leach agreed.
“Doesn’t seem to me quite a lady, though,” he said dubiously.
“They aren’t nowadays,” said Battle. “Shall we see No. 1? No, I think we’ll have Miss Aldin next, and get an outside angle on this matrimonial business.”
Mary Aldin came in composedly and sat down. Beneath her outward calmness her eyes looked worried.
She answered Leach’s questions clearly enough, confirming Nevile’s account of the evening. She had come up to bed about ten o’clock.
“Mr. Strange was then with Lady Tressilian?”
“Yes, I could hear them talking.”
“Talking, Miss Aldin, or quarrelling?”
She flushed but answered quietly:
“Lady Tressilian, you know, was fond of discussion. She often sounded acrimonious when she was really nothing of the kind. Also, she was inclined to be autocratic and to domineer over people—and a man doesn’t take that kind of thing as easily as a woman does.”
“As you do, perhaps,” thought Battle.
He looked at her intelligent face. It was she who broke the silence.
“I don’t want to be stupid—but it really seems to me incredible—quite incredible, that you should suspect one of the people in this house. Why shouldn’t it be an outsider?”
“For several reasons, Miss Aldin. For one thing, nothing was taken and no entry was forced. I needn’t remind you of the geography of your own house and grounds, but just bear this in mind. On the west is a sheer cliff down to the sea, to the south are a couple of terraces with a wall and a drop to the sea, on the east the garden slopes down almost to the shore, but it is surrounded by a high wall. The only ways out are a small door leading through on to the road which was found bolted inside as usual this morning and the main door to the house, which is set on the road. I’m not saying no one could climb that wall, nor that they could not have got in by using a spare key to the front door or even a skeleton key—but I’m saying that as far as I can see no one did anything of the sort. Whoever committed this crime knew that Barrett took senna pod decoction every night, and doped it—that means someone in the house. The niblick was taken from the cupboard under the stairs. It wasn’t an outsider, Miss Aldin.”
“It wasn’t Nevile! I’m sure it wasn’t Nevile!”
“Why are you so sure?”
She raised her hands hopelessly.
“It just isn’t like him—that’s why! He wouldn’t kill a defence-less old woman in bed—Nevile!”
“It doesn’t seem very likely,” said Battle reasonably, “but you’d be surprised at the things people do when they