Towards Zero - Agatha Christie [60]
They pursued their inquiries doggedly—with bar attendants, waiters, lift boys. Latimer had been seen in the lounge between nine and ten. He had been in the bar at a quarter past ten. But between that time and eleven twenty he seemed to have been singularly elusive. Then one of the maids was found who declared that Mr. Latimer had been “in one of the small writing rooms with Mrs. Beddoes—that’s the fat North Country lady.”
Pressed as to time, she said she thought it was about eleven o’clock.
“That tears it,” said Battle gloomily. “He was here all right. Just didn’t want attention drawn to his fat (and no doubt rich) lady friend. That throws us back on those others—the servants, Kay Strange, Audrey Strange, Mary Aldin and Thomas Royde. One of them killed the old lady, but which? If we could find the real weapon—”
He stopped, then slapped his thigh.
“Got it, Jim, my boy! I know now what made me think of Hercule Poirot. We’ll have a spot of lunch and go back to Gull’s Point and I’ll show you something.”
X
Mary Aldin was restless. She went in and out of the house, picked off a dead dahlia head here and there, went back into the drawing room and shifted flower vases in an unmeaning fashion.
From the library came a vague murmur of voices. Mr. Trelawny was in there with Nevile. Kay and Audrey were nowhere to be seen.
Mary went out in the garden again. Down by the wall she spied Thomas Royde placidly smoking. She went and joined him.
“Oh dear.” She sat down beside him with a deep perplexed sigh.
“Anything the matter?” Thomas asked.
Mary laughed with a slight note of hysteria in the laugh.
“Nobody but you would say a thing like that. A murder in the house and you just say ‘Is anything the matter?’”
Looking a little surprised, Thomas said:
“I meant anything fresh?”
“Oh, I know what you meant. It’s really a wonderful relief to find anyone so gloriously just-the-same-as-usual as you are!”
“Not much good, is it, getting all het up over things?”
“No, no. You’re eminently sensible. It’s how you manage to do it beats me.”
“Well, I suppose I’m an outsider.”
“That’s true, of course. You can’t feel the relief all the rest of us do that Nevile is cleared.”
“I’m very pleased he is, of course,” said Royde.
Mary shuddered.
“It was a very near thing. If Camilla hadn’t taken it into her head to ring the bell for Barrett after Nevile had left her—”
She left the sentence unfinished. Thomas finished it for her.
“Then old Nevile would have been for it all right.”
He spoke with a certain grim satisfaction, then shook his head with a slight smile, as he met Mary’s reproachful gaze.
“I’m not really heartless, but now that Nevile’s all right I can’t help being pleased he had a bit of a shaking up. He’s always so damned complacent.”
“He isn’t really, Thomas.”
“Perhaps not. It’s just his manner. Anyway he was looking scared as Hell this morning!”
“What a cruel streak you have!”
“Anyway it’s all right now. You know, Mary, even here Nevile has had the devil’s own luck. Some other poor beggar with all that evidence piled up against him mightn’t have had such a break.”
Mary shivered again. “Don’t say that. I like to think the innocent are—protected.”
“Do you, my dear?” His voice was gentle.
Mary burst out suddenly:
“Thomas, I’m worried. I’m frightfully worried.”
“Yes?”
“It’s about Mr. Treves.”
Thomas dropped his pipe on the stones. His voice changed as he bent to pick it up.
“What about Mr. Treves?”
“That night he was here—that story he told—about a little murderer! I’ve been wondering, Thomas…Was it just a story? Or did he tell it with a purpose?”
“You mean,” said Royde deliberately, “was it aimed at someone who was in the room?”
Mary whispered, “Yes.”
Thomas said quietly:
“I’ve been wondering, too. As a matter of fact that was what I was thinking about when you came along just now.”
Mary half closed her eyes.
“I’ve been trying to remember…He told it, you know, so very