of the water.
'Gets the afternoon sun,' he murmured. 'But rather a grim morning outlook. Nasty smell of seaweed at low tide, too. And that headland has got a grim look. Don't wonder it attracts suicides!'
He passed into the larger room, the door of which had been unlocked.
Here everything was in wild confusion. Clothes lay about in heaps — filmy underwear, stockings, jumpers tried on and discarded — a patterned summer frock thrown sprawling over the back of a chair. Battle looked inside the wardrobe. It was full of furs, evening dresses, shorts, tennis frocks, playsuits.
Battle shut me doors again almost reverently.
'Expensive tastes,' he remarked. 'She must cost her husband a lot of money.'
Leach said darkly: 'Perhaps that's why — ' He left the sentence unfinished.
'Why he needed a hundred — or rather fifty thousand pounds? Maybe. We'd better see, I think, what he has to say about it.'
They went down to the library. Williams was despatched to tell the servants they could get on with the housework. The family were free to return to their rooms if they wished. They were to be informed of that fact and also that Inspector Leach would like an interview with each of them separately, starting with Mr. Nevile Strange.
When Williams had gone out of the room, Battle and Leach established themselves behind a massive Victorian table. A young policeman with notebook sat in the corner of the room, his pencil poised.
Battle said: 'You carry on for a start, Jim. Make it impressive.' As the other nodded his head. Battle rubbed his chin and frowned.
'I wish I knew what keeps putting Hercule Poirot into my head.'
'You mean that old chap — the Belgian — comic little guy?'
'Comic, my foot,' said Superintendent Battle. 'About as dangerous as a black mamba and a she-leopard — that's what he is when he starts making a mountebank of himself! I wish he was here — this sort of thing would be right up his street.'
'In what way?'
'Psychology,' said Battle . 'Real psychology — not the half-baked stuff people hand out who know nothing about it.' His memory dwelt resentfully on Miss Amphrey and his daughter Sylvia. 'No — the real, genuine article — knowing just what makes the wheels go round. Keep a murderer talking — that's one of his lines. Says everyone is bound to speak what's true sooner or later — because in the end it's easier than telling lies. And so they make some little slip they don't think matters — and that's when you get them.'
'So you're going to give Nevile Strange plenty of rope?'
Battle gave an absent-minded assent. Then he added, in some annoyance and perplexity: 'But what's really worrying me is — what put Hercule Poirot into my head? Upstairs — that's where it was. Now what did I see that reminded me of that little guy?'
The conversation was put to an end by the arrival of Nevile Strange.
He looked pale and worried, but much less nervous than he had done at the breakfast table. Battle eyed him keenly. Incredible that a man who knew — and he must know if he were capable of any thought processes at all — that he had left his fingerprints on the instrument of the crime — and who had since had his fingerprints taken by the police — should show neither intense nervousness nor elaborate brazening of it out.
Nevile Strange looked quite natural — shocked, worried, grieved — and just slightly and healthily nervous.
Jim Leach was speaking in his pleasant West Country voice. 'We would like you to answer certain questions, Mr. Strange. Both as to your movements last night and in reference to particular facts. At the same time I must caution you that you are not bound to answer these questions unless you like, and that if you prefer to do so you may have your solicitor present.'
He leaned back to observe the effect of this. Nevile Strange looked, quite plainly, bewildered.
'He hasn't the least idea what we're getting at, or else he's a damned good actor,' Leach thought to himself. Aloud he said, as Nevile did not answer: 'Well, Mr. Strange?'
Nevile said: 'Of course, ask me anything you like.'
'You realise,' said Battle pleasantly, 'that anything you say will be taken down in writing and may subsequently be used in a court of law in evidence.'
A flash of temper showed on Strange's face. He said sharply: 'Are you threatening me?'
'No, no, Mr. Strange. Warning you.'
Nevile shrugged his shoulders.
'I suppose all this is part of your routine. Go ahead.'
'You are ready to make a statement?'
'If that's what you call it.'
'Then will you tell us exactly what you did last night. From dinner onwards, shall we say?'
'Certainly. After dinner we went into the drawing-room. We had coffee. We listened to the wireless — the news and so on. Then I decided to go across to Easterhead Bay Hotel and look up a chap who is staying there — a friend of mine.'
'That friend's name is?'
'Latimer. Edward Latimer.'
'An intimate friend?'
'Oh, so-so. We've seen a good deal of him since he's been down here. He's been over to lunch and dinner and we've been over there.'
Battle said: 'Rather late, wasn't it, to go off to Easterhead Bay ?'
'Oh, it's a gay spot — they keep it up till all hours.'
'But this is rather an early-to-bed household, isn't it?'
'Yes, on the whole. However, I took the latchkey with me. Nobody had to sit up.'
'Your wife didn't think of going with you?'
There was a slight change, a stiffening in Nevile's tone as he said: 'No, she had a headache. She'd already gone up to bed.'
'Please go on, Mr. Strange.'
'I was just going up to change — '
Leach interrupted: 'Excuse me, Mr. Strange. Change into what? Into evening dress, or out of evening dress?'
'Neither. I was wearing a blue suit — my best, as it happened, and as it was raining a bit and I proposed to take the ferry and walk the other side — it's about half a mile, as you know — I changed into an older suit — a grey pin-stripe, if you want me to go into every detail.'
'We do like— to get things clear,' said Leach humbly. 'Please go on.'
'I was going upstairs, as I say, when Barrett came and told me Lady Tressilian wanted to see me, so I went along and had a — a jaw with her for a bit.'
Battle said gently: 'You were the last person to see her alive, I think, Mr. Strange?'
Nevile flushed.
'Yes — yes — I suppose I was. She was quite all right then.'
'How long were you with her?'
'About twenty minutes to half an hour, I should think, then I went to my room, changed my suit and hurried off. I took the latchkey with me.'
'What time was that?'
'About half-past ten, I should think. I hurried down the hill, just caught the ferry starting and went across to the Easterhead side. I found Latimer at the hotel, we had a drink or two and a game of billiards. The time passed so quickly that I found I'd lost the last ferry back. It goes at one-thirty. So Latimer very decently got out his car and drove me back. That, as you know, means going all the way round by Saltington — sixteen miles. We left the hotel at two o'clock and got back here somewhere around half-past, I should say. I thanked Ted Latimer, asked him in for a drink, but he said he'd rather get straight back, so I let myself in and went straight up to bed. I didn't see or hear anything amiss. The house seemed all asleep and peaceful. Then this morning I heard that girl screaming and — '
