Towards Zero

‘We were talking, sir, about the Lamorne case.’

He paused expectantly.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Treves. ‘I was thinking of that.’

There was a respectful hush.

‘But I’m afraid,’ said Mr Treves, still polishing, ‘that I was being fanciful. Yes, fanciful. Result of getting on in years, I suppose. At my age one can claim the privilege of being fanciful, if one likes.’

‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ said young Lewis, but he looked puzzled.

‘I was thinking,’ said Mr Treves, ‘not so much of the various points of law raised—though they were interesting—very interesting—if the verdict had gone the other way there would have been good grounds for appeal, I rather think—but I won’t go into that now. I was thinking, as I say, not of the points of law but of the—well, of the people in the case.’

Everybody looked rather astonished. They had considered the people in the case only as regarding their credibility or otherwise as witnesses. No one had even hazarded a speculation as to whether the prisoner had been guilty or as innocent as the court had pronounced him to be.

‘Human beings, you know,’ said Mr Treves thoughtfully. ‘Human beings. All kinds and sorts and sizes and shapes of ’em. Some with brains and a good many more without. They’d come from all over the place, Lancashire, Scotland—that restaurant proprietor from Italy and that school teacher woman from somewhere out Middle West. All caught up and enmeshed in the thing and finally all brought together in a court of law in London on a grey November day. Each one contributing his little part. The whole thing culminating in a trial for murder.’

He paused and gently beat a delicate tattoo on his knee.

‘I like a good detective story,’ he said. ‘But, you know, they begin in the wrong place! They begin with the murder. But the murder is the end. The story begins long before that—years before sometimes—with all the causes and events that bring certain people to a certain place at a certain time on a certain day. Take that little maid servant’s evidence—if the kitchenmaid hadn’t pinched her young man she wouldn’t have thrown up her situation in a huff and gone to the Lamornes and been the principal witness for the defence. That Guiseppe Antonelli—coming over to exchange with his brother for a month. The brother is as blind as a bat. He wouldn’t have seen what Guiseppe’s sharp eyes saw. If the constable hadn’t been sweet on the cook at No 48, he wouldn’t have been late on his beat …’

He nodded his head gently:

‘All converging towards a given spot … And then, when the time comes—over the top! Zero Hour. Yes, all of them converging towards zero …’

He repeated: ‘Towards zero …’

Then gave a quick little shudder.

‘You’re cold, sir, come nearer the fire.’

‘No, no,’ said Mr Treves. ‘Just someone walking over my grave, as they say. Well, well, I must be making my way homewards.’

He gave an affable little nod and went slowly and precisely out of the room.

There was a moment of dubious silence and then Rufus Lord, KC, remarked that poor old Treves was getting on.

Sir William Cleaver said:

‘An acute brain—a very acute brain—but Anno Domini tells in the end.’

‘Got a groggy heart, too,’ said Lord. ‘May drop down any minute, I believe.’

‘He takes pretty good care of himself,’ said young Lewis.

At that moment Mr Treves was carefully stepping into his smooth-running Daimler. It deposited him at a house in a quiet square. A solicitous butler valet helped him off with his coat. Mr Treves walked into his library where a coal fire was burning. His bedroom lay beyond, for out of consideration for his heart he never went upstairs.

He sat down in front of the fire and drew his letters towards him.

His mind was still dwelling on the fancy he had outlined at the Club.

‘Even now,’ thought Mr Treves to himself, ‘some drama—some murder to be—is in course of preparation. If I were writing one of these amusing stories of blood and crime, I should begin now with an elderly gentleman sitting in front of the fire opening his letters—going, unbeknownst to himself—towards zero …’

He slit open an envelope and gazed down absently at the sheet he abstracted from it.

Suddenly his expression changed. He came back from romance to reality.

‘Dear me,’ said Mr Treves. ‘How extremely annoying! Really, how very vexing. After all these years! This will alter all my plans.’

‘Open the Door and Here are the People’ (#ulink_dd96c282-4b07-52c0-9d31-c1e1f0ddf18a)

January 11th

The man in the hospital bed shifted his body slightly and stifled a groan.

The nurse in charge of the ward got up from her table and came down to him. She shifted his pillows and moved him into a more comfortable position.

Angus MacWhirter only gave a grunt by way of thanks.

He was in a state of seething rebellion and bitterness.

By this time it ought to have been over. He ought to have been out of it all! Curse that damned ridiculous tree growing out of the cliff! Curse those officious sweethearts who braved the cold of a winter’s night to keep a tryst on the cliff edge.

But for them (and the tree!) it would have been over—a plunge into the deep icy water, a brief struggle perhaps, and then oblivion—the end of a misused, useless, unprofitable life.

And now where was he? Lying ridiculously in a hospital bed with a broken shoulder and with the prospect of being hauled up in a police court for the crime of trying to take his own life.

Curse it, it was his own life, wasn’t it?

And if he had succeeded in the job, they would have buried him piously as of unsound mind!

Unsound mind, indeed! He’d never been saner! And to commit suicide was the most logical and sensible thing that could be done by a man in his position.

Completely down and out, with his health permanently affected, with a wife who had left him for another man. Without a job, without affection, without money, health or hope, surely to end it all was the only possible solution?

And now here he was in this ridiculous plight. He would shortly be admonished by a sanctimonious magistrate for doing the common-sense thing with a commodity which belonged to him and to him only—his life.

He snorted with anger. A wave of fever passed over him.

The nurse was beside him again.

She was young, red-haired, with a kindly, rather vacant face.

‘Are you in much pain?’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘I’ll give you something to make you sleep.’