Towards Zero: Agatha Christie’s Superintendent Battle Mystery of a Murder Planned Long in Advance
A love story that ended in tragedy, a household full of old tensions, and a story told one evening that turns out to matter far more than anyone imagines. Towards Zero is Agatha Christie’s novel about a murder that is the end point, the "zero hour", of a plan set in motion long before.
Author: Agatha Christie (1890–1976)
Title: Towards Zero (1944)
Format: English paperback (HarperCollins), 256 pages
Scope: Superintendent Battle novel
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0008196311 (ASIN 0008196311)
A Story Told at Dinner
On the night an elderly lady is murdered, one of the guests tells a story about a boy who, long ago, wounded another child fatally with a bow and arrow. It was assumed to be an innocent accident and the child was not blamed for the death; but the narrator adds that if he ever saw that boy again he would recognise him at once, because there was something that set him apart from everyone else.
Too Much Evidence
Several things happen during that strange night, and Superintendent Battle and his nephew, Inspector Leach, find themselves faced with far too much evidence, pointing at several members of the household. At first it looks like an ordinary burglary by an outsider; little by little the unusual motives behind this strange case come to light.
Gull’s Point
The setting is Gull’s Point, Lady Tressilian’s house above the estuary at Saltcreek, where a small group gathers for a late-summer holiday. Among the guests is Nevile Strange, a handsome sportsman, who has had the awkward idea of bringing together his glamorous new wife, Kay, and his quiet former wife, Audrey. The tensions between the two women, and among the friends and relatives around them, build slowly until the evening when the elderly Mr Treves tells his story about the child with the bow and arrow.
The Idea of Zero Hour
The title comes from a remark by Mr Treves, an old lawyer who has spent his life watching trials. Detective stories, he says, usually begin with the murder, but the murder is really the end: the story begins much earlier, with all the causes and circumstances that converge towards a certain point at a certain hour. Christie builds the whole novel on that idea, with a prologue of apparently unconnected scenes that only make sense when they come together at "zero hour".
Superintendent Battle
Battle is one of Christie’s less famous detectives, but readers who meet him here often become fans. He appeared earlier in The Secret of Chimneys, The Seven Dials Mystery and Cards on the Table, alongside Poirot, and he is everything Poirot is not: large, quiet, wooden-faced and modest. Christie gives him a lovely personal touch at the start of this book, when a problem involving his own daughter at school gives him the insight he will later need.
Stage and Screen
Christie adapted the novel for the stage with Gerald Verner in 1956. In 2007 it was filmed in France as L’Heure zéro, and the same year a British television version inserted Miss Marple into the story, though she plays no part in the book.
If You Like This
Readers who enjoy Battle’s calm, methodical style should try Cards on the Table next, where he works alongside Poirot and two other investigators.
Murder Is Easy, in which Battle makes a brief appearance, is another good choice.
Both are worth seeking out.
Battle never disappoints.
Why Read It
Christie turns the usual structure of the detective novel inside out: the murder is not the beginning of the story but its culmination. Battle is a wonderfully solid, unshowy detective, and the ending is one of her cleverest.
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