“Will you walk into my parlour Said the spider to the fly”
Towards Zero“Will you walk into my parlour? Said the spider to the fly” is the expression Superintendent Battle uses to characterize Nevile Strange’s invitation to Audrey Strange. Its spider-and-fly image turns a seemingly conciliatory offer into a calculated snare, giving a compact name to Audrey’s fear that she had never truly escaped Nevile.
The Invitation as a Trap
Audrey recalls that, after she met Nevile in the Park, he said he wanted her and Kay Strange to become friends and proposed that they all come to Gull’s Point in September. She felt unable to refuse, in part because she remembered Nevile’s earlier kindness. Battle’s allusion exposes the darker shape of that invitation: what could be presented as a thoughtful effort at reconciliation was, in Audrey’s experience, another step into Nevile’s reach.
Recognition and Irony
Battle makes the comparison aloud, and Audrey shivers before agreeing that it was just so. He then observes that Nevile protested so loudly to everyone that the gathering was his idea that people immediately assumed it was not. The expression therefore marks a reversal between appearance and effect: Nevile’s conspicuous insistence helped conceal the very intention Battle sees in the invitation. Its force lies not in explaining every detail of the scheme, but in giving Audrey’s belated recognition a vivid image of the inviter and the person drawn in.
