Agatha Christie - Crooked House

"Brenda had rushed over to call me. My father was ill - she said he had had a seizure of some sort.

"I'd been sitting with the dear old boy only about half an hour earlier. He'd been perfectly all right then. I rushed over. He was blue in the face, gasping. I dashed down to Philip. He rang up the doctor. I - we couldn't do anything. Of course I never dreamed for a moment then that there had been any funny business. Funny?

Did I say funny? God, what a word to use."

With a little difficulty, Taverner and I disentangled ourselves from the emotional atmosphere of Roger Leonides's room and found ourselves outside the door, once more at the top of the stairs.

"Whew!" said Taverner. "What a contrast from the other brother." He added, rather inconsequently "Curious things, rooms. Tell you quite a lot about the people j who live in them." ^ I agreed and he went on.

"Curious the people who marry each other, too, isn't it?".,. ^ I was not quite sure if he was referring to Clemency and Roger, or to Philip and Magda. His words applied equally well to either. Yet it seemed to me that both the marriages might be classed as happy ones.

Roger's and Clemency's certainly was.

"I shouldn't say he was a poisoner, would | you?" asked Taverner. "Not off hand, I wouldn't. Of course, you never know. Now j she's more the type. Remorseless sort of woman. Might be a bit mad."

Again I agreed. "But I don't suppose,"

I said, "that she'd murder anyone just because she didn't approve of their aims and mode of life. Perhaps, if she really hated the old man - but are any murders committed just out of pure hate?"

"Precious few," said Taverner. "I've ^m^ aprnss one mvself. No, I think we're a good deal safer to stick to Mrs.

Brenda. But God knows if we'll ever get any evidence."

A parlourmaid opened the door of the opposite wing to us. She looked scared but slightly contemptuous when she saw Taverner.

"You want to see the mistress?"

"Yes, please."

She showed us into a big drawing room and went out.

Its proportions were the same as the drawing room on the ground floor below.

There were coloured cretonnes, very gay in colour and striped silk curtains. Over the mantelpiece was a portrait that held my gaze riveted - not only because of the master hand that had painted it, but also because of the arresting face of the subject.

It was the portrait of a little old man with dark piercing eyes. He wore a black velvet skull cap and his head was sunk down in his shoulders, but the vitality and power of the man radiated forth from the canvas. The twinkling eyes seemed to hold mine.

"That's him," said Chief Inspector Taverner ungrammatically. "Painted by Augustus John. Got a personality, hasn't he?"

"Yes," I said and felt the monosyllable pounds was inadequate.

I understood now just what Edith de

Haviland had meant when she said the house seemed so empty without him. This was the Original Crooked Little Man who had built the Crooked Little House - and without him the Crooked Little House had lost its meaning.

"That's his first wife over there, painted by Sargent," said Taverner.

I examined the picture on the wall between the windows. It had a certain cruelty like many of Sargent's portraits.

The length of the face was exaggerated, I thought - so was the faint suggestion of horsiness - the indisputable correctness -It was a portrait of a typical English Lady - in Country (not Smart) Society. Handsome, but rather lifeless. A most unlikely wife for the grinning powerful little despot over the mantelpiece.

H The door opened and Sergeant Lamb stepped in.

"I've done what I could with the servants, sir," he said. "Didn't get anything."

Taverner sighed.

Sergeant Lamb took out his notebook and retreated to the far end of the room where he seated himself unobtrusively.

The door opened again and Aristide Leonides's second wife came into the room.

She wore black - very expensive black and a good deal of it. It swathed her up to the neck and down to the wrists. She moved easily and indolently, and black certainly suited her. Her face was mildly pretty and she had rather nice brown hair arranged in somewhat too elaborate a style. Her face was well powdered and she had on lipstick and rouge, but she had clearly been crying.

She was wearing a string of very large pearls fl and she had a big emerald ring on one hand and an enormous ruby on the other.

There was one other thing I noticed about her. She looked frightened.

"Good morning, Mrs. Leonides," said Taverner easily. "I'm sorry to have to trouble you again."

She said in a flat voice:

"I suppose it can't be helped."

"You understand, don't you, Mrs. Leonides, that if you wish your solicitor to be present, that is perfectly in order."

I wondered if she did understand the significance of those words. Apparently not.

She merely said rather sulkily:

"I don't like Mr. Gaitskill. I don't want him."

"You could have your own solicitor, Mrs.Leonides."

"Must I? I don't like solicitors. They confuse me."

"It's entirely for you to decide," said

Taverner, producing an automatic smile.

"Shall we go on, then?"

Sergeant Lamb licked his pencil. Brenda Leonides sat down on a sofa facing Taverner.

"Have you found out anything?" she asked, a I noticed her fingers nervously twisting and untwisting a pleat of the chiffon of her dress.

"We can state definitely now that your husband died as a result of eserine poisoning."

"You mean those eyedrops killed him?"

"It seems quite certain that when you gave Mr. Leonides that last injection, it was eserine that you injected and not insulin."

"But I didn't know that. I didn't have anything to do with it. Really I didn't, Inspector."

"Then somebody must have deliberately replaced the insulin by the eyedrops."

"What a wicked thing to do!"

"Yes, Mrs. Leonides."

"Do you think - someone did it on purpose? Or by accident? It couldn't have been a - a joke, could it?"

Taverner said smoothly:

"We don't think it was a joke, Mrs.

Leonides."

"It must have been one of the servants."

Taverner did not answer.

"It must. I don't ^ee who else could have done it."

"Are you sure? Think, Mrs. Leonides.

Haven't you any ideas at all? There's been no ill feeling anywhere? No quarrel? No grudge?"

She still stared at him with large defiant eyes.

"I've no idea at all," she said.

"You had been at the cinema that afternoon, you said?"

"Yes - I came in at half past six - it was time for the insulin - I - I - gave him the injection just the same as usual and he went all aueer. I was terrified - I rushed over to Roger - I've told you all this before. Have I got to go over it again and again?" Her voice rose hysterically.

"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Leonides. Now can

I speak to Mr. Brown?"

"To Laurence? Why? He doesn't know anything about it."

"I'd like to speak to him all the same."

She stared at him suspiciously.

"Eustace is doing Latin with him in the schoolroom. Do you want him to come here?"

"No - we'll go to him."

Taverner went quickly out of the room.

The Sergeant and I followed. I

"You've put the wind up her, sir," said

Sergeant Lamb.

Taverner grunted. He led the way up a short flight of steps and along a passage into a big room looking over the garden.

There a fair haired young man of about thirty and a handsome dark boy of sixteen were sitting at a table.

They looked up at our entrance. Sophia's brother Eustace looked at me, Laurence Brown fixed an agonised gaze on Chief Inspector Taverner.

I have never seen a man look so completely paralysed with fright. He stood up, then sat down again. He said, and his voice was almost a squeak,