Agatha Christie - Crooked House

"Yes?" He lifted the receiver - listened, and then said, "Put her through."

He looked at me.

"It's your young woman," he said. "She wants to speak to us. It's urgent."

I took the receiver from him.

"Sophia?"

"Charles? Is that you? It's - Josephine!"

Her voice broke slightly.

"What about Josephine?"

"She's been hit on the head. Concussion.

She's - she's pretty bad… They say she may not recover…"

I turned to the other two. c "Josephine's been knocked out," I said.

My father took the receiver from me. He said sharply as he did so: t "I told you to keep an eye on that child…"

In next to no time Taverner and I were racing in a fast police car in the direction of Swinly Dean.

I remembered Josephine emerging, from among the cisterns, and her airy remark that it was "about time for the second murder." The poor child had had no idea that she herself was likely to be the victim of the "second murder."

I accepted fully the blame that my father had tacitly ascribed to me. Of course I ought to have kept an eye on Josephine.

Though neither Taverner nor I had any real clue to the poisoner of old Leonides, it was highly possible that Josephine had.

What I had taken for childish nonsense and "showing off" might very well have been something quite different. Josephine, in her favourite sports of snooping and prying, knight have become aware of some piece of ^formation that she herself could not assess at its proper value.

I remembered the twig that had cracked in the garden.

I had had an inkling then that danger was about. I had acted upon it at the moment, and afterwards it had seemed to me that my suspicions had been melodramatic and unreal. On the contrary. I should have realised that this was murder, that whoever committed murder had endangered their neck, and that consequently that same person would not hesitate to repeat the crime if by the way safety could be assured.

Perhaps Magda, but some obscure maternal instinct, had recognised that Josephine was in peril, and that may have been what occasioned her sudden feverish haste to get the child sent to Switzerland.

Sophia came out to meet us as we arrived.

Josephine, she said, had been taken by ambulance to Market Basing General Hospital.

Dr. Gray would let them know as soon as possible the result of the X-ray. r- '"How did it happen?" asked Taverner.

Sophia led the way round to the back of the house and through a door into a small disused yard. In one corner a door stood ajar. - "Tr's a kind of wash house," Sophialj W,f explained. "There's a cat hole cut in the bottom of the door, and Josephine used to stand on it and swing to and fro."

I remembered swinging on doors in my own youth.

The wash house was small and rather dark. There were wooden boxes in it, some old hose pipe, a few derelict garden implements and some broken furniture. Just inside the door was a marble lion door stop.

"It's the door stop from the front door,"

Sophia explained. "It must have been balanced on the top of the door."

Taverner reached up a hand to the top of the door. It was a low door, the top of it only about a foot above his head.

"A booby trap," he said.

He swung the door experimentally to and fro. Then he stooped to the block of marble but he did not touch it.

"Has anyone handled this?"

"No," said Sophia. "I wouldn't let any one touch it."

"Quite right. Who found her?"

"I did. She didn't come in for her dinner at one o'clock. Nannie was calling her.

She'd passed through the kitchen and out into the stable yard about a quarter of an hour before. Nannie said, 'She'll be bouncing her ball or swinging on that door again.'

I said I'd fetch her in."

Sophia paused.

"She had a habit of playing in that way, you said? Who knew about that?"

Sophia shrugged her shoulders.

"Pretty well everybody in the house, I should think."

"Who else used the wash house? Gardeners?"

Sophia shook her head.

"Hardly anyone ever goes into it."

"And this little yard isn't overlooked from the house?" Taverner summed it up.

"Anyone could have slipped out from the house or round the front and fixed up that trap ready. But it would be chancy…"

He broke off, looking at the door, and swinging it gently to and fro.

"Nothing certain about it. Hit or miss.

And likelier miss than hit. But she was unlucky. With her it was hit."

Sophia shivered.

He peered at the floor. There were various dents on it.

"Looks as though someone experimented first M^.. to see just how it would fall…

The sound wouldn't carry to the house."

"No, we didn't hear anything. We'd no .,..„,i,- _/'ong until I came out idea anything was wi^ °, „ /4 ^,,«/-i u i g face down - all and found her lyin^,.,,,.,

«1^/4 ^»? o rAS voice broke a little. sprawled out. Sophia,,. „ "There was blood on ner nalr'., "That her scarf?" ^raverner Pointed to a checked woollen muf^ lymg on the floor» "Yes " Using the scarf he picked up the block of marble carefully.., „,.,

"There mav be fi^rprmts, he said, u «- k^ o^/.i.1- t much hope. "But I but he spoke withou,.,. ' r, „ rather think whoever ^lr was - careful He said to me: "Whac are you looking at? t,,roo i^^ ^ i,,roken backed wooden I was looking at a V,,,. i^'^k^/.ko^ u-u as among the derelicts. kitchen chair which w^ r r n n^ tk^ o i- c ^ J^ a Ie\v fragments of On the seat of it wei^ "r'^^o '» ^.Taverner. "Someone Curious, said.,,, r. xr ci-r^ri ^r, tko^ i, ifh muddy feet. Now stood on that chair w why was that?"

He shook his head.-, r i u "w/^nr t,r^. when you found her, What time was it Miss Leonides?" p.

"Tt ^^ot i, i- ^n Ilve minutes past it must have be^ " one."

"And your Nannie saw hergolng out about twenty minuted earher- wh0 wasthe la«;t r^^o^r, k f ^ ^ known to have been last person before tha) in the wash house?"

"I've no idea. Probably Josephine herself.

Josephine was swinging on the door this morning after breakfast, I know."

Taverner nodded.

"So between then and a quarter to one someone set the trap. You say that bit of marble is the door stop you use for the front door? Any idea when that was missing?"

Sophia shook her head.

"The door hasn't been propped open at all to-day. It's been too cold."

"Any idea where everyone was all the morning?"?

"I went out for a walk. Eustace and Josephine did lessons until half past twelve - with a break at half past ten. Father 5 I think, has been in the library all the morning."

"Your mother?"

"She was just coming out of her bedroom when I came in from my walk - that was about a quarter past twelve. She doesn't get up very early."

We re-entered the house. I followed Sophia to the library. Philip 5 looking white and haggard, sat in his usual chair. Magda crouched against his knees, crying quietly.

Sophia asked:

"Have they telephoned yet from the hospital?"

Philip shook his head.

Magda sobbed:

"Why wouldn't they let me go with her?

My baby - my funny ugly baby. And I used to call her a changeling and make her so angry. How could I be so cruel? And now she'll die. I know she'll die."

"Hush, my dear," said Philip. "Hush."

I felt that I had no place in this family scene of anxiety and grief. I withdrew quietly and went to find Nannie. She was sitting in the kitchen crying quietly.

"It's a judgement on me, Mr. Charles, for the hard things I've been thinking. A judgement, that's what it is."

I did not try and fathom her meaning.

"There's wickedness in this house. That's what there is. I didn't wish to see it or believe it. But seeing's believing. Somebody killed the master and the same somebody must have tried to kill Josephine."