Agatha Christie: Crooked House

Old Leonides married again, ten years ago."

"When he was seventy five?"

"Yes, he married a young woman of twenty four." t I whistled.

"What sort of a young woman."

"A young woman out of a tea shop. A perfectly respectable young woman - good looking in an anaemic 5 apathetic sort of way."

"And she's the strong probability?"

"I ask you, sir," said Taverner. "She's only thirty four now - and that's a dangerous age. She likes living soft. And there's a young man in the house. Tutor to the grandchildren. Not been in the war - got a bad heart or something. They're as thick as thieves."^ | I looked at him thoughtfully. It was, certainly, an old and familiar pattern. The mixture as before. And the second Mrs. | Leonides was, my father had emphasized, very respectable. In the name of respectabi| lity many murders have been committed.

"What was it?" I asked. "Arsenic?"

"No. We haven't got the analyst's report yet - but the doctor thinks it's eserine."

"That's a little unusual, isn't it? Surely easy to trace purchaser."

"Not this thing. It was his own stuff, you see. Eyedrops."

"Leonides suffered from diabetes," said my father. "He had regular injections of 11 insulin. Insulin is given out in small bottles with a rubber cap. A hypodermic needle is | pressed down through the rubber cap and the injection drawn up."

I guessed the next bit.

"And it wasn't insulin in the bottle, but I eserine?"

"Exactly."

"And who gave him the injection?" I asked.

"His wife."

I understood now what Sophia had meant by the "right person."

I asked: "Does the family get on well with the second Mrs. Leonides?"

"No. I gather they are hardly on speaking terms." m t^ It all seemed clearer and clearer. Nevertheless 5 Inspector Taverner was clearly not happy about it. | "What don't you like about it?" I asked him.

"If she did it, Mr. Charles, it would have been so easy for her to substitute a bona ride bottle of insulin afterwards. In fact, if she is guilty, I can't imagine why on earth she didn't do just that."

"Yes, it does seem indicated. Plenty of insulin about?"

"Oh yes, full bottles and empty ones.

And if she'd done that, ten to one the doctor wouldn't have spotted it. Very little | is known of the post mortem appearances in human poisoning by eserine. But as it was he checked up on the insulin (in case it was the wrong strength or something like that) and so, of course, he soon spotted that it wasn't insulin."

"So it seems," I said thoughtfully, "that Mrs. Leonides was either very stupid - or possibly very clever."

"You mean -"

"That she may be gambling on your coming to the conclusion that nobody could have been as stupid as she appears to have been. What are the alternatives? Any other - suspects?"

The Old Man said quietly:

"Practically anyone in the house could have done it. There was always a good store of insulin - at least a fortnight's supply.

One of the phials could have been tampered with, and replaced in the knowledge that it would be used in due course."

"And anybody, more or less, had access to them?"

"They weren't locked away. They were kept on a special shelf in the medicine cupboard in the bathroom of his part of the house. Everybody in the house came and went freely."

"Any strong motive?" My father sighed. «"My dear Charles, Aristide Leonides was enormously rich! He had made over a good deal of his money to his family, it is true, but it may be that somebody wanted more."

"But the one that wanted it most would be the present widow. Has her young man any money?"

"No. Poor as a Church mouse." o Something clicked in my brain. I remembered Sophia's quotation. I suddenly remembered the whole verse of the nursery rhyme:

There was a crooked man and he went fc a crooked mile 5:1 He found a crooked sixpence beside a crooked stile He had a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

I said to Taverner:

"How does she strike you - Mrs. Leonides? What do you think of her?"

He replied slowly:

"It's hard to say - very hard to say.

She's not easy. Very quiet - so you don't know what she's thinking. But she likes living soft - that I'll swear I'm right about.

Puts me in mind, you know, of a cat, a big purring lazy cat… Not that I've anything against cats. Cats are all right…"

He sighed.

"What we want," he said, "is evidence." ||ft1'" '

Yes, I thought, we all wanted evidence that Mrs. Leonides had poisoned her husband. Sophia wanted it, and I wanted it, and Chief Inspector Taverner wanted it.

Then everything in the garden would be lovely!

But Sophia wasn't sure, and I wasn't sure, and I didn't think Chief Inspector Taverner was sure either…

On the following day I went down to Three Gables with Taverner.

My position was a curious one. It was, to say the least of it, quite unorthodox. But the Old Man has never been highly orthodox.

I had a certain standing. I had worked with the Special Branch at the Yard during the early days of the war.

This, of course, was entirely different -but my earlier performances had given me, so to speak, a certain official standing.

My father said:

"If we're ever going to solve this case, we've got to get some inside dope. We've got to know all about the people in that house. We've got to know them from the inside - not the outside. You're the man who can get that for us."

I didn't like it. I threw my cigarette end into the grate as I said:

"T?I'm a police spy? Is that it? I'm to get the inside dope from Sophia whom I love and who both loves and trusts me, or so I believe."

The Old Man became quite irritable. He said sharply:

"For Heaven's Sake don't take the commonplace view. To begin with, you don't believe, do you, that your young woman murdered her grandfather?"

I "Of course not. The idea's absolutely absurd."

"Very well - we don't think so either.

She's been away for some years, she has always been on perfectly amicable terms with him. She has a very generous income | and he would have been, I should say, delighted to hear of her engagement to you and would probably have made a handsome marriage settlement on her. We don't suspect her. Why should we? But you can make quite sure of one thing. If this thing isn't cleared up, that girl won't marry you.

From what you've told me I'm fairly sure of that. And mark this, it's the kind of crime that may never be cleared up. We may be reasonably sure that the wife and her young man were in cahoots over it -but proving it will be another matter.

There's not even a case to put up to the D.P.P. so far. And unless we get definite evidence against her, there'll always be a nasty doubt. You see that, don't you?"

Yes, I saw that.

The Old Man then said quietly:

"Why not put it to her?"

"You mean - ask Sophia if I -" I stopped.

The Old Man was nodding his head vigorously. r "Yes, yes… I'm not asking you to worm your way in without telling the girl what you're up to. See what she has to say about it.". -E And so it came about that the following day I drove down with Chief Inspector | Taverner and Detective Sergeant Lamb to Swinly Dean.

A little way beyond the golf course, we turned in at a gateway where I imagined that before the war there had been an imposing pair of gates. Patriotism or ruthless requisitioning had swept these away. We drove up a long curving drive flanked with rhododendrons and came out on a gravelled sweep in front of the house.

It was incredible! I wondered why it had been called Three Gables. Eleven Gables J would have been more apposite! The curious thing was that it had a strange air of being distorted - and I thought I knew why. It was the type, really, of a cottage, it was a cottage swollen out of all proportion. It was like looking at a country cottage through a gigantic magnifying glass. The slantwise beams, the half-timbering, the gables - it was a little crooked house that had grown like a mushroom in the night!