Agatha Christie: Crooked House

"Aunt Edith.t".." murmured Sophia.

I remembered Edith de Haviland's ruthless foot grinding bindweed into the earth.

I remembered my early, almost fanciful, suspicions of her. But why -Sophia spoke the thought in my mind before I came to it.

"But why Josephine? Why did she take

Josephine with her?"

"Why did she do it at all?" I demanded.

"What was her motive?"

But even as I said that, I knew the truth.

I saw the whole thing clearly. I realised that I was still holding her second letter in my hand. I looked down and saw my own name on it.

It was thicker and harder than the other one. I think I knew what was in it before I opened it. I tore the envelope along and Josephine's little black notebook fell out. I picked it up off the floor - it came open in my hand and I saw the entry on the first page…

Sounding from a long way away, I heard Sophia's voice, clear and self controlled.

"We've got it all wrong," she said. "Edith didn't do it."

"No," I said.

Sophia came closer to me - she whispered:

"It was - Josephine - wasn't it? That was it, Josephine." j Together we looked down on the first entry in the little black book, written in an unformed childish hand.

"Today I killed grandfather"

I was to wonder afterwards that I could have been so blind. The truth had stuck out so clearly all along. Josephine and only Josephine fitted in with all the necessary qualifications. Her vanity, her persistent self importance, her delight in talking, her reiteration on how clever she was, and how stupid the police were.

I had never considered her because she was a child. But children have committed murders, and this particular murder had been well within a child's compass. Her grandfather himself had indicated the precise method - he had practically handed her a blue print. All she had to do was to avoid leaving fingerprints and the slightest knowledge of detective fiction would teach her that. And everything else had been a mere hotch potch, culled at random from stock mystery stories. The notebook - the sleuthing - her pretended suspicions, her insistence that she was not going to tell till she was sure…

And finally the attack on herself. An almost incredible performance considering that she might easily have killed herself.

But then, childlike, she never considered such a possibility. She was the heroine. The heroine isn't killed. Yet there had been a clue there - the traces of earth on the seat of the old chair in the wash house. Josephine k was the only person who would have had to climb up on a chair to balance the block I of marble on the top of the door. Obviously it had missed her more than once, (the dints in the floor) and patiently she had E - climbed up again and replaced it, handling | it with her scarf to avoid fingerprints. And I then it had fallen - and she had had a near escape from death.

It had been the perfect set up - the impression she was aiming for! She was in danger, she "knew something," she had • been attacked!

I saw how that had deliberately drawn | my attention to her presence in the cylinder I room. And she had completed the artistic I disorder of her room before going out to the wash house. | But when she had returned from hospital, when she had found Brenda and Laurence arrested, she must have become dissatisfied.

The case was over - and she - Josephine, was out of the lime light.

So she stole the digitalin from Edith's room and put it in her own cup of cocoa and left the cup untouched on the hall table.

Did she know that Nannie would drink it? Possibly. From her words that morning, she had resented Nannie's criticisms of her.

Did Nannie, perhaps, wise from a lifetime of experience with children, suspect? I think that Nannie knew, had always known, that Josephine was not normal. With her precocious mental development had gone a retarded moral sense. Perhaps, too, the various factors of heredity - what Sophia had called the "ruthlessness" of the family had met together.

She had had an authoritarian ruthlessness of her grandmother's family, and the ruthless egoism of Magda, seeing only her own point of view. She had also presumably suffered, sensitive like Philip, from the stigma of being the unattractive - the changeling child - of the family. Finally, in her very marrow, had run the essential crooked strain of old Leonides. She had been Leonides's grandchild, she had resembled him in brain and in cunning - but his love had gone outwards to family and friends, hers had turned to herself.

I thought that old Leonides had realised what none of the rest of the family had realised, that Josephine might be a source of danger to others and to herself. He had kept her from school life because he was afraid of what she might do. He had shielded her, and guarded her in the home, and I understood now his urgency to Sophia to look after Josephine.

Magda's sudden decision to send Josephine abroad had that, too, been due to a fear for the child? Not, perhaps, a conscious fear, but some vague maternal instinct.

And Edith de Haviland? Had she first suspected, then feared - and finally known?

I looked down at the letter in my hand.

Dear Charles. This is in confidence for you - and for Sophia if you so decide. It is imperative that someone should know the truth. I found the enclosed in the disused dog kennel I outside the back door. She kept it there. It confirms what I already suspected.

The action I am about to take may be right or wrong - I do not know. But my life, in any case, is close to its end, and I do not want the child to suffer as I believe she would suffer if called to earthly account for what she has done.

There is often one of the litter who is

"not quite right".

If I do wrong. God forgive me - but I do it out of love. God bless you both.

Edith de Haviland

I hesitated for only a moment, then I handed the letter to Sophia. Together we again opened Josephine's little black book.

Today I killed grandfather.

We turned the pages. It was an amazing production. Interesting, I should imagine, to a psychologist. It set out, with such terrible clarity, the fury of thwarted egoism.

The motive for the crime was set down, pitifully childish and inadequate.

Grandfather wouldn't let me do bally dancing so I made up my mind I would kill him. Then we would go to London and live and mother wouldn't mind me doing bally.

I give only a few entries. They are all significant.

I don't want to go to Switzerland - I won't go. If mother makes me I will kill her too - only I can't get any poison.

Perhaps I could make it with youberries.

They are poisonous, the book says so.

Eustace has made me very cross to day. He says I am only a girl and no use and that its silly my detecting. He wouldn't think me silly if he knew it was me did the murder.

I like Charles - but he is rather stupid. I have not decided yet who I shall make have done the crime. Perhaps Brenda and Laurence - Brenda is nasty to me - she says I am not all there but I like Laurence - he told me about Chariot Korday - she killed someone in his bath. She was not very clever about it.

The last entry was revealing.

I hate Nannie… I hate her… I hate her… She says I am only a little girl. She says I show off. She's making mother send me abroad… I'm going to kill her too - I think Aunt Edith's medicine would do it. If there is another murder 5 then the police will come back and it will all be exciting again.

Nannie's dead. I am glad. I haven't decided yet where I'll hide the bottle with the little pill things. Perhaps in Aunt Clemency's room - or else Eustace.

When I am dead as an old woman I shall leave this behind me addressed to the Chief of the Police and they will see what a really great criminal I was.