Agatha Christie: Crooked House

I closed the book. Sophia's tears were flowing fast.

"Oh Charles - oh Charles - it's so dreadful. She's such a little monster - and yet - and yet it's so terribly pathetic."

I had felt the same.

I had liked Josephine… I still felt a fondness for her… You do not like anyone less because they have tuberculosis or some other fatal disease. Josephine was, as Sophia had said, a little monster, but she was a pathetic little monster. She had been born with a kink - the crooked child of the little crooked house.

Sophia asked:

"If - she had lived - what would have happened?"

"I suppose she would have been sent to a reformatory or a special school. Later she would have been released - or possibly certified, I don't know."

Sophia shuddered.

"It's better the way it is. But Aunt Edith - I don't like to think of her taking the blame."

"She chose to do so. I don't suppose it will be made public. I imagine that when Brenda and Laurence come to trial, no case will be brought against them and they will be discharged.

"And you, Sophia," I said, this time on a different note and taking both her hands in mine, "will marry me. I've just heard I'm appointed to Persia. We will go out there together, and you will forget the little Crooked House. Your mother can put on plays and your father can buy more books and Eustace will soon go to a university.

Don't worry about them any more. Think of me."

Sophia looked at me straight in the eyes.

"Aren't you afraid, Charles, to marry me?"

"Why should I be? In poor little Josephine all the worst of the family came together.

In you, Sophia, I fully believe that all that is bravest and best in the Leonides family has been handed down to you. Your grandfather thought highly of you and he seems to have been a man who was usually right.

Hold up your head, my darling. The future is ours."

"I will, Charles. I love you and I'll marry you and make you happy." She looked down at the notebook. "Poor Josephine."

"Poor Josephine," I said.

"What's the truth of it, Charles?" said my father.

I never lie to the Old Man.

"It wasn't Edith de Haviland, sir," I said. "It was Josephine."

My father nodded his head gently.

"Yes," he said. "I've thought so for some time. Poor child…"