Crooked House - Christie Agatha - Страница 13

I was going - but it doesn't matter. Come into the sitting room. I'll get Clemency -oh, you're there, darling. It's Chief Inspector Taverner. He - are there any cigarettes?

Just wait a minute. If you don't mind -"

He collided with a screen, said "I beg your pardon" to it in a flustered manner, and went out of the room.

It was rather like the exit of a bumble bee and left a noticeable silence behind it.

Mrs. Roger Leonides was standing up by the window. I was intrigued at once by her personality and by the atmosphere of the room in which we stood.

It was quite definitely her room. I was sure of that.

The walls were painted white - really white, not an ivory or a pale cream which is what one usually means when one says "white" in house decoration. They had no pictures on them except one over the mantelpiece, a geometrical fantasia in triangles of dark grey and battleship blue.

There was hardly any furniture - only mere utilitarian necessities, three or four chairs, a glass topped table, one small bookshelf. There were no ornaments. There was light and space and air. It was as different from the big brocaded and flowered drawing room on the floor below as chalk from cheese. And Mrs. Roger Leonides was as different from Mrs. Philip Leonides as one woman could be from another. Whilst one felt that Magda Leonides could be, and often was, at least half a dozen different women. Clemency Leonides, I was sure, could never be anyone but herself. She was a woman of very sharp and definite personality.

She was about fifty, I suppose, her hair was grey, cut very short in what was almost an Eton crop but which grew so beautifully on her small well shaped head that it had none of the ugliness I have always associated with that particular cut. She had an intelligent, sensitive face, with light grey eyes of a peculiar and searching intensity. She had on a simple dark red woollen frock that fitted her slenderness perfectly.

She was, I felt at once, rather an alarming woman… I think because I judged that the standards by which she lived might not be those of an ordinary woman. I understood at once why Sophia had used the word ruthlessness in connection with her.

The room was cold and I shivered a little.

Clemency Leonides said in a quiet well bred voice:

"Do sit down, Chief Inspector. Is there any further news?"

"Death was due to eserine, Mrs. Leonides." t,She said thoughtfully: i "So that makes it murder. It couldn't have been an accident of any kind, could it?"

"No, Mrs. Leonides."

"Please be very gentle with my husband,

Chief Inspector. This will affect him very much. He worshipped his father and he feels things very acutely. He is an emotional person."

"You were on good terms with your fatherin-law, Mrs. Leonides?"

"Yes, on quite good terms." She added quietly, "I did not like him very much."

"Why was that?"

"I disliked his objectives in life - and his methods of attaining them."

"And Mrs. Brenda Leonides?"

"Brenda? I never saw very much of her." "Do you think it is possible that there was anything between her and Mr. Laurence Brown?"

"You mean - some kind of a love affair?

I shouldn't think so. But I really wouldn't know anything about it."

Her voice sounded completely uninterested.

Roger Leonides came back with a rush, and the same bumble bee effect.

"I got held up," he said. "Telephone.

Well, Inspector? Well? Have you got any news? What caused my father's death?"

"Death was due to eserine poisoning."

"It was? My God! Then it was that woman! She couldn't wait! He took her more or less out of the gutter and this is his reward. She murdered him in cold blood! God, it makes my blood boil to think of it."

"Have you any particular reason for thinking that?" Taverner asked.

Roger was pacing up and down, tugging at his hair with both hands.

"Reason? Why, who else could it be?

I've never trusted her - never liked her!

We've none of us liked her. Philip and I were both appalled when Dad came home one day and told us what he had done! At his age! It was madness - madness. My father was an amazing man. Inspector. In intellect he was as young and fresh as a man of forty. Everything I have in the world I owe to him. He did everything for me - never failed me. It was I who failed him - when I think of it -"

He dropped heavily onto a chair. His wife came quietly to his side.

"Now, Roger, that's enough. Don't work yourself up."

"I know, dearest - I know," he took her hand. "But how can I keep calm -how can I help feeling -"

"But we must all keep calm, Roger. Chief Insoector Taverner wants our help."

K "That is right, Mrs. Leonides."

Roger cried:

"Do you know what I'd like to do? I'd like to strangle that woman with my own hands. Grudging that dear old man a few extra years of life. If I had her here -" He sprang up. He was shaking with rage. He held out convulsive hands. "Yes, I'd wring her neck, wring her neck…"

"Roger!" said Clemency sharply.

He looked at her, abashed.

"Sorry, dearest." He turned to us. "I do apologise. My feelings get the better of me.

I - excuse me -"

He went out of the room again. Clemency

Leonides said with a very faint smile:

"Really, you know, he wouldn't hurt a fly."

Taverner accepted her remark politely.

Then he started on his socalled routine questions.

Clemency Leonides replied concisely and accurately.

Roger Leonides had been in London on the day of his father's death at Box House, the headquarters of the Associated Catering.

He had returned early in the afternoon and had spent some time with his father as was his custom. She herself had been, as usual at the Lambert Institute on Gower Street where she worked. She had returned to the house just before six o'clock.

"Did you see your father-in-law?" "No. The last time I saw him was on the day before. We had coffee with him after dinner."

"But you did not see him on the day of his death?"

"No. I actually went over to his part of the house because Roger thought he had left his pipe there - a very precious pipe 5 but as it happened he had left it on the hall table there, so I did not need to disturb the old man. He often dozed off about six."

"When did you hear of his illness?"

"Brenda came rushing over. That was just a minute or two after half past six."

These questions, as I knew, were unimportant, but I was aware how keen was Inspector Taverner's scrutiny of the woman who answered them. He asked her a few questions about the nature of her work in London. She said that it had to do with the radiation effects of atomic disintegration.

"You work on the atom bomb, in fact?"

"The work has nothing destructive about it. The Institute is carrying out experiments | on the therapeutic effects.".

When Taverner got up, he expressed a wish to look around their part of the house.

She seemed a little surprised 5 but showed him its extent readily enough. The bedroom with its twin beds and white coverlets and its simplified toilet appliances reminded me again of a hospital or some monastic cell.

The bathroom, too, was severely plain with no special luxury fitting and no array of cosmetics. The kitchen was bare, spotlessly clean, and well equipped with labour saving devices of a practical kind. Then we came to a door which Clemency opened saying:

"This is my husband's special room.55

"Come in," said Roger. "Come in."

I drew a faint breath of relief. Something in the spotless austerity elsewhere had been getting me down. This was an intensely personal room. There was a large roll top desk untidily covered with papers, old pipes and tobacco ash. There were big shabby easy chairs. Persian rugs covered the floor.

On the walls were groups, their photography somewhat faded. School groups, cricket groups, military groups. Water colour sketches of deserts and minarets, and of sailing boats and sea effects and sunsets. It was, somehow, a pleasant room, the room of a lovable friendly companionable man.

Roger, clumsily, was pouring out drinks from a tantalus, sweeping books and papers off one of the chairs.

"Place is in a mess. I was turning out.

Clearing up old papers. Say when." The

Inspector declined a drink. I accepted.

"You must forgive me just now," went on Roger. He brought my drink over to me, turning his head to speak to Taverner as he did so. "My feelings ran away with me."

He looked around almost guiltily, but

Clemency Leonides had not accompanied us into the room.

"She's so wonderful," he said. "My wife, I mean. All through this, she's been splendid - splendid! I can't tell you how I admire that woman. And she's had such a hard time - a terrible time. I'd like to tell you about it. Before we were married, I mean. Her first husband was a fine chap - fine mind, I mean - but terribly delicate - tubercular as a matter of fact. He was doing some very valuable research work on crystallography, I believe. Poorly paid and very exacting, but he wouldn't give up. She slaved for him, practically kept him, knowing all the time that he was dying. And never a complaint - never a murmur of wpanness. She always said she was happy.

Then he died, and she was terribly cut up.

At last she agreed to marry me. I was glad to be able to give her some rest, some happiness, I wished she would stop working, but of course she felt it her duty in war time, and she still seems to feel she should go on. She's been a wonderful wife - the most wonderful wife a man ever had. Gosh, I've been lucky! I'd do anything for her."

Taverner made a suitable rejoinder. Then he embarked once more on the familiar routine questions. When had he first heard of his father's illness?

"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?