"I've decided Josephine really must go to school."
"Josephine? To school."
"Yes. To Switzerland. I'm going to see about it tomorrow. I really think we might get her off at once. It's so bad for her to be mixed up in a horrid business like this. She's getting quite morbid about it. What she needs is other children of her own age. School life. I've always thought so."
"Grandfather didn't want her to go to school," said Sophia slowly. "He was very much against it."
"Darling old Sweetie Pie liked us all here under his eye. Very old people are often selfish in that way. A child ought to be amongst other children. And Switzerland is so healthy - all the winter sports, and the air, and such much, much better food than we get here!"
"It will be difficult to arrange for Switzerland now with all the currency regulations, won't it?" I asked.
"Nonsense, Charles. There's some kind of educational racket - or you exchange with a Swiss child - there are all sorts of ways. Rudolf Alstir's in Lausanne. I shall wire him tomorrow to arrange everything. We can get her off by the end of the week!"
Magda punched a cushion, smiled at us, went to the door, stood a moment looking back at us in a quite enchanting fashion.
"It's only the young who count," she said. As she said it, it was a lovely line. "They must always come first. And, darlings - think of the flowers - the blue gentians, the narcissus..."
"In November?" asked Sophia, but Magda had gone.
Sophia heaved an exasperated sigh.
"Really," she said, "Mother is too trying! She gets these sudden ideas, and she sends thousands of telegrams and everything has to be arranged at a moment's notice. Why should Josephine be hustled off to Switzerland all in a flurry?"
"There's probably something in the idea of school. I think children of her own age would be a good thing for Josephine."
"Grandfather didn't think so," said Sophia obstinately.
I felt slightly irritated.
"My dear Sophia, do you really think an old gentleman of over eighty is the best judge of a child's welfare?"
"He was about the best judge of anybody in this house," said Sophia.
"Better than your Aunt Edith?"
"No, perhaps not. She did rather favour school. I admit Josephine's got into rather difficult ways - she's got a horrible habit of snooping. But I really think it's just because she's playing detectives."
Was it only the concern for Josephine's welfare which had occasioned Magda's sudden decision? I wondered. Josephine was remarkably well informed about all sorts of things that had happened prior to the murder and which had been certainly no business of hers. A healthy school life with plenty of games would probably do her a world of good. But I did rather wonder at the suddenness and urgency of Magda's decision - Switzerland was a long way off.
Chapter 16
The Old Man had said: "Let them talk to you."
As I shaved the following morning, I considered just how far that had taken me.
Edith de Haviland had talked to me - she had sought me out for that especial purpose. Clemency had talked to me (or had I talked to her?). Magda had talked to me in a sense - that is I had formed part of the audience to one of her broadcasts.
Sophia naturally had talked to me. Even Nannie had talked to me. Was I any the wiser for what I had learned from them all? Was there any significant word or phrase? More, was there any evidence of that abnormal vanity on which my father had laid stress? I couldn't see that there was. The only person who had shown absolutely no desire to talk to me in any way, nor on any subject, was Philip. Was not that, in a way, rather abnormal? He must know by now that I wanted to marry his daughter.
Yet he continued to act as though I was not in the house at all. Presumably he resented my presence there. Edith de Haviland had apologised for him. She had said it was just "manner." She had shown herself concerned about Philip. Why?
I considered Sophia's father. He was in every sense a repressed individual. He had been an unhappy jealous child. He had been forced back into himself. He had taken refuge in the world of books - in the historical past. That studied coldness and reserve of his might conceal a good deal of passionate feeling. The inadequate motive of financial gain by his father's death was unconvincing - I did not think for a moment that Philip Leonides would kill his father because he himself had not quite as much money as he would like to have. But there might have been some deep psychological reason for his desiring his father's death. Philip had come back to his father's house to live, and later, as a result of the Blitz Roger had come - and Philip had been obliged to see day by day that Roger was his father's favourite... Might things have come to such a pass in his tortured mind that the only relief possible was his father's death? And supposing that that death should incriminate his elder brother? Roger was short of money - on the verge of a crash. Knowing nothing of that last interview between Roger and his father and the latter's offer of assistance, might not Philip have believed that the motive would seem so powerful that Roger would be at once suspected? Was Philip's mental balance sufficiently disturbed to lead him to do murder?
I cut my chin with the razor and swore.
What the hell was I trying to do? Fasten murder on Sophia's father? That was a nice thing to try and do! That wasn't what Sophia had wanted me to come down here for.
Or - was it? There was something, had been something all along, behind Sophia's appeal. If there was any lingering suspicion in her mind that her father was the killer, then she would never consent to marry me - in case that suspicion might be true.
And since she was Sophia, clear-eyed and brave, she wanted the truth, since uncertainty would be an eternal and perpetual barrier between us. Hadn't she been in effect saying to me, "Prove that this dreadful thing I am imagining is not true - but if it is true, then prove its truth to me - so that I can know the worst and face it!"
Did Edith de Haviland know, or suspect, that Philip was guilty. What had she meant by "this side idolatry"?
And what had Clemency meant by that peculiar look she had thrown at me when I asked her who she suspected and she had answered: "Laurence and Brenda are the obvious suspects, aren't they?"
The whole family wanted it to be Brenda and Laurence, hoped it might be Brenda and Laurence, but didn't really believe it was Brenda and Laurence...
And of course, the whole family might be wrong, and it might really be Laurence and Brenda after all.
Or, it might be Laurence, and not Brenda...
That would be a much better solution. I finished dabbing at my cut chin and went down to breakfast filled with the determination to have an interview with Laurence Brown as soon as possible.
It was only as I drank my second cup of coffee that it occurred to me that the Crooked House was having its effect on me also. I, too, wanted to find, not the true solution, but the solution that suited me best.
After breakfast I went out through the hall and up the stairs. Sophia had told me that I should find Laurence giving instruction to Eustace and Josephine in the schoolroom.
I hesitated on the landing outside Brenda's front door. Did I ring and knock, or did I walk right in? I decided to treat the house as an integral Leonides home and not as Brenda's private residence.
I opened the door and passed inside.
Everything was quiet, there seemed to be no one about. On my left the door into the big drawing room was closed. On my right two open doors showed a bedroom and adjoining bathroom. This I knew was the bathroom adjoining Aristide Leonides' s bedroom where the eserine and the insulin had been kept. The police had finished with it now. I pushed the door open and slipped inside. I realised then how easy it would have been for anyone in the house (or from outside the house for the matter of that!) to come up here and into the bathroom unseen.
I stood in the bathroom looking round.
It was sumptuously appointed with gleaming tiles and a sunk bath. At one side were various electric appliances; a hot plate and grill under, an electric kettle - a small electric saucepan, a toaster - everything that a valet attendant to an old gentleman might need. On the wall was a white enamelled cupboard. I opened it. Inside were medical appliances, two medicine glasses, eyebath, eye dropper and a few labelled bottles. Aspirin, Boracic powder, iodine. Elastoplast bandages, etc. On a separate shelf were the stacked supply of insulin, two hypodermic needles, and a bottle of surgical spirit. On a third shelf was a bottle marked The Tablets - one or two to be taken at night as ordered. On this shelf, no doubt, had stood the bottle of eyedrops. It was all clear, well arranged, easy for anyone to get at if needed, and equally easy to get at for murder.
I could do what I liked with the bottles and then go softly out and downstairs again and nobody would ever know I had been there. All this was, of course, nothing new, but it brought home to me how difficult the task of the police was.
Only from the guilty party or parties could one find out what one needed.
"Rattle 'em," Taverner had said to me. "Get 'em on the run. Make 'em think we're on to something. Keep ourselves well in the limelight. Sooner or later, if we do, our criminal will stop leaving well alone and try to be smarter still - and then - we've got him."
Well, the criminal hadn't reacted to this treatment so far.
I came out of the bathroom. Still no one about. I went on along the corridor. I passed the dining-room on the left, and Brenda's bedroom and bathroom on the right. In the latter, one of the maids was moving about. The dining room door was closed. From a room beyond that, I heard Edith de Haviland's voice telephoning to the inevitable fishmonger. A spiral flight of stairs led to the floor above. I went up them. Edith's bedroom and sitting room was here, I knew, and two more bathrooms and Laurence Brown's room. Beyond that again the short flight of steps down to the big room built out over the servant's quarters at the back which was used as a schoolroom.
Outside the door I paused. Laurence Brown's voice could be heard, slightly damped, from inside.
