Crooked House / Скрюченный домишко. Книга для чтения на английском языке

‘These shoes are wrong. Frivolous.’

Obeying Sophia’s imperious wave of the head, I hurried after Taverner. I caught him up in the outer hall just going through the door to the stairway.

‘Just going up to see the elder brother,’ he explained.

I put my problem to him without more ado.

‘Look here, Taverner, who am I supposed to be?’

He looked surprised.

‘Who are you supposed to be?’

‘Yes, what am I doing here in this house? If anyone asks me, what do I say?’

‘Oh I see.’ He considered for a moment. Then he smiled. ‘Has anybody asked you?’

‘Well—no.’

‘Then why not leave it at that. Never explain. That’s a very good motto. Especially in a house upset like this house is. Everyone is far too full of their own private worries and fears to be in a questioning mood. They’ll take you for granted so long as you just seem sure of yourself. It’s a great mistake ever to say anything when you needn’t. H’m, now we go through this door and up the stairs. Nothing locked. Of course you realize, I expect, that these questions I’m asking are all a lot of hooey! Doesn’t matter a hoot who was in the house and who wasn’t, or where they all were on that particular day—’

Then why—’

He went on: ‘Because it at least gives me a chance to look at them all, and size them up, and hear what they’ve got to say, and to hope that, quite by chance, somebody might give me a useful pointer.’ He was silent a moment and then murmured: ‘I bet Mrs Magda Leonides could spill a mouthful if she chose.’

‘Would it be reliable?’ I asked.

‘Oh no,’ said Taverner, ‘it wouldn’t be reliable. But it might start a possible line of inquiry. Everybody in the damned house had means and opportunity. What I want is a motive.’

At the top of the stairs, a door barred off the right-hand corridor. There was a brass knocker on it and Inspector Taverner duly knocked.

It was opened with startling suddenness by a man who must have been standing just inside. He was a clumsy giant of a man, with powerful shoulders, dark rumpled hair, and an exceedingly ugly but at the same time rather pleasant face. His eyes looked at us and then quickly away in that furtive, embarrassed manner which shy but honest people often adopt.

‘Oh, I say,’ he said. ‘Come in. Yes, do. 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[68 - Bumble-bee – шмель] 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.

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[69 - Eton crop – дамская стрижка «под мальчика»] 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.’

She said thoughtfully:

‘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 father-in-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 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 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[70 - to pace up and down – расхаживать взад-вперед], 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 on to 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 Inspector Taverner wants our help.’