Crooked House

‘Just who is the right person?’

He threw a sharp glance at me.

‘How much do you know about it all?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ He looked surprised. ‘Didn’t the girl tell you?’

‘No. She said she’d rather I saw it all—from an outside point of view.’

‘Now I wonder why that was?’

‘Isn’t it rather obvious?’

‘No, Charles. I don’t think it is.’

He walked up and down frowning. He had lit a cigar and the cigar had gone out. That showed me just how disturbed the old boy was.

‘How much do you know about the family?’ he shot at me.

‘Damn all! I know there was the old man and a lot of sons and grandchildren and in-laws. I haven’t got the ramifications clear.’ I paused and then said, ‘You’d better put me in the picture, Dad.’

‘Yes.’ He sat down. ‘Very well then—I’ll begin at the beginning—with Aristide Leonides. He arrived in England when he was twenty-four.’

‘A Greek from Smyrna.’

‘You do know that much?’

‘Yes, but it’s about all I do know.’

The door opened and Glover came in to say that Chief Inspector Taverner was here.

‘He’s in charge of the case,’ said my father. ‘We’d better have him in. He’s been checking up on the family. Knows more about them than I do.’

I asked if the local police had called in the Yard.

‘It’s in our jurisdiction. Swinly Dean is Greater London.’

I nodded as Chief Inspector Taverner came into the room. I knew Taverner from many years back. He greeted me warmly and congratulated me on my safe return.

‘I’m putting Charles in the picture,’ said the Old Man. ‘Correct me if I go wrong, Taverner. Leonides came to London in 1884. He started up a little restaurant in Soho. It paid. He started up another. Soon he owned seven or eight of them. They all paid hand over fist.’

‘Never made any mistakes in anything he handled,’ said Chief Inspector Taverner.

‘He’d got a natural flair,’ said my father. ‘In the end he was behind most of the well-known restaurants in London. Then he went into the catering business in a big way.’

‘He was behind a lot of other businesses as well,’ said Taverner. ‘Second-hand clothes trade, cheap jewellery stores, lots of things. Of course,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘he was always a twister.’

‘You mean he was a crook?’ I asked.

Taverner shook his head.

‘No, I don’t mean that. Crooked, yes—but not a crook. Never anything outside the law. But he was the sort of chap that thought up all the ways you can get round the law. He’s cleaned up a packet that way even in this last war, and old as he was. Nothing he did was ever illegal—but as soon as he’d got on to it, you had to have a law about it, if you know what I mean. But by that time he’d gone on to the next thing.’

‘He doesn’t sound a very attractive character,’ I said.

‘Funnily enough, he was attractive. He’d got personality, you know. You could feel it. Nothing much to look at. Just a gnome—ugly little fellow—but magnetic—women always fell for him.’

‘He made a rather astonishing marriage,’ said my father. ‘Married the daughter of a country squire—an MFH.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Money?’

The Old Man shook his head.

‘No, it was a love match. She met him over some catering arrangements for a friend’s wedding—and she fell for him. Her parents cut up rough, but she was determined to have him. I tell you, the man had charm—there was something exotic and dynamic about him that appealed to her. She was bored stiff with her own kind.’

‘And the marriage was happy?’

‘It was very happy, oddly enough. Of course their respective friends didn’t mix (those were the days before money swept aside all class distinctions) but that didn’t seem to worry them. They did without friends. He built a rather preposterous house at Swinly Dean and they lived there and had eight children.’

‘This is indeed a family chronicle.’

‘Old Leonides was rather clever to choose Swinly Dean. It was only beginning to be fashionable then. The second and third golf courses hadn’t been made. There was a mixture of Old Inhabitants who were passionately fond of their gardens and who liked Mrs Leonides, and rich City men who wanted to be in with Leonides, so they could take their choice of acquaintances. They were perfectly happy, I believe, until she died of pneumonia in 1905.’

‘Leaving him with eight children?’

‘One died in infancy. Two of the sons were killed in the last war. One daughter married and went to Australia and died there. An unmarried daughter was killed in a motor accident. Another died a year or two ago. There are two still living—the eldest son, Roger, who is married but has no children, and Philip, who married a well-known actress and has three children. Your Sophia, Eustace, and Josephine.’

‘And they are all living at—what is it?—Three Gables?’

‘Yes. The Roger Leonides were bombed out early in the war. Philip and his family have lived there since 1937. And there’s an elderly aunt, Miss de Haviland, sister of the first Mrs Leonides. She always loathed her brother-in-law apparently, but when her sister died she considered it her duty to accept her brother-in-law’s invitation to live with him and bring up the children.’

‘She’s very hot on duty,’ said Inspector Taverner. ‘But she’s not the kind that changes her mind about people. She always disapproved of Leonides and his methods—’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘it seems a pretty good houseful. Who do you think killed him?’

Taverner shook his head.

‘Early days,’ he said, ‘early days to say that.’

‘Come on, Taverner,’ I said. ‘I bet you think you know who did it. We’re not in court, man.’

‘No,’ said Taverner gloomily. ‘And we never may be.’

‘You mean he may not have been murdered?’

‘Oh, he was murdered all right. Poisoned. But you know what these poisoning cases are like. It’s very tricky getting the evidence. Very tricky. All the possibilities may point one way—’