Free Crooked House by Agatha Christie

had committed the crime - now, at this moment, it all seemed positively inhuman conduct. She was alone, defenceless, hunted down.
    “And if it's not me, they think it's Laurence,” she went on.
    “What about Laurence?” I asked.
    “I'm terribly sorry for Laurence. He's delicate and he couldn't go and fight. It's not because he was a coward. It's because he's sensitive. I've tried to cheer him up and to make him feel happy. He has to teach those horrible children. Eustace is always sneering at him, and Josephine - well, you've seen Josephine. You know what she's like.”
    I said I hadn't met Josephine yet.
    “Sometimes I think that child isn't right in her head. She has horrible sneaky ways, and she looks queer... She gives me the shivers sometimes.”
    I didn't want to talk about Josephine. I harked back to Laurence Brown.
    “Who is he?” I asked. “Where does he come from?”
    I had phrased it clumsily. She flushed.
    “He isn't anybody particular. He's just like me... What chance have we got against all of them?”
    “Don't you think you're being a little hysterical?”
    “No, I don't. They want to make out that Laurence did it - or that I did. They've got that policeman on their side. What chance have I got?”
    “You mustn't work yourself up,” I said.
    “Why shouldn't it be one of them who killed him? Or someone from outside? Or one of the servants?”
    “There's a certain lack of motive.”
    “Oh! motive. What motive had I got? Or Laurence?”
    I felt rather uncomfortable as I said:
    “They might think, I suppose, that you and - er - Laurence - are in love with each other - that you wanted to marry.”
    She sat bolt upright.
    “That's a wicked thing to suggest! And it's not true! We've never said a word of that kind to each other. I've just been sorry for him and tried to cheer him up. We've been friends, that's all. You do believe me, don't you?”
    I did believe her. That is, I believed that she and Laurence were, as she put it, only friends. But I also believed that, possibly unknown to herself, she was actually in love with the young man.
    It was with that thought in my mind that I went downstairs in search of Sophia.
    As I was about to go into the drawing room, Sophia poked her head out of a door further along the passage.
    “Hullo,” she said, “I'm helping Nannie with lunch.”
    I would have joined her, but she came out into the passage, shut the door behind her, and taking my arm led me into the drawing room which was empty.
    “Well,” she said, “did you see Brenda? What did you think of her?”
    “Frankly,” I said, “I was sorry for her.”
    Sophia looked amused.
    “I see,” she said. “So she got you.”
    I felt slightly irritated.
    “The point is,” I said, “that I can see her side of it. Apparently you can't.”
    “Her side of what?”
    “Honestly, Sophia, have any of the family ever been nice to her, or even fairly decent to her, since she came here?”
    “No, we haven't been nice to her. Why should we be?”
    “Just ordinary Christian kindliness, if nothing else.”
    “What a very high moral tone you're taking, Charles. Brenda must have done her stuff pretty well.”
    “Really, Sophia, you seem - I don't know what's come over you.”
    “I'm just being honest and not pretending. You've seen Brenda's side of it, so you say. Now take a look at my side. I don't like the type of young woman who makes up a hard luck story and marries a very rich old man on the strength of it. I've a perfect right not to like that type of young woman, and there is no earthly reason why I should pretend I do. And if the facts were written down in cold blood on paper, you wouldn't like that young woman either.”
    “Was it a made up story?” I asked.
    “About the child? I don't know. Personally, I think so.”
    “And you resent the fact that your grandfather was taken in by it?”
    “Oh, grandfather wasn't taken in.” Sophia laughed. “Grandfather was never taken in by anybody. He