Free Crooked House by Agatha Christie Page B

view. They resented a stranger within the gates who had obtained admission by what they regarded as ignoble means. They were entirely within their rights. As Sophia had said: On paper it wouldn't look well...
    But there was the human side of it - the side that I saw and that they didn't.
    They were, they always had been, rich and well established. They had no conception of the temptations of the underdog. Brenda Leonides had wanted wealth, and pretty things and safety - and a home. She had claimed that in exchange she had made her old husband happy. I had sympathy with her. Certainly, while I was talking with her, I had had sympathy for her... Had I got as much sympathy now?
    Two sides to the question - different angles of vision - which was the true angle... the true angle...
    I had slept very little the night before. I had been up early to accompany Taverner. Now, in the warm flower-scented atmosphere of Magda Leonides's drawing room, my body relaxed in the cushioned embrace of the big chair and my eyelids dropped...
    Thinking of Brenda, of Sophia, of an old man's picture, my thoughts slid together into a pleasant haze.
    I slept...

Crooked House

Chapter 10
    I returned to consciousness so gradually that I didn't at first realise that I had been asleep. The scent of flowers was in my nose. In front of me a round white blob appeared to float in space. It was some few seconds before I realised that it was a human face I was looking at - a face suspended in the air about a foot or two away from me. As my faculties returned, my vision became more precise. The face still had its goblin suggestion - it was round with a bulging brow, combed back hair and small rather beady, black eyes. But it was definitely attached to a body - a small skinny body. It was regarding me very earnestly.
    “Hullo,” it said.
    “Hullo,” I replied, blinking.
    “I'm Josephine.”
    I had already deduced that. Sophia's sister, Josephine, was, I judged, about eleven or twelve years of age. She was a fantastically ugly child with a very distinct likeness to her grandfather. It seemed to me possible that she also had his brains.
    “You're Sophia's young man,” said Josephine.
    I acknowledged the correctness of this remark.
    “But you came down here with Chief Inspector Taverner. Why did you come with Chief Inspector Taverner?”
    “He's a friend of mine.”
    “Is he? I don't like him. I shan't tell him things.”
    “What sort of things?”
    “The things that I know. I know a lot of things. I like knowing things.”
    She sat down on the arm of the chair and continued her searching scrutiny of my face. I began to feel quite uncomfortable.
    “Grandfather's been murdered. Did you know?”
    “Yes,” I said. “I knew.”
    “He was poisoned. With es-er-ine.” She pronounced the word very carefully. “It's interesting, isn't it?”
    “I suppose it is.”
    “Eustace and I are very interested. We like detective stories. I've always wanted to be a detective. I'm being one now. I'm collecting clues.”
    She was, I felt, rather a ghoulish child. She returned to the charge.
    “The man who came with Chief Inspector Taverner is a detective too, isn't he? In books it says you can always know plain clothes detectives by their boots. But this detective was wearing suede shoes.”
    “The old order changeth,” I said.
    Josephine interpreted this remark according to her own ideas.
    “Yes,” she said, “there will be a lot of changes here now, I expect. We shall go and live in a house in London on the embankment. Mother has wanted to for a long time. She'll be very pleased. I don't expect father will mind if his books go, too. He couldn't afford it before. He lost an awful lot of money over Jezebel.”
    “Jezebel?” I queried.
    “Yes, didn't you see it?”
    “Oh, was it a play? No, I didn't. I've been abroad.”
    “It didn't run very long. Actually, it was the most awful flop. I don't think mother's really the type to play Jezebel, do you?”
    I