Crooked House by Agatha Christie Read Free Book Online Page B

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 enquiry. 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 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.
    It was quite definitely her room. I was sure of that.
    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 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 is possible that there was anything between her and Mr Laurence Brown?”
    “You mean - some kind of a love affair? I shouldn't