trees look with their bare branches against
the sky ? and just a golden leaf or two
still hanging . . ."
She was silent a moment or two, then
she turned and kissed Sophia.
"Goodbye, dear," she said. "Don't worry
too much. Certain things have to be faced
and endured."
Then she said, "Come, Josephine," and
got into the car. Josephine climbed in beside
her.
They both waved as the car drove off.
"I suppose she's right, and it's better to
keep Josephine out of this for a while. But
we've got to make that child tell what she
knows, Sophia."
"She probably doesn't know anything.
She's just showing off. Josephine likes to
make herself look important, you know."
"It's more than that. Do they know what
poison it was in the cocoa?"
"They think it's digitalin. Aunt Edith
takes digitalin for her heart. She has a
whole bottle full of little tablets up in her
room. Now the bottle's empty."
"She ought to keep things like that locked
up."
"She did. I suppose it wouldn't be
difficult for someone to find out where she
hid the key."
"Someone? Who?" I looked again at the
pile of luggage. I said suddenly and loudly:
"They can't go away. They mustn't be
allowed to."
Sophia looked surprised.
"Roger and Clemency? Charles, you don't
think ?"
"Well, what do you think?"
Sophia stretched out her hands in a
helpless gesture.
"I don't know, Charles," she whispered.
"I only know that I'm back ? back in the
nightmare ?"
"I know. Those were the very words I
used to myself as I drove down with
Taverner."
"Because this is just what a nightmare
is. Walking about among people you know,
looking in their faces ? and suddenly the
faces change ? and it's not someone you
know any longer ? it's a stranger ? a
cruel stranger. ..."
She cried:
"Come outside, Charles ? come outside.
It's safer outside . . . I'm afraid to stay in
this house. . . ."
Twenty-five
We stayed in the garden a long time. By a
kind of tacit consent, we did not discuss
the horror that was weighing upon us.
Instead Sophia talked affectionately of the
dead woman, of things they had done, and
games they had played as children with
Nannie -- and tales that the old woman
used to tell them about Roger and their
father and the other brothers and sisters.
"They were her real children, you see.
She only came back to us to help during
the war when Josephine was a baby and
Eustace was a funny little boy."
There was a certain balm for Sophia in
these memories and I encouraged her to
talk.
I wondered what Taverner was doing.
Questioning the household, I suppose. A
car drove away with the police photographer
and two other men, and presently an ambulance
drove up. ^
Sophia shivered a little. Presently the
ambulance left and we knew that Nannie's
body had been taken away in preparation
for an autopsy.
And still we sat or walked in the garden
and talked ? our words becoming more
and more of a cloak for our real thoughts.
Finally, with a shiver, Sophia said:
"It must be very late ? it's almost dark.
We've got to go in. Aunt Edith and Josephine
haven't come back . . . Surely they
ought to be back by now?" (
A vague uneasiness woke in me. What
had happened? Was Edith deliberately
keeping the child away from the Crooked
House?
We went in. Sophia drew all the curtains.
The fire was lit and the big drawing room
looked harmonious with an unreal air of
bygone luxury. Great bowls of bronze
chrysanthemums stood on the tables.
Sophia rang and a maid who I recognised
as having been formerly upstairs brought
in tea. She had red eyes and sniffed
continuously. Also I noticed that she had a
frightened way of glancing quickly over her
shoulder.
Magda joined us, but Philip's tea was
sent in to him in the library. Magda's role
was a stiff frozen image of grief. She spoke
little or not at all. She said once:
"Where are Edith and Josephine? They're
out very late."
But she said it in a preoccupied kind of
way.
But I myself was becoming increasingly
uneasy. I asked if Taverner were still in the
house and Magda replied that she thought
so. I went in search of him. I told him that
I was worried about Miss de Haviland and
the child.
He went immediately to the telephone
and gave certain instructions.
"I'll let you know when I have news,"
he said.
I thanked him and went back to the
drawing room. Sophia was there with Eustace.
Magda had gone.
"He'll let us know if he hears anything,"
I said to Sophia.
She said in a low voice:
"Something's happened, Charles, something
must have happened."
"My dear Sophia, it's not really late yet."
"What are you bothering about?" said
Eustace. "They've probably gone to the
cinema."
He lounged out of the room. I said to
Sophia: "She may have taken Josephine to
a hotel -- or up to London. I think she
fully realised that the child was in danger
-- perhaps she realised it better than we
did."
Sophia replied with a sombre look that I
could not quite fathom.
"She kissed me goodbye. ..."
I did not see quite what she meant by
that disconnected remark, or what it was
r supposed to show. I asked if Magda was
worried.
"Mother? No, she's all right. She's no
sense of time. She's reading a new play of
Vavasour Jones called 'The Woman Disposes5.
It's a funny play about murder -- a
| female Bluebeard -- cribbed from 'Arsenic
and Old Lace' if you ask me, but it's got a
good woman's part, a woman who's got a
mania for being a widow."
I said no more. We sat, pretending to
read.
I It was half past six when Taverner opened
the door and came in. His face prepared us
for what he had to say.
Sophia got up.
"Yes?" she said.
"I'm sorry. I've got bad news for you. I
sent out a general alarm for the car. A
motorist reported having seen a Ford car
with a number something like that turning
off the main road at Flackspur Heath ?
through the woods."
"Not ? the track to the Flackspur
> Quarry?"
"Yes, Miss Leonides." He paused and
went on: "The car's been found in the
quarry. Both the occupants were dead.
You'll be glad to know they were killed
outright."
"Josephine!" It was Magda standing in
the doorway. Her voice rose in a wail.
"Josephine . . . My baby."
Sophia went to her and put her arms
round her. I said: "Wait a minute."
I had remembered something! Edith de
Haviland writing a couple of letters at the
desk, going out into the hall with them in
her hand.
But they had not been in her hand when
she got into the car.
I dashed out into the hall and went to
the long oak chest. I found the letters ?
pushed inconspicuously to the back behind
a brass tea urn.
The uppermost was addressed to Chief
Inspector Taverner.
Taverner had followed me. I handed the
letter to him and he tore it open. Standing
beside him I read its brief contents.
k My expectation is that this will be
opened after my death. I wish to enter
into no details, but I accept full responsibility
for the deaths of my brother-inlaw
Aristide Leonides and Janet Rowe
B (Nannie). I hereby solemnly declare that
Brenda Leonides and Laurence Brown
are innocent of the murder of Aristide
Leonides. Enquiry of Dr Michael Chavasse, 783 Harley Street will confirm
that my life could only have been
prolonged for a few months. I prefer to
take this way out and to spare two
innocent people the ordeal of being
charged with a murder they did not
commit. I am of sound mind and fully
conscious of what I write.
Edith Elfrida de Haviland.
As I finished the letter I was aware that
Sophia, too, had read it -- whether with
Taverner's concurrence or not, I don't
know.
"Aunt Edith .t". ." murmured Sophia.
I remembered Edith de Haviland's ruthless
foot grinding bindweed into the earth.
I remembered my early, almost fanciful, suspicions of her. But why --
Sophia spoke the thought in my mind
before I came to it.
"But why Josephine? Why did she take
Josephine with her?"
"Why did she do it at all?" I demanded.
"What was her motive?"
But even as I said that, I knew the truth.
I saw the whole thing clearly. I realised
that I was still holding her second letter in
my hand. I looked down and saw my own
name on it.
It was thicker and harder than the other
one. I think I knew what was in it before I
opened it. I tore the envelope along and
Josephine's little black notebook fell out. I
picked it up off the floor -- it came open
in my hand and I saw the entry on the first
page . . .
Sounding from a long way away, I heard
Sophia's voice, clear and self controlled.
"We've got it all wrong," she said. "Edith
didn't do it."
"No," I said.
Sophia came closer to me -- she whispered:
"It was -- Josephine -- wasn't it? That
was it, Josephine." j
Together we looked down on the first
entry in the little black book, written in an
unformed childish hand.
"Today I killed grandfather"
Twenty-six
I was to wonder afterwards that I could
have been so blind. The truth had stuck
out so clearly all along. Josephine and only
Josephine fitted in with all the necessary
qualifications. Her vanity, her persistent
self importance, her delight in talking, her
reiteration on how clever she was, and how
stupid the police were.
I had never considered her because she
was a child. But children have committed
murders, and this particular murder had
been well within a child's compass. Her
grandfather himself had indicated the precise
method -- he had practically handed
her a blue print. All she had to do was to
avoid leaving fingerprints and the slightest
knowledge of detective fiction would teach
her that. And everything else had been a
mere hotch potch, culled at random from
stock mystery stories. The notebook -- the
sleuthing -- her pretended suspicions, her
insistence that she was not going to tell till
she was sure. . . .
And finally the attack on herself. An
almost incredible performance considering
that she might easily have killed herself.
But then, childlike, she never considered
such a possibility. She was the heroine. The
heroine isn't killed. Yet there had been a
clue there ? the traces of earth on the seat
of the old chair in the wash house. Josephine
k was the only person who would have had
to climb up on a chair to balance the block
I of marble on the top of the door. Obviously
it had missed her more than once, (the
dints in the floor) and patiently she had
E - climbed up again and replaced it, handling
| it with her scarf to avoid fingerprints. And
I then it had fallen ? and she had had a near
escape from death.
It had been the perfect set up ? the
impression she was aiming for! She was in
danger, she "knew something," she had
? been attacked!
I saw how that had deliberately drawn
| my attention to her presence in the cylinder
I room. And she had completed the artistic
I disorder of her room before going out to
the wash house.
| But when she had returned from hospital,
when she had found Brenda and Laurence
arrested, she must have become dissatisfied.
The case was over -- and she -- Josephine, was out of the lime light.
So she stole the digitalin from Edith's
room and put it in her own cup of cocoa
and left the cup untouched on the hall
table.
Did she know that Nannie would drink
it? Possibly. From her words that morning, she had resented Nannie's criticisms of her.
Did Nannie, perhaps, wise from a lifetime
of experience with children, suspect? I think
that Nannie knew, had always known, that
Josephine was not normal. With her precocious
mental development had gone a
retarded moral sense. Perhaps, too, the
various factors of heredity -- what Sophia
had called the "ruthlessness" of the family
had met together.
She had had an authoritarian ruthlessness
of her grandmother's family, and the
ruthless egoism of Magda, seeing only her
own point of view. She had also presumably
suffered, sensitive like Philip, from the
stigma of being the unattractive -- the
changeling child -- of the family. Finally, in her very marrow, had run the essential
crooked strain of old Leonides. She ha
d
been Leonides's grandchild, she had resembled
him in brain and in cunning -- but
his love had gone outwards to family and
friends, hers had turned to herself.
I thought that old Leonides had realised
what none of the rest of the family had
realised, that Josephine might be a source
of danger to others and to herself. He had
kept her from school life because he was
afraid of what she might do. He had
shielded her, and guarded her in the home, and I understood now his urgency to Sophia
to look after Josephine.
Magda's sudden decision to send Josephine
abroad had that, too, been due to a
fear for the child? Not, perhaps, a conscious
fear, but some vague maternal instinct.
And Edith de Haviland? Had she first
suspected, then feared -- and finally known?
I looked down at the letter in my hand.
Dear Charles. This is in confidence
for you -- and for Sophia if you so
decide. It is imperative that someone
should know the truth. I found the
enclosed in the disused dog kennel
I outside the back door. She kept it
there. It confirms what I already suspected.
The action I am about to take
may be right or wrong ? I do not
know. But my life, in any case, is close
to its end, and I do not want the child
to suffer as I believe she would suffer if
called to earthly account for what she
has done.
There is often one of the litter who is
"not quite right".
If I do wrong. God forgive me ? but
I do it out of love. God bless you both.
Edith de Haviland
I hesitated for only a moment, then I
handed the letter to Sophia. Together we
again opened Josephine's little black book.
Today I killed grandfather.
We turned the pages. It was an amazing
production. Interesting, I should imagine,
to a psychologist. It set out, with such
terrible clarity, the fury of thwarted egoism.
The motive for the crime was set down,
pitifully childish and inadequate.
Grandfather wouldn't let me do bally
dancing so I made up my mind I would
kill him. Then we would go to London
and live and mother wouldn't mind
me doing bally.
I give only a few entries. They are all
significant.
I don't want to go to Switzerland -- I
won't go. If mother makes me I will kill
her too -- only I can't get any poison.
Perhaps I could make it with youberries.
They are poisonous, the book says so.
Eustace has made me very cross to
day. He says I am only a girl and no use
and that its silly my detecting. He wouldn't
think me silly if he knew it was me did
the murder.
I like Charles -- but he is rather
stupid. I have not decided yet who I shall
make have done the crime. Perhaps
Brenda and Laurence -- Brenda is nasty
to me -- she says I am not all there but
I like Laurence -- he told me about
Chariot Korday -- she killed someone in
his bath. She was not very clever about
it.
The last entry was revealing.
I hate Nannie ... I hate her ... I
hate her . . . She says I am only a little
girl. She says I show off. She's making
mother send me abroad . . . I'm going
to kill her too ? I think Aunt Edith's
medicine would do it. If there is another
murder 5 then the police will
come back and it will all be exciting
again.
Nannie's dead. I am glad. I haven't
decided yet where I'll hide the bottle with
the little pill things. Perhaps in Aunt
Clemency's room ? or else Eustace.
When I am dead as an old woman I shall
leave this behind me addressed to the
Chief of the Police and they will see what
a really great criminal I was.
I closed the book. Sophia's tears were
flowing fast.
"Oh Charles ? oh Charles ? it's so
dreadful. She's such a little monster ? and
yet ? and yet it's so terribly pathetic."
I had felt the same.
I had liked Josephine ... I still felt a
fondness for her . . . You do not like
anyone less because they have tuberculosis
or some other fatal disease. Josephine was,
as Sophia had said, a little monster, but she
was a pathetic little monster. She had been
born with a kink ? the crooked child of
the little crooked house.
Sophia asked:
"If ? she had lived ? what would have
happened?"
"I suppose she would have been sent to
a reformatory or a special school. Later she
would have been released ? or possibly
certified, I don't know."
Sophia shuddered.
"It's better the way it is. But Aunt Edith
? I don't like to think of her taking the
blame."
"She chose to do so. I don't suppose it
will be made public. I imagine that when
Brenda and Laurence come to trial, no case
will be brought against them and they will
be discharged.
"And you, Sophia," I said, this time on
a different note and taking both her hands
in mine, "will marry me. I've just heard
I'm appointed to Persia. We will go out
there together, and you will forget the little
Crooked House. Your mother can put on
plays and your father can buy more books
and Eustace will soon go to a university.
Don't worry about them any more. Think
of me."
Sophia looked at me straight in the
eyes.
"Aren't you afraid, Charles, to marry
me?"
"Why should I be? In poor little Josephine