Chapter 14

There was a murmur of voices from the big drawing-room. I hesitated but did not go in. I wandered down the passage and, led by some impulse, I pushed open a baize door. The passage beyond was dark, but suddenly a door opened showing a big lighted kitchen. In the doorway stood an old woman—a rather bulky old woman. She had a very clean white apron tied round her ample waist and the moment I saw her I knew that everything was all right. It is the feeling that a good Nannie can always give you. I am thirty-five, but I felt just like a reassured little boy of four.

As far as I knew, Nannie had never seen me, but she said at once:

‘It’s Mr Charles, isn’t it? Come into the kitchen and let me give you a cup of tea.’

It was a big happy-feeling kitchen. I sat down by the centre table and Nannie brought me a cup of tea and two sweet biscuits on a plate. I felt more than ever that I was in the nursery again. Everything was all right—and the terrors of the dark and the unknown were no more with me.

‘Miss Sophia will be glad you’ve come,’ said Nannie. ‘She’s been getting rather over-excited.’ She added disapprovingly: ‘They’re all over-excited.’

I looked over my shoulder.

‘Where’s Josephine? She came in with me.’

Nannie made a disapproving clacking noise with her tongue.

‘Listening at doors and writing down things in that silly little book she carries about with her,’ she said. ‘She ought to have gone to school and had children of her own age to play with. I’ve said so to Miss Edith and she agrees— but the master would have it that she was best here in her home.’

‘I suppose he’s very fond of her,’ I said.

‘He was, sir. He was fond of them all.’

I looked slightly astonished, wondering why Phi lip’s affection for his offspring was put so definitely in the past. Nannie saw my expression and flushing slightly, she said:

‘When I said the master, it was old Mr Leonides I meant.’

Before I could respond to that, the door opened with a rush and Sophia came in.

‘Oh, Charles,’ she said, and then quickly: ‘Oh, Nannie, I’m so glad he’s come.’

‘I know you are, love.’

Nannie gathered up a lot of pots and pans and went off into a scullery with them. She shut the door behind her.

I got up from the table and went over to Sophia. I put my arms round her and held her to me.

‘Dearest,’ I said. ‘You’re trembling. What is it?’

Sophia said:

‘I’m frightened, Charles. I’m frightened.’

‘I love you,’ I said. ‘If I could take you away—’

She drew apart and shook her head.

‘No, that’s impossible. We’ve got to see this through. But you know, Charles, I don’t like it. I don’t like the feeling that someone—someone in this house—someone I see and speak to every day is a cold-blooded, calculating poisoner…’

And I didn’t know how to answer that. To someone like Sophia one can give no easy meaningless reassurances.

She said: ‘If only one knew—’

‘That must be the worst of it,’ I agreed.

‘You know what really frightens me?’ she whispered. ‘It’s that we may never know…’

I could visualize easily what a nightmare that would be… And it seemed to me highly probable that it never might be known who had killed old Leonides.

But it also reminded me of a question I had meant to put to Sophia on a point that had interested me.

‘Tell me, Sophia,’ I said. ‘How many people in this house knew about the eserine eyedrops—I mean (a) that your grandfather had them, and (b) that they were poisonous and what would be a fatal dose?’

‘I see what you’re getting at, Charles. But it won’t work. You see, we all knew.’

‘Well, yes, vaguely, I suppose, but specifically—’

‘We knew specifically. We were all up with grandfather one day for coffee after lunch. He liked all the family round him, you know. And his eyes had been giving him a lot of trouble. And Brenda got the eserine to put a drop in each eye, and Josephine, who always asks questions about everything, said: “Why does it say ‘Eyedrops—not to be taken’ on the bottle?” And grandfather smiled and said: “If Brenda were to make a mistake and inject eyedrops into me one day instead of insulin—I suspect I should give a big gasp, and go rather blue in the face and then die, because you see, my heart isn’t very strong.” And Josephine said: “Oo,” and grandfather went on: “So we must be careful that Brenda does not give me an injection of eserine instead of insulin, mustn’t we?”’ Sophia paused and then said: ‘We were all there listening. You see? We all heard!’

I did see. I had some faint idea in my mind that just a little specialized knowledge would have been needed. But now it was borne in upon me that old Leonides had actually supplied the blue print for his own murder. The murderer had not had to think out a scheme, or to plan or devise anything. A simple easy method of causing death had been supplied by the victim himself.

I drew a deep breath. Sophia, catching my thought, said: ‘Yes, it’s rather horrible, isn’t it?’

‘You know, Sophia,’ I said slowly. ‘There’s just one thing does strike me.’

‘Yes?’

‘That you’re right, and that it couldn’t have been Brenda. She couldn’t do it exactly that way—when you’d all listened—when you’d all remember.’

‘I don’t know about that. She is rather dumb in some ways, you know.’

‘Not as dumb as all that,’ I said. ‘No, it couldn’t have been Brenda.’

Sophia moved away from me.

‘You don’t want it to be Brenda, do you?’ she asked.

And what could I say? I couldn’t—no, I couldn’t—say flatly: ‘Yes, I hope it is Brenda.’

Why couldn’t I? Just the feeling that Brenda was all alone on one side, and the concentrated animosity of the powerful Leonides family was arrayed against her on the other side. Chivalry? A feeling for the weaker? For the defenceless? I remembered her sitting on the sofa in her expensive rich mourning, the hopelessness in her voice—the fear in her eyes.

Nannie came back rather opportunely from the scullery. I don’t know whether she sensed a certain strain between myself and Sophia.

She said disapprovingly:

‘Talking murders and such-like. Forget about it, that’s what I say. Leave it to the police. It’s their nasty business, not yours.’

‘Oh, Nannie—don’t you realize that someone in this house is a murderer?’

‘Nonsense, Miss Sophia, I’ve no patience with you. Isn’t the front door open all the time—all the doors open, nothing locked—asking for thieves and burglars?’

‘But it couldn’t have been a burglar, nothing was stolen. Besides, why should a burglar come in and poison somebody?’

‘I didn’t say it was a burglar, Miss Sophia. I only said all the doors were open. Anyone could have got in. If you ask me it was the Communists.’

Nannie nodded her head in a satisfied way.

‘Why on earth should Communists want to murder poor grandfather?’

‘Well, everyone says that they’re at the bottom of everything that goes on. But if it wasn’t the Communists, mark my word, it was the Catholics. The Scarlet Woman of Babylon, that’s what they are.’

With the air of one saying the last word, Nannie disappeared again into the scullery.

Sophia and I laughed.

‘A good old Black Protestant,’ I said.

‘Yes, isn’t she? Come on, Charles, come into the drawingroom. There’s a kind of family conclave going on. It was scheduled for this evening—but it’s started prematurely.’

‘I’d better not butt in, Sophia.’

‘If you’re ever going to marry into the family, you’d better see just what it’s like when it has the gloves off.’

‘What’s it all about?’

‘Roger’s affairs. You seem to have been mixed up in them already. But you’re crazy to think that Roger would ever have killed grandfather. Why, Roger adored him.’

‘I didn’t really think Roger had. I thought Cle mency might have.’

‘Only because I put it into your head. But you’re wrong there too. I don’t think Clemency will mind a bit if Roger loses all his money. I think she’ll actually be rather pleased. She’s got a queer kind of passion for not having things. Come on.’

When Sophia and I entered the drawing-room, the voices that were speaking stopped abruptly. Everybody looked at us.

They were all there. Philip sitting in a big crimson brocaded arm-chair between the windows, his beautiful face set in a cold, stern mask. He looked like a judge about to pronounce sentence. Roger was astride a big pouffe by the fireplace. He had ruffled up his hair between his fingers until it stood up all over his head. His left trouser leg was rucked up and his tie askew. He looked flushed and argumentative. Clemency sat beyond him, her slight form seemed too slender for the big stuffed chair. She was looking away from the others and seemed to be studying the wall panels with a dispassionate gaze. Edith sat in a grandfather chair, bolt upright. She was knitting with incredible energy, her lips pressed tightly together. The most beautiful thing in the room to look at was Magda and Eustace. They looked like a portrait by Gainsborough. They sat together on the sofa—the dark, handsome boy with a sullen expression on his face, and beside him, one arm thrust out along the back of the sofa, sat Magda, the Duchess of Three Gables in a picture gown of taffetas with one small foot in a brocaded slipper thrust out in front of her.

Philip frowned.

‘Sophia,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, but we are discussing family matters which are of a private nature.’

Miss de Haviland’s needles clicked. I prepared to apologize and retreat. Sophia forestalled me. Her voice was clear and determined.

‘Charles and I,’ she said, ‘hope to get married. I want Charles to be here.’

‘And why on earth not?’ cried Roger, springing up from his pouffe with explosive energy. ‘I keep telling you, Philip, there’s nothing private about this! The whole world is going to know tomorrow or the day after. Anyway, my dear boy,’ he came and put a friendly hand on my shoulder, ‘you know all about it. You were there this morning.’

‘Do tell me,’ cried Magda, leaning forward. ‘What is it like at Scotland Yard? One always wonders. A table? A desk? Chairs? What kind of curtains? No flowers, I suppose? A dictaphone?’

‘Put a sock in it, Mother,’ said Sophia. ‘And anyway, you told Vavasour Jones to cut that Scotland Yard scene. You said it was an anti-climax.’

‘It makes it too like a detective play,’ said Magda. ‘Edith Thompson is definitely a psychological drama— or psychological thriller—which do you think sounds best?’

‘You were there this morning?’ Philip asked me sharply. ‘Why? Oh, of course—your father—’

He frowned. I realized more clearly than ever that my presence was unwelcome, but Sophia’s hand was clenched on my arm.

Clemency moved a chair forward.

‘Do sit down,’ she said.

I gave her a grateful glance and accepted.

‘You may say what you like,’ said Miss de Haviland, apparently going on from where they had all left off, ‘but I do think we ought to respect Aristide’s wishes. When this will business is straightened out, as far as I am concerned, my legacy is entirely at your disposal, Roger.’

Roger tugged his hair in a frenzy.

‘No, Aunt Edith. No! ’ he cried.

‘I wish I could say the same,’ said Philip, ‘but one has to take every factor into consideration—’

‘Dear old Phil, don’t you understand? I’m not going to take a penny from anyone.’

‘Of course he can’t!’ snapped Clemency.

‘Anyway, Edith,’ said Magda. ‘If the will is straightened out, he’ll have his own legacy.’

‘But it can’t possibly be straightened out in time, can it?’ asked Eustace.

‘You don’t know anything about it, Eustace,’ said Philip.

‘The boy’s absolutely right,’ cried Roger. ‘He’s put his finger on the spot. Nothing can avert the crash. Nothing.’

He spoke with a kind of relish.

‘There is really nothing to discuss,’ said Clemency.

‘Anyway,’ said Roger, ‘what does it matter?’

‘I should have thought it mattered a good deal,’ said Philip, pressing his lips together.

‘No,’ said Roger. ‘No! Does anything matter compared with the fact that father is dead? Father is dead! And we sit here discussing mere money matters!’

A faint colour rose in Philip’s pale cheeks.

‘We are only trying to help,’ he said stiffly.

‘I know, Phil, old boy, I know. But there’s nothing anyone can do. So let’s call it a day.’

‘I suppose,’ said Philip, ‘that I could raise a certain amount of money. Securities have gone down a good deal and some of my capital is tied up in such a way that I can’t touch it: Magda’s settlement and so on—but—’

Magda said quickly:

‘Of course you can’t raise the money, darling. It would be absurd to try—and not very fair on the children.’

‘I tell you I’m not asking anyone for anything!’ shouted Roger. I’m hoarse with telling you so. I’m quite content that things should take their course.’

‘It’s a question of prestige,’ said Philip. ‘Father’s. Ours.’

‘It wasn’t a family business. It was solely my concern.’

‘Yes,’ said Philip, looking at him. ‘It was entirely your concern.’

Edith de Haviland got up and said: ‘I think we’ve discussed this enough.’

There was in her voice that authentic note of authority that never fails to produce its effect.

Philip and Magda got up. Eustace lounged out of the room and I noticed the stiffness of his gait. He was not exactly lame, but his walk was a halting one.

Roger linked his arm in Philip’s and said:

‘You’ve been a brick, Phil, even to think of such a thing!’ The brothers went out together.

Magda murmured, ‘Such a fuss!’ as she followed them, and Sophia said that she must see about my room.

Edith de Haviland stood rolling up her knitting. She looked towards me and I thought she was going to speak to me. There was something almost like appeal in her glance. However, she changed her mind, sighed, and went out after the others.

Clemency had moved over to the window and stood looking out into the garden. I went over and stood beside her. She turned her head slightly towards me.

‘Thank goodness that’s over,’ she said—and added with distaste: ‘What a preposterous room this is!’

‘Don’t you like it?’

‘I can’t breathe in it. There’s always a smell of half-dead flowers and dust.’

I thought she was unjust to the room. But I knew what she meant. It was very definitely an interior.

It was a woman’s room, exotic, soft, shut away from the rude blasts of outside weather. It was not a room that a man would be happy in for long. It was not a room where you could relax and read the newspaper and smoke a pipe and put up your feet. Nevertheless I preferred it to Clemency’s own abstract expression of herself upstairs. On the whole I prefer a boudoir to an operating theatre.

She said, looking round:

‘It’s just a stage set. A background for Magda to play her scenes against.’ She looked at me. ‘You rea lize, don’t you, what we’ve just been doing? Act II—the family conclave. Magda arranged it. It didn’t mean a thing. There was nothing to talk about, nothing to discuss. It’s all settled—finished.’

There was no sadness in her voice. Rather there was satisfaction. She caught my glance.

‘Oh, don’t you understand?’ she said impatiently. ‘We’re free—at last! Don’t you understand that Roger’s been miserable—absolutely miserable—for years? He never had any aptitude for business. He likes things like horses and cows and pottering round in the country. But he adored his father—they all did. That’s what’s wrong with this house—too much family. I don’t mean that the old man was a tyrant, or preyed upon them, or bullied them. He didn’t. He gave them money and freedom. He was devoted to them. And they kept on being devoted to him.’

‘Is there anything wrong in that?’

‘I think there is. I think, when your children have grown up, that you should cut away from them, efface yourself, slink away, force them to forget you.’

‘Force them? That’s rather drastic, isn’t it? Isn’t coercion as bad one way as another?’

‘If he hadn’t made himself such a personality—’

‘You can’t make yourself a personality,’ I said. ‘He was a personality.’

‘He was too much of a personality for Roger. Ro ger worshipped him. He wanted to do everything his father wanted him to do, he wanted to be the kind of son his father wanted. And he couldn’t. His father made over Associated Catering to him—it was the old man’s particular joy and pride, and Roger tried hard to carry on in his father’s footsteps. But he hadn’t got that kind of ability. In business matters Roger is—yes, I’ll say it plainly—a fool. And it nearly broke his heart. He’s been miserable for years, struggling, seeing the whole thing go down the hill, having sudden wonderful “ideas” and “schemes” which always went wrong and made it worse than ever. It’s a terrible thing to feel you’re a failure year after year. You don’t know how unhappy he’s been. I do.’

Again she turned and faced me.

‘You thought, you actually suggested to the police, that Roger would have killed his father—for money! You don’t know how—how absolutely ridiculous that is!’

‘I do know it now,’ I said humbly.

‘When Roger knew he couldn’t stave it off any more—that the crash was bound to come, he was actually relieved. Yes, he was. He worried about his father’s knowing—but not about anything else. He was looking forward to the new life we were going to live.’

Her face quivered a little and her voice softened.

‘Where were you going?’ I asked.

‘To Barbados. A distant cousin of mine died a short time ago and left me a tiny estate out there—oh, nothing much. But it was somewhere to go. We’d have been desperately poor, but we’d have scratched a living—it costs very little just to live. We’d have been together—unworried, away from them all.’

She sighed.

‘Roger is a ridiculous person. He would worry about me—about my being poor. I suppose he’s got the Leonides’ attitude to money too firmly in his mind. When my first husband was alive, we were terribly poor—and Roger thinks it was so brave and wonderful of me! He doesn’t realize that I was happy—really happy! I’ve never been so happy since. And yet—I never loved Richard as I love Roger.’

Her eyes half-closed. I was aware of the intensity of her feeling.

She opened her eyes, looked at me and said:

‘So you see, I would never have killed anyone for money. I don’t like money.’

I was quite sure that she meant exactly what she said. Clemency Leonides was one of those rare people to whom money does not appeal. They dislike luxury, prefer austerity and are suspicious of possessions.

Still, there are many to whom money has no personal appeal, but who can be tempted by the power it confers.

I said: ‘You mightn’t want money for yourself—but wisely directed, money can do a lot of interesting things. It can endow research, for example.’

I had suspected that Clemency might be a fanatic about her work, but she merely said:

‘I doubt if endowments ever do much good. They’re usually spent in the wrong way. The things that are worth while are usually accomplished by someone with enthusiasm and drive—and with natural vision. Expensive equipment and training and experiment never does what you’d imagine it might do. The spending of it usually gets into the wrong hands.’

‘Will you mind giving up your work when you go to Barbados?’ I asked. ‘You’re still going, I presume?’

‘Oh, yes, as soon as the police will let us. No, I shan’t mind giving up my work at all. Why should I? I wouldn’t like to be idle, but I shan’t be idle in Barbados.’

She added impatiently:

‘Oh, if only this could all be cleared up quickly and we could get away.’

‘Clemency,’ I said, ‘have you any idea at all who did do this? Granting that you and Roger had no hand in it (and really I can’t see any reason to think you had), surely, with your intelligence, you must have some idea of who did?’

She gave me a rather peculiar look, a darting, sideways glance. When she spoke her voice had lost its spontaneity. It was awkward, rather embarrassed.

‘One can’t make guesses, it’s unscientific,’ she said. ‘One can only say that Brenda and Laurence are the obvious suspects.’

‘So you think they did it?’

Clemency shrugged her shoulders.

She stood for a moment as though listening, then she went out of the room, passing Edith de Haviland in the doorway.

Edith came straight over to me.

‘I want to talk to you,’ she said.

My father’s words leapt into my mind. Was this—

But Edith de Haviland was going on:

‘I hope you didn’t get the wrong impression,’ she said. ‘About Philip, I mean. Philip is rather difficult to understand. He may seem to you reserved and cold, but that is not so at all. It’s just a manner. He can’t help it.’

‘I really hadn’t thought—’ I began.

But she swept on:

‘Just now—about Roger. It isn’t really that he’s grudging. He’s never been mean about money. And he’s really a dear—he’s always been a dear—but he needs understanding.’

I looked at her with the air, I hope, of one who was willing to understand. She went on:

‘It’s partly, I think, from having been the second of the family. There’s often something about a second child—they start handicapped. He adored his father, you see. Of course, all the children adored Aristide and he adored them. But Roger was his especial pride and joy. Being the eldest— the first. And I think Philip felt it. He drew back right into himself. He began to like books and the past and things that were well divorced from everyday life. I think he suffered—children do suffer…’

She paused and went on:

‘What I really mean, I suppose, is that he’s always been jealous of Roger. I think perhaps he doesn’t know it himself. But I think the fact that Roger has come a cropper—oh, it seems an odious thing to say and really I’m sure he doesn’t realize it himself—but I think perhaps Philip isn’t as sorry about it as he ought to be.’

‘You mean really that he’s rather pleased Roger has made a fool of himself.’

‘Yes,’ said Miss de Haviland. ‘I mean just exactly that.’

She added, frowning a little:

‘It distressed me, you know, that he didn’t at once offer to help his brother.’

‘Why should he?’ I said. ‘After all, Roger has made a muck of things. He’s a grown man. There are no children to consider. If he were ill or in real want, of course his family would help—but I’ve no doubt Roger would really much prefer to start afresh entirely on his own.’

‘Oh! he would. It’s only Clemency he minds about. And Clemency is an extraordinary creature. She really likes being uncomfortable and having only one utility teacup to drink out of. Modern, I suppose. She’s no sense of the past, no sense of beauty.’

I felt her shrewd eyes looking me up and down.

‘This is a dreadful ordeal for Sophia,’ she said. ‘I am so sorry her youth should be dimmed by it. I love them all, you know. Roger and Philip, and now Sophia and Eustace and Josephine. All the dear children. Marcia’s children. Yes, I love them dearly.’ She paused and then added sharply: ‘But, mind you, this side idolatry.’

She turned abruptly and went. I had the feeling that she had meant something by her last remark that I did not quite understand.