Chapter 12

There was a short silence after Taverner had gone out.

Then I said:

‘Dad, what are murderers like?’

The Old Man looked at me thoughtfully. We understand each other so well that he knew exactly what was in my mind when I put that question. And he answered it very seriously.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s important now—very important, for you… Murder’s come close to you. You can’t go on looking at it from the outside.’

I had always been interested, in an amateurish kind of way, in some of the more spectacular ‘cases’ with which the CID had dealt, but, as my father said, I had been interested from the outside—looking in, as it were, through the shop window. But now, as Sophia had seen much more quickly than I did, murder had become a dominant factor in my life.

The Old Man went on:

‘I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask. I could put you on to a couple of the tame psychiatrists who do jobs for us. They’ve got it all cut and dried. Or Taverner could give you all the inside dope. But you want, I take it, to hear what I, personally, as the result of my experience of criminals, think about it?’

‘That’s what I want,’ I said gratefully.

My father traced a little circle with his finger on the desk-top.

‘What are murderers like? Some of them’—a faint rather melancholy smile showed on his face—‘have been thoroughly nice chaps.’

I think I looked a little startled.

‘Oh yes, they have,’ he said. ‘Nice ordinary fellows like you and me—or like that chap who went out just now— Roger Leonides. Murder, you see, is an amateur crime. I’m speaking of course of the kind of murder you have in mind—not gangster stuff. One feels, very often, as though these nice ordinary chaps had been overtaken, as it were, by murder, almost accidentally. They’ve been in a tight place, or they’ve wanted something very badly, money or a woman—and they’ve killed to get it. The brake that operates with most of us doesn’t operate with them. A child, you know, translates desire into action without compunction. A child is angry with its kitten, says “I’ll kill you,” and hits it on the head with a hammer—and then breaks its heart because the kitten doesn’t come alive again! Lots of kids try to take a baby out of a pram and “drown it”, because it usurps attention—or interferes with their pleasures. They get—very early—to a stage when they know that that is “wrong”—that is, that it will be punished. Later, they get to feel that it is wrong. But some people, I suspect, remain morally immature. They continue to be aware that murder is wrong, but they do not feel it. I don’t think, in my experience, that any murderer has really felt remorse… And that, perhaps, is the mark of Cain. Murderers are set apart, they are “different”– murder is wrong—but not for them—for them it is necessary—the victim has “asked for it”, it was “the only way”.’

‘Do you think,’ I asked, ‘that if someone hated old Leonides, had hated him, say, for a very long time, that that would be a reason?’

‘Pure hate? Very unlikely, I should say.’ My father looked at me curiously. ‘When you say hate, I presume you mean dislike carried to excess. A jealous hate is different—that rises out of affection and frustration. Constance Kent, everybody said, was very fond of the baby brother she killed. But she wanted, one supposes, the attention and the love that was bestowed on him. I think people more often kill those they love than those they hate. Possibly because only the people you love can really make life unendurable to you.

‘But all this doesn’t help you much, does it?’ he went on. ‘What you want, if I read you correctly, is some token, some universal sign that will help you to pick out a murderer from a household of apparently normal and pleasant people?’

‘Yes, that’s it.’

‘Is there a common denominator? I wonder. You know,’ he paused in thought, ‘if there is, I should be inclined to say it is vanity.’

‘Vanity?’

‘Yes, I’ve never met a murderer who wasn’t vain… It’s their vanity that leads to their undoing, nine times out of ten. They may be frightened of being caught, but they can’t help strutting and boasting and usually they’re sure they’ve been far too clever to be caught.’ He added: ‘And here’s another thing, a murderer wants to talk?

‘To talk?’

‘Yes; you see, having committed a murder puts you in a position of great loneliness. You’d like to tell somebody all about it—and you never can. And that makes you want to all the more. And so—if you can’t talk about how you did it, you can at least talk about the murder itself—discuss it, advance theories—go over it.

‘If I were you, Charles, I should look out for that. Go down there again, mix with them all, and get them to talk. Of course it won’t be plain sailing. Guilty or innocent, they’ll be glad of the chance to talk to a stranger, because they can say things to you that they couldn’t say to each other. But it’s possible, I think, that you might spot a difference. A person who has something to hide can’t really afford to talk at all. The blokes knew that in Intelligence during the war. If you were captured, your name, rank, and number, but nothing more. People who attempt to give false information nearly always slip up. Get that household talking, Charles, and watch out for a slip or for some flash of self-revelation.’

I told him then what Sophia had said about the ruthlessness in the family—the different kinds of ruthlessness. He was interested.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Your young woman has got something there. Most families have got a defect, a chink in their armour. Most people can deal with one weakness—but they mightn’t be able to deal with two weaknesses of a different kind. Interesting tiling, heredity. Take the de Haviland ruthlessness, and what we might call the Leonides unscrupulousness—the de Havilands are all right because they’re not unscrupulous, and the Leonides are all right because, though unscrupulous, they are kindly—but get a descendant who inherited both of those traits—see what I mean?’

I had not thought of it quite in those terms. My father said:

‘But I shouldn’t worry your head about heredity. It’s much too tricky and complicated a subject. No, my boy, go down there and let them talk to you. Your Sophia is quite right about one thing. Nothing but the truth is going to be any good to her or to you. You’ve got to know.’

He added as I went out of the room:

‘And be careful of the child.’

‘Josephine? You mean don’t let on to her what I’m up to?’

‘No, I didn’t mean that. I meant—look after her. We don’t want anything to happen to her.’

I stared at him.

‘Come, come, Charles. There’s a cold-blooded killer somewhere in that household. The child Josephine appears to know most of what goes on.’

‘She certainly knew all about Roger—even if she did leap to the conclusion that he was a swindler. Her account of what she overheard seems to have been quite accurate.’

‘Yes, yes. Child’s evidence is always the best evidence there is. I’d rely on it every time. No good in court, of course. Children can’t stand being asked direct questions. They mumble or else look idiotic and say they don’t know. They’re at their best when they’re showing off. That’s what the child was doing to you. Showing off. You’ll get more out of her in the same way. Don’t go asking her questions. Pretend you think she doesn’t know anything. That’ll fetch her.’

He added:

‘But take care of her. She may know a little too much for somebody’s safety.’

Chapter 13

I went down to the Crooked House (as I called it in my own mind) with a slightly guilty feeling. Though I had repeated to Taverner Josephine’s confidences about Roger, I had said nothing about her statement that Brenda and Laurence Brown wrote love letters to each other.

I excused myself by pretending that it was mere romancing, and that there was no reason to believe that it was true. But actually I had felt a strange reluctance to pile up additional evidence against Brenda Leonides. I had been affected by the pathos of her position in the house— surrounded by a hostile family united solidly against her. If such letters existed doubtless Taverner and his myrmidons would find them. I disliked to be the means of bringing fresh suspicion on a woman in a difficult position. Moreover, she had assured me solemnly that there was nothing of that kind between her and Laurence and I felt more inclined to believe her than to believe that malicious gnome Josephine. Had not Brenda said herself that Josephine was ‘not all there’?

I stifled an uneasy certainty that Josephine was very much all there. I remembered the intelligence of her beady black eyes.

I had rung up Sophia and asked if I might come down again.

‘Please do, Charles.’

‘How are things going?’

‘I don’t know. All right. They keep on searching the house. What are they looking for?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘We’re all getting very nervy. Come as soon as you can. I shall go crazy if I can’t talk to someone.’

I said I would come down straight away.

There was no one in sight as I drove up to the front door. I paid the taxI and it drove away. I felt uncertain whether to ring the bell or to walk in. The front door was open.

As I stood there, hesitating, I heard a slight sound behind me. I turned my head sharply. Josephine, her face partially obscured by a very large apple, was standing in the opening of the yew hedge looking at me.

As I turned my head, she turned away.

‘Hallo, Josephine.’

She did not answer, but disappeared behind the hedge. I crossed the drive and followed her. She was seated on the uncomfortable rustic bench by the goldfish pond swinging her legs to and fro and biting into her apple. Above its rosy circumference her eyes regarded me sombrely and with what I could not but feel was hostility.

‘I’ve come down again, Josephine,’ I said.

It was a feeble opening, but I found Josephine’s silence and her unblinking gaze rather unnerving.

With excellent strategic sense, she still did not reply.

‘Is that a good apple?’ I asked.

This time Josephine did condescend to reply. Her reply consisted of one word.

‘Woolly.’

‘A pity,’ I said. ‘I don’t like woolly apples.’

Josephine replied scornfully:

‘Nobody does.’

‘Why wouldn’t you speak to me when I said hallo?’

‘I didn’t want to.’

‘Why not?’

Josephine removed the apple from her face to assist in the clearness of her denunciation.

‘You went and sneaked to the police,’ she said.

‘Oh!’ I was rather taken aback. ‘You mean—about—’ ‘About Uncle Roger.’

‘But it’s all right, Josephine,’ I assured her. ‘Quite all right. They know he didn’t do anything wrong—I mean, he hadn’t embezzled any money or anything of that kind.’

Josephine threw me an exasperated glance.

‘How stupid you are.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I wasn’t worrying about Uncle Roger. It’s simply that that’s not the way to do detective work. Don’t you know that you never tell the police until the very end?’

‘Oh, I see,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Josephine. I’m really very sorry.’

‘So you should be.’ She added reproachfully: ‘I trusted you.’

I said I was sorry for the third time. Josephine appeared a little mollified. She took another couple of bites of apple.

‘But the police would have been bound to find out about all this,’ I said. ‘You—I—we couldn’t have kept it a secret.’

‘You mean because he’s going bankrupt?’

As usual Josephine was well informed.

‘I suppose it will come to that.’

‘They’re going to talk about it tonight,’ said Josephine. ‘Father and Mother and Uncle Roger and Aunt Edith. Aunt Edith would give him her money—only she hasn’t got it yet—but I don’t think father will. He says if Roger has got in a jam he’s only got himself to blame and what’s the good of throwing good money after bad, and Mother won’t hear of giving him any because she wants Father to put up the money for Edith Thompson. Do you know about Edith Thompson? She was married, but she didn’t like her husband. She was in love with a young man called Bywaters who came off a ship and he went down a different street after the theatre and stabbed him in the back.’

I marvelled once more at the range and completeness of Josephine’s knowledge; and also at the dramatic sense which, only slightly obscured by hazy pronouns, had presented all the salient facts in a nutshell.

‘It sounds all right,’ said Josephine, ‘but I don’t suppose the play will be like that at all. It will be like Jezebel again.’ She sighed. ‘I wish I knew why the dogs wouldn’t eat the palms of her hands.’

‘Josephine,’ I said. ‘You told me that you were almost sure who the murderer was?’

‘Well?’

‘Who is it?’

She gave me a look of scorn.

‘I see,’ I said. ‘Not till the last chapter? Not even if I promise not to tell Inspector Taverner?’

‘I want just a few more clues,’ said Josephine.

‘Anyway,’ she added, throwing the core of the apple into the goldfish pool, ‘I wouldn’t tell you. If you’re anyone, you’re Watson.’

I stomached this insult.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’m Watson. But even Watson was given the data.’

‘The what?’

‘The facts. And then he made the wrong deductions from them. Wouldn’t it be a lot of fun for you to see me making the wrong deductions?’

For a moment Josephine was tempted. Then she shook her head.

‘No,’ she said, and added: ‘Anyway, I’m not very keen on Sherlock Holmes. It’s awfully old-fashioned. They drive about in dog-carts.’

‘What about those letters?’ I asked.

‘What letters?’

‘The letters you said Laurence Brown and Brenda wrote to each other.’

‘I made that up,’ said Josephine.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Yes, I did. I often make things up. It amuses me.’

I stared at her. She stared back.

‘Look here, Josephine. I know a man at the British Museum who knows a lot about the Bible. If I find out from him why the dogs didn’t eat the palms of Jezebel’s hands, will you tell me about those letters?’

This time Josephine really hesitated.

Somewhere, not very far away, a twig snapped with a sharp cracking noise. Josephine said flatly:

‘No, I won’t.’

I accepted defeat. Rather late in the day, I remembered my father’s advice.

‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘it’s only a game. Of course you don’t really know anything.’

Josephine’s eyes snapped, but she resisted the bait.

I got up. ‘I must go in now,’ I said, ‘and find Sophia. Come along.’

‘I shall stop here,’ said Josephine.

‘No, you won’t,’ I said. ‘You’re coming in with me.’

Unceremoniously I yanked her to her feet. She seemed surprised and inclined to protest, but yielded with a fairly good grace—partly, no doubt, because she wished to observe the reactions of the household to my presence.

Why I was so anxious for her to accompany me I could not at that moment have said. It only came to me as we were passing through the front door.

It was because of the sudden snapping of a twig.