Crooked House - Agatha Christie [35]
“Mr. Leonides gave you this letter and then you left him? What did you do next?”
“I rushed back to my own part of the house. My wife had just come in. I told her what my father proposed to do. How wonderful he had been! I—really, I hardly knew what I was doing.”
“And your father was taken ill—how long after that?”
“Let me see—half an hour, perhaps, or an hour. Brenda came rushing in. She was frightened. She said he looked queer. I—I rushed over with her. But I’ve told you all this before.”
“During your former visit, did you go into the bathroom adjoining your father’s room at all?”
“I don’t think so. No—no, I am sure I didn’t. Why, you can’t possibly think that I—”
My father quelled the sudden indignation. He got up and shook hands.
“Thank you, Mr. Leonides,” he said. “You have been very helpful. But you should have told us all this before.”
The door closed behind Roger. I got up and came to look at the letter lying on my father’s table.
“It could be a forgery,” said Taverner hopefully.
“It could be,” said my father, “but I don’t think it is. I think we’ll have to accept it exactly as it stands. Old Leonides was prepared to get his son out of this mess. It could have been done more efficiently by him alive than it could by Roger after his death—especially as it now transpires that no will is to be found and that in consequence Roger’s actual amount of inheritance is open to question. That means delays—and difficulties. As things now stand, the crash is bound to come. No, Taverner, Roger Leonides and his wife had no motive for getting the old man out of the way. On the contrary—”
He stopped and repeated thoughtfully as though a sudden thought had occurred to him: “On the contrary….”
“What’s on your mind, sir?” Taverner asked.
The Old Man said slowly:
“If Aristide Leonides had lived only another twenty-four hours, Roger would have been all right. But he didn’t live twenty-four hours. He died suddenly and dramatically within little more than an hour.”
“H’m,” said Taverner. “Do you think somebody in the house wanted Roger to go broke? Someone who had an opposing financial interest? Doesn’t seem likely.”
“What’s the position as regards the will?” my father asked. “Who actually gets old Leonides’ money?”
Taverner heaved an exasperated sigh.
“You know what lawyers are. Can’t get a straight answer out of them. There’s a former will. Made when he married the second Mrs. Leonides. That leaves the same sum to her, rather less to Miss de Haviland, and the remainder between Philip and Roger. I should have thought that if this will isn’t signed, then the old one would operate, but it seems it isn’t so simple as that. First the making of the new will revoked the former one and there are witnesses to the signing of it, and the ‘testator’s intention.’ It seems to be a toss-up if it turns out that he died intestate. Then the widow apparently gets the lot—or a life interest at any rate.”
“So if the will’s disappeared Brenda Leonides is the most likely person to profit by it?”
“Yes. If there’s been any hocus-pocus, it seems probable that she’s at the bottom of it. And there obviously has been hocus-pocus, but I’m dashed if I see how it was done.”
I didn’t see, either. I suppose we were really incredibly stupid. But we were looking at it, of course, from the wrong angle.
Twelve
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