Crooked House - Agatha Christie [48]
The whole family wanted it to be Brenda and Laurence, hoped it might be Brenda and Laurence, but didn’t really believe it was Brenda and Laurence….
And of course, the whole family might be wrong, and it might really be Laurence and Brenda after all.
Or, it might be Laurence, and not Brenda….
That would be a much better solution.
I finished dabbing my cut chin and went down to breakfast filled with the determination to have an interview with Laurence Brown as soon as possible.
It was only as I drank my second cup of coffee that it occurred to me that the Crooked House was having its effect on me also. I, too, wanted to find, not the true solution, but the solution that suited me best.
After breakfast I went through the hall and up the stairs. Sophia had told me that I should find Laurence giving instruction to Eustace and Josephine in the schoolroom.
I hesitated on the landing outside Brenda’s front door. Did I ring and knock, or did I walk right in? I decided to treat the house as an integral Leonides home and not as Brenda’s private residence.
I opened the door and passed inside. Everything was quiet, there seemed no one about. On my left the door into the big drawing room was closed. On my right two open doors showed a bedroom and adjoining bathroom. This I knew was the bathroom adjoining Aristide Leonides’ bedroom where the eserine and the insulin had been kept.
The police had finished with it now. I pushed the door open and slipped inside. I realized then how easy it would have been for anyone in the house (or from outside the house for the matter of that!) to come up here and into the bathroom unseen.
I stood in the bathroom looking round. It was sumptuously appointed with gleaming tiles and a sunken bath. At one side were various electric appliances; a hot plate and grill under, an electric kettle—a small electric saucepan, a toaster—everything that a valet attendant to an old gentleman might need. On the wall was a white enamelled cupboard. I opened it. Inside were medical appliances, two medicine glasses, eyebath, eye dropper, and a few labelled bottles. Aspirin, boracic powder, iodine. Elastoplast bandages, etc. On a separate shelf were the stacked supply of insulin, two hypodermic needles, and a bottle of surgical spirit. On a third shelf was a bottle marked “The Tablets—one or two to be taken at night as ordered.” On this shelf, no doubt, had stood the bottle of eyedrops. It was all clear, well arranged, easy for anyone to get at if needed, and equally easy to get at for murder.
I could do what I liked with the bottles and then go softly out and downstairs again and nobody would ever know I had been there. All this was, of course, nothing new, but it brought home to me how difficult the task of the police was.
Only from the guilty party or parties could one find out what one needed.
“Rattle ’em,” Taverner had said to me. “Get ’em on the run. Make ’em think we’re on to something. Keep ourselves well in the limelight. Sooner or later, if we do, our criminal will stop leaving well alone and try to be smarter still—and then—we’ve got him.”
Well, the criminal hadn’t reacted to this treatment so far.
I came out of the bathroom. Still no one about. I went on along the corridor. I passed the dining room on the left, and Brenda’s bedroom and bathroom on the right. In the latter, one of the maids was moving about. The dining room door was closed. From a room beyond that, I heard Edith de Haviland’s voice telephoning to the inevitable fishmonger. A spiral flight of stairs led to the floor above. I went up them. Edith’s bedroom and sitting room were here, I knew, and two more bathrooms and Laurence Brown’s room. Beyond that again the short flight of steps down to the big room built out over the servants’ quarters at the back which was used as a schoolroom.
Outside the door I paused. Laurence Brown’s voice could be heard, slightly raised, from inside.
I think Josephine’s habit of snooping must have been catching. Quite unashamedly I leaned against the door