Crooked House - Agatha Christie [50]
I had some comprehension of his feelings. I remembered (very dimly) my own supersensitiveness at Eustace’s age. My horror of appearing in any way unusual or of my near relatives departing from the normal.
“What about your grandfather?” I said. “Were you fond of him?”
A curious expression flitted across Eustace’s face.
“Grandfather,” he said, “was definitely antisocial!”
“In what way?”
“He thought of nothing but the profit motive. Laurence says that’s completely wrong. And he was a great individualist. All that sort of thing has got to go, don’t you think so?”
“Well,” I said, rather brutally, “he has gone.”
“A good thing, really,” said Eustace. “I don’t want to be callous, but you can’t really enjoy life at that age!”
“Didn’t he?”
“He couldn’t have. Anyway, it was time he went. He—”
Eustace broke off as Laurence Brown came back into the schoolroom.
Laurence began fussing about with some books, but I thought that he was watching me out of the corner of his eye.
He looked at his wristwatch and said:
“Please be back here sharp at eleven, Eustace. We’ve wasted too much time the last few days.”
“OK, sir.”
Eustace lounged towards the door and went out whistling.
Laurence Brown darted another sharp glance at me. He moistened his lips once or twice. I was convinced that he had come back into the schoolroom solely in order to talk to me.
Presently, after a little aimless stacking and unstacking of books and a pretence of looking for a book that was missing, he spoke:
“Er—How are they getting on?” he said.
“They?”
“The police.”
His nose twitched. A mouse in a trap, I thought, a mouse in a trap.
“They don’t take me into their confidence,” I said.
“Oh. I thought your father was the Assistant Commissioner.”
“He is,” I said. “But naturally he would not betray official secrets.”
I made my voice purposely pompous.
“Then you don’t know how—what—if—” His voice trailed off. “They’re not going to make an arrest, are they?”
“Not so far as I know. But then, as I say, I mightn’t know.”
Get ’em on the run, Inspector Taverner had said. Get ’em rattled. Well, Laurence Brown was rattled all right.
He began talking quickly and nervously.
“You don’t know what it’s like … The strain … Not knowing what—I mean, they just come and go—Asking questions … Questions that don’t seem to have anything to do with the case….”
He broke off. I waited. He wanted to talk—well, then, let him talk.
“You were there when the Chief Inspector made that monstrous suggestion the other day? About Mrs. Leonides and myself … It was monstrous. It makes one feel so helpless. One is powerless to prevent people thinking things! And it is all so wickedly untrue. Just because she is—was—so many years younger than her husband. People have dreadful minds—dreadful minds. I feel—I can’t help feeling, that it is all a plot.”
“A plot? That’s interesting.”
It was interesting, though not quite in the way he took it.
“The family, you know; Mr. Leonides’ family, have never been sympathetic to me. They were always aloof. I always felt that they despised me.”
His hands had begun to shake.
“Just because they have always been rich and—powerful. They looked down on me. What was I to them? Only the tutor. Only a wretched conscientious objector. And my objections were conscientious. They were indeed!”
I said nothing.
“All right then,” he burst out. “What if I was—afraid? Afraid I’d make a mess of it. Afraid that when I had to pull a trigger—I mightn’t be able to bring myself to do it. How can you be sure