Crooked House - Agatha Christie [56]
“A booby trap,” he said.
He swung the door experimentally to and fro. Then he stooped to the block of marble but he did not touch it.
“Has anyone handled this?”
“No,” said Sophia. “I wouldn’t let anyone touch it.”
“Quite right. Who found her?”
“I did. She didn’t come in for her dinner at one o’clock. Nannie was calling her. She’d passed through the kitchen and out into the stable yard about a quarter of an hour before. Nannie said, ‘She’ll be bouncing her ball or swinging on that door again.’ I said I’d fetch her in.”
Sophia paused.
“She had a habit of playing in that way, you said? Who knew about that?”
Sophia shrugged her shoulders.
“Pretty well everybody in the house, I should think.”
“Who else used the washhouse? Gardeners?”
Sophia shook her head.
“Hardly anyone ever goes into it.”
“And this little yard isn’t overlooked from the house?” Taverner summed it up. “Anyone could have slipped out from the house or round the front and fixed up that trap ready. But it would be chancy….”
He broke off, looking at the door, and swinging it gently to and fro.
“Nothing certain about it. Hit or miss. And likelier miss than hit. But she was unlucky. With her it was hit.”
Sophia shivered.
He peered at the floor. There were various dents on it.
“Looks as though someone experimented first … to see just how it would fall … The sound wouldn’t carry to the house.”
“No, we didn’t hear anything. We’d no idea anything was wrong until I came out and found her lying face down—all sprawled out.” Sophia’s voice broke a little. “There was blood on her hair.”
“That her scarf?” Taverner pointed to a checked woollen muffler lying on the floor.
“Yes.”
Using the scarf he picked up the block of marble carefully.
“There may be fingerprints,” he said, but he spoke without much hope. “But I rather think whoever did it was—careful.” He said to me: “What are you looking at?”
I was looking at a broken-backed wooden kitchen chair which was among the derelicts. On the seat of it were a few fragments of earth.
“Curious,” said Taverner. “Someone stood on that chair with muddy feet. Now why was that?”
He shook his head.
“What time was it when you found her, Miss Leonides?”
“It must have been five minutes past one.”
“And your Nannie saw her going out about twenty minutes earlier. Who was the last person before that known to have been in the washhouse?”
“I’ve no idea. Probably Josephine herself. Josephine was swinging on the door this morning after breakfast, I know.”
Taverner nodded.
“So between then and a quarter to one someone set the trap. You say that bit of marble is the doorstop you use for the front door? Any idea when that was missing?”
Sophia shook her head.
“The door hasn’t been propped open all today. It’s been too cold.”
“Any idea where everyone was all the morning?”
“I went out for a walk. Eustace and Josephine did lessons until half past twelve—with a break at half past ten. Father, I think, has been in the library all the morning.”
“Your mother?”
“She was just coming out of her bedroom when I came in from my walk—that was about a quarter-past twelve. She doesn’t get up very early.”
We reentered the house. I followed Sophia to the library. Philip, looking white and haggard, sat in his usual chair. Magda crouched against his knees, crying quietly. Sophia asked:
“Have they telephoned yet from the hospital?”
Philip shook his head.
Magda sobbed.
“Why wouldn’t they let me go with her? My baby—my funny ugly baby. And I used to call her a changeling and make her so angry. How could I be so cruel? And now she’ll die. I know she’ll die.”
“Hush, my dear,” said Philip. “Hush.”
I felt that I had no place in this family scene of anxiety and grief. I withdrew quietly and went to find Nannie. She was sitting in the kitchen crying quietly.
“It’s a judgement on me, Mr. Charles, for the hard things I’ve been thinking. A judgement, that’s what it is.”
I did not try and fathom her meaning.
“There’s wickedness in this house. That’s what there is. I didn’t wish to see it