Crooked House - Agatha Christie [64]
I remembered the look of terror on Brenda’s face—the wild unreasoning panic. I remembered the sheer panic that Magda had conjured up at will when she considered playing the part of a murderess. There would be no panic in Sophia’s mind, but she was a realist, and she could see clearly enough that Leonides’ will made her a suspect. I understood better now (or thought I did) her refusal to become engaged to me and her insistence that I should find out the truth. Nothing but the truth, she had said, was any good to her. I remembered the passion, the earnestness with which she had said it.
We had turned to walk towards the house and suddenly, at a certain spot, I remembered something else she had said.
She had said that she supposed she could murder someone, but if so, she had added, it must be for something really worthwhile.
Twenty-two
Round a turn of the rock garden Roger and Clemency came walking briskly towards us. Roger’s flapping tweeds suited him better than his City clothes. He looked eager and excited. Clemency was frowning.
“Hallo, you two,” said Roger. “At last! I thought they were never going to arrest that foul woman. What they’ve been waiting for, I don’t know. Well, they’ve pinched her now, and her miserable boyfriend—and I hope they hang them both.”
Clemency’s frown increased. She said:
“Don’t be so uncivilized, Roger.”
“Uncivilized? Bosh! Deliberate cold-blooded poisoning of a helpless trusting old man—and when I’m glad the murderers are caught and will pay the penalty you say I’m uncivilized! I tell you I’d willingly strangle that woman myself.”
He added:
“She was with you, wasn’t she, when the police came for her? How did she take it?”
“It was horrible,” said Sophia in a low voice. “She was scared out of her wits.”
“Serve her right.”
“Don’t be vindictive,” said Clemency.
“Oh, I know, dearest, but you can’t understand. It wasn’t your father. I loved my father. Don’t you understand? I loved him!”
“I should understand by now,” said Clemency.
Roger said to her, half-jokingly:
“You’ve no imagination, Clemency. Suppose it had been I who had been poisoned—?”
I saw the quick droop of her lids, her half-clenched hands. She said sharply: “Don’t say things like that even in fun.”
“Never mind, darling, we’ll soon be away from all this.”
We moved towards the house. Roger and Sophia walked ahead and Clemency and I brought up the rear. She said:
“I suppose now—they’ll let us go?”
“Are you so anxious to get off?” I asked.
“It’s wearing me out.”
I looked at her in surprise. She met my glance with a faint desperate smile and a nod of the head.
“Haven’t you seen, Charles, that I’m fighting all the time? Fighting for my happiness. For Roger’s. I’ve been so afraid the family would persuade him to stop in England. That we’d go on tangled up in the midst of them, stifled with family ties. I was afraid Sophia would offer him an income and that he’d stay in England because it would mean greater comfort and amenities for me. The trouble with Roger is that he will not listen. He gets ideas in his head—and they’re never the right ideas. He doesn’t know anything. And he’s enough of a Leonides to think that happiness for a woman is bound up with comfort and money. But I will fight for my happiness—I will. I will get Roger away and give him the life that suits him where he won’t feel a failure. I want him to myself—away from them all—right away—”
She had spoken in a low hurried voice with a kind of desperation that startled me. I had not realized how much on edge she was. I had not realized, either, quite how desperate and possessive was her feeling for Roger.
It brought back to my mind that odd quotation of Edith de Haviland’s. She had quoted the line “this side idolatry” with a peculiar intonation. I wondered if she had been thinking of Clemency.
Roger, I thought, had loved his father better than he would ever love anyone else, better even than his wife, devoted though he was to her. I realized for the first time how urgent was Clemency’s desire to get her husband to herself. Love for Roger, I saw,