Читать «Crooked House / Скрюченный домишко. Книга для чтения на английском языке» онлайн - страница 15

‘So no one gains particularly by his death?’

She threw me a strange glance.

‘Yes, they do. They all get more money. But they could probably have had it, if they asked for it, anyway.’

‘Have you any idea who poisoned him, Miss de Haviland?’

She replied characteristically:

‘No, indeed I haven’t. It’s upset me very much. Not nice to think one has a Borgia sort of person loose about the house. I suppose the police will fasten on poor Brenda.’

‘You don’t think they’ll be right in doing so?’

‘I simply can’t tell. She’s always seemed to me a singularly stupid and commonplace young woman—rather conventional. Not my idea of a poisoner. Still, after all, if a young woman of twenty-four marries a man close on eighty, it’s fairly obvious that she’s marrying him for his money. In the normal course of events she could have expected to become a rich widow fairly soon. But Aristide was a singularly tough old man. His diabetes wasn’t getting any worse. He really looked like living to be a hundred. I suppose she got tired of waiting…’

‘In that case,’ I said, and stopped.

‘In that case,’ said Miss de Haviland briskly, ‘it will be more or less all right. Annoying publicity, of course. But after all, she isn’t one of the family.’

‘You’ve no other ideas?’ I asked.

‘What other ideas should I have?’

I wondered. I had a suspicion that there might be more going on under the battered felt hat than I knew.

Behind the perky, almost disconnected utterance, there was, I thought, a very shrewd brain at work. Just for a moment I even wondered whether Miss de Haviland had poisoned Aristide Leonides herself…

It did not seem an impossible idea. At the back of my mind was the way she had ground the bindweed into the soil with her heel with a kind of vindictive thoroughness.

I remembered the word Sophia had used. Ruthlessness.

I stole a sideways glance at Edith de Haviland.

Given good and sufficient reason… But what exactly would seem to Edith de Haviland good and sufficient reason?

To answer that, I should have to know her better.

Chapter 6

The front door was open. We passed through it into a rather surprisingly spacious hall. It was furnished with restraint—well-polished dark oak and gleaming brass. At the back, where the staircase would normally appear, was a white panelled wall with a door in it.

‘My brother-in-law’s part of the house,’ said Miss de Haviland. ‘The ground floor is Philip and Magda’s.’

We went through a doorway on the left into a large drawing-room. It had pale-blue panelled walls, furniture covered in heavy brocade, and on every available table and on the walls were hung photographs and pictures of actors, dancers, and stage scenes and designs. A Degas of ballet dancers hung over the mantelpiece. There were masses of flowers, enormous brown chrysanthemums and great vases of carnations.