Читать «Crooked House / Скрюченный домишко. Книга для чтения на английском языке» онлайн - страница 7

‘Yes.’ He sat down. ‘Very well then—I’ll begin at the beginning—with Aristide Leonides. He arrived in England when he was twenty-four.’

‘A Greek from Smyrna.’

‘You do know that much?’

‘Yes, but it’s about all I do know.’

The door opened and Glover came in to say that Chief Inspector Taverner was here.

‘He’s in charge of the case,’ said my father. ‘We’d better have him in. He’s been checking up on the family. Knows more about them than I do.’

I asked if the local police had called in the Yard.

‘It’s in our jurisdiction. Swinly Dean is Greater London.’ I nodded as Chief Inspector Taverner came into the room. I knew Taverner from many years back. He greeted me warmly and congratulated me on my safe return.

‘I’m putting Charles in the picture,’ said the Old Man. ‘Correct me if I go wrong, Taverner. Leonides came to London in 188’. He started up a little restaurant in Soho. It paid. He started up another. Soon he owned seven or eight of them. They all paid hand over fist.’

‘Never made any mistakes in anything he hand led,’ said Chief Inspector Taverner.

‘He’d got a natural flair,’ said my father. ‘In the end he was behind most of the well-known restaurants in London. Then he went into the catering business in a big way.’

‘He was behind a lot of other businesses as well,’ said Taverner. ‘Second-hand clothes trade, cheap jewellery stores, lots of things. Of course,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘he was always a twister.’

‘You mean he was a crook?’ I asked.

Taverner shook his head.

‘No, I don’t mean that. Crooked, yes—but not a crook. Never anything outside the law. But he was the sort of chap that thought up all the ways you can get round the law. He’s cleaned up a packet that way even in this last war, and old as he was. Nothing he did was ever illegal— but as soon as he’d got on to it, you had to have a law about it, if you know what I mean. But by that time he’d gone on to the next thing.’

‘He doesn’t sound a very attractive character,’ I said.

‘Funnily enough, he was attractive. He’d got personality, you know. You could feel it. Nothing much to look at. Just a gnome—ugly little fellow—but magnetic—women always fell for him.’

‘He made a rather astonishing marriage,’ said my father. ‘Married the daughter of a country squire—an MFH.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Money?’

The Old Man shook his head.

‘No, it was a love match. She met him over some catering arrangements for a friend’s wedding—and she fell for him. Her parents cut up rough, but she was determined to have him. I tell you, the man had charm—there was something exotic and dynamic about him that appealed to her. She was bored stiff with her own kind.’

‘And the marriage was happy?’

‘It was very happy, oddly enough. Of course their respective friends didn’t mix (those were the days before money swept aside all class distinctions) but that didn’t seem to worry them. They did without friends. He built a rather preposterous house at Swinly Dean and they lived there and had eight children.’