Crooked House, стр. 25

I went down to the Crooked House (as I called it in my own mind) with a slightly guilty feeling. Though I had repeated to Taverner Josephine's confidences about Roger 5 I had said nothing about her statement that Brenda and Laurence Brown wrote love letters to each other.

I excused myself by pretending that it was mere romancing, and that there was no reason to believe that it was true. But actually I had felt a strange reluctance to pile up additional evidence against Brenda Leonides. I had been affected by the pathos of her position in the house - surrounded by a hostile family united solidly against her. If such letters existed doubtless Taverner and his myrmidons would find them. I disliked to be the means of bringing fresh suspicion on a woman in a difficult Position. Moreover, she had assured me ^lemnly that there was nothing of that kind between her and Laurence and I felt more inclined to believe her than to believe that malicious gnome Josephine. Had not Brenda said herself that Josephine was "Not all there."

I stifled an uneasy certainty that Josephine was very much all there. I remembered the intelligence of her beady black eyes.

I had rung up Sophia and asked if I might come down again. i "Please do, Charles."

"How are things going?"

"I don't know. All right. They keep on searching the house. What are they looking for?"

"I've no idea."

"We're all getting very nervy. Come as soon as you can. I shall go crazy if I can't talk to someone."

I said I would come down straightaway.

There was no one in sight as I drove up to the front door. I paid the taxi and it drove away. I felt uncertain whether to ring the bell or to walk in. The front door was open.

As I stood there, hesitating, I heard a slight sound behind me. I turned my head sharply. Josephine, her face partially oh- smred by a very large apple, was standing in the opening of the yew hedge looking at me.

As I turned my head 5 she turned away.

"Hullo, Josephine."

She did not answer, but disappeared behind the hedge. I crossed the drive and followed her. She was seated on the uncomfortable rustic bench by the goldfish pond swinging her legs to and fro and biting into her apple. Above its rosy circumference her eyes regarded me sombrely and with what I could not but feel was hostility.

"I've come down again, Josephine," I said.

It was a feeble opening, but I found Josephine's silence and her unblinking gaze, rather unnerving.

With excellent strategic sense, she still did not reply.

"Is that a good apple?" I asked.

This time Josephine did condescend to reply. Her reply consisted of one word.

"Woolly."

"A pity," I said. "I don't like woolly apples."

Josephine replied scornfully:

"Nobody does."

"Why wouldn't you speak to me when

I said Hullo?"

"I didn't want to."

"Why not?"

Josephine removed the apple from her face to assist in the clearness of her denunciation..

"You went and sneaked to the police," she said.

"Oh," I was rather taken aback. "You mean - about -"

"About Uncle Roger."

"But it's all right, Josephine," I assured her. "Quite all right. They know he didn't do anything wrong - I mean, he hadn't embezzled any money or anything of that kind."

Josephine threw me an exasperated glance.

"How stupid you are."

"I'm sorry."

"I wasn't worrying about Uncle Roger.

It's simply that that's not the way to do detective work. Don't you know that you never tell the police until the very end?" ft "Oh I see," I said. "I'm sorry, Josephine.

I'm really very sorry."

"So you should be." She added reproachfully,

"I trusted you."

I said I was sorry for the third time. loseohine appeared a little mollified. She took another couple of bites of apple.

"But the police would have been bound to find out about all this," I said. "You -I - we couldn't have kept it a secret."

"You mean because he's going bankrupt?"

As usual Josephine was well informed.

"I suppose it will come to that."

"They're going to talk about it tonight," said Josephine. "Father and Mother and Uncle Roger and Aunt Edith. Aunt Edith would give him her money - only she hasn't got it yet - but I don't think father will. He says if Roger has got in a jam he's only got himself to blame and what's the good of throwing good money after bad, and mother won't hear of giving him any because she wants father to put up the money for Edith Thompson. Do you know Edith Thompson? She was married, but she didn't like her husband. She was in love with a young man called Bywaters who came off a ship and he went down a different street after the theatre and stabbed him in the back."

I marvelled once more at the range and completeness of Josephine's knowledge; and also at the dramatic sense which, only [slightly obscured by hazy pronouns, had presented all the salient facts in a nutshell.

"It sounds all right," said Josephine,

"but I don't suppose the play will be like that at all. It will be like Jezebel again."

She sighed. "I wish I knew why the dogs wouldn't eat the palms of her hands."

"Josephine," I said. "You told me that you were almost sure who the murderer was?"..- | "Well?" U "

"Who is it?"

She gave me a look of scorn.

"I see," I said. "Not till the last chapter?

Not even if I promise not to tell Inspector Taverner?"

"I want just a few more clues," said

Josephine.

"Anyway," she added, throwing the core of the apple into the goldfish pool, "I wouldn't tell you. If you're anyone, you're Watson."

I stomached this insult.

"O.K." I said. "I'm Watson. But even

Watson was given the data."

"The what?"

"The facts. And then he made the wrong deductions from them. Wouldn't it be a lot of fun for you to see me making the wrong deductions?"

A

» B;

For a moment Josephine was tempted.

Then she shook her head.

"No," she said, and added: "Anyway? I'm not very keen on Sherlock Holmes. It^s awfully old fashioned. They drive about in dog carts."

"What about those letters?" I asked.

"What letters?"

The letters you said Laurence Brown and

Brenda wrote to each other."

"I made that up," said Josephine.

"I don't believe you."

"Yes, I did. I often make things up. It amuses me."

I stared at her. She stared back.

"Look here, Josephine. I know a man sit the British Museum who knows a lot aboixt the Bible. If I find out from him why th^ dogs didn't eat the palms of Jezebel's hands? will you tell me about those letters?"

This time Josephine really hesitated.

Somewhere, not very far away, a twi^ snapped with a sharp cracking noise. Jose^phine said flatly:

"No, I won't."

I accepted defeat. Rather late in the day^ I remembered my father's advice.

"Oh well," I said, "it's only a game. Qt ^urse you don't really know anything."

Josephine's eyes snapped, but she resisted the bait. ^ I got up. "I must go in now," I said, "and find Sophia. Come along."

"I shall stop here," said Josephine.

"No, you won't," I said. "You're coming in with me."

Unceremoniously I yanked her to her feet. She seemed surprised and inclined to protest, but yielded with a fairly good grace - partly, no doubt, because she wished to observe the reactions of the household to my presence.

Why I was so anxious for her to accompany me I could not at the moment have said. It only came to me as we were passing through the front door.

It was because of the sudden snapping of a twig.