Crooked House Read Online Free PDF Page A

don't know where you are!”
    She turned to Sophia: “Nannie's asking for you, Sophia. Fish.”
    “Bother,” said Sophia. “I'll go and telephone about it.”
    She walked briskly towards the house.
    Miss de Haviland turned and walked slowly in the same direction. I fell into step beside her.
    “Don't know what we'd all do without Nannies,” said Miss de Haviland. “Nearly everybody's got an old Nannie. They come back and wash and iron and cook and do housework. Faithful. Chose this one myself - years ago.”
    She stooped and pulled viciously at an entangling twining bit of green. “Hateful stuff - bindweed! Worst weed there is! Choking, entangling - and you can't get at it properly, runs along underground.”
    With her heel she ground the handful of green stuff viciously underfoot.
    “This is a bad business, Charles Hayward,” she said. She was looking towards the house. “What do the police think about it? Suppose I mustn't ask you that. Seems odd to think of Aristide being poisoned. For that matter it seems odd to think of him being dead. I never liked him - never! But I can't get used to the idea of his being dead... Makes the house seem so - empty.”
    I said nothing. For all her curt way of speech, Edith de Haviland seemed in a reminiscent mood.
    “Was thinking this morning - I've lived here a long time. Over forty years. Came here when my sister died. He asked me to. Seven children - and the youngest only a year old... Couldn't leave 'em to be brought up by a dago, could I? An impossible marriage, of course. I always felt Marcia must have been - well - bewitched. Ugly common little foreigner! He gave me a free hand - I will say that. Nurses, governesses, schools. And proper wholesome nursery food - not those queer spiced rice dishes he used to eat.”
    “And you've been here ever since?” I murmured.
    “Yes. Queer in a way... I could have left, I suppose, when the children grew up and married... I suppose, really, I'd got interested in the garden. And then there was Philip. If a man marries an actress he can't expect to have any home life. Don't know why actresses have children. As soon as a baby's born they rush off and play in Repertory in Edinburgh or somewhere as remote as possible. Philip did the sensible thing - moved in here with his books.”
    “What does Philip Leonides do?”
    “Writes books. Can't think why. Nobody wants to read them. All about obscure historical details. You've never even heard of them, have you?”
    I admitted it.
    “Too much money, that's what he's had,” said Miss de Haviland. “Most people have to stop being cranks and earn a living.”
    “Don't his books pay?”
    “Of course not. He's supposed to be a great authority on certain periods and all that. But he doesn't have to make his books pay - Aristide settled something like a hundred thousand pounds - something quite fantastic - on him! To avoid death duties! Aristide made them all financially independent. Roger runs Associated Catering - Sophia has a very handsome allowance. The children's money is in trust for them.”
    “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