Crooked House Read Online Free PDF Page B

face was quite incurious. It made me rather nervous. He stood there, patient and uninterested.
    “Where are those awful policemen?” demanded Miss de Haviland. “Have they been in here?”
    “I believe Chief Inspector -” (he glanced down at a card on the desk) “er - Taverner is coming to talk to me presently.”
    “Where is he now?”
    “I've no idea. Aunt Edith. Upstairs, I suppose.”
    “With Brenda?”
    “I really don't know.”
    Looking at Philip Leonides, it seemed quite impossible that a murder could have been committed anywhere in his vicinity.
    “Is Magda up yet?”
    “I don't know. She's not usually up before eleven.”
    “That sounds like her,” said Edith de Haviland.
    What sounded like Mrs Philip Leonides was a high voice talking very rapidly and approaching very fast. The door behind me burst open and a woman came in. I don't know how she managed to give the impression of its being three women rather than one who entered.
    She was smoking a cigarette in a long holder and was wearing a peach satin negligee which she was holding up with one hand. A cascade of Titian hair rippled down her back. Her face had that almost shocking air of nudity that a woman's has nowadays when it is not made up at all. Her eyes were blue and enormous and she was talking very rapidly in a husky rather attractive voice with a very clear enunciation.
    “Darling, I can't stand it - I simply can't stand it - just think of the notices - it isn't in the papers yet, but of course it will be - and I simply can't make up my mind what I ought to wear at the inquest - very very subdued? - not black though, perhaps dark purple - and I simply haven't got a coupon left - I've lost the address of that dreadful man who sells them to me - you know, the garage somewhere near Shaftesbury Avenue - and if I went up there in the car the police would follow me, and they might ask the most awkward questions, mightn't they? I mean, what could one say? How calm you are, Philip! How can you be so calm? Don't you realise we can leave this awful house now. Freedom - freedom! Oh, how unkind - the poor old Sweetie - of course we'd never have left him while he was alive. He really did dote on us, didn't he - in spite of all the trouble that woman upstairs tried to make between us. I'm quite sure that if we had gone away and left him to her, he'd have cut us right out of everything. Horrible creature! After all, poor old Sweetie Pie was just on ninety - all the family feeling in the world couldn't have stood up against a dreadful woman who was on the spot. You know, Philip, I really believe that this would be a wonderful opportunity to put on the Edith Thompson play. This murder would give us a lot of advance publicity. Bildenstein said he could get the Thespian - that dreary play in verse about miners is coming off any minute - It's a wonderful part - wonderful. I know they say I must always play comedy because of my nose - but you know there's quite a lot of comedy to be got out of Edith Thompson - I don't think the author realised that - comedy heightens the suspense. I know just how I'd play it - commonplace, silly, make-believe up to the last minute and then -”
    She cast out an arm - the cigarette fell out of the holder onto the polished mahogany of Philip's desk and began to burn it.
    Impassively he reached for it and dropped it into the waste paper basket.
    “And then,” whispered Magda Leonides, her eyes suddenly widening, her face stiffening, “just terror...”
    The stark fear stayed on her face for about twenty seconds, then her face relaxed, crumpled, a bewildered child was about to burst into tears.
    Suddenly all emotion was wiped away as though by a sponge and turning to me, she asked in a businesslike tone:
    “Don't you think that would be the way to play Edith Thompson?”
    I said I thought that would be exactly the way to play Edith Thompson. At the moment I could only remember very vaguely who Edith Thompson was, but I was