Chapter 7

‘And now,’ said Taverner, ‘we’ll go and have a word with Mrs Philip. Magda West, her stage name is.’

‘Is she any good?’ I asked. ‘I know her name, and I believe I’ve seen her in various shows, but I can’t remember when and where.’

‘She’s one of those Near Successes,’ said Taverner. ‘She’s starred once or twice in the West End^[62], she’s made quite a name for herself in repertory^[63]—she plays a lot for the little highbrow theatres and the Sunday clubs. The truth is, I think, she’s been handicapped by not having to earn her living at it. She’s been able to pick and choose, and to go where she likes and occasionally to put up the money and finance a show where she’s fancied a certain part—usually the last part in the world to suit her. Result is, she’s receded a bit into the amateur class rather than the professional. She’s good, mind you, especially in comedy—but managers don’t like her much—they say she’s too independent, and she’s a troublemaker—foments rows^[64] and enjoys a bit of mischief-making. I don’t know how much of it is true—but she’s not too popular amongst her fellow artists.’

Sophia came out of the drawing-room and said: ‘My mother is in here, Chief Inspector.’

I followed Taverner into the big drawing-room. For a moment I hardly recognized the woman who sat on the brocaded settee.

The Titian hair was piled high on her head in an Edwardian coiffure, and she was dressed in a well-cut dark-grey coat and skirt with a delicately pleated pale mauve shirt fastened at the neck by a small cameo brooch. For the first time I was aware of the charm of her delightfully tip-tilted nose. I was faintly reminded of Athene Seyler^[65]—and it seemed quite impossible to believe that this was the tempestuous creature in the peach négligé.

‘Inspector Taverner?’ she said. ’Do come in and sit down. Will you smoke? This is a most terrible business. I simply feel at the moment that I just can’t take it in^[66].’

Her voice was low and emotionless, the voice of a person determined at all costs to display self-control. She went on:

‘Please tell me if I can help you in any way.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Leonides. Where were you at the time of the tragedy?’

‘I suppose I must have been driving down from London. I’d lunched that day at the Ivy with a friend. Then we’d gone to a dress show. We had a drink with some other friends at the Berkeley. Then I started home. When I got here everything was in commotion. It seemed my father-in-law had had a sudden seizure. He was—dead.’ Her voice trembled just a little.

‘You were fond of your father-in-law?’

‘I was devoted—’

Her voice rose. Sophia adjusted, very slightly, the angle of the Degas picture. Magda’s voice dropped to its former subdued tone.

‘I was very fond of him,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘We all were. He was—very good to us.’

‘Did you get on well with Mrs Leonides?’

We didn’t see very much of Brenda.’

Why was that?’

Well, we hadn’t much in common. Poor dear Brenda. Life must have been hard for her sometimes.’

Again Sophia fiddled with the Degas.

‘Indeed? In what way?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Magda shook her head, with a sad little smile.

Was Mrs Leonides happy with her husband?’

‘Oh, I think so.’

‘No quarrels?’

Again the slight smiling shake of the head.

‘I really don’t know, Inspector. Their part of the house is quite separate.’

‘She and Mr Laurence Brown were very friendly, were they not?’

Magda Leonides stiffened. Her eyes opened reproachfully at Taverner.

‘I don’t think,’ she said with dignity, ‘that you ought to ask me things like that. Brenda was quite friendly to everyone. She is really a very amiable sort of person.’

‘Do you like Mr Laurence Brown?’

‘He’s very quiet. Quite nice, but you hardly know he’s there. I haven’t really seen very much of him.’

‘Is his teaching satisfactory?’

‘I suppose so. I really wouldn’t know. Philip seems quite satisfied.’

Taverner essayed some shock tactics.

‘I’m sorry to ask you this, but in your opinion was there anything in the nature of a love affair^[67] between Mr Brown and Mrs Brenda Leonides?’

Magda got up. She was very much the grande dame.

‘I have never seen any evidence of anything of that kind,’ she said. ‘I don’t think really, Inspector, that that is a question you ought to ask me. She was my father-in-law’s wife.’

I almost applauded.

The Chief Inspector also rose.

‘More a question for the servants?’ he suggested.

Magda did not answer.

Thank you, Mrs Leonides,’ said the Inspector and went out.

‘You did that beautifully, darling,’ said Sophia to her mother warmly.

Magda twisted up a curl reflectively behind her right ear and looked at herself in the glass.

‘Ye-es,’ she said, ‘I think it was the right way to play it.’

Sophia looked at me.

‘Oughtn’t you,’ she asked, ‘to go with the Inspector?’

‘Look here, Sophia, what am I supposed—’

I stopped. I could not very well ask outright in front of Sophia’s mother exactly what my role was supposed to be. Magda Leonides had so far evinced no interest in my presence at all, except as a useful recipient of an exit line on daughters. I might be a reporter, her daughter’s fiancé, or an obscure hanger-on of the police force, or even an undertaker—to Magda Leonides they would one and all come under the general heading of audience.

Looking down at her feet, Mrs Leonides said with dissatisfaction:

‘These shoes are wrong. Frivolous.’

Obeying Sophia’s imperious wave of the head, I hurried after Taverner. I caught him up in the outer hall just going through the door to the stairway.

‘Just going up to see the elder brother,’ he explained.

I put my problem to him without more ado.

‘Look here, Taverner, who am I supposed to be?’

He looked surprised.

‘Who are you supposed to be?’

‘Yes, what am I doing here in this house? If anyone asks me, what do I say?’

‘Oh I see.’ He considered for a moment. Then he smiled. ‘Has anybody asked you?’

‘Well—no.’

‘Then why not leave it at that. Never explain. That’s a very good motto. Especially in a house upset like this house is. Everyone is far too full of their own private worries and fears to be in a questioning mood. They’ll take you for granted so long as you just seem sure of yourself. It’s a great mistake ever to say anything when you needn’t. H’m, now we go through this door and up the stairs. Nothing locked. Of course you realize, I expect, that these questions I’m asking are all a lot of hooey! Doesn’t matter a hoot who was in the house and who wasn’t, or where they all were on that particular day—’

Then why—’

He went on: ‘Because it at least gives me a chance to look at them all, and size them up, and hear what they’ve got to say, and to hope that, quite by chance, somebody might give me a useful pointer.’ He was silent a moment and then murmured: ‘I bet Mrs Magda Leonides could spill a mouthful if she chose.’

‘Would it be reliable?’ I asked.

‘Oh no,’ said Taverner, ‘it wouldn’t be reliable. But it might start a possible line of inquiry. Everybody in the damned house had means and opportunity. What I want is a motive.’

At the top of the stairs, a door barred off the right-hand corridor. There was a brass knocker on it and Inspector Taverner duly knocked.

It was opened with startling suddenness by a man who must have been standing just inside. He was a clumsy giant of a man, with powerful shoulders, dark rumpled hair, and an exceedingly ugly but at the same time rather pleasant face. His eyes looked at us and then quickly away in that furtive, embarrassed manner which shy but honest people often adopt.

‘Oh, I say,’ he said. ‘Come in. Yes, do. I was going—but it doesn’t matter. Come into the sitting-room. I’ll get Clemency—oh, you’re there, darling. It’s Chief Inspector Taverner. He—are there any cigarettes? Just wait a minute. If you don’t mind.’ He collided with a screen, said ‘I beg your pardon’ to it in a flustered manner, and went out of the room.

It was rather like the exit of a bumble-bee^[68] and left a noticeable silence behind it.

Mrs Roger Leonides was standing up by the window. I was intrigued at once by her personality and by the atmosphere of the room in which we stood.

The walls were painted white—really white, not an ivory or a pale cream which is what one usually means when one says ‘white’ in house decoration. They had no pictures on them except one over the mantelpiece, a geometrical fantasia in triangles of dark grey and battleship blue. There was hardly any furniture—only mere utilitarian necessities, three or four chairs, a glass-topped table, one small bookshelf. There were no ornaments. There was light and space and air. It was as different from the big brocaded and flowered drawing-room on the floor below as chalk from cheese. And Mrs Roger Leonides was as different from Mrs Philip Leonides as one woman could be from another. Whilst one felt that Magda Leonides could be, and often was, at least half a dozen different women, Clemency Leonides, I was sure, could never be anyone but herself. She was a woman of very sharp and definite personality.

She was about fifty, I suppose; her hair was grey, cut very short in what was almost an Eton crop^[69] but which grew so beautifully on her small well-shaped head that it had none of the ugliness I have always associated with that particular cut. She had an intelligent, sensitive face, with light-grey eyes of a peculiar and searching intensity. She had on a simple dark-red woollen frock that fitted her slenderness perfectly.

She was, I felt at once, rather an alarming woman… I think, because I judged that the standards by which she lived might not be those of an ordinary woman. I understood at once why Sophia had used the word ruthlessness in connection with her. The room was cold and I shivered a little.

Clemency Leonides said in a quiet, well-bred voice:

‘Do sit down, Chief Inspector. Is there any further news?’

‘Death was due to eserine, Mrs Leonides.’

She said thoughtfully:

‘So that makes it murder. It couldn’t have been an accident of any kind, could it?’

‘No, Mrs Leonides.’

‘Please be very gentle with my husband, Chief Inspector. This will affect him very much. He worshipped his father and he feels things very acutely. He is an emotional person.’

‘You were on good terms with your father-in-law, Mrs Leonides?’

‘Yes, on quite good terms.’ She added quietly: ‘I did not like him very much.’

‘Why was that?’

‘I disliked his objectives in life—and his methods of attaining them.’

‘And Mrs Brenda Leonides?’

‘Brenda? I never saw very much of her.’

‘Do you think it possible that there was anything between her and Mr Laurence Brown?’

‘You mean—some kind of a love affair? I shouldn’t think so. But I really wouldn’t know anything about it.’

Her voice sounded completely uninterested.

Roger Leonides came back with a rush, and the same bumble-bee effect.

‘I got held up,’ he said. ‘Telephone. Well, Inspector? Well? Have you got news? What caused my father’s death?’

‘Death was due to eserine poisoning.’

‘It was? My God! Then it was that woman! She couldn’t wait! He took her more or less out of the gutter and this is his reward. She murdered him in cold blood! God, it makes my blood boil to think of it.’

‘Have you any particular reason for thinking that?’ Taverner asked.

Roger was pacing up and down^[70], tugging at his hair with both hands.

‘Reason? Why, who else could it be? I’ve never trusted her—never liked her! We’ve none of us liked her. Philip and I were both appalled when Dad came home one day and told us what he had done! At his age! It was madness— madness. My father was an amazing man, Inspector. In intellect he was as young and fresh as a man of forty. Everything I have in the world I owe to him. He did everything for me—never failed me. It was I who failed him—when I think of it—’

He dropped heavily on to a chair. His wife came quietly to his side.

‘Now, Roger, that’s enough. Don’t work yourself up.’

‘I know, dearest—I know,’ he took her hand. ‘But how can I keep calm—how can I help feeling—’

‘But we must all keep calm, Roger. Chief Inspector Taverner wants our help.’

‘That is right, Mrs Leonides.’

Roger cried:

‘Do you know what I’d like to do? I’d like to strangle that woman with my own hands. Grudging that dear old man a few extra years of life. If I had her here—’ He sprang up^[71]. He was shaking with rage. He held out convulsive hands. ‘Yes, I’d wring her neck, wring her neck…’

‘Roger!’ said Clemency sharply.

He looked at her, abashed.

‘Sorry, dearest.’ He turned to us. ‘I do apologize. My feelings get the better of me. I—excuse me—’

He went out of the room again. Clemency Leonides said with a very faint smile:

‘Really, you know, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

Taverner accepted her remark politely.

Then he started on his so-called routine questions.

Clemency Leonides replied concisely and accurately.

Roger Leonides had been in London on the day of his father’s death at Box House, the headquarters of the Associated Catering. He had returned early in the afternoon and had spent some time with his father as was his custom. She herself had been, as usual, at the Lambert Institute in Gower Street where she worked. She had returned to the house just before six o’clock.

‘Did you see your father-in-law?’

‘No. The last time I saw him was on the day before. We had coffee with him after dinner.’

‘But you did not see him on the day of his death?’

‘No. I actually went over to his part of the house because Roger thought he had left his pipe there—a very precious pipe, but as it happened he had left it on the hall table there, so I did not need to disturb the old man. He often dozed off^[72] about six.’

‘When did you hear of his illness?’

‘Brenda came rushing over. That was just a mi nute or two after half-past six.’

These questions, as I knew, were unimportant, but I was aware how keen was Inspector Taverner’s scrutiny of the woman who answered them. He asked her a few questions about the nature of her work in London. She said that it had to do with the radiation effects of atomic disintegration.

‘You work on the atom bomb, in fact?’

‘The work has nothing destructive about it. The Institute is carrying out experiments on the therapeutic effects.’

When Taverner got up, he expressed a wish to look round their part of the house. She seemed a little surprised, but showed him its extent readily enough. The bedroom with its twin beds and white coverlets and its simplified toilet appliances reminded me again of a hospital or some monastic cell. The bathroom, too, was severely plain with no special luxury fitting and no array of cosmetics. The kitchen was bare, spotlessly clean, and well equipped with labour-saving devices of a practical kind. Then we came to a door which Clemency opened, saying: ‘This is my husband’s special room.’

‘Come in,’ said Roger. ‘Come in.’

I drew a faint breath of relief. Something in the spotless austerity elsewhere had been getting me down. This was an intensely personal room. There was a large roll-top desk untidily covered with papers, old pipes, and tobacco ash. There were big shabby easy-chairs. Persian rugs covered the floor. On the walls were groups, their photography somewhat faded. School groups, cricket groups, military groups. Water-colour sketches of deserts and minarets, and of sailing-boats and sea effects and sunsets. It was, somehow, a pleasant room, the room of a lovable, friendly, companionable man.

Roger, clumsily, was pouring out^[73] drinks from a tantalus^[74], sweeping books and papers off one of the chairs.

‘Place is in a mess. I was turning out. Clearing up old papers. Say when.’ The inspector declined a drink. I accepted. ‘You must forgive me just now,’ went on Roger. He brought my drink over to me, turning his head to speak to Taverner as he did so. ‘My feelings ran away with me.’