Crooked House / Скрюченный домишко. Книга для чтения на английском языке

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�So it seems,’ I said thoughtfully, �that Mrs Leonides was either very stupid—or possibly very clever.’

�You mean—’

�That she may be gambling on your coming to the conclusion that nobody could have been as stupid as she appears to have been. What are the alternatives? Any other—suspects?’

The Old Man said quietly:

�Practically anyone in the house could have done it. There was always a good store of insulin—at least a fortnight’s supply. One of the phials could have been tampered with[39 - to tamper with – подменить], and replaced in the knowledge that it would be used in due course.

�And anybody, more or less, had access to them?’

�They weren’t locked away. They were kept on a special shelf in the medicine cupboard in the bathroom of his part of the house. Everybody in the house came and went freely.’

�Any strong motive?’

My father sighed.

�My dear Charles, Aristide Leonides was enormously rich.

�But the one that wanted it most would be the present widow. Has her young man any money?’

�No. Poor as a church mouse.’

Something clicked in my brain. I remembered Sophia’s quotation. I suddenly remembered the whole verse of the nursery rhyme:

There was a crooked man and he went a crooked mile.

He found a crooked sixpence beside a crooked stile.

He had a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

I said to Taverner:

�How does she strike you—Mrs Leonides? What do you think of her?’

He replied slowly:

�It’s hard to say—very hard to say. She’s not easy. Very quiet—so you don’t know what she’s thinking. But she likes living soft—that I’ll swear I’m right about. Puts me in mind, you know, of a cat, a big pur ring lazy cat… Not that I’ve anything against cats.

He sighed.

�What we want,’ he said, �is evidence.’

Yes, I thought, we all wanted evidence that Mrs Leonides had poisoned her husband. Sophia wanted it, and I wanted it, and Chief Inspector Taverner wanted it.

Then everything in the garden would be lovely!

But Sophia wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t think Chief Inspector Taverner was sure either.