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answer. He passed his tongue over his dry lips.
    “To have a companion of more or less her own age living here must have been agreeable to her?”
    “I - no, not at all - I mean - I don't know.”
    “It seems to me quite natural that an attachment should have sprung up between you.”
    The young man protested vehemently.
    “It didn't! It wasn't! Nothing of the kind! I know what you're thinking, but it wasn't so! Mrs Leonides was very kind to me always and I had the greatest - the greatest respect for her - but nothing more - nothing more, I do assure you. It's monstrous to suggest things of that kind! Monstrous! I wouldn't kill anybody - or tamper with bottles - or anything like that. I'm very sensitive and highly strung. I - the very idea of killing is a nightmare to me - they quite understood that at the tribunal - I have religious objections to killing. I did hospital work instead - stoking boilers - terribly heavy work - I couldn't go on with it - but they let me take up educational work. I have done my best here with Eustace and with Josephine - a very intelligent child, but difficult. And everybody has been most kind to me - Mr Leonides and Mrs Leonides and Miss de Haviland. And now this awful thing happens... And you suspect me - me - of murder!”
    Inspector Taverner looked at him with a slow appraising interest.
    “I haven't said so,” he remarked.
    “But you think so! I know you think so! They all think so! They look at me. I - I can't go on talking to you. I'm not well.”
    He hurried out of the room. Taverner turned his head slowly to look at me.
    “Well, what do you think of him?”
    “He's scared stiff.”
    “Yes, I know, but is he a murderer?”
    “If you ask me,” said Sergeant Lamb, “he'd never have had the nerve.”
    “He'd never have bashed anyone on the head, or shot off a pistol,” agreed the Chief Inspector, “But in this particular crime what is there to do? Just monkey about with a couple of bottles... Just help a very old man out of the world in a comparatively painless manner.”
    “Practically euthanasia,” said the Sergeant. "And then, perhaps, after a decent interval, marriage with a woman who inherits a hundred thousand pounds free of legacy duty, who already has about the same amount settled upon her, and who has in addition pearls and rubies and emeralds the size of what's-its-name eggs!
    “Ah well -” Taverner sighed. “It's all theory and conjecture! I managed to scare him all right, but that doesn't prove anything. He's just as likely to be scared if he's innocent. And anyway, I rather doubt if he was the one actually to do it. More likely to have been the woman - only why on earth didn't she throw away the insulin bottle, or rinse it out?” He turned to the Sergeant. “No evidence from the servants about any goings on?”
    “The parlourmaid says they're sweet on each other.”
    “What grounds?”
    “The way he looks at her when she pours out his coffee.”
    “Fat lot of good that would be in a court of law! Definitely no carryings on?”
    “Not that anybody's seen.”
    “I bet they would have seen, too, if there had been anything to see. You know I'm beginning to believe there really is nothing between them.” He looked at me. “Go back and talk to her. I'd like your impression of her.”
    I went half reluctantly, yet I was interested.

Crooked House

Chapter 9
    I found Brenda Leonides sitting exactly where I had left her. She looked up sharply as I entered.
    “Where's Inspector Taverner? Is he coming back?”
    “Not just yet.”
    “Who are you?”
    At last I had been asked the question that I had been expecting all the morning. I answered it with reasonable truth.
    “I'm connected with the police, but I'm also a friend of the family.”
    “The family! Beasts! I hate them all.”
    She looked at me, her mouth working. She looked sullen and frightened and angry.
    “They've been beastly to me always - always. From the very first. Why shouldn't I marry their