‘You mean he was a crook?’ I asked.
Taverner shook his head.
‘No, I don’t mean that. Crooked, yes—but not a crook. Never anything outside the law. But he was the sort of chap that thought up all the ways you can get round the law. He’s cleaned up a packet that way even in this last war, and old as he was. Nothing he did was ever illegal—but as soon as he’d got on to it, you had to have a law about it, if you know what I mean. But by that time he’d gone on to the next thing.’
‘He doesn’t sound a very attractive character,’ I said.
‘Funnily enough, he was attractive. He’d got personality, you know. You could feel it. Nothing much to look at. Just a gnome—ugly little fellow—but magnetic—women always fell for him.’
‘He made a rather astonishing marriage,’ said my father. ‘Married the daughter of a country squire—an MFH.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Money?’
The Old Man shook his head.
‘No, it was a love match. She met him over some catering arrangements for a friend’s wedding—and she fell for him. Her parents cut up rough, but she was determined to have him. I tell you, the man had charm—there was something exotic and dynamic about him that appealed to her. She was bored stiff with her own kind.’
‘And the marriage was happy?’
‘It was very happy, oddly enough. Of course their respective friends didn’t mix (those were the days before money swept aside all class distinctions) but that didn’t seem to worry them. They did without friends. He built a rather preposterous house at Swinly Dean and they lived there and had eight children.’
‘This is indeed a family chronicle.’
‘Old Leonides was rather clever to choose Swinly Dean. It was only beginning to be fashionable then. The second and third golf courses hadn’t been made. There was a mixture of Old Inhabitants who were passionately fond of their gardens and who liked Mrs Leonides, and rich City men who wanted to be in with Leonides, so they could take their choice of acquaintances. They were perfectly happy, I believe, until she died of pneumonia in 1905.’
‘Leaving him with eight children?’
‘One died in infancy. Two of the sons were killed in the last war. One daughter married and went to Australia and died there. An unmarried daughter was killed in a motor accident. Another died a year or two ago. There are two still living—the eldest son, Roger, who is married but has no children, and Philip, who married a well-known actress and has three children. Your Sophia, Eustace, and Josephine.’
‘And they are all living at—what is it?—Three Gables?’
‘Yes. The Roger Leonides were bombed out early in the war. Philip and his family have lived there since 1937. And there’s an elderly aunt, Miss de Haviland, sister of the first Mrs Leonides. She always loathed her brother-in-law apparently, but when her sister died she considered it her duty to accept her brother-in-law’s invitation to live with him and bring up the children.’
‘She’s very hot on duty,’ said Inspector Taverner. ‘But she’s not the kind that changes her mind about people. She always disapproved of Leonides and his methods—’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it seems a pretty good houseful. Who do you think killed him?’
Taverner shook his head.
‘Early days,’ he said, ‘early days to say that.’
‘Come on, Taverner,’ I said. ‘I bet you think you know who did it. We’re not in court, man.’
‘No,’ said Taverner gloomily. ‘And we never may be.’
‘You mean he may not have been murdered?’
‘Oh, he was murdered all right. Poisoned. But you know what these poisoning cases are like. It’s very tricky getting the evidence. Very tricky. All the possibilities may point one way—’
‘That’s what I’m trying to get at. You’ve got it all taped out in your mind, haven’t you?’
‘It’s a case of very strong probability. It’s one of those obvious things. The perfect set-up. But I don’t know, I’m sure. It’s tricky.’
I looked appealingly at the Old Man.
He said slowly: ‘In murder cases, as you know, Charles, the obvious is usually the right solution. Old Leonides married again, ten years ago.’
‘When he was seventy-seven?’
‘Yes, he married a young woman of twenty-four.’
I whistled.
‘What sort of a young woman?’
‘A young woman out of a tea-shop. A perfectly respectable young woman—good-looking in an anæmic, apathetic sort of way.’
‘And she’s the strong probability?’
‘I ask you, sir,’ said Taverner. ‘She’s only thirty-four now—and that’s a dangerous age. She likes living soft. And there’s a young man in the house. Tutor to the grandchildren. Not been in the war—got a bad heart or something. They’re as thick as thieves.’
I looked at him thoughtfully. It was, certainly, an old and familiar pattern. The mixture as before. And the second Mrs Leonides was, my father had emphasized, very respectable. In the name of respectability many murders had been committed.
‘What was it?’ I asked. ‘Arsenic?’
‘No. We haven’t got the analyst’s report yet—but the doctor thinks it’s eserine.’
‘That’s a little unusual, isn’t it? Surely easy to trace the purchaser.’
‘Not this thing. It was his own stuff, you see. Eyedrops.’
‘Leonides suffered from diabetes,’ said my father. ‘He had regular injections of insulin. Insulin is given out in small bottles with a rubber cap. A hypodermic needle is pressed down through the rubber cap and the injection drawn up.’
I guessed the next bit.
‘And it wasn’t insulin in the bottle, but eserine?’
‘Exactly.’
‘And who gave him the injection?’ I asked.
‘His wife.’
I understood now what Sophia meant by the ‘right person’.
I asked: ‘Does the family get on well with the second Mrs Leonides?’
‘No. I gather they are hardly on speaking terms.’
It all seemed clearer and clearer. Nevertheless, Inspector Taverner was clearly not happy about it.
‘What
