"They?"
"The police."
His nose twitched. A mouse in a trap, I thought, a mouse in a trap.
"They don't take me into their confidence," I said.
"Oh. I thought your father was the Assistant Commissioner."
"He is," I said. "But naturally he would not betray official secrets."
I made my voice purposely pompous.
"Then you don't know how - what - if..." His voice trailed off. "They're not going to make an arrest, are they?"
"Not so far as I know. But then, as I say, I mightn't know."
Get 'em on the run. Inspector Taverner had said. Get 'em rattled. Well, Laurence Brown was rattled all right.
He began talking quickly and nervously.
"You don't know what it's like... The strain... Not knowing what - I mean, they just come and go - Asking questions... Questions that don't seem to have anything to do with the case..."
He broke off. I waited. He wanted to talk - well, then, let him talk.
"You were there when the Chief Inspector made that monstrous suggestion the other day? About Mrs Leonides and myself... It was monstrous. It makes one feel so helpless. One is powerless to prevent people thinking things! And it is all so wickedly untrue. Just because she is - was - so many years younger than her husband. People have dreadful minds - dreadful minds... I feel - I can't help feeling, that it is all a plot."
"A plot? That's interesting."
It was interesting, though not quite in the way he took it.
"The family, you know; Mr Leonides' s family, have never been sympathetic to me. They were always aloof. I always felt that they despised me."
His hands began to shake.
"Just because they have always been rich - and powerful. They looked down on me. What was I to them? Only the tutor. Only a wretched conscientious objector. And my objections were conscientious. They were indeed!"
I said nothing.
"All right then," he burst out. "What if I was - afraid? Afraid I'd make a mess of it. Afraid that when I had to pull a trigger - I mightn't be able to bring myself to do it. How can you be sure it's a Nazi you're going to kill? It might be some decent lad - some village boy - with no political leanings, just called up for his country's service. I believe war is wrong, do you understand? I believe it is wrong."
I was still silent. I believed that my silence was achieving more than any arguments or agreements could do. Laurence Brown was arguing with himself, and in so doing was revealing a good deal of himself.
"Everyone's always laughed at me." His voice shook. "I seem to have a knack of making myself ridiculous. It isn't that I really lack courage - but I always do the thing wrong. I went into a burning house to rescue a woman they said was trapped there. But I lost the way at once, and the smoke made me unconscious, and it gave a lot of trouble to the firemen finding me. I heard them say, 'Why couldn't the silly chump leave it to us?' It's no good my trying, everyone's against me. Whoever killed Mr Leonides arranged it so that I would be suspected. Someone killed him so as to ruin me."
"What about Mrs Leonides?" I asked.
He flushed. He became less of a mouse and more like a man.
"Mrs Leonides is an angel," he said, "an angel. Her sweetness, her kindness to her elderly husband were wonderful. To think of her in connection with poison is laughable - laughable! And that thick-headed Inspector can't see it!"
"He's prejudiced," I said, "by the number of cases on his files where elderly husbands have been poisoned by sweet young wives."
"The insufferable dolt," said Laurence Brown angrily.
He went over to a bookcase in the corner and began rummaging the books in it. I didn't think I should get anything more out of him. I went slowly out of the room. As I was going along the passage, a door on my left opened and Josephine almost fell on top of me. Her appearance had the suddenness of a demon in an old-fashioned pantomime.
Her face and hands were filthy and a large cobweb floated from one ear.
"Where have you been, Josephine?"
I peered through the half open door. A couple of steps led up into the attic-like rectangular space in the gloom of which several big tanks could be seen.
"In the cistern room."
"Why in the cistern room?"
Josephine replied in a brief businesslike way:
"Detecting."
"What on earth is there to detect among the cisterns?"
To this, Josephine merely replied:
"I must wash."
"I should say most decidedly."
Josephine disappeared through the nearest bathroom door. She looked back to say:
"I should say it's about time for the next murder, wouldn't you?"
"What do you mean - the next murder?"
"Well, in books there's always a second murder about now. Someone who knows something is bumped off before they can tell what they know."
"You read too many detective stories, Josephine. Real life isn't like that. And if anybody in this house knows something the last thing they seem to want to do is to talk about it."
Josephine's reply came to me rather obscured by the gushing of water from a tap.
"Sometimes it's something that they don't know that they do know."
I blinked as I tried to think this out.
Then, leaving Josephine to her ablutions, I went down to the floor below.
Just as I was going out through the front door to the staircase, Brenda came with a soft rush through the drawing room door.
