Crooked House

Taverner and Charles go upstairs to talk to Magda. She plays up her questioning like a scene from a play but denies knowledge of an affair between Brenda and Laurence. Afterward, Taverner tells Charles that the questions he’s asking don’t matter as much as the opportunity to get a sense of each family member. Because each of them had the means to commit murder, he’s still searching for a motive.

Taverner leads Charles to the rooms of Roger and Clemency Leonides. While Roger is flustered and emotional, Clemency is calm and cold. Despite their different temperaments, their marriage appears strong and loving. Roger says he hates Brenda and expresses a desire to strangle her. He and Clemency claim not to have seen Aristide on the day of his murder—both were out of the house, although Clemency visited Aristide’s part of the house shortly before his murder to pick up a pair of glasses Roger left behind. Taverner feels that neither of them are likely suspects.

In the drawing room of the opposite wing of the house, where Aristide lived, Taverner and Charles wait to question Brenda. Charles notes a portrait of Aristide on the wall and feels that the house is empty without the larger-than-life presence of the “crooked little man” (54). Brenda enters the room in an extravagant mourning outfit. She looks frightened and responds sullenly to questions, claiming that one of the servants must have made the insulin-eserine swap.

The group moves on to the schoolroom, where tutor Laurence is practicing Latin with Eustace, Sophia’s 16-year-old brother, who is handsome and bright but bitter due to being crippled by polio. Laurence is a nervous wreck during questioning. He denies having an affair with Brenda, growing increasingly hysterical until he must leave the room. Taverner sends a reluctant Charles back out into the drawing room to talk to Brenda himself.

As Charles reenters the drawing room, Brenda asks who he is. He identifies himself vaguely as “connected with the police, but also a friend of the family” (60). Brenda wryly proclaims her dislike of the entire Leonides family except Aristide. She recounts the story of their meeting: He came into a café where she worked as a waitress and, upon learning that she was single and pregnant, he married her and took her in. The pregnancy turned out to be false and, although their marriage was happy, the rest of the family was cruel to her due to her class and the suspicion that she was after their fortune.

Won over by Brenda’s emotional story, Charles goes to find Sophia, who is working in the kitchen with Janet. Charles confronts her about the family’s cruelty. Sophia implies that Brenda is a master manipulator and that Charles has fallen victim to her. Her grandfather, though, was not so gullible. He knew exactly what he was doing when he married a pretty, younger woman, even hiring Laurence so that Brenda could be entertained by “a mild romance” (66) with the unthreatening man. Leaving their conversation, Charles contemplates the situation from the viewpoints of the Leonides descendants as well as Brenda. He has sympathy for everyone involved.

Charles wakes to find Josephine, Sophia’s 12-year-old sister, standing by his bed. She has deduced that Charles is Sophia’s fiancé and claims to “know a lot of [other] things” (70). Charles asks if she is upset over her grandfather’s death, and she says she is not because she was angry at him for not allowing her to take ballet classes.

Josephine tells Charles that her uncle Roger owns Associated Catering, a business passed down to him by Aristide. She reveals that after an unsuccessful attempt at writing a play, Roger embezzled from Associated Catering to make up for his losses, a decision that caused tension between him and Aristide. She also states that Brenda and Laurence are in love—she has personally intercepted and read their “soppy” love letters. Charles asks if she knows who killed Aristide, and she says she does.

Their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Gaitskill, Aristide’s lawyer, who is searching for his client’s will. Aristide was supposed to leave the will in a secure holding at the bank after finalizing and signing it with his family, but it’s not there. Roger recalls that the previous November, Aristide summoned all the family to the drawing room and read out the provisions of the will, which divided his estate fairly among Brenda, Edith, and his surviving children and grandchildren. Everyone signed the will and Aristide expressed the intent of taking it to the bank.

Mr. Gaitskill produces a document—a blank copy of the will, meaning that the entire family somehow signed the wrong document in November. As they exit the room, Josephine is swinging on an opened door. She states that “the police are stupid” (81) and chasing after the wrong suspects.

Back at Scotland Yard, Charles relays what he learned from Josephine. The investigators theorize that Roger and Clemency planned the murder together, with Clemency making the insulin-eserine switch. The next day, Charles is called to the Yard again. Taverner and Arthur have investigated Associated Catering and discovered that the business was failing due to Roger’s poor management. Aristide’s death would have guaranteed him enough money to save the business.

Roger is called into the station, where he admits that he obscured the failing status of his business. He felt extremely ashamed to have let his father down and didn’t want to ask for money from Aristide because he knew he would mishandle it again; he just isn’t cut out for business. He planned to leave a letter apologizing to his father and go to the West Indies with Clemency to live off the land. However, Aristide learned his secret and insisted on saving the business for Roger despite his protests. He produces a letter from Aristide to his brokers, with instructions on transferring the money to Roger. About half an hour after their meeting, Aristide fell ill and died. Considering this new information, Taverner realizes that Roger and Clemency had no motive for murdering Aristide and allows Roger to leave.