"Wouldn't it have been simpler to go to old Leonides and ask for help?" he suggested.
"I think he did," said Taverner. "I think that's what the kid overheard. The old boy refused point blank, I should imagine, to throw good money after bad. He would, you know."
I thought that Taverner was right there. Aristide Leonides had refused the backing for Magda's play - he had said that it would not be a Box Office success. Events had proved him correct. He was a generous man to his family, but he was not a man to waste money in unprofitable enterprises.
And Associated Catering ran to thousands, or probably hundreds of thousands. He had refused point blank, and the only way for Roger to avoid financial ruin was for his father to die.
Yes, there was certainly a motive there all right.
My father looked at his watch.
"I've asked him to come here," he said. "He'll be here any minute now."
"Roger?"
"Yes."
"Will you walk into my parlour said the spider to the fly?" I murmured.
Taverner looked at me in a shocked way.
"We shall give him all the proper cautions," he said severely.
The stage was set, the shorthand writer established. Presently the buzzer sounded, and a few minutes later Roger Leonides entered the room.
He came in eagerly - and rather clumsily - he stumbled over a chair. I was reminded as before of a large friendly dog. At the same time I decided quite definitely that it was not he who had carried out the actual process of transferring eserine to an insulin bottle. He would have broken it, spilled it, or muffed the operation in some way or other. No. Clemency's, I decided, had been the actual hand, though Roger had been privy to the deed.
Words rushed from him:
"You wanted to see me? You've found out something? Hullo, Charles, I didn't see you. Nice of you to come along. But please tell me. Sir Arthur -"
Such a nice fellow - really such a nice fellow. But lots of murderers had been nice fellows - so their astonished friends had said afterwards. Feeling rather like Judas, I smiled a greeting.
My father was deliberate, coldly official. The glib phrases were uttered. Statement... taken down... no compulsion... solicitor...
Roger Leonides brushed them all aside with the same characteristic eager impatience.
I saw the faint sardonic smile on Chief Inspector Taverner's face, and read from it the thought in his mind.
"Always sure of themselves, these chaps. They can't make a mistake. They're far too clever!"
I sat down unobtrusively in a corner and listened.
"I have asked you to come here, Mr Leonides," my father said, "not to give you fresh information, but to ask for some information from you - information that you have previously withheld."
Roger Leonides looked bewildered.
"Withheld? But I've told you everything - absolutely everything!"
"I think not. You had a conversation with the deceased on the afternoon of his death?"
"Yes, yes, I had tea with him. I told you so."
"You told us that, yes, but you did not tell us about your conversation."
"We - just - talked."
"What about?"
"Daily happenings, the house, Sophia -"
"What about Associated Catering? Was that mentioned?"
I think I had hoped up to then that Josephine had been inventing the whole story - but if so, that hope was quickly quenched.
Roger's face changed. It changed in a moment from eagerness to something that was recognisably close to despair.
"Oh my God," he said. He dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands.
Taverner smiled like a contented cat.
"You admit, Mr Leonides, that you have not been frank with us?"
"How did you get to know about that? I thought nobody knew - I don't see how anybody could know."
"We have means of finding out these things, Mr Leonides." There was a majestic pause. "I think you will see now that you had better tell us the truth."
"Yes, yes, of course. I'll tell you. What do you want to know?"
"Is it true that Associated Catering is on the verge of collapse?"
"Yes. It can't be staved off now. The crash is bound to come. If only my father could have died without ever knowing. I feel so ashamed - so disgraced -"
"There is a possibility of criminal prosecution?"
Roger sat up sharply.
"No, indeed. It will be bankruptcy - but an honourable bankruptcy. Creditors will be paid twenty shillings in the pound if I throw in my personal assets which I shall do. No, the disgrace I feel is to have failed my father. He trusted me. He made over to me this, his largest concern - and his pet concern. He never interfered, he never asked what I was doing. He just - trusted me... And I let him down."
My father said drily:
"You say there was no likelihood of criminal prosecution? Why then, had you and your wife planned to go abroad without telling anybody of your intention?"
"You know that, too?"
"Yes, Mr Leonides."
"But don't you see?" He leaned forward eagerly. "I couldn't face him with the truth. It would have looked, you see, as if I was asking for money? As though I wanted him to set me on my feet again. He - he was very fond of me. He would have wanted to help. But I couldn't - I couldn't go on - it would have meant making a mess of things all over again - I'm no good. I haven't got the ability. I'm not the man my father was. I've always known it. I've tried. But it's no good. I've been so miserable - God! you don't know how miserable I've been! Trying to get out of the muddle, hoping I'd just get square, hoping the dear old man would never need hear about it. And then it came - no more hope of avoiding the crash. Clemency - my wife - she understood, she agreed with me. We thought out this plan. Say nothing to anyone. Go away. And then let the storm break. I'd leave a letter for my father, telling him all about it - telling him how ashamed I was and begging him to forgive me. He's been so good to me always - you don't know! But it would be too late then for him to do anything. That's what I wanted. Not to ask him - or even to seem to ask him for help. Start again on my own somewhere. Live simply and humbly. Grow things. Coffee - fruit. Just have the bare necessities of life - hard on Clemency, but she swore she didn't mind. She's wonderful - absolutely wonderful."
"I see." My father's voice was dry. "And what made you change your mind?"
"Change my mind?"'
"Yes. What made you decide to go to your father and ask for financial help after all?"
Roger stared at him.
"But I didn't!"
"Come now, Mr Leonides."
"You've got it all wrong. I didn't go to him. He sent for me. He'd heard, somehow, in the City. A rumour? I suppose. But he always knew things. Someone had told him. He tackled me with it. Then, of course, I broke down... I told him everything. I said it wasn't so much the money - it was the feeling I'd let him down after he'd trusted me."
Roger swallowed convulsively. "The dear man," he said. "You can't imagine how he was to me. No reproaches. Just kindness. I told him I didn't want help, that I preferred not to have it - that I'd rather go away as I had planned to do. But he wouldn't listen. He insisted on coming to the rescue - on putting Associated Catering on its legs again."
Taverner said sharply:
"You are expecting us to believe that your father intended to come to your assistance financially?"
"Certainly he did. He wrote to his brokers then and there, giving them instructions."
I suppose he saw the incredulity on the two men's faces and flushed.
"Look here," he said, "I've still got the letter. I was to post it. But of course later - with - with the shock and confusion, I forgot. I've probably got it in my pocket now."
He drew out his wallet and started hunting through it. Finally he found what he wanted. It was a creased envelope with a stamp on it. It was adressed, as I saw by leaning forward, to Messrs. Greatorex and Hanbury.
"Read it for yourselves," he said. "If you don't believe me."
My father tore open the letter. Taverner went round behind him. I did not see the letter then, but I saw it later. It instructed Messrs. Greatorex and Hanbury to realise certain investments and asked for a member of the firm to be sent down on the following day to take certain instructions re the affairs of Associated Catering. Some of it was unintelligible to me but its purport was clear enough. Aristide Leonides was preparing to put Associated Catering on its feet again.
Taverner said:
"We will give you a receipt for this, Mr Leonides."
Roger took the receipt. He got up and said:
"Is that all? You do see how it all was, don't you?"
Taverner said:
"Mr Leonides gave you this letter and you then left him? What did you do next?"
"I rushed back to my own part of the house. My wife had just come in. I told her what my father proposed to do. How wonderful he had been! I - really, I hardly knew what I was doing."
"And your father was taken ill - how long after that?"
"Let me see - half an hour, perhaps, or an hour. Brenda came rushing in. She was frightened. She said he looked queer. I - I rushed over with her. But I've told you this before."
"During your former visit, did you go into the bathroom adjoining your father's room at all?"
"I don't think so. No - no, I am sure I didn't. Why, you can't possibly think that I -"
My father quelled the sudden indignation. He got up and shook hands.
"Thank you, Mr Leonides," he said. "You have been very helpful. But you should have told us all this before."
The door closed behind Roger. I got up and came to look at the letter lying on my father's table.
"It could be forgery," said Taverner hopefully.
"It could be," said my father, "but I don't think it is. I think we'll have to accept it as it stands. Old Leonides was prepared to get his son out of this mess. It could have been done more efficiently by him alive than it could by Roger after his death... especially as it now transpires that no will is to be found and that in consequence Roger's actual amount of inheritance is open to question. That means delays - and difficulties. As things now stand, the crash is bound to come. No, Taverner, Roger Leonides and his wife had no motive for getting the old man out of the way. On the contrary -"
He stopped and repeated thoughtfully as though a sudden thought had occurred to him, "On the contrary..."
"What's on your mind, sir?" Taverner asked.
The Old Man said slowly:
"If Aristide Leonides had lived only another twenty-four hours, Roger would have been all right. But he didn't live twenty-four hours. He died suddenly and dramatically within little more than an hour."
"Hm," said Taverner. "Do you think somebody in the house wanted Roger to go broke? Someone who had an opposing financial interest? Doesn't seem likely."
"What's the position as regards the will?" my father asked. "Who actually gets old Leonides' money?"
"You know what lawyers are. Can't get a straight answer out of them. There's a former will. Made when he married the second Mrs Leonides. That leaves the same sum to her, rather less to Miss de Haviland, and the remainder between Philip and Roger. I should have thought that if this will isn't signed, then the old one would operate, but it seems it isn't so simple as that. First the making of the new will revoked the former one and there are witnesses to the signing of it, and the 'testator's intention.' It seems to be a toss up if it turns out that he died intestate. Then the widow apparently gets the lot - or a life interest at any rate."
"So if the will's disappeared Brenda Leonides is the most likely person to profit by it?"
"Yes. If there's been any hocus pocus, it seems probable that she's at the bottom of it. And there obviously has been hocus pocus, but I'm dashed if I see how it was done."
I didn't see, either. I suppose we were really incredibly stupid. But we were looking at it, of course, from the wrong angle.
Chapter 12
There was a short silence after Taverner had gone out.
Then I said: "Dad, what are murderers like?"
The Old Man looked up at me thoughtfully.
We understand each other so well that he knew exactly what was in my mind when I put that question. And he answered it very seriously.
"Yes," he said. "That's important now - very important, for you... Murder's come close to you. You can't go on looking at it from the outside."
I had always been interested, in an amateurish kind of way, in some of the more spectacular "cases" with which the CID had dealt, but, as my father said, I had been interested from the outside - looking in, as it were, through the shop window. But now, as Sophia had seen much more quickly than I did, murder had become a dominant factor in my life.
The Old Man went on:
"I don't know if I'm the right person to ask. I could put you on to a couple of the tame psychiatrists who do jobs for us. They've got it all cut and dried. Or Taverner could give you all the inside dope. But you want, I take it, to hear what I, personally, as the result of my experience of criminals, think about it?"
"That's what I want," I said gratefully.
My father traced a little circle with his finger on the desk top.
"What are murderers like? Some of them," a faint rather melancholy smile showed on his face, "have been thoroughly nice chaps."
I think I looked a little startled.
"Oh yes, they have," he said. "Nice ordinary fellows like you and me - or like that chap who went out just now - Roger Leonides. Murder, you see, is an amateur crime. I'm speaking of course of the kind of murder you have in mind - not gangster stuff. One feels, very often, as though these nice ordinary chaps, had been overtaken, as it were, by murder, almost accidentally. They've been in a tight place, or they've wanted something very badly, money or a woman - and they've killed to get it. The brake that operates with most of us doesn't operate with them. A child, you know, translates desire into action without compunction. A child is angry with its kitten, says 'I'll kill you,' and hits it on the head with a hammer - and then breaks its heart because the kitten doesn't come alive again! Lots of kids try to take a baby out of a pram and 'drown it,' because it usurps attention - or interferes with their pleasures. They get - very early - to a stage when they know that that is 'wrong' - that is, that it will be punished. Later, they get to feel that it is wrong. But some people, I suspect, remain morally immature. They continue to be aware that murder is wrong, but they do not feel it. I don't think, in my experience, that any murderer has really felt remorse... And that, perhaps, is the mark of Cain. Murderers are set apart, they are 'different' - murder is wrong - but not for them - for them it is necessary - the victim has 'asked for it,' it was 'the only way.'"
