Any other - suspects?"
The Old Man said quietly: "Practically anyone in the house could have done it. There was always a good store of insulin - at least a fortnight's supply.
One of the phials could have been tampered with, and replaced in the knowledge that it would be used in due course."
"And anybody, more or less, had access to them?"
"They weren't locked away. They were kept on a special shelf in the medicine cupboard in the bathroom of his part of the house.
Everybody in the house came and went freely."
"Any strong motive?"
My father sighed.
"My dear Charles, Aristide Leonides was enormously rich!
He had made over a good deal of his money to his family, it is true, but it may be that somebody wanted more."
"But the one that wanted it most would be the present widow.
Has her young man any money?"
"No.
Poor as a Church mouse."
Something clicked in my brain.
I remembered Sophia's quotation.
I suddenly remembered the whole verse of the nursery rhyme: There was a crooked man and he went a crooked mile He found a crooked sixpence beside a crooked stile He had a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse And they all lived together in a little crooked house.
I said to Taverner: "How does she strike you - Mrs Leonides? What do you think of her?"
He replied slowly:
"It's hard to say - very hard to say.
She's not easy.
Very quiet - so you don't know what she's thinking.
But she likes living soft - that I'll swear I'm right about.
Puts me in mind, you know, of a cat, a big purring lazy cat... Not that I've anything against cats.
Cats are all right..." He sighed. "What we want," he said, "is evidence."
Yes, I thought, we all wanted evidence that Mrs Leonides had poisoned her husband. Sophia wanted it, and I wanted it, and Chief Inspector Taverner wanted it.
Then everything in the garden would be lovely!
But Sophia wasn't sure, and I wasn't sure, and I didn't think Chief Inspector Taverner was sure either...
Chapter 4
On the following day I went down to Three Gables with Taverner.
My position was a curious one.
It was, to say the least of it, quite unorthodox.
But the Old Man has never been highly orthodox.
I had a certain standing.
I had worked with the Special Branch at the Yard during the early days of the war.
This, of course, was entirely different - but my earlier performances had given me, so to speak, a certain official standing.
My father said:
"If we're ever going to solve this case, we've got to get some inside dope.
We've got to know all about the people in that house.
We've got to know them from the inside - not the outside.
You're the man who can get that for us."
I didn't like it.
I threw my cigarette end into the grate as I said:
"I? - I'm a police spy?
Is that it?
I'm to get the inside dope from Sophia whom I love and who both loves and trusts me, or so I believe." The Old Man became quite irritable.
He said sharply:
"For Heaven's Sake don't take the commonplace view.
To begin with, you don't believe, do you, that your young woman murdered her grandfather?"
"Of course not.