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.