Just the feeling that Brenda was all alone on one side, and the concentrated animosity of the powerful Leonides family was arrayed against her on the other side?
Chivalry?
A feeling for the weaker? For the defenceless?
I remembered her sitting on the sofa in her expensive rich mourning, the hopelessness in her voice - the fear in her eyes.
Nannie came back rather opportunely from the scullery.
I don't know whether she sensed a certain strain between myself and Sophia.
She said disapprovingly: "Talking murders and such like. Forget about it, that's what I say.
Leave it to the police. It's their nasty business, not yours."
"Oh Nannie - don't you realize that someone in this house is a murderer."
"Nonsense, Miss Sophia, I've no patience with you.
Isn't the front door open all the time - all the doors open, nothing locked - asking for thieves and burglars."
"But it couldn't have been a burglar, nothing was stolen.
Besides why should a burglar come in and poison somebody?"
"I didn't say it was a burglar. Miss Sophia.
I only said all the doors were open.
Anyone could have got in.
If you ask me it was the Communists."
Nannie nodded her head in a satisfied way.
"Why on earth should Communists want to murder poor grandfather?"
"Well, everyone says that they're at the bottom of everything that goes on.
But if it wasn't the Communists, mark my word, it was the Catholics.
The Scarlet Woman of Babylon, that's what they are."
With the air of one saying the last word, Nannie disappeared again into the scullery.
Sophia and I laughed.
"A good old Black Protestant," I said.
"Yes, isn't she?
Come on, Charles, come into the drawing room.
There's a kind of family conclave going on.
It was scheduled for this evening - but it's started prematurely."
"I'd better not butt in, Sophia."
"If you're ever going to marry into the family, you'd better see just what it's like when it has the gloves off."
"What's it all about?"
"Roger's affairs.
You seem to have been mixed up in them already.
But you're crazy to think that Roger would ever have killed grandfather. Why, Roger adored him."
"I didn't really think Roger had.
I thought Clemency might have."
"Only because I put it into your head.
But you're wrong there too.
I don't think Clemency will mind a bit if Roger loses all his money.
I think she'll actually be rather pleased.
She's got a queer kind of passion for not having things.
Come on."
When Sophia and I entered the drawing room, the voices that were speaking stopped abruptly. Everybody looked at us.
They were all there.
Philip sitting in a big crimson brocaded armchair between the windows, his beautiful face set in a cold stern mask. He looked like a judge about to pronounce sentence.
Roger was astride a big pouf by the fireplace.
He had ruffled up his hair between his fingers until it stood up all over his head. His left trouser leg was rucked up and his tie was askew.
He looked flushed and argumentative.
Clemency sat beyond him, her slight form seemed too slender for the big stuffed chair.