Sheer terror - that was what had been on Brenda's face.
Brenda was not a fighter.
I wondered that she had ever had the nerve to do murder.
But possibly she had not.
Possibly it had been Laurence Brown, with his persecution mania, his unstable personality who had put the contents of one little bottle into another little bottle - a simple easy act - to free the woman he loved.
"So it's over," said Sophia.
She sighed deeply, then asked: "But why arrest them now?
I thought there wasn't enough evidence."
"A certain amount of evidence has come to light.
Letters."
"You mean love letters between them?"
"Yes."
"What fools people are to keep these things!"
Yes, indeed. Fools.
The kind of folly which never seemed to profit by the experience of others.
You couldn't open a daily newspaper without coming across some instance of that folly - the passion to keep the written word, the written assurance of love.
"It's quite beastly, Sophia," I said. "But it's no good minding about it.
After all, it's what we've been hoping all along, isn't it?
It's what you said that first night at Mario's.
You said it would be all right if the right person had killed your grandfather.
Brenda was the right person, wasn't she?
Brenda or Laurence?"
"Don't. Charles, you make me feel awful."
"But we must be sensible.
We can marry now, Sophia.
You can't hold me off any longer. The Leonides family are out of it."
She stared at me.
I had never realised before the vivid blue of her eyes.
"Yes," she said. "I suppose we're out of it now.
We are out of it, aren't we?
You're sure?"
"My dear girl, none of you really had a shadow of motive."
Her face went suddenly white.
"Except me, Charles.
I had a motive."
"Yes, of course -" I was taken aback. "But not really.
You didn't know, you see, about the will."
"But I did, Charles," she whispered.
"What?"
I stared at her. I felt suddenly cold.
"I knew all the time that grandfather had left his money to me."
"But how?"
"He told me. About a fortnight before he was killed.
He said to me quite suddenly,
'I've left all my money to you, Sophia.
You must look after the family when I'm gone.'" I stared.
"You never told me."
"No.
You see, when they all explained about the will and his signing it, I thought perhaps he had made a mistake - that he was just imagining that he had left it to me.
Or that if he had made a will leaving it to me, then it had got lost and would never turn up.