Five

Five
Along the path towards us came a tall figure walking briskly. It had on abattered old felt hat, a shapeless skirt, and a rather cumbersome² jersey³.
“Aunt Edith,” said Sophia.
The figure paused once or twice, stooping to the flower borders, then itadvanced upon us. I rose to my feet.
“This is Charles Hayward, Aunt Edith. My aunt, Miss de Haviland.”
Edith de Haviland was a woman of about seventy. She had a mass of un-tidy grey hair, a weather-beaten face and a shrewd and piercing glance.
“How d’ye do?” she said. “I’ve heard about you. Back from the East.
How’s your father?”
Rather surprised, I said he was very well.
“Knew him when he was a boy,” said Miss de Haviland. “Knew hismother very well. You look rather like her. Have you come to help us—orthe other thing?”
“I hope to help,” I said rather uncomfortably.
She nodded.
“We could do with some help. Place swarming⁴ with policemen. Pop outat you all over the place. Don’t like some of the types. A boy who’s been toa decent school oughtn’t to go into the police. Saw Moyra Kinoul’s boy theother day holding up the traffic at Marble Arch. Makes you feel you don’tknow where you are!”
She turned to Sophia.
“Nannie’s asking for you, Sophia. Fish.”
“Bother,” said Sophia. “I’ll go and telephone about it.”
She walked briskly towards the house. Miss de Haviland turned andwalked slowly in the same directon. I fell into step beside her.
“Don’t know what we’d all do without nannies,” said Miss de Haviland.
“Nearly everybody’s got an old nannie. They come back and wash andiron and cook and do housework. Faithful. Chose this one myself—yearsago.”
She stopped and pulled viciously at an entangling⁵ twining bit of green.
“Hateful stuff—bindweed! Worst weed there is! Choking, entangling—and you can’t get at it properly, runs along underground.”
With her heel she ground the handful of greenstuff viciously underfoot.
“This is a bad business, Charles Hayward,” she said. She was looking to-wards the house. “What do the police think about it? Suppose I mustn’task you that. Seems odd to think of Aristide being poisoned. For that mat-ter it seems odd to think of him being dead. I never liked him—never! ButI can’t get used to the idea of his being dead … Makes the house seem so—empty.”
I said nothing. For all her curt⁶ way of speech, Edith de Haviland seemedin a reminiscent mood.
“Was thinking this morning — I’ve lived here a long time. Over fortyyears. Came here when my sister died. He asked me to. Seven children—and the youngest only a year old … Couldn’t leave ’em to be brought up bya dago, could I? An impossible marriage, of course. I always felt Marciamust have been—well—bewitched. Ugly common little foreigner! He gaveme a free hand—I will say that. Nurses, governesses, school. And properwholesome nursery food—not those queer spiced rice dishes he used toeat.”
“And you’ve been here ever since?” I murmured.
“Yes. Queer in a way … I could have left, I suppose, when the childrengrew up and married … I suppose, really, I’d got interested in the garden.
And then there was Philip. If a man marries an actress he can’t expect tohave any home life. Don’t know why actresses have children. As soon as ababy’s born they rush off and play in Repertory in Edinburgh or some-where as remote as possible. Philip did the sensible thing—moved in herewith his books.”
“What does Philip Leonides do?”
“Writes books. Can’t think why. Nobody wants to read them. All aboutobscure historical details. You’ve never even heard of them, have you?”
I admitted it.
“Too much money, that’s what he’s had,” said Miss de Haviland. “Mostpeople have to stop being cranks and earn a living.”
“Don’t his books pay?”
“Of course not. He’s supposed to be a great authority on certain periodsand all that. But he doesn’t have to make his books pay—Aristide settledsomething like a hundred thousand pounds—something quite fantastic—on him! To avoid death duties! Aristide made them all financially inde-pendent. Roger runs Associated Catering—Sophia has a very handsome al-lowance. The children’s money is in trust for them.”
“So no one gains particularly by his death?”
She threw me a strange glance.
“Yes, they do. They all get more money. But they could probably havehad it, if they asked for it, anyway.”
“Have you any idea who poisoned him, Miss de Haviland?”
She replied characteristically:
“No, indeed I haven’t. It’s upset me very much. Not nice to think one hasa Borgia sort of person loose about the house. I suppose the police willfasten on poor Brenda.”
“You don’t think they’ll be right in doing so?”
“I simply can’t tell. She’s always seemed to me a singularly stupid andcommonplace young woman—rather conventional. Not my idea of a pois-oner. Still, after all, if a young woman of twenty-four marries a man closeon eighty, it’s fairly obvious that she’s marrying him for his money. In thenormal course of events she could have expected to become a rich widowfairly soon. But Aristide was a singularly tough old man. His diabeteswasn’t getting any worse. He really looked like living to be a hundred. Isuppose she got tired of waiting….”
“In that case,” I said, and stopped.
“In that case,” said Miss de Haviland briskly, “it will be more or less allright. Annoying publicity⁷, of course. But after all, she isn’t one of the fam-ily.”
“You’ve no other ideas?” I asked.
“What other ideas should I have?”
I wondered. I had a suspicion that there might be more going on underthe battered¹ felt hat than I knew.
Behind the perky, almost disconnected utterance⁸, there was, I thought, avery shrewd brain at work. Just for a moment I even wondered whetherMiss de Haviland had poisoned Aristide Leonides herself….
It did not seem an impossible idea. At the back of my mind was the wayshe had ground the bindweed into the soil with her heel with a kind ofvindictive thoroughness.
I remembered the word Sophia had used. Ruthlessness.
I stole a sideways glance at Edith de Haviland.
Given good and sufficient reason … But what exactly would seem toEdith de Haviland good and sufficient reason?
To answer that, I should have to know her better.

1 battered   

adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损

参考例句：

• He drove up in a battered old car.他开着一辆又老又破的旧车。
• The world was brutally battered but it survived.这个世界遭受了惨重的创伤,但它还是生存下来了。

2 cumbersome   

adj.笨重的，不便携带的

参考例句：

• Although the machine looks cumbersome,it is actually easy to use.尽管这台机器看上去很笨重，操作起来却很容易。
• The furniture is too cumbersome to move.家具太笨，搬起来很不方便。

3 jersey   

n.运动衫

参考例句：

• He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
• They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致，都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。

4 swarming   

密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去

参考例句：

• The sacks of rice were swarming with bugs. 一袋袋的米里长满了虫子。
• The beach is swarming with bathers. 海滩满是海水浴的人。

5 entangling   

v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• We increasingly want an end to entangling alliances. 我们越来越想终止那些纠缠不清的盟约。 来自辞典例句
• What a thing it was to have her love him, even if it be entangling! 得到她的爱是件多么美妙的事，即使为此陷入纠葛中去也值得！ 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

6 curt   

adj.简短的，草率的

参考例句：

• He gave me an extremely curt answer.他对我作了极为草率的答复。
• He rapped out a series of curt commands.他大声发出了一连串简短的命令。

7 publicity   

n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告

参考例句：

• The singer star's marriage got a lot of publicity.这位歌星的婚事引起了公众的关注。
• He dismissed the event as just a publicity gimmick.他不理会这件事，只当它是一种宣传手法。

8 utterance   

n.用言语表达，话语，言语

参考例句：

• This utterance of his was greeted with bursts of uproarious laughter.他的讲话引起阵阵哄然大笑。
• My voice cleaves to my throat,and sob chokes my utterance.我的噪子哽咽，泣不成声。