Twenty-one

Twenty-one
My one feeling of regret at this time was that Josephine was out of it all.
She would have enjoyed it all so much.
Her recovery was rapid and she was expected to be back any day now,but nevertheless she missed another event of importance.
I was in the rock garden one morning with Sophia and Brenda when acar drew up to the front door. Taverner and Sergeant¹ Lamb got out of it.
They went up the steps and into the house.
Brenda stood still, staring at the car.
“It’s those men,” she said. “They’ve come back, and I thought they’dgiven up—I thought it was all over.”
I saw her shiver.
She had joined us about ten minutes before. Wrapped in her chinchillacoat, she had said: “If I don’t get some air and exercise, I shall go mad. If Igo outside the gate there’s always a reporter waiting to pounce² on me. It’slike being besieged³. Will it go on for ever?”
Sophia said that she supposed the reporters would soon get tired of it.
“You can go out in the car,” she added.
“I tell you I want to get some exercise.”
Then she said abruptly⁴:
“You’re giving Laurence the sack, Sophia. Why?”
Sophia answered quietly:
“We’re making other arrangements for Eustace. And Josephine is goingto Switzerland.”
“Well, you’ve upset Laurence very much. He feels you don’t trust him.”
Sophia did not reply and it was at that moment that Taverner’s car hadarrived.
Standing⁵ there, shivering in the moist autumn air, Brenda muttered:
“What do they want? Why have they come?”
I thought I knew why they had come. I said nothing to Sophia of the let-ters I had found by the cistern⁶, but I knew that they had gone to the Direc-tor of Public Prosecutions⁷.
Taverner came out of the house again. He walked across the drive andthe lawn towards us. Brenda shivered more violently.
“What does he want?” she repeated nervously⁸. “What does he want?”
Then Taverner was with us. He spoke⁹ curtly¹⁰ in his official voice, usingthe official phrases.
“I have a warrant here for your arrest—you are charged with adminis-tering eserine to Aristide Leonides on September 19th last. I must warnyou that anything you say may be used in evidence at your trial.”
And then Brenda went to pieces. She screamed. She clung to me. Shecried out, “No, no, no, it isn’t true! Charles, tell them it isn’t true! I didn’t doit. I didn’t know anything about it. It’s all a plot. Don’t let them take meaway. It isn’t true, I tell you … It isn’t true…. I haven’t done anything….”
It was horrible — unbelievably horrible. I tried to soothe¹¹ her, I un-fastened her fingers from my arm. I told her that I would arrange for alawyer for her—that she was to keep calm—that a lawyer would arrangeeverything—
Taverner took her gently under the elbow.
“Come along, Mrs. Leonides,” he said. “You don’t want a hat, do you?
No? Then we’ll go off right away.”
She pulled back, staring at him with enormous cat’s eyes.
“Laurence,” she said. “What have you done to Laurence?”
“Mr. Laurence Brown is also under arrest,” said Taverner.
She wilted¹² then. Her body seemed to collapse¹³ and shrink. The tearspoured down her face. She went away quietly with Taverner across thelawn to the car. I saw Laurence Brown and Sergeant Lamb come out of thehouse. They all got into the car. The car drove away.
I drew a deep breath and turned to Sophia. She was very pale and therewas a look of distress¹⁴ on her face.
“It’s horrible, Charles,” she said. “It’s quite horrible.”
“I know.”
“You must get her a really first-class solicitor—the best there is. She—she must have all the help possible.”
“One doesn’t realize,” I said, “what these things are like. I’ve never seenanyone arrested before.”
“I know. One has no idea.”
We were both silent. I was thinking of the desperate terror on Brenda’sface. It had seemed familiar to me and suddenly I realized why. It was thesame expression that I had seen on Magda Leonides’ face the first day Ihad come to the Crooked¹⁵ House when she had been talking about theEdith Thompson play.
“And then,” she had said, “sheer terror, don’t you think so?”
Sheer terror—that was what had been on Brenda’s face. Brenda was nota fighter. I wondered that she had ever had the nerve to do murder. Butpossibly she had not. Possibly it had been Laurence Brown, with his perse-cution mania¹⁶, his unstable¹⁷ personality, who had put the contents of onelittle bottle into another little bottle—a simple easy act—to free the womanhe 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 folly¹⁸ which never seemed to profit by theexperience of others. You couldn’t open a daily newspaper without com-ing across some instance of that folly—the passion to keep the writtenword, 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 saidthat first night at Mario’s. You said it would be all right if the right personhad 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 meoff any longer. The Leonides family are out of it.”
She stared at me. I had never realized before the vivid blue of her eyes.
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose we’re out of it now. We are out of it, aren’twe. You’re sure?”
“My dear girl, none of you ever really had a shadow of motive¹⁹.”
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 quitesuddenly: ‘I’ve left all my money to you, Sophia. You must look after thefamily when I’ve gone.’”
I stared.
“You never told me.”
“No. You see, when they all explained about the will and his signing it, Ithought perhaps he had made a mistake—that he was just imagining thathe had left it to me. Or that if he had made a will leaving it to me, then ithad got lost and would never turn up. I didn’t want it to turn up—I wasafraid.”
“Afraid? Why?”
“I suppose—because of murder.”
I remembered the look of terror on Brenda’s face—the wild unreasoningpanic. I remembered the sheer panic that Magda had conjured²⁰ up at willwhen she considered playing the part of a murderess. There would be nopanic in Sophia’s mind, but she was a realist, and she could see clearlyenough that Leonides’ will made her a suspect. I understood better now(or thought I did) her refusal to become engaged to me and her insistencethat I should find out the truth. Nothing but the truth, she had said, wasany good to her. I remembered the passion, the earnestness with whichshe had said it.
We had turned to walk towards the house and suddenly, at a certainspot, I remembered something else she had said.
She had said that she supposed she could murder someone, but if so, shehad added, it must be for something really worthwhile.

1 sergeant   

n.警官，中士

参考例句：

• His elder brother is a sergeant.他哥哥是个警官。
• How many stripes are there on the sleeve of a sergeant?陆军中士的袖子上有多少条纹？

2 pounce   

n.猛扑；v.猛扑，突然袭击，欣然同意

参考例句：

• Why do you pounce on every single thing I say?干吗我说的每句话你都要找麻烦？
• We saw the tiger about to pounce on the goat.我们看见老虎要向那只山羊扑过去。

3 besieged   

包围，围困，围攻( besiege的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Paris was besieged for four months and forced to surrender. 巴黎被围困了四个月后被迫投降。
• The community besieged the newspaper with letters about its recent editorial. 公众纷纷来信对报社新近发表的社论提出诘问，弄得报社应接不暇。

4 abruptly   

adv.突然地，出其不意地

参考例句：

• He gestured abruptly for Virginia to get in the car.他粗鲁地示意弗吉尼亚上车。
• I was abruptly notified that a half-hour speech was expected of me.我突然被通知要讲半个小时的话。

5 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

6 cistern   

n.贮水池

参考例句：

• The cistern is empty but soon fills again.蓄水池里现在没水，但不久就会储满水的。
• The lavatory cistern overflowed.厕所水箱的水溢出来了

7 prosecutions   

起诉( prosecution的名词复数 )； 原告； 实施； 从事

参考例句：

• It is the duty of the Attorney-General to institute prosecutions. 检察总长负责提起公诉。
• Since World War II, the government has been active in its antitrust prosecutions. 第二次世界大战以来，政府积极地进行着反对托拉斯的检举活动。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件

8 nervously   

adv.神情激动地，不安地

参考例句：

• He bit his lip nervously,trying not to cry.他紧张地咬着唇，努力忍着不哭出来。
• He paced nervously up and down on the platform.他在站台上情绪不安地走来走去。

9 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

10 curtly   

adv.简短地

参考例句：

• He nodded curtly and walked away. 他匆忙点了一下头就走了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The request was curtly refused. 这个请求被毫不客气地拒绝了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 soothe   

v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承

参考例句：

• I've managed to soothe him down a bit.我想方设法使他平静了一点。
• This medicine should soothe your sore throat.这种药会减轻你的喉痛。

12 wilted   

（使）凋谢，枯萎( wilt的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The flowers wilted in the hot sun. 花在烈日下枯萎了。
• The romance blossomed for six or seven months, and then wilted. 那罗曼史持续六七个月之后就告吹了。

13 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

14 distress   

n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛

参考例句：

• Nothing could alleviate his distress.什么都不能减轻他的痛苦。
• Please don't distress yourself.请你不要忧愁了。

15 crooked   

adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的

参考例句：

• He crooked a finger to tell us to go over to him.他弯了弯手指，示意我们到他那儿去。
• You have to drive slowly on these crooked country roads.在这些弯弯曲曲的乡间小路上你得慢慢开车。

16 mania   

n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好

参考例句：

• Football mania is sweeping the country.足球热正风靡全国。
• Collecting small items can easily become a mania.收藏零星物品往往容易变成一种癖好。

17 unstable   

adj.不稳定的，易变的

参考例句：

• This bookcase is too unstable to hold so many books.这书橱很不结实，装不了这么多书。
• The patient's condition was unstable.那患者的病情不稳定。

18 folly   

n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话

参考例句：

• Learn wisdom by the folly of others.从别人的愚蠢行动中学到智慧。
• Events proved the folly of such calculations.事情的进展证明了这种估计是愚蠢的。

19 motive   

n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的

参考例句：

• The police could not find a motive for the murder.警察不能找到谋杀的动机。
• He had some motive in telling this fable.他讲这寓言故事是有用意的。

20 conjured   

用魔术变出( conjure的过去式和过去分词 )； 祈求，恳求； 变戏法； （变魔术般地） 使…出现

参考例句：

• He conjured them with his dying breath to look after his children. 他临终时恳求他们照顾他的孩子。
• His very funny joke soon conjured my anger away. 他讲了个十分有趣的笑话，使得我的怒气顿消。