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.

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1
sergeant
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n.警官,中士 | |
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2
pounce
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n.猛扑;v.猛扑,突然袭击,欣然同意 | |
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3
besieged
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包围,围困,围攻( besiege的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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4
abruptly
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adv.突然地,出其不意地 | |
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5
standing
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n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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6
cistern
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n.贮水池 | |
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7
prosecutions
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起诉( prosecution的名词复数 ); 原告; 实施; 从事 | |
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8
nervously
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adv.神情激动地,不安地 | |
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9
spoke
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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 | |
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10
curtly
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adv.简短地 | |
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11
soothe
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v.安慰;使平静;使减轻;缓和;奉承 | |
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12
wilted
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(使)凋谢,枯萎( wilt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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13
collapse
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vi.累倒;昏倒;倒塌;塌陷 | |
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14
distress
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n.苦恼,痛苦,不舒适;不幸;vt.使悲痛 | |
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15
crooked
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adj.弯曲的;不诚实的,狡猾的,不正当的 | |
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16
mania
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n.疯狂;躁狂症,狂热,癖好 | |
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17
unstable
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adj.不稳定的,易变的 | |
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18
folly
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n.愚笨,愚蠢,蠢事,蠢行,傻话 | |
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19
motive
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n.动机,目的;adv.发动的,运动的 | |
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20
conjured
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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 | |
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