Crooked House

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There is also a short story by science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein entitled “—And He Built a Crooked House—”.

Crooked House (published in 1949) is a whodunnit novel by Agatha Christie. The action takes place in and near London in the autumn of 1947. Christie has said that this was one of her two favorites of her own works, the other being Ordeal by Innocence.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The first person narrator is Charles Hayward who, towards the end of the Second World War, occupies some post in Cairo. There he meets Sophia Leonides, who works for the Foreign Office there. They fall in love with each other but put off getting engaged until after the end of the war when they will be reunited back home in England.

When Hayward arrives back home it is only to find an obituary in The Times: Sophia's grandfather, Aristide Leonides, has died, aged 87. Due to the war, the whole family has been living together under one roof, in a large house near London, among them Leonides' second wife, whom many in the family dislike and see as nothing more than a gold digger.

When the news is broken that Aristide Leonides has been poisoned, via a diabetic injection, Charles is unwittingly drawn into the case.

The obvious suspects are Brenda Leonides herself, no longer willing to wait for her inheritance, and Laurence Brown, a conscientious objector who also lives in the house as private tutor to Eustace and Josephine, Sophia's younger brother and sister. Rumour has it that Brenda Leonides and Brown have been carrying on an illicit love affair right under old Leonides's nose. In fact all family members want them to be the murderers because it would be the easiest way out for them and the family's good name would not suffer. Charles agrees to help his father, Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, investigate the crime, when no interviews can lead conclusively to any one suspect.

The Leonides family are a strange lot: Edith de Haviland, Aristide's unmarried sister-in-law, came to stay with him after his first wife's death in order to supervise his children's upbringing. Roger, the eldest son and always Aristide's favourite, is a failure as businessman and has steered the catering business bestowed to him by his father to the brink of bankruptcy; his wife Clemency, an austere-looking scientist, has never been able to enjoy the wealth offered by her husband's family. Philip, Roger's younger brother, has suffered all his life under his father's preference for Roger and retreated into a distant world of books and bygone historical epochs, spending all his waking hours in the library of the house. Philip's wife Magda is a modestly successful actress to whom everything, even a murder in the family, is a stage show in which she wants to play a leading part. 16 year-old Eustace still suffers from the aftereffects of some childhood disease, but otherwise is just an ordinary boy. His sister Josephine, aged 12, on the other hand, is exceptionally ugly to look at and preoccupied with detective stories, which she has been devouring for some time.

Things get complicated when Charles learns that Leonides redrafted his will to leave everything to Sophia, and when someone attempts to kill Josephine, who has been bragging that she knows the identity of the killer. But, even after hidden love letters are discovered and Brenda and Laurence are arrested, worse things begin to happen as Josephine's nanny dies after drinking a poisoned cup of cocoa originally intended for Josephine, and the family realizes that the killer is still among them.

As events unravel and begin to take form, Edith de Haviland drives her car with Josephine off a cliff, instantly killing both. Back at the house, Charles finds two letters; one for Chief Inspector Taverner from de Haviland admitting to the murders of Aristide, the nanny and Josephine, and her own suicide. The other letter, written by de Haviland also, contains the truth of the murderer's identity - Josephine. It also contains her notebook, in which the first line reads "To-day I killed grandfather."

[edit] External links

[edit] Nursery rhyme

The title is a reference to a nursery rhyme ("There was a Crooked Man"), a common theme of Christie's.

Agatha Christie
Detectives: Hercule PoirotMiss Marple Tommy and Tuppence Ariadne Oliver Arthur Hastings Superintendent Battle Chief Inspector Japp Parker Pyne
Novels: The Mysterious Affair at StylesThe Secret Adversary Murder on the Links The Man in the Brown Suit The Secret of Chimneys The Murder of Roger Ackroyd The Big Four The Mystery of the Blue Train The Seven Dials Mystery The Murder at the Vicarage The Sittaford Mystery Peril at End House Lord Edgware Dies Murder on the Orient Express Three Act Tragedy Why Didn't They Ask Evans? Death in the Clouds The A.B.C. Murders Murder in Mesopotamia Cards on the Table Death on the Nile Dumb Witness Appointment with Death And Then There Were None Murder is Easy Hercule Poirot's Christmas Sad Cypress Evil Under the Sun N or M? One, Two, Buckle My Shoe The Body in the Library Five Little Pigs The Moving Finger Towards Zero Sparkling Cyanide Death Comes as the End The Hollow Taken at the Flood Crooked House A Murder is Announced They Came to Baghdad Mrs McGinty's Dead They Do It with Mirrors A Pocket Full of Rye After the Funeral Hickory Dickory Dock Destination Unknown Dead Man's Folly 4.50 From Paddington Ordeal by Innocence Cat Among the Pigeons The Pale Horse The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side The Clocks A Caribbean Mystery At Bertram's Hotel Third Girl Endless Night By the Pricking of My Thumbs Hallowe'en Party Passenger to Frankfurt Nemesis Elephants Can Remember Postern of Fate Curtain Sleeping Murder
As Mary Westmacott: Giant's BreadUnfinished Portrait Absent in the Spring The Rose and the Yew Tree A Daughter's a Daughter The Burden
Short story collections: Poirot InvestigatesPartners in Crime The Mysterious Mr. Quin The Hound of Death The Thirteen Problems Parker Pyne Investigates The Listerdale Mystery Murder in the Mews The Regatta Mystery The Labours of Hercules Poirot's Early Cases The Harlequin Tea Set
Plays: AkhnatonThe Mousetrap Witness for the Prosecution Verdict Rule of Three Fiddlers Three