The Mousetrap

LEONARD. Well—I mean naturally, yes.

MYERS. Yes, very convenient. How was it, Mr. Vole, that you never took your wife to see Miss French?

LEONARD. I don’t know. It just didn’t seem to crop up.

MYERS. You say Miss French knew you were married?

LEONARD. Yes.

MYERS. Yet she never asked you to bring your wife with you to the house?

LEONARD. No.

MYERS. Why not?

LEONARD. Oh, I don’t know. She didn’t like women, I don’t think.

MYERS. She preferred, shall we say, personable young men? And you didn’t insist on bringing your wife?

LEONARD. No, of course I didn’t. You see, she knew my wife was a foreigner and she—oh, I don’t know, she seemed to think we didn’t get on.

MYERS. That was the impression you gave her?

LEONARD. No, I didn’t. She—well, I think it was wishful thinking on her part.

MYERS. You mean she was infatuated with you?

LEONARD. No, she wasn’t infatuated, but she, oh, it’s like mothers are sometimes with a son.

MYERS. How?

LEONARD. They don’t want him to like a girl or get engaged or anything of that kind.

MYERS. You hoped, didn’t you, for some monetary advantage from your friendship with Miss French?

LEONARD. Not in the way you mean.

MYERS. Not in the way I mean? You seem to know what I mean better than I know myself. In what way then did you hope for monetary advantage? (He pauses.) I repeat, in what way did you hope for monetary advantage?

LEONARD. You see, there’s a thing I’ve invented. A kind of windscreen wiper that works in snow. I was looking for someone to finance that and I thought perhaps Miss French would. But that wasn’t the only reason I went to see her. I tell you I liked her.

MYERS. Yes, yes, we’ve heard that very often, haven’t we—how much you liked her.

LEONARD. (Sulkily.) Well, it’s true.

MYERS. I believe, Mr. Vole, that about a week before Miss French’s death, you were making enquiries of a travel agency for particulars of foreign cruises.

LEONARD. Supposing I did—it isn’t a crime, is it?

MYERS. Not at all. Many people go for cruises when they can pay for it. But you couldn’t pay for it, could you, Mr. Vole?

LEONARD. I was hard up. I told you so.

MYERS. And yet you came into this particular travel agency—with a blonde—a strawberry blonde—I understand—and . . .

JUDGE. A strawberry blonde, Mr. Myers?

MYERS. A term for a lady with reddish fair hair, my lord.

JUDGE. I thought I knew all about blondes, but a strawberry blonde . . . Go on, Mr. Myers.

MYERS. (ToLEONARD) Well?

LEONARD. My wife isn’t a blonde and it was only a bit of fun, anyway.

MYERS. You admit that you asked for particulars, not of cheap trips, but of the most expensive and luxurious cruises. How did you expect to pay for such a thing?

LEONARD. I didn’t.

MYERS. I suggest that you knew that in a week’s time you would have inherited a large sum of money from a trusting elderly lady.

LEONARD. I didn’t know anything of the kind. I just was feeling fed up—and there were the posters in the window—palm trees and coconuts and blue seas, and I went in and asked. The clerk gave me a sort of supercilious look—I was a bit shabby—but it riled me. And so I put on a bit of an act—(He suddenly grins as though enjoying remembrance of the scene.) and began asking for the swankiest tours there were—all de luxe and a cabin on the boat deck.

MYERS. You really expect the Jury to believe that?

LEONARD. I don’t expect anyone to believe anything. But that’s the way it was. It was make-believe and childish if you like—but it was fun and I enjoyed it. (He looks suddenly pathetic.) I wasn’t thinking of killing anybody or of inheriting money.

MYERS. So it was just a remarkable coincidence that Miss French should be killed, leaving you her heir, only a few days later.

LEONARD. I’ve told you—I didn’t kill her.

MYERS. Your story is that on the night of the fourteenth, you left Miss French’s house at four minutes to nine, that you walked home and you arrived there at twenty-five minutes past nine, and stayed there the rest of the evening.

LEONARD. Yes.

MYERS. You have heard the woman Romaine Heilger rebut that story in Court. You have heard her say that you came in not at twenty-five minutes past nine but at ten minutes past ten.

LEONARD. It’s not true!

MYERS. That your clothes were bloodstained, that you definitely admitted to her that you had killed Miss French.

LEONARD. It’s not true, I tell you. Not one word of it is true.

MYERS. Can you suggest any reason why this young woman, who has been passing as your wife, should deliberately give evidence she has given if it were not true?