Crooked House / Скрюченный домишко. Книга для чтения на английском языке

The Old Man was nodding his head vigorously.

�Yes, yes. I’m not asking you to worm your way in[44 - worm one's way in – втереться в доверие к к.-л.] without telling the girl what you’re up to. See what she has to say about it.’

And so it came about that the following day I drove down with Chief Inspector Taverner and Detective Sergeant Lamb to Swinly Dean.

A little way beyond the golf course, we turned in at a gateway where I imagined that before the war there had been an imposing pair of gates.

Patriotism or ruthless requisitioning had swept these away. We drove up a long curving drive flanked with rhododendrons and came out on a gravelled sweep in front of the house.

It was incredible! I wondered why it had been called Three Gables. Eleven Gables would have been more apposite! The curious thing was that it had a strange air of being distorted—and I thought I knew why. It was the type, really, of a cottage, it was a cottage swollen out[45 - to swell out – раздуться] of all proportion.

It was like looking at a country cottage through a gigantic magnifying-glass. The slant-wise beams, the half-timbering, the gables—it was a little that had grown like a mushroom in the night!

Yet I got the idea. It was a Greek restaurateur’s idea of something English. It was meant to be an Englishman’s home—built the size of a castle! I wondered what the first Mrs Leonides had thought of it. She had not, I fancied, been consulted or shown the plans. It was, most probably, her exotic husband’s little surprise.

I wondered if she had shuddered or smiled.

Apparently she had lived there quite happily.

�Bit overwhelming, isn’t it?’ said Inspector Taverner. �Of course, the old gentleman built on to it a good deal—making it into three separate houses, so to speak, with kitchensand everything. It’s all tip-top inside, fitted up[46 - to fit up – оборудовать] like a luxury hotel.’

Sophia came out of the front door.

She was hatless and wore a green shirt and a tweed skirt.

She stopped dead when she saw me.

�You?’ she exclaimed.

I said:

�Sophia, I’ve got to talk to you. Where can we go?’

For a moment I thought she was going to demur, then she turned and said: �This way.’

We walked down across the lawn. There was a fine view across Swinly Dean’s No 1 course—away to a clump of pine trees on a hill, and beyond it, to the dimness of hazy countryside.