Crooked House (film)

Plot[edit]

Sophia Leonides, granddaughter of the late Greek business tycoon Aristide Leonides, visits private investigator Charles Hayward. She asks Charles to investigate Aristide's death, suspecting that he has been murdered. Charles agrees reluctantly, feeling conflicted due to an earlier a love affair with Sophia in Cairo. Charles seeks the consent of Chief Inspector Taverner of Scotland Yard to look into the case.


Aristide had been the bullying and manipulative patriarch of the large and idiosyncratic Leonides family who all lived together on the family estate. He had died from a heart attack after his regular insulin injection – given by his wife Brenda – had been laced with eserine from his eye drops. Brenda is Aristide's second wife, a former casino dancer and much younger than her husband.


Lady Edith de Haviland is the sister of Aristide's late first wife, fond of stalking the grounds, blasting moles in the lawn with a shotgun. She despised her brother-in-law.


Aristide's elder son, Philip, hated his father for passing him over as successor to the family business, and for refusing to fund production of a screenplay he wrote for his wife, Magda, a fading theatre actress. Their children (Aristide's grandchildren) are Sophia, Eustace (a teenager affected by polio), and Josephine, a clever 12-year-old who knows everyone's business.


The younger son, Roger, is managing director of a major family business, but is a failure who has required multiple bail-outs. His domineering wife Clemency is a plant biologist with extensive knowledge of poisons.


Laurence Brown, a private tutor, has been having an affair with Brenda. He is spied upon by his pupil Josephine from her treehouse hideout.


Charles interviews the family, and is met with hostility. All of the family members have motives for the killing: all resented Aristide's bullying and manipulative ways, and are now expecting a sizeable bequest. Most suspect Brenda, as the outsider who had administered the fatal injection. Their suspicions are strengthened when it transpires that Aristide's will was unsigned, resulting in Brenda inheriting his entire estate under the intestacy rules.


Josephine hints that she has found clues, but will not disclose them. The ladder to Josephine's treehouse is sabotaged and she falls and is knocked unconcious. Suspicion switches to Sophia after another, properly signed, will is discovered, leaving the whole estate to her.


Taverner arrives to take over the case; he feels Charles's history with Sophia compromises him. The discovery of love letters between Brenda and Laurence gives Taverner enough evidence to arrest them for Aristide's murder and the attempt on Josephine's life.


Charles, however, remains unconvinced. Josephine is angry that her private notebook has disappeared. Her nanny prepares hot chocolate for her and dies after Josephine refuses it and she drinks it herself. Charles implores Josephine to name the killer. Again, Josephine refuses, even when Charles warns her that she is in danger. Edith is diagnosed with a fatal illness, and is told she has only months to live.


The coroner finds that the nanny had died of cyanide poisoning. Charles suspects Edith, who used cyanide to kill moles. He searches Edith's garden shed, and finds a bottle of cyanide; also Josephine's missing notebook, buried in quicklime. Edith takes Josephine into the countryside for a drive. She leaves a note confessing to the murders. Charles and Sophia chase them in another car.


As they drive, Sophia reads from Josephine's notebook, and discovers the truth: that Josephine had murdered Aristide for having stopped her ballet lessons. She had also staged her fall from the treehouse, poisoned the nanny (who had begun to suspect her), and forged Brenda's love letters. Edith had realised that Josephine was the killer and falsely confessed to exonerate Brenda and Laurence, and to spare Josephine a life in psychiatric institutions. As Charles and Sophia catch up, Edith drives off the edge of a quarry, and both she and Josephine are killed.