Crooked House

Chapters 1-5

Reading Check

1. Grandfather (Chapter 1)

2. Father (Chapter 3)

3. Edith de Haviland (Chapter 5)

Short Answer

1. Sophia suspects that her grandfather was murdered, and because of Charles’s career and family connections to the government, she is afraid that the scandal will negatively impact Charles if they marry. (Chapter 2)

2. Arthur explains that in building his businesses, Aristide found many ways to circumvent the law but stopped short of actually breaking the law. He maintains that Aristide was “crooked…but not a crook” (13). (Chapter 3)

3. Three Gables, where the Leonides family lives, is “crooked” in the literal sense because its appearance is strangely distorted. In the figurative sense, it is the home of a man whose business dealings were “crooked” and houses a family full of shady characters. (Chapter 4)

Chapters 6-11

Reading Check

1. Actress (Chapter 6)

2. Polio (Chapter 8)

3. Aristide’s will (Chapter 10)

Short Answer

1. Roger is emotional and seems flustered, while Clemency remains cool and collected. (Chapter 7)

2. Sophia claims that Brenda is a skilled manipulator and that Charles is being gullible. (Chapter 9)

3. Aristides had agreed to bail Roger out of the trouble he was in at Associated Catering about half an hour before he died. (Chapter 11)

Chapters 12-15

Reading Check

1. Vanity (Chapter 12)

2. Josephine (Chapter 13)

3. Edith (Chapter 14)

Short Answer

1. He says that the people you love are the ones who can make life seem most intolerable. (Chapter 12)

2. Clemency explains that now that Associated Catering is going to fail, she and Roger are finally free and can move out of England to somewhere where they can live a quiet, humble life. (Chapter 14)

3. Sophia’s opinion is that the family members are too interdependent and have not had room to grow strong and independent. (Chapter 15)

Chapters 16-20

Reading Check

1. Josephine (Chapter 16)

2. Sophia (Chapter 17)

3. Muddy footprints (Chapter 18)

Short Answer

1. Charles wishes that Laurence would turn out to be the killer. He realizes that he is thinking this way because it would be personally convenient. He would like for the killer to be someone outside of Sophia’s family, but he doesn’t want the killer to be Brenda, because he feels sympathy for her. (Chapter 16)

2. He notes that both crimes use indirect methods and thinks this is because Laurence shies away from direct violence. (Chapter 19)

3. Philip is furious about being cut out of the will and insinuates that Sophia somehow manipulated her grandfather into leaving his money to her. (Chapter 20)

Chapters 21-26

Reading Check

1. Edith (Chapter 22)

2. Her notebook (Chapter 23)

3. Edith (Chapter 25)

Short Answer

1. Sophia reveals that she knew all along about the change in her grandfather’s will, and that she feigned ignorance because she did not want to be a suspect in his murder. (Chapter 21)

2. Edith takes digitalin for her heart, and the killer took this medication and mixed an amount that would cause an overdose into some cocoa. (Chapter 24)

3. Josephine is the killer, and she killed her grandfather because he would not pay for her ballet lessons. (Chapter 26)