Agatha Christie - Ordeal by Innocence

"If you mean Gwenda Vaughan and Leo Argyle," said Huish, "that's what we've thought all along, you know, but it doesn't seem to fit."

"It's more complicated than that," said Arthur Calgary.

It was again dusk when Arthur Calgary came to Sunny Point on an evening very like the evening when he had first come there. Viper's Point, he thought to himself as he rang the bell.

Once again events seemed to repeat themselves. It was Hester who opened it. There was the same defiance in her face, the same air of desperate tragedy. Behind her in the hall he saw, as he had seen before, the watchful, suspicious figure of Kirsten Lindstrom. It was history repeating itself.

Then the pattern wavered and changed. The suspicion and the desperation went out of Hester's face. It broke up into a lovely, welcoming smile.

"You," she said. "Oh, I'm so glad you've come!"

He took her hands in his.

"I want to see your father, Hester. Is he upstairs in the library?"

"Yes. Yes, he's there with Gwenda."

Kirsten Lindstrom came forward towards them.

"Why do you come here again?" she said accusingly. "Look at the trouble you brought last time! See what has happened to us all. Hester's life ruined, Mr. Argyle's life ruined — and two deaths. Two! Philip Durrant and little Tina. And it is your doing — all your doing!"

"Tina is not dead yet," said Calgary , "and I have something here to do that I cannot leave undone."

"What have you got to do?" Kirsten still stood barring his way to the staircase. "I've got to finish what I began," said Calgary .

Very gently he put a hand on her shoulder and moved her slightly aside. He walked up the stairs and Hester followed him. He turned back over his shoulder and said to Kirsten: "Come, too, Miss Lindstrom, I would like you all to be here."

In the library, Leo Argyle was sitting in a chair by the desk. Gwenda Vaughan was kneeling in front of the fire, staring into its embers. They looked up with some surprise.

"I'm sorry to burst in upon you," said Calgary , "but as I've just been saying to these two, I've come to finish what I began." He looked round. "Is Mrs. Durrant in the house still? I should like her to be here also."

"She's lying down, I think," said Leo. "She — she's taken things terribly hard."

"I should like her to be here all the same." He looked at Kirsten. "Perhaps you would go and fetch her."

"She may not want to come," said Kirsten sullenly.

"Tell her," said Calgary , "that there are things she may want to hear about her husband's death."

"Oh, go on, Kirsty," said Hester. "Don't be so suspicious and so protective of us all. I don't know what Dr. Calgary's going to say, but we ought all to be here."

"As you please," said Kirsten. She went out of the room.

"Sit down," said Leo. He indicated a chair on the other side of the fireplace, and Calgary sat there.

"You must forgive me," said Leo, "if I say at this moment that I wish you'd never come here in the first place, Dr. Calgary."

"That's unfair," said Hester fiercely. "That's a terribly unfair thing to say."

"I know what you must feel," said Calgary , "I think in your place I should feel much the same. Perhaps I even shared your view for a short period, but on reflection I still cannot see that there was anything else that I could have done."

Kirsten re-entered the room. "Mary is coming," she said.

They sat in silence waiting and presently Mary Durrant entered the room. Calgary looked at her with interest, since it was the first time he had seen her. She looked calm and composed, neatly dressed, every hair in place. But her face was mask-like in its lack of expression and there was an air about her as of a woman who walks in her sleep.

Leo made an introduction. She bowed her head slightly.

"It is good of you to come, Mrs. Durrant," said Calgary . "I thought you ought to hear what I have to say."

"As you please," said Mary. "But nothing that you can say or anyone can say will bring Philip back again."

She went a little way away from them and sat down in a chair by the window. Calgary looked round him.

"Let me first say this: When I came here the first time, when I told you that I was able to clear Jacko's name, your reception of my news puzzled me. I understand it now. But the thing that made the greatest impression upon me was what this child here –" he looked at Hester — "said to me as I left. She said that it was not justice that mattered, it was what happened to the innocent. There is a phrase in the latest translation of the Book of Job that describes it. The calamity of the innocent. As a result of my news that is what you have all been suffering. The innocent should not suffer, and must not suffer, and it is to end the suffering of the innocent that I am here now to say what I have to say."

He paused for a moment or two but no one spoke. In his quiet pedantic voice, Arthur Calgary went on: "When I came here first, it was not, as I thought, to bring you what might be described as tidings of great joy. You had all accepted Jacko's guilt. You were all, if I may say so, satisfied with it. It was the best solution that there could be in the murder of Mrs. Argyle."

"Isn't that speaking a little harshly?" asked Leo.

"No," said Calgary , "it is the truth. Jacko was satisfactory to you all as the criminal since there could be no real question of an outsider having committed the crime, and because in the case of Jacko you could find the necessary excuses. He was unfortunate, a mental invalid, not responsible for his actions, a problem or delinquent boy! All the phrases that we can use nowadays so happily to excuse guilt. You said, Mr. Argyle, that you did not blame him. You said his mother, the victim, would not have blamed him. Only one person blamed him." He looked at Kirsten Lindstrom. "You blamed him. You said fairly and squarely that he was wicked. That is the term you used. 'Jacko was wicked,' you said."

"Perhaps," said Kirsten Lindstrom. "Perhaps — yes, perhaps I said that. It was true."

"Yes, it was true. He was wicked. If he had not been wicked none of this would have happened. Yet you know quite well," said Calgary , "that my evidence cleared him of the actual crime."

Kirsten said: One cannot always believe evidence. You had concussion. I know very well what concussion does to people. They remember things not clearly but in a kind of blur."

"So that is still your solution?" said Calgary . "You think that Jacko actually committed that crime and that in some way he managed to fake an alibi? Is that right?"

"I do not know the details. Yes, something of that sort. I still say he did it. All the suffering that has gone on here and the deaths — yes, these terrible deaths — they are all his doing. All Jacko's doing!"

Hester cried: "But Kirsten, you were always devoted to Jacko." "Perhaps," said Kirsten, "yes, perhaps. But I still say he was wicked."

"There I think you are right," said Calgary , "but in another way you are wrong. Concussion or no concussion, my memory is perfectly clear. On the night of Mrs. Argyle's death I gave Jacko a lift at the stated time. There is no possibility — and I repeat those words strongly — there is no possibility that Jacko Argyle killed his adopted mother that night. His alibi holds."

Leo moved with a trace of restlessness. Calgary went on: "You think that I'm repeating the same thing over and over again? Not quite. There are other points to be considered. One of them is the statement that I got from Superintendent Huish that Jacko was very glib and assured when giving his alibi. He had it all pat and ready, the times, the place, almost as though he knew he might need it. That ties up with the conversation I had about him with Dr. MacMaster, who has had a very wide experience of borderline delinquent cases. He said he was not so surprised at Jacko having the seeds of murder in his heart, but he was surprised that he had actually carried one out. He said the type of murder he would have expected was one where Jacko egged on someone else to commit the crime. So I came to the point where I asked myself this: Did Jacko know that a crime was to be committed that night? Did he know that he would need an alibi and did he deliberately go about giving himself one? If so, someone else killed Mrs. Argyle, but — Jacko knew she was going to be killed and one may fairly say that he was the instigator of the crime."