Ordeal by Innocence

by Agatha Christie

  The casual exciting atmosphere! Fun in the streets! Ganging up on other boys! His mother with her bright golden head (cheap rinse, he thought, in his adult wisdom), her sudden furies when she would turn and lambast him (gin, of course!) and the wild gaiety she had when she was in a good mood. Lovely suppers offish and chips, and she'd sing songs - sentimental ballads. Sometimes they'd go to the pictures. There were always the Uncles, of course - that's what he always had to call them. His own dad had walked out before he could remember him... But his mother wouldn't stand for the Uncle of the day laying a hand on him. "You leave our Micky alone," she'd say.

  And then there had come the excitement of the war. Expecting Hitler's bombers - abortive sirens. Moaning Minnies. Going down into the Tubes and spending the nights there. The fun of it! The whole street was there with their sandwiches and their bottles of pop. And trains rushing through practically all night. That had been life, that had! In the thick of things!

  And then he'd come down here - to the country. A dead and alive place where nothing ever happened!

  "You'll come back, love, when it's all over," his mother had said, but lightly as though it wasn't really true. She hadn't seemed to care about his going. And why didn't she come too? Lots of the kids in the street had been evacuated with their Mums. But his mother hadn't wanted to go. She was going to the North (with the current Uncle, Uncle Harry!) to work in munitions.

  He must have known then, in spite of her affectionate farewell. She didn't really care... Gin, he thought, that was all she cared for, gin and the Uncles...

  And he'd been here, captured, a prisoner, eating tasteless, unfamiliar meals; going to bed, incredibly, at six o'clock, after a silly supper of milk and biscuits (milk and biscuits!), lying awake, crying, his head pushed down under the blankets, crying for Mom and home.

  It was that woman! She'd got him and she wouldn't let him go. A lot of sloppy talk. Always making him play silly games. Wanting something from him. Something that he was determined not to give. Never mind. He'd wait. He'd be patient! And one day - one glorious day, he'd go home. Home to the streets, and the boys, and the glorious red buses and the tube, and fish and chips, and the traffic and the area cats - his mind went longingly over the catalogue of delights. He must wait. The war couldn't go on forever. Here he was stuck in this silly place with bombs falling all over London and half London on fire - coo! What a blaze it must make, and people being killed and houses crashing down.

  He saw it in his mind all in glorious Technicolor.

  Never mind. When the war was over he'd go back to Mom. She'd be surprised to see how he'd grown.

  In the darkness Micky Argyle expelled his breath in a long hiss.

  The war was over. They'd licked Hitler and Mussolini. Some of the children were going back. Soon, now...

  And then she had come back from London and had said that he was going to stay at Sunny Point and be her own little boy...

  He had said: "Where's my Mom? Did a bomb get her?"

  If she had been killed by a bomb - well, that would be not too bad. It happened to boys' mothers.

  But Mrs. Argyle said "No," she hadn't been killed. But she had some rather difficult work to do and couldn't look after a child very well - that sort of thing, anyway; soft soap, meaning nothing... His Mom didn't love him, didn't want him back - he'd got to stay here, for ever...

  He'd sneaked round after that, trying to overhear conversations, and at last he did hear something, just a fragment between Mrs. Argyle and her husband. "Only too pleased to get rid of him - absolutely indifferent and something about a hundred pounds. So then he knew - his mother had sold him for a hundred pounds..."

  The humiliation - the pain - he'd never got over it... And she had bought him! He saw her, vaguely, as embodied power, someone against whom he, in his puny strength, was helpless. But he'd grow up, he'd be strong one day, a man. And then he'd kill her...

  He felt better once he'd made that resolution.

  Later, when he went away to school, things were not so bad. But he hated the holidays - because of her. Arranging everything, planning, giving him all sorts of presents. Looking puzzled, because he was so undemonstrative. He hated being kissed by her... And later still, he'd taken a pleasure in thwarting her silly plans for him. Going into a bank! An oil company. Not he. He'd go and find work for himself.

  It was when he was at the university that he'd tried to trace his mother. She'd been dead for some years, he discovered - in a car crash with a man who'd been driving roaring drunk...

  So why not forget it all? Why not just have a good time and get on with life? He didn't know why not.

  And now - what was going to happen now? She was dead, wasn't she? Thinking she'd bought him for a miserable hundred pounds. Thinking she could buy anything - houses and cars - and children, since she hadn't any of her own. Thinking she was God Almighty!

  Well, she wasn't. Just a crack on the head with a poker and she was a corpse like any other corpse! (like the golden haired corpse in a car smash on the Great North Road...)

  She was dead, wasn't she? Why worry?

  What was the matter with him? Was it - that he couldn't hate her any more because she was dead?

  So that was Death...

  He felt lost without his hatred - lost and afraid.

  Chapter 12

  In her spotlessly kept bedroom, Kirsten Lindstrom plaited her grizzled blonde hair into two unbecoming plaits and prepared for bed.

  She was worried and afraid.

  The police didn't like foreigners. She had been in England so long that she herself did not feel foreign. But the police could not know that.

  That Dr. Calgary - why did he have to come and do this to her?

  Justice had been done. She thought of Jacko and repeated to herself that justice had been done.

  She thought of him as she had known him from a small boy.

  Always, yes, always, a liar and a cheat! But so charming, so engaging. Always one forgave him. Always one tried to shield him from punishment.

  He lied so well. That was the horrible truth. He lied so well that one believed him - that one couldn't help believing him. Wicked, cruel Jacko.

  Dr. Calgary might think he knew what he was talking about! But Dr. Calgary was wrong. Places and times and alibis indeed! Jacko could arrange things of that kind easily enough. Nobody really knew Jacko as she had known him.

  Would anybody believe her if she told them just exactly what Jacko was like? And now - tomorrow, what was going to happen? The police would come. And everyone so unhappy, so suspicious. Looking at each other... not sure what to believe.

  And she loved them all so much... so much. She knew more about them all than anyone else could know. Far more than Mrs. Argyle had ever known. For Mrs. Argyle had been blinded by her intense maternal possessiveness. They were her children - she saw them always as belonging to her. But Kirsten had seen them as individuals - as themselves - with all their faults and virtues. If she had had children of her own, she might have felt possessive about them, she supposed. But she was not pre-eminently a maternal woman. Her principal love would have been for the husband she had never had.

  Women like Mrs. Argyle were difficult for her to understand. Crazy about a lot of children who were not her own, and treating her husband as though he were not there! A good man, too, a fine man, none better. Neglected, pushed aside. And Mrs. Argyle too self-absorbed to notice what was happening under her nose. That secretary, a good-looking girl and every inch a woman. Well, it was not too late for Leo - or was it too late now? Now, with murder raising its head from the grave in which it had been laid, would those two ever dare to come together?

  Kirsten sighed unhappily. What was going to happen to them all? To Micky, who had borne that deep, almost pathological grudge against his adopted mother. To Hester, so unsure of herself, so wild. Hester, who had been on the point of finding peace and security with that nice stolid young doctor. To Leo and Gwenda, who had had motive and, yes, it had to
be faced, opportunity, as they both must realise. To Tina, that sleek little catlike creature. To selfish, cold-hearted Mary, who until she had married had never shown affection for anybody.

  Once, Kirsten thought, she herself had been full of affection for her employer, full of admiration. She couldn't remember exactly when she had begun to dislike her, when she had begun to judge her and find her wanting. So sure of herself, benevolent, tyrannical - a kind of living walking embodiment of Mother Knows Best.

  And not really even a mother! If she had ever borne a child, it might have kept her humble.

  But why go on thinking of Rachel Argyle? Rachel Argyle was dead. She had to think of herself - and the others. And of what might happen tomorrow.

  Mary Durrant woke with a start.

  She had been dreaming - dreaming that she was a child, back again in New York.

  How odd. She hadn't thought of those days for years.

  It was really surprising that she could remember anything at all. How old had she been? Five? Six?

  She had dreamed that she was being taken home to the tenement from the hotel. The Argyles were sailing for England and not taking her with them after all. Anger and rage filled her heart for a moment or two until the realisation came that it had only been a dream.

  How wonderful it had been. Taken into the car, going up in the elevator of the hotel to the eighteenth floor. The big suite, that wonderful bathroom; the revelation of what things there were in the world if you were rich! If she could stay here, if she could keep all this for ever... Actually, there had been no difficulty at all. All that was needed was a show of affection; never easy for her, for she was not affectionate by disposition, but she had managed it. And there she was, established for life!

  A rich father and mother, clothes, cars, ships, aeroplanes, servants to wait on her, expensive dolls and toys. A fairy tale comes true...

  A pity that all those other children had had to be there, too. That was the war, of course. Or would it have happened anyway? That insatiable mother love! Really something unnatural in it. So animal.

  She had always felt a faint contempt for her adopted mother. Stupid in any case to choose the children she had chosen. The under-privileged! Criminal tendencies like Jacko's. Unbalanced like Hester. A savage like Micky. And Tina, a half-caste! No wonder they had all turned out badly. Though she couldn't really blame them for rebelling. She, herself, had rebelled. She remembered her meeting with Philip, a dashing young pilot. Her mother's disapproval. "These hurried marriages. Wait until the war is over." But she hadn't wanted to wait. She had as strong a will as her mother's, and her father had backed her up. They had married, and the war had ended soon afterwards.

  She had wanted to have Philip all to herself - to get away out of her mother's shadow. It was Fate that had defeated her, not her mother. First the failure of Philip's financial schemes and then that horrifying blow - polio of the paralytic type. As soon as Philip was able to leave hospital they had come to Sunny Point. It had seemed inevitable that they would have to make their home there. Philip himself had seemed to think it inevitable. He had gone through all his money and her allowance from the Trust was not so very big. She had asked for a larger one, but the answer had been that perhaps for a while it would be wise to live at Sunny Point. But she wanted Philip to herself, all to herself, she didn't want him to be the last of Rachel Argyle's "children." She had not wanted a child of her own - she only wanted Philip.

  But Philip himself had seemed quite agreeable to the idea of coming to Sunny Point.

  "Easier for you," he said. "And people always coming and going there makes a distraction. Besides, I always find your father very good company."

  Why didn't he want only to be with her as she wanted only to be with him? Why did he crave for other company - her father's, Hester's?

  And Mary had felt a wave of futile rage sweep over her. Her mother, as usual, would get her own way. But she hadn't got her own way... she had died.

  And now it was going to be all raked up again. Why, oh, why?

  And why was Philip being so trying about it all? Questioning, trying to find out, mixing himself up in what was none of his business?

  Laying traps...

  What kind of traps?

  Ill

  Leo Argyle watched the morning light fill the room slowly with dim grey light.

  He had thought out everything very carefully.

  It was quite clear to him - exactly what they were up against, he and Gwenda.

  He lay looking at the whole thing as Superintendent Huish would look at it. Rachel coming in and telling them about Jacko - his wildness and his threats. Gwenda had tactfully gone into the next room, and he had tried to comfort Rachel, had told her she was quite right to have been firm, that helping Jacko in the past had done no good - that for better or worse he must take what was coming to him. And she had gone away easier in her mind.

  And then Gwenda had come back into the room, and gathered up the letters for the post and had asked if there was anything that she could do, her voice saying more than the actual words. And he had thanked her and said no. And she had said good night and gone out of the room. Along the passage and down the stairs and past the room where Rachel was sitting at her desk and so out of the house with no one to watch her go...

  And he himself had sat on alone in the library, and there had been nobody to check whether he left it and went down to Rachel's room.

  It was like that - opportunity for either of them.

  And motive, because already by then he loved Gwenda and she loved him.

  And there was nobody, ever, who could prove the guilt or innocence of either of them.

  IV

  A quarter of a mile away, Gwenda lay dry-eyed and sleepless.

  Her hands clenched, she was thinking how much she had hated Rachel Argyle.

  And now in the darkness, Rachel Argyle was saying: "You thought you could have my husband once I was dead. But you can't - you can't. You will never have my husband."

  Hester was dreaming. She dreamt that she was with Donald Craig and that he had left her suddenly at the edge of an abyss. She had cried out in fear and then, on the other side of it, she saw that Arthur Calgary was standing, holding out his hands to her.

  She cried out to him reproachfully.

  "Why have you done this to me?" and he answered: "But I've come to help you..."

  She woke up.

  VI

  Lying quietly in the small spare-room bed, Tina breathed gently and regularly, but sleep did not come. She thought of Mrs. Argyle, without gratitude and without resentment - simply with love. Because of Mrs. Argyle she had had food and drink and warmth and toys and comfort. She had loved Mrs. Argyle. She was sorry she was dead...

  But it wasn't quite as simple as that. It hadn't mattered when it was Jacko...

  But now...

  Chapter 13

  Superintendent Huish looked round on them all, gently and politely. His tone when he spoke was persuasive and apologetic.

  "I know it must be very painful to you all," he said, "to have to go over the whole thing again. But really, we've no choice in the matter. You saw the notice, I expect? It was in all the morning papers."

  "A free pardon," said Leo.

  "The phraseology always grates on people," said Huish. "An anachronism, like so much of legal terminology. But its meaning is quite clear."

  "It means that you made a mistake," said Leo.

  "Yes." Huish acknowledged it simply. "We made a mistake."

  He added, after a minute, "Of course, without Dr. Calgary's evidence it was really inevitable."

  Leo said coldly: "My son told you, when you arrested him, that he had been given a lift that night."

  "Oh, yes. He told us. And we did our best to check - but we couldn't find any confirmation of the story. I quite realise, Mr. Argyle, that you must feel exceedingly bitter about the whole business. I'm not making excuses and apologies. All we police officers have to do is to colle
ct the evidence. The evidence goes to the Public Prosecutor and he decides if there is a case. In this case he decided there was. If it's possible, I'd ask you to put as much bitterness as you can out of your mind and just run over the facts and times again."

  "What's the use now?" Hester spoke up sharply. "Whoever did it is miles away and you'll never find him."

  Superintendent Huish turned to look at her. "That may be - and it may not," he said mildly.

  "You'd be surprised at the times we do get our man - sometimes after several years. It's patience does it, patience and never letting up."

  Hester turned her head away, and Gwenda gave a quick shiver as though a cold wind had passed over her. Her lively imagination felt the menace behind the quiet words.