Ordeal by Innocence

by Agatha Christie

  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."

  He said to Kirsten Lindstrom: "You feel that, don't you? You still feel it, or you want to feel it? You feel that it was Jacko who killed her, not you... You feel it was under his orders and under his influence you did it. Therefore you want all the blame to be his!"

  "I?" said Kirsten Lindstrom. "I? What are you saying?"

  "I'm saying," said Calgary, "that there was only one person in this house who could in any way fit into the role of Jacko Argyle's accomplice. And that is you, Miss Lindstrom. Jacko had a record behind him, a record of being able to inspire passion in middle-aged women. He employed that power deliberately. He had the gift of making himself believed." He leaned forward. "He made love to you, didn't he?" he said gently. "He made you believe that he cared for you, that he wanted to marry you, that after this was over and he'd got more control of his mother's money, you would be married and go away somewhere. That is right, isn't it?"

  Kirsten stared at him. She did not speak. It was as though she were paralysed.

  "It was done cruelly and heartlessly and deliberately," said Arthur Calgary. "He came here that night desperate for some money, with the shadow over him of arrest and a jail sentence. Mrs. Argyle refused to give him money. When he was refused by her he applied to you."

  "Do you think," said Kirsten Lindstrom, "do you think that I would have taken Mrs. Argyle's money to give him instead of giving him my own?"

  "No," said Calgary, "you would have given him your own if you'd had any. But I don't think you had... You had a good income from the annuity which Mrs. Argyle had bought for you, but I think he'd already milked you dry of that. So he was desperate that evening and when Mrs. Argyle had gone up to her husband in the library, you went outside the house where he was waiting and he told you what you had to do. First you must give him the money and then, before the theft could be discovered, Mrs. Argyle had to be killed. Because she would not have covered up the theft. He said it would be easy. You had just to pull out the drawers to make it look as though a burglar had been there and to hit her on the back of the head. It would be painless, he said. She would not feel anything. He himself would establish an alibi, so that you must be careful to do this thing within the right time limits, between seven and seven-thirty."

  "It's not true," said Kirsten. She had begun to tremble. "You are mad to say such things."

  Yet there was no indignation in her voice. Strangely enough, it was mechanical and weary.

  "Even if what you say is true," she said, "do you think I would let him be accused of the murder?"

  "Oh yes," said Calgary. "After all, he had told you he would have an alibi. You expected him, perhaps, to be arrested and then to prove his innocence. That was all part of the plan."

  "But when he couldn't prove his innocence," said Kirsten. "Would I not have saved him then?"

  "Perhaps," said Calgary, "perhaps, but for one fact. The fact that on the morning after the murder Jacko's wife turned up here. You didn't know he was married. The girl had to repeat the statement two or three times before you would believe her. At that moment your world crashed round you. You saw Jacko for what he was - heartless, scheming, without a particle of affection for you. You realised what he had made you do."

  Suddenly Kirsten Lindstrom was speaking. The words came rushing out incoherently.

  "I loved him... I loved him with all my heart. I was a fool, a credulous middle-aged doting fool. He made me think it - he made me believe it. He said he had never cared for girls. He said -1 cannot tell you all the things he said. I loved him. I tell you I loved him. And then that silly, simpering child came here, that common little thing. I saw it was all wickedness, wickedness... His wickedness, not mine."

  "The night I came here," said Calgary, you were afraid, weren't you? You were afraid of what was going to happen. You were afraid for the others. Hester, whom you loved, Leo, whom you were fond of. You saw, perhaps, a little of what this might do to them. But principally you were afraid for yourself. And you see where fear has led you. You have two more deaths on your hands now."

  "You are saying I killed Tina and Philip?"

  "Of course you killed them," said Calgary. Tina has recovered consciousness."

  Kirsten's shoulders dropped in the sagging of despair. "So she has told that I stabbed her. I did not think she even knew. I was mad, of course. I was mad by then, mad with terror. It was coming so close, so close."

  "Shall I tell you what Tina said when she regained consciousness?" said Calgary. "She said 'The cup was empty.' I knew what that meant. You pretended to be taking up a cup of coffee to Philip Durrant, but actually you had already
stabbed him and were coming out of that room when you heard Tina coming. So you turned round and pretended you were taking the tray in. Later, although she was shocked almost into unconsciousness by his death, she noticed automatically that the cup that had dropped on the floor was an empty cup and there was no stain of coffee left by it."

  Hester cried out: "But Kirsten couldn't have stabbed her! Tina walked downstairs and out to Micky. She was quite all right."

  "My dear child," said Calgary, people who have been stabbed have walked the length of the street without even knowing what has happened to them! In the state of shock Tina was in she would hardly have felt anything. A pinprick, a slight pain perhaps." He looked again at Kirsten.

  "And later," he said, "you slipped that knife into Micky's pocket. That was the meanest thing of all."

  Kirsten's hands flew out pleadingly.

  "I couldn't help it -1 could not help it... It was coming so near... They were all beginning to find out. Philip was finding out and Tina -1 think Tina must have overheard Jacko talking to me outside the kitchen that evening. They were all beginning to know... I wanted to be safe. I wanted - one can never be safe -" Her hands dropped. "I didn't want to kill Tina. As for Philip -"

  Mary Durrant rose. She came across the room slowly but with increasing purpose.

  "You killed Philip?" she said. "You killed Philip." Suddenly, like a tigress she sprang at the other woman.

  It was Gwenda, quick-witted, who sprang to her feet and caught hold of her. Calgary joined her and together they held her back.

  "You - you?" cried Mary Durrant. Kirsten Lindstrom looked at her.

  "What business was it of his?" she asked. "Why did he have to snoop round and ask questions? He was never threatened. It was never a matter of life or death for him. It was just - an amusement." She turned and walked slowly towards the door. Without looking at them she went out.

  "Stop her," cried Hester. "Oh, we must stop her."

  Leo Argyle said: "Let her go, Hester."

  "But-she'll kill herself."

  "I rather doubt it," said Calgary.

  "She has been our faithful friend for so long," said Leo. "Faithful, devoted - and now this!"

  "Do you think she'll - give herself up?" said Gwenda.

  "It's far more likely," said Calgary, "that she'll go to the nearest station and take a train for London. But she won't, of course, be able to get away with it. She'll be traced and found."

  "Our dear Kirsten," said Leo again. His voice shook. "So faithful, so good to us all."

  Gwenda caught him by the arm and shook it.

  "How can you, Leo, how can you? Think what she did to us all - what she has made us suffer!"

  "I know," said Leo, "but she suffered herself, you know, as well. I think it is her suffering we have felt in this house."

  "We might have gone on suffering for ever," said Gwenda, "as far as she was concerned! If it hadn't been for Dr. Calgary here." She turned towards him gratefully.

  "So at last," said Calgary, "I have done something to help, though rather late in the day."

  "Too late," said Mary, bitterly. "Too late! Oh, why didn't we know - why didn't we guess?" She turned accusingly on Hester. "I thought it was you. I always thought it was you."

  "He didn't," said Hester. She looked at Calgary.

  Mary Durrant said quietly: "I wish I were dead."

  "My dear child," said Leo, "how I wish I could help you."

  "Nobody can help me," said Mary. "It's all Philip's own fault, wanting to stay on here, wanting to mess about with this business. Getting himself killed." She looked round at them. "None of you understand." She went out of the room.

  Calgary and Hester followed her. As they went through the door, Calgary, looking back, saw Leo's arm pass round Gwenda's shoulders.

  "She warned me, you know," said Hester. Her eyes were wide and scared. "She told me right at the beginning not to trust her, to be as afraid of her as I was of everyone else..."

  "Forget it, my dear," said Calgary. "That is the thing you have to do now. Forget. All of you are free now. The innocent are no longer in the shadow of guilt."

  "And Tina? Will she get well? She is not going to die?"

  "I don't think she will die," said Calgary. "She's in love with Micky, isn't she?"

  "I suppose she might be," said Hester, in a surprised voice. "I never thought about it. They've always been brother and sister, of course. But they're not really brother and sister."

  "By the way, Hester, would you have any idea what Tina meant when she said 'The dove on the mast.'"

  "Dove on the mast?" Hester frowned. "Wait a minute. It sounds terribly familiar. The dove on the mast, as we sailed past, Did mourn and mourn and mourn. Is that it?"

  "It might be," said Calgary.

  "It's a song," said Hester. "A sort of lullaby song. Kirsten used to sing it to us. I can only remember bits of it. 'My love he stood at my right hand,' and something, something, something. 'Oh, maid most dear, I am not here, I have no place no part, No dwelling more by sea nor shore, But only in thy heart.'"

  "I see," said Calgary. "Yes, yes, I see..."

  "Perhaps they'll get married," said Hester, "when Tina gets well, and then she can go out to Kuwait with him. Tina always wanted to be somewhere where it's warm. It's very warm in the Persian Gulf, isn't it?"

  "Almost too warm, I should say," said Calgary.

  "Nothing's too warm for Tina," Hester assured him.

  "And you will be happy now, my dear," said Calgary, taking Hester's hands in his. He made an effort to smile.

  "You'll marry your young doctor and you'll settle down and you'll have no more of these wild imaginings and terrific despairs."

  "Marry Don?" said Hester, in a surprised tone of voice. "Of course I'm not going to marry Don."

  "But you love him."

  "No, I don't think I do, really... I just thought I did. But he didn't believe in me. He didn't know I was innocent. He ought to have known." She looked at Calgary. "You knew! I think I'd like to marry you."

  "But, Hester, I'm years older than you are. You can't really -" "That is - if you want me," said Hester with sudden doubt. "Oh, I want you!" said Arthur Calgary.