Ordeal by Innocence Read online

  The telephone rang and Mary went to it.

  "Hallo... yes... speaking... Oh, it's you..."

  She said aside to Philip: "It's Micky."

  "Yes... yes, we have heard. Father telephoned... Well, of course... Yes... Yes... Philip says if the lawyers are satisfied it must be all right Really, Micky, I don't see why you're so upset I'm not aware of being particularly dense... Really, Micky, I do think you - Hallo?... Hallo?..." She frowned angrily.

  "He's rung off." She replaced the receiver. "Really, Philip, I can't understand Micky."

  "What did he say exactly?"

  "Well, he seems in such a state. He said that I was dense, that I didn't realise the - the repercussions. Hell to pay! That's the way he put it. But why? I don't understand."

  "Got the wind up, has he?" said Philip thoughtfully. "But why?" "Well, he's right, you know. There will be repercussions." Mary looked a little bewildered.

  "You mean that there will be a revival of interest in the case? Of course I'm glad Jacko is cleared, but it will be rather unpleasant if people begin talking about it again."

  "It's not just what the neighbours say. There's more to it than that."

  She looked at him inquiringly.

  "The police are going to be interested, too!"

  "The police?" Mary spoke sharply. "What's it got to do with them?"

  "My dear girl," said Philip. "Think."

  Mary came back slowly to sit by him.

  "It's an unsolved crime again now, you see," said Philip.

  "But surely they won't bother - after all this time?"

  "A very nice bit of wishful thinking," said Philip, "but fundamentally unsound, I fear."

  "Surely," said Mary, "after they've been so stupid - making such a bad mistake over Jacko - they won't want to rake it all up again?"

  "They mayn't want to - but they'll probably have to! Duty is duty."

  "Oh, Philip, I'm sure you're wrong. There will just be a bit of talk and then it will all die down."

  "And then our lives will go on happily ever afterwards," said Philip in his mocking voice.

  "Why not?"

  He shook his head. "It's not as simple as that... Your father's right. We must all get together and have a consultation. Get Marshall down as he said."

  "You mean - go over to Sunny Point?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, we can't do that."

  "Why not?"

  "It's not practicable. You're an invalid and..."

  "I'm not an invalid." Philip spoke with irritation. "I'm quite strong and well. I just happen to have lost the use of my legs. I could go to Timbuctoo with the proper transport laid on."

  "I'm sure it would be very bad for you to go to Sunny Point. Having all this unpleasant business raked up -"

  "It's not my mind that's affected."

  "And I don't see how we can leave the house. There have been so many burglaries lately."

  "Get someone to sleep in."

  "It's all very well to say that - as though it was the easiest thing in the world."

  "Old Mrs. Whatshername can come in every day. Do stop making housewifely objections, Polly. It's you, really, who doesn't want to go."

  "No, I don't."

  "We won't be there long," said Philip reassuringly. "But I think we've got to go. This is a time when the family's got to present a united front to the world. We've got to find out exactly how we stand."

  Ill

  At the Hotel in Drymouth, Calgary dined early and went up to his room. He felt

  profoundly affected by what he had passed through at Sunny Point. He had

  expected his mission painful and it had taken him all his resolution to go through with it. But the whole thing had been painful and upsetting in an entirely different way from the one he had expected. He flung himself down on his bed and lit a cigarette as he went over and over it in his mind.

  The clearest picture that came to him was of Hester's face at that parting moment. Her scornful rejection of his plea for justice! What was it that she had said? "It's not the guilty who matter, it's the innocent." And then: "Don't you see what you we done to us all?" But what had he done? He didn't understand.

  And the others. The woman they called Kirsty (why Kirsty? That was a Scottish name. She wasn't Scottish - Danish perhaps, or Norwegian ?) Why had she spoken so sternly, so accusingly?

  There had been something odd, too, about Leo Argyle - a withdrawal, a watchfulness. No suggestion of the "Thank God my son was innocent!" which surely would have been the natural reaction!

  And that girl - the girl who was Leo's secretary. She had been helpful to him, kindly. But she, too, had reacted in an odd way. He remembered the way she had knelt there by Argyle's chair. As though - as though - she were sympathising with him, consoling him. Consoling him for what?

  That his son was not guilty of murder? And surely - there was more there than a secretary's feelings - even a secretary of some years' standing.

  What was it all about? Why did they...

  The telephone on the table by the bed rang. He picked up the receiver.

  "Hallo?"

  "Dr. Calgary? There is someone asking for you."

  "For me?"

  He was surprised. As far as he was aware, nobody knew that he was spending the night in Drymouth.

  "Who is it?"

  There was a pause. Then the clerk said: "It's a Mr. Argyle."

  "Oh. Tell him -" Arthur Calgary checked himself on the point of saying that he would come down. If for some reason Leo Argyle had followed him to Drymouth and managed to find out where he was staying, then presumably the matter would be embarrassing to discuss in the crowded lounge downstairs.

  He said instead: "Ask him to come up to my room, will you?"

  He rose from where he had been lying and paced up and down until the knock came on the door.

  He went across and opened it. "Come in, Mr. Argyle!"

  He stopped, taken aback. It was not Leo Argyle. It was a young man in his early twenties, a young man whose dark, handsome face was marred by its expression of bitterness. A reckless, angry, unhappy face.

  "Didn't expect me," said the young man. "Expected my - father. I'm Michael Argyle."

  "Come in." Calgary closed the door after his visitor had entered. "How did you find out I was here?" he asked as he offered the boy his cigarette case.

  Michael Argyle took one and gave a short unpleasant laugh.

  "That one's easy! Rang up the principal hotels on the chance you might be staying the night. Hit it the second."

  "And why did you want to see me?"

  Michael Argyle said slowly: "Wanted to see what sort of a chap you were..."

  His eyes ran appraisingly over Calgary, noting the slightly stooped shoulders, the greying hair, the thin sensitive face. "So you're one of the chaps who went on the 'Hayes Bentley' to the Pole. You don't look very tough."

  Arthur Calgary smiled faintly.

  "Appearances are sometimes deceptive," he said. "I was tough enough. It's not entirely muscular force that's needed. There are other important qualifications: endurance, patience, technical knowledge."

  "How old are you, forty-five?"

  "Thirty-eight."

  "You look more."

  "Yes - yes, I suppose I do." For a moment a feeling of poignant sadness came over him as he confronted the virile youth of the boy facing him.

  He asked rather abruptly: "Why did you want to see me?" The other scowled.

  "It's natural, isn't it? When I heard about the news you'd brought. The news about my dear brother."

  Calgary did not answer.

  Michael Argyle went on: "It's come a bit late for him, hasn't it?"

  "Yes," said Calgary in a low voice. "It is too late for him."

  "What did you bottle it up for? What's all this about concussion?"

  Patiently Calgary told him. Strangely enough, he felt heartened by the boy's roughness and rudeness. Here, at any rate, was someone who felt strongly on his brot
her's behalf.

  "Gives Jacko an alibi, that's the point, is it? How do you know the times were as you say they were?"

  "I am quite sure about the times." Calgary spoke with firmness.

  "You may have made a mistake. You scientific blokes are apt to be absent-minded sometimes about little things like times and places."

  Calgary showed slight amusement.

  "You have made a picture for yourself of the absent-minded professor of fiction - wearing odd socks, not quite sure what day it is or where he happens to be? My dear young man, technical work needs great precision; exact amounts, times, calculations. I assure you there is no possibility of my having made a mistake. I picked up your brother just before seven and put him down in Drymouth at five minutes after the half hour."

  "Your watch could have been wrong. Or you went by the clock in your car." "My watch and the clock in the car were exactly synchronised." "Jacko could have led you up the garden path some way. He was full of tricks." "There were no tricks. Why are you so anxious to prove me wrong?"

  With some heat, Calgary went on: "I expected it might be difficult to convince the authorities that they had convicted a man unjustly. I did not expect to find his own family so hard to convince!"

  "So you've found all of us a little difficult to convince?"

  "The reaction seemed a little - unusual."

  Micky eyed him keenly.

  "They didn't want to believe you?"

  "It - almost seemed like that..."

  "Not only seemed like it. It was. Natural enough, too, if you only think about it."

  "But why? Why should it be natural? Your mother is killed. Your brother is accused and convicted of the crime. Now it turns out that he was innocent. You should be pleased - thankful. Your own brother."

  Micky said: "He wasn't my brother. And she wasn't my mother." "What?"

  "Hasn't anyone told you? We were all adopted. The lot of us. Mary, my eldest 'sister,' in New York. The rest of us during the war. My 'mother,' as you call her, couldn't have any children of her own. So she got herself a nice little family by adoption. Mary, myself, Tina, Hester, Jacko. Comfortable, luxurious home and plenty of mother love thrown in! I'd say she forgot we weren't her own children in the end. But she was out of luck when she picked Jacko to be one of her darling little boys."

  "I had no idea," said Calgary.

  "So don't pull out the 'own mother,' 'own brother' stop on me! Jacko was a louse!"

  "But not a murderer," said Calgary.

  His voice was emphatic. Micky looked at him and nodded.

  "All right. It's your say so - and you're sticking to it. Jacko didn't kill her. Very well then - who did kill her? You haven't thought about that one, have you? Think about it now. Think about it - and then you'll begin to see what you're doing to us all..."

  He wheeled round and went abruptly out of the room.

  Chapter 4

  Calgary said apologetically, "It's very good of you to see me again, Mr. Marshall."

  "Not at all," said the lawyer.

  "As you know, I went down to Sunny Point and saw Jack Argyle's family."

  "Quite so."

  You will have heard by now, I expect, about my visit?"

  "Yes, Dr. Calgary, that is correct."

  "What you may find it difficult to understand is why I have come back here to you again. You see, things didn't turn out exactly as I thought they would."

  "No," said the lawyer, "no, perhaps not." His voice was as usual dry and unemotional, yet something in it encouraged Arthur Calgary to continue.

  "I thought, you see," went on Calgary, "that that would be the end of it. I was prepared for a certain amount of- what shall I say - natural resentment on their part. Although concussion may be termed, I suppose, an Act of God, yet from their viewpoint they could be forgiven for harbouring resentment against me. I was prepared for that, as I say. But at the same time I hoped it would be offset by the thankfulness they would feel over the fact that Jack Argyle's name was cleared. But things didn't turn out as I anticipated. Not at all."

  "I see."

  "Perhaps, Mr. Marshall, you anticipated something of what would happen? Your manner, I remember, puzzled me when I was here before. Did you foresee the attitude of mind that I was going to encounter?"

  "You haven't told me yet, Dr. Calgary, what that attitude was."

  Arthur Calgary drew his chair forward. "I thought that I was ending something, giving - shall we say - a different end to a chapter already written. But I was made to feel, I was made to see, that instead of ending something I was starting something. Something altogether new. Is that a true statement, do you think, of the position?"

  Mr. Marshall nodded his head slowly.

  "Yes," he said, "it could be put that way. I did think -1 admit it - that you were not realising all the implications. You could not be expected to do so because, naturally, you knew nothing of the background or of the facts except as they were given in the law reports."

  "No. No, I see that now. Only too clearly." His voice rose as he went on excitedly, "It wasn't really relief they felt, it wasn't thankfulness. It was apprehension. A dread of what might be coming next. Am I right?"

  Marshall said cautiously: "I should think probably that you are quite right. Mind you, I do not speak of my own knowledge."

  "And if so," went on Calgary, "then I no longer feel that I can go back to my work satisfied with having made the only amends that I can make. I'm still involved. I'm responsible for bringing a new factor into various people's lives. I can't just wash my hands of it."

  The lawyer cleared his throat. "That, perhaps, is a rather fanciful point of view, Dr. Calgary."

  "I don't think it is - not really. One must take responsibility for one's actions and not only one's actions but for the result of one's actions. Just on two years ago I gave a lift to a young hitch-hiker on the road. When I did that I set in train a certain course of events. I don't feel that I can disassociate myself from them."

  The lawyer still shook his head.

  "Very well, then," said Arthur Calgary impatiently. "Call it fanciful if you like. But my feelings, my conscience, are still involved. My only wish was to make amends for something it had been outside my power to prevent. I have not made amends. In some curious way I have made things worse for people who have already suffered. But I still don't understand clearly why?"

  "No," said Marshall slowly, "no, you would not see why. For the past eighteen months or so you've been out of touch with civilisation. You did not read the daily papers, the account of the criminal proceedings and the background account of this family that was given in the newspapers. Possibly you would not have read them anyway, but you could not have escaped, I think, hearing about them. The facts are very simple, Dr. Calgary. They are not confidential. They were made public at the time. It resolves itself very simply into this. If Jack Argyle did not (and by your account he cannot have), committed the crime, then who did? That brings us back to the circumstances in which the crime was committed. It was committed between the hours of seven and seven-thirty on a November evening in a house where the deceased woman was surrounded by the members of her own family and household. The house was securely locked and shuttered and if anyone entered from outside, then the outsider must have been admitted by Mrs. Argyle herself or have entered with their own key. In other words, it must have been someone she knew. It resembles in some ways the conditions of the Borden case in America where Mr. Borden and his wife were struck down by blows of an axe on a Sunday morning. Nobody in the house heard anything, nobody was known or seen to approach the house. You can see, Dr. Calgary, why the members of the family were, as you put it, disturbed rather than relieved by the news you brought them?"

  Calgary said slowly: "They'd rather, you mean, that Jack Argyle was guilty?"

  "Oh yes," said Marshall. "Oh yes, very decidedly so. If I may put it in a somewhat cynical way, Jack Argyle was the perfect answer to the unpleasant fact of murder in the family. He h
ad been a problem child, a delinquent boy, a man of violent temper. Excuses could be and were made for him within the family circle. They could mourn for him, have sympathy with him, declare to themselves, to each other, and to the world that it was not really his fault, that psychologists could explain it all! Yes, very, very convenient."

  "And now -" Calgary stopped.

  "And now," said Mr. Marshall, "it is different, of course. Quite different. Almost alarming perhaps."