Ordeal by Innocence Read online

  "Took advantage of the fact that the boy had been there, that he'd quarrelled with her and that he'd threatened her?"

  "Yes. All that person had to do was to step in the room, pick up the poker in a gloved hand, from where Jacko had thrown it down, walk up to the table where Mrs. Argyle was writing and biff her one on the head."

  Major Finney said one simple word: "Why?" Superintendent Huish nodded slowly.

  "Yes, sir, that's what we've got to find out. It's going to be one of the difficulties. Absence of motive."

  "There didn't seem at the time," said the Chief Constable, "to be any obvious motive knocking about, as you might say. Like most other women who have property and a considerable fortune of their own, she'd entered into such various schemes as are legally permitted to avoid death duties. A beneficiary trust was already in existence, the children were all provided for in advance of her death. They'd get nothing further when she did die. And it wasn't as though she was an unpleasant woman, nagging or bullying or mean. She'd lavished money on them all their lives. Good education, capital sums to start them in jobs, handsome allowances to them all. Affection, kindness, benevolence."

  "That's so, sir," agreed Superintendent Huish. "On the face of it there's no reason for anyone to want her out of the way. Of course -" He paused.

  "Yes, Huish?"

  "Mr. Argyle, I understand, is thinking of remarrying. He's marrying Miss Gwenda Vaughan, who's acted as his secretary over a good number of years."

  "Yes," said Major Finney thoughtfully. "I suppose there's a motive there. One that we didn't know about at the time. She's been working for him for some years, you say. Think there was anything between them at the time of the murder?"

  "I should rather doubt it, sir," said Superintendent Huish. "That sort of thing soon gets talked about in a village. I mean, I don't think there were any goings-on, as you might say. Nothing for Mrs. Argyle to find out about or cut up rough about."

  "No," said the Chief Constable, "but he might have wanted to marry Gwenda Vaughan quite badly."

  "She's an attractive young woman," said Superintendent Huish. "Not glamorous, I wouldn't say that, but good-looking and attractive in a nice kind of way."

  "Probably been devoted to him for years," said Major Finney. "These women secretaries always seem to be in love with their boss."

  "Well, we've got a motive of a kind for those two," said Huish. "Then there's the lady help, the Swedish woman. She mightn't really have been as fond of Mrs. Argyle as she appeared to be. There might have been slights or imagined slights; things she resented. She didn't benefit financially by the death because Mrs. Argyle had already bought her a very handsome annuity. She seems a nice, sensible kind of woman and not the sort you can imagine hitting anyone on the head with a poker! But you never know, do you? Look at the Lizzie Borden case."

  "No," said the Chief Constable, "you never know. There's no question of an outsider of any kind?"

  "No trace of one," said the superintendent. "The drawer where the money was, was pulled out. A sort of attempt had been made to make the room look as though a burglar had been there, but it was a very amateurish effort. Sort of thing that fitted in perfectly with young Jacko having tried to create that particular effect."

  "The odd thing to me," said the Chief Constable, "is the money."

  "Yes," said Huish. "That's very difficult to understand. One of the fivers Jack Argyle had on him was definitely one that had been given to Mrs. Argyle at the bank that morning. Mrs. Bottleberry was the name written on the back of it. He said his mother had given the money to him, but both Mr. Argyle and Gwenda Vaughan are quite definite that Mrs. Argyle came into the library at a quarter to seven and told them about Jacko's demands for money and categorically said she'd refused to give him any."

  "It's possible, of course," the Chief Constable pointed out, "with what we know now, that Argyle and the Vaughan girl might have been lying."

  "Yes, that's a possibility - or perhaps -" the superintendent broke off. "Yes, Huish?" Finney encouraged him.

  "Say someone - we'll call him or her X for the moment - overheard the quarrel and the threats that Jacko was making. Suppose someone saw an opportunity there. Got the money, ran after the boy, said that his mother after all wanted him to have it, thus paving the way to one of the prettiest little frame-ups ever. Careful to use the poker that he'd picked up to threaten her with, without smearing his fingerprints."

  "Dammit all," said the Chief Constable angrily. "None of it seems to fit with what I know of the family. Who else was in the house that evening besides Argyle and Gwenda Vaughan, Hester Argyle and this Lindstrom woman?"

  "The eldest married daughter, Mary Durrant, and her husband were staying there."

  "He's a cripple, isn't he? That lets him out. What about Mary Durrant?"

  "She's a very calm piece of goods, sir. You can't imagine her getting excited or, well, or killing anyone."

  "The servants?" demanded the Chief Constable. "All dailies, sir, and they'd gone home by six o'clock." "Let me have a look at the times." The superintendent passed the paper to him.

  "H'm... yes, I see. A quarter to seven Mrs. Argyle was in the library talking to her husband about Jacko's threats. Gwenda Vaughan was present during part of the conversation. Gwenda Vaughan went home just after seven. Hester Argyle saw her mother alive at about two or three minutes to seven. After that, Mrs. Argyle was not seen till half past seven, when her dead body was discovered by Miss Lindstrom. Between seven andhalfpastthere was plenty of opportunity. Hester could have killed her, Gwenda Vaughan could have killed her after she left the library and before she left the house. Miss Lindstrom could have killed her when she 'discovered the body'. Leo Argyle was alone in his library from ten past seven until Miss Lindstrom sounded the alarm. He could have gone to his wife's sitting-room and killed her any time during that twenty minutes. Mary Durrant, who was upstairs, could have come down during that half hour and killed her mother. And -" said Finney thoughtfully - "Mrs. Argyle herself could have let anyone in by the front door as we thought she let Jack Argyle in. Leo Argyle said, if you remember, that he thought he did hear a ring at the bell, and the sound of the front door opening and closing, but he was very vague about the time. We assumed that that was when Jacko returned and killed her."

  "He needn't have rung the bell," said Huish. "He had a key of his own. They all had."

  "There's another brother, isn't there?"

  "Yes, Michael. Works as a car salesman in Drymouth."

  "You'd better find out, I suppose," said the Chief Constable, "what he was doing that evening."

  "After two years?" said Superintendent Huish. "Not likely anyone will remember, is it?"

  "Was he asked at the time?"

  "Out testing a customer's car, I understand. No reason for suspecting him then, but he had a key and he could have come over and killed her."

  The Chief Constable sighed.

  "I don't know how you're going to set about it, Huish. I don't know whether we're ever going to get anywhere."

  "I'd like to know myself who killed her," said Huish. "From all I can make out, she was a fine type of woman. She'd done a lot for people. For unlucky children, for all sorts of charities. She's the sort of person that oughtn't to have been killed. Yes. I'd like to know. Even if we can never get enough evidence to satisfy the D.P.P. I'd still like to know."

  "Well, I wish you the best of luck, Huish," said the Chief Constable. "Fortunately we've nothing very much on just now, but don't be discouraged if you can't get anywhere. It's a very cold trail. Yes, it's a very cold trail."

  Chapter 6

  The lights went up in the cinema. Advertisements flashed on to the screen. The cinema usherettes walked round with cartons of lemonade and of ice-cream. Arthur Calgary scrutinised them. A plump girl with brown hair, a tall dark one and a small, fair-haired one. That was the one he had come to see. Jacko's wife. Jacko's widow, now the wife of a man called Joe Clegg. It was a pretty, rather vapid little
face, plastered with make-up, eyebrows plucked, hair hideous and stiff in a cheap perm. Arthur Calgary bought an ice-cream carton from her. He had her home address and he meant to call there, but he had wanted to see her first while she was unaware of him.

  Well, that was that. Not the sort of daughter-in-law, he thought, that Mrs. Argyle, from all accounts, would have cared about very much. That, no doubt, was why Jacko had kept her dark.

  He sighed, concealed the ice-cream carton carefully under his chair, and leaned back as the lights went out and a new picture began to flash on the screen. Presently he got up and left the cinema.

  At eleven o'clock the next morning he called at the address he had been given. A sixteen-year-old boy opened the door, and in answer to Calgary's enquiry, said: "Cleggs? Top floor."

  Calgary climbed the stairs. He knocked at a door and Maureen Clegg opened it. Without her smart uniform and her make-up, she looked a different girl. It was a silly little face, good-natured but with nothing particularly interesting about it. She looked at him doubtfully, frowned suspiciously.

  "My name is Calgary. I believe you have had a letter from Mr. Marshall about me."

  Her face cleared.

  "Oh, so you're the one! Come in, do." She moved back to let him enter. "Sorry the place is in such a mess. I haven't had time to get around to things yet."

  She swept some untidy clothes off a chair and pushed aside the remains of a breakfast consumed some time ago. "Do sit down. I'm sure it's ever so good of you to come."

  "I felt it was the least I could do," said Calgary.

  She gave a little embarrassed laugh, as though not really taking in what he meant.

  "Mr. Marshall wrote me about it," she said, "About that story that Jackie made up - how it was all true after all. That someone did give him a lift back that night to Drymouth. So it was you, was it?"

  "Yes," said Calgary. "It was I."

  "I really can't get over it," said Maureen. "Talked about it half the night, Joe and I did. Really, I said, it might be something on the pictures. Two years ago, isn't it, or nearly?"

  "About that, yes."

  "Just the sort of thing you do see on the pictures, and of course you say to yourself that sort of thing's all nonsense, it wouldn't happen in real life. And now there it is! It does happen! It's really quite exciting in a way, isn't it?"

  "I suppose," said Calgary, "that it might be thought of like that." He was watching her with a vague kind of pain.

  She chattered on quite happily.

  "There's poor old Jackie dead and not able to know about it. He got pneumonia, you know, in prison. I expect it was the damp or something, don't you?"

  She had, Calgary realised, a definite romantic image of prison in her mind's eye. Damp underground cells with rats gnawing one's toes.

  "At the time, I must say," she went on, "him dying seemed all for the best." "Yes, I suppose so. Yes, I suppose it must have done."

  "Well, I mean, there he was, shut up for years and years and years. Joe said I'd better get a divorce and I was just setting about it."

  "You wanted to divorce him?"

  "Well, it's no good being tied to a man who's going to be in prison for years, is it? Besides, you know, although I was fond of Jackie and all that, he wasn't what you call the steady type. I never did think really that our marriage would last."

  "Had you actually started proceedings for divorce when he died?"

  "Well, I had in a kind of way. I mean, I'd been to a lawyer. Joe got me to go. Of course, Joe never could stand Jackie."

  "Joe is your husband?"

  "Yes. He works in the electricity. Got a very good job and they think a lot of him. He always told me Jackie was no good, but of course I was just a kid and silly then. Jackie had a great way with him, you know."

  "So it seems from all I've heard about him."

  "He was wonderful at getting round women -1 don't know why, really. He wasn't good-looking or anything like that. Monkey-face, I used to call him. But all the same, he'd got a way with him. You'd find you were doing anything he wanted you to do. Mind you, it came in useful once or twice. Just after we were married he got into trouble at the garage where he was working over some work done on a customer's car. I never understood the rights of it. Anyway, the boss was ever so angry. But Jackie got round the boss's wife. Quite old, she was. Must have been near on fifty, but Jackie flattered her up, played her off this way and that until she didn't know whether she was on her head or her heels. She'd have done anything for him in the end. Got round her husband, she did, and got him to say as he wouldn't prosecute if Jackie paid the money back. But he never knew where the money came from! It was his own wife what provided it. That reely gave us a laugh, Jackie and me!"

  Calgary looked at her with faint repulsion. "Was it so very funny?"

  "Oh, I think so, don't you? Reely, it was a scream. An old woman like that crazy about Jackie and raking out her savings for him."

  Calgary sighed. Things were never, he thought, the way you imagined them to be. Every day he found himself less attracted to the man whose name he had taken such trouble to vindicate. He was almost coming to understand and share the point of view which had so astounded him at Sunny Point.

  "I only came here, Mrs. Clegg," he said, "to see if there was anything I could, well, do for you to make up for what had happened."

  Maureen Clegg looked faintly puzzled.

  "Very nice of you, I'm sure," she said. "But why should you? We're all right. Joe is making good money and I've got my own job. I'm an usherette, you know, at the Picturedrome."

  "Yes, I know."

  "We're going to get a telly next month," the girl went on proudly.

  "I'm very glad," said Arthur Calgary, "more glad than I can say that this - this unfortunate business hasn't left any - well, permanent shadow."

  He was finding it more and more difficult to choose the right words when talking to this girl who had been married to Jacko. Everything he said sounded pompous, artificial. Why couldn't he talk naturally to her?

  "I was afraid it might have been a terrible grief to you."

  She stared at him, her wide, blue eyes not understanding in the least what he meant.

  "It was horrid at the time," she said. "All the neighbours talking and the worry of it all, though I must say the police were very kind, all things considered. Talked to me very politely and spoke very nice about everything."

  He wondered if she had had any feeling for the dead man. He asked her a question abruptly.

  "Did you think he'd done it?" he said.

  "Do you mean, do I think he'd done his mother in?"

  "Yes. Just that."

  "Well, of course - well - well - yes, I suppose I did in a way. Of course, he said he hadn't, but I mean you never could believe anything Jackie said, and it did seem as though he must have done. You see, he could get very nasty, Jackie could, if you stood up against him. I knew he was in a hole of some kind. He wouldn't say much to me, just swore at me when I asked him about it. But he went off that way and he said that it was going to be all right. His mother, he said, would stump up. She'd have to. So of course I believed him."

  "He had never told his family about your marriage, I understand. You hadn't met them?"

  "No. You see, they were classy people, had a big house and all that. I wouldn't have gone down very well. Jackie thought it best to keep me dark. Besides, he said if he took me along his mother'd want to run my life as well as his. She couldn't help running people, he said, and he'd had enough of it - we did very well as we were, he said."

  She appeared to display no resentment, but to think, indeed, that her husband's behaviour had been perfectly natural.

  "I suppose it was a great shock to you when he was arrested?"

  "Well, naturally. 'However could he do such a thing?' I said to myself, but then, you can't get away from things. He always had a very nasty temper when anything upset him."

  Calgary leaned forward.

  "Let's put
it like this. It really seemed to you not at all a surprising thing that your husband should have hit his mother on the head with a poker and stolen a large quantity of money from her?"

  "Well, Mr - er - Calgary, if you'll excuse me, that's putting it in rather a nasty way. I don't suppose he meant to hit her so hard. Don't suppose he meant to do her in. She just refused to give him some money, he caught up the poker and he threatened her, and when she stuck it out he lost control of himself and gave her a swipe. I don't suppose he meant to kill her. That was just his bad luck. You see, he needed the money very badly. He'd have gone to prison if he hadn't got it."