Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie Read Free Book Online

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 had 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.”
    Calgary said shrewdly, “The news I brought was unwelcome to you, too, wasn't it?”
    “I must admit that.