Ordeal by Innocence

Chapter 9
Calgary had only been gone a few minutes when Dr. MacMaster received a second visitor. This one was well known to him and he greeted him with affection.

"Ah, Don, glad to see you. Come in and tell me what's on your mind. There is something on your mind. I always know when your forehead wrinkles in that peculiar way."

Dr. Donald Craig smiled at him ruefully. He was a good-looking serious young man who took himself and his work in a serious manner. The old retired doctor was very fond of his young successor though there were times when he wished that it was easier for Donald Craig to see a joke.

Craig refused the offer of a drink and came straight to the point. "I'm badly worried, Mac."

"Not more vitamin deficiencies, I hope," said Dr. MacMaster. From his point of view vitamin deficiency had been a good joke. It had once taken a veterinary surgeon to point out to young Craig that the cat belonging to a certain child patient was suffering with an advanced case of ringworm.

"It's nothing to do with the patients," said Donald Craig. "It's my own private affairs."

MacMaster's face changed immediately.

"I'm sorry, my boy. Very sorry. Have you had bad news?"

The young man shook his head.

"It's not that. It's -look here, Mac, I've got to talk to someone about it and you know them all, you've been here for years, you know all about them. And I've got to know too. I've got to know where I stand, what I'm up against."

MacMaster's bushy eyebrows rose slowly up his forehead. "Let's hear the trouble," he said.

"It's the Argyles. You know -1 suppose everyone knows - that Hester Argyle and I-"

The old doctor nodded his head.

"A nice little understanding," he said approvingly. "That's the old- fashioned term they used to use, and it was a very good one."

"I'm terribly in love with her," Donald said simply, "and I think - oh, I'm sure -that she cares too. And now all this happens."

A look of enlightenment came into the older doctor's face.

"Ah yes! Free pardon for Jacko Argyle," he said. "A free pardon that's come too late for him."

"Yes. That's just what makes me feel -1 know it's an entirely wrong thing to feel, but I can't help it - that it would have been better if - if this new evidence hadn't come to light."

"Oh, you're not the only one who seems to feel that," said MacMaster.

"It's felt, as far as I can find out, from the Chief Constable through the Argyle family down to the man who came back from the Antarctic and

supplied the evidence." He added: "He's been here this afternoon."

Donald Craig looked startled. "Has he? Did he say anything?" "What did you expect him to say?" "Did he have any idea of who -" Slowly Dr. MacMaster shook his head.

"No," he said. "He's no idea. How could he have - coming out of the blue and seeing them all for the first time? It seems," he went on, "that nobody has any idea."

"No. No, I suppose not."

"What's upset you so much, Don?"

Donald Craig drew a deep breath.

"Hester rang me up that evening when this fellow Calgary had been there. She and I were going in to Drymouth after the surgery to hear a lecture on criminal types in Shakespeare."

"Sounds particularly suitable," said MacMaster.

"And then she rang me up. Said she wouldn't be coming. Said there had been news of a peculiarly upsetting type."

"Ah. Dr. Calgary's news."

"Yes. Yes, although she didn't mention him at the time. But she was very upset. She sounded -1 can't explain to you how she sounded."

"Irish blood," said MacMaster.

"She sounded altogether stricken, terrified. Oh, I can't explain it."

"Well, what do you expect?" the doctor asked. "She's not yet twenty, is she?"

"But why is she so upset? I tell you, Mac, she's scared stiff of something."

"M'm, yes, well - yes that might be so, I suppose," said MacMaster.

"Do you think - what do you think?"

"It's more to the point," MacMaster pointed out, "what you are thinking."

The young man said bitterly:

"I suppose, if I wasn't a doctor, I shouldn't even begin to think of such things. She'd be my girl and my girl could do no wrong. But as it is -"

"Yes - come on. You'd better get it off your chest."

"You see, I know something of what goes on in Hester's mind. She - she's a victim of early insecurity."

"Quite so," said MacMaster. "That's the way we put it nowadays."

"She hasn't had time yet to get properly integrated. She was suffering, at the time of the murder, from a perfectly natural feeling of an adolescent young woman - resentment of authority - an attempt to escape from smother-love which is responsible for so much harm nowadays. She wanted to rebel, to get away. She's told me all this herself. She ran away and joined a fourth-class touring theatrical company. Under the circumstances I think her mother behaved very reasonably. She suggested that Hester should go to London and go to

RADA and study acting properly if she wanted to do so. But that wasn't what Hester wanted to do. This running away to act was just a gesture really. She didn't really want to train for the stage, or to take up the profession seriously. She just wanted to show she could be on her own. Anyway, the Argyles didn't try to coerce her. They gave her a quite handsome allowance."

"Which was very clever of them," said MacMaster.

"And then she had this silly love affair with a middle-aged member of the company. In the end she realised for herself that he was no good. Mrs. Argyle came along and dealt with him and Hester came home."

"Having learnt her lesson, as they used to say in my young days," said MacMaster. "But of course one never liked learning one's lesson. Hester didn't."

Donald Craig went on anxiously: "She was full, still, of pent-up resentment; all the worse because she had to acknowledge secretly, if not openly, that her mother had been perfectly right; that she was no good as an actress and that the man she had lavished her affections on wasn't worth it. And that, anyway, she didn't really care for him.

'Mother knows best' It's always galling to the young."

"Yes," said MacMaster. "That was one of poor Mrs. Argyle's troubles, though she'd never have thought of it like that. The fact was she was nearly always right, that she did know best. If she'd been one of those women who run into debt, lose their keys, miss trains, and do foolish actions that other people have to help them out of, her entire family would have been much fonder of her. Sad and cruel, but there's life for you. And she wasn't a clever enough woman to get her own way by guile. She was complacent, you know. Pleased with her own power and judgment and quite, quite sure of herself. That's a very difficult thing to come up against when you're young."

"Oh, I know," said Donald Craig. "I realise all that. It's because I realise it so well that I feel, that I wonder -" He stopped.

MacMaster said gently: "I'd better say it for you, hadn't I, Don? You're afraid that it was your Hester who heard the quarrel between her mother and Jacko, who got worked up by hearing it, perhaps, and who, in a fit of rebellion against authority, and against her mother's superior assumption of omniscience, went into that room, picked up the poker and killed her. That's what you're afraid of, isn't it?"

The young man nodded miserably.

"Not really. I don't really believe it, but - but I feel -1 feel that it could have happened. I don't feel Hester has got the poise, the balance to -1

feel she's young for her age, uncertain of herself, liable to have brainstorms. I look at that household and I don't feel that any of them are likely to have done such a thing until I come to Hester. And then - then I'm not sure."

"I see," said Dr. MacMaster. "Yes, I see."

"I don't really blame her," said Don Craig quickly. "I don't think the poor child really knew what she was doing. I can't call it murder. It was just an act of emotional defiance, of rebellion, of a longing to be free, of the conviction that she would never be free until - until her mother wasn't there any longer."

"And that last is probably true enough," said MacMaster. "It's the only kind of motive there is, and it's rather a peculiar one. Not the kind that looks strong in the eyes of the law. Wishing to be free. Free from the impact of a stronger personality. Just because none of them inherits a large sum of money on the death of Mrs. Argyle the law won't consider that they had a motive. But even the financial control, I should imagine, was very largely in Mrs. Argyle's hands through her influence with the Trustees. Oh yes, her death set them free all right. Not only Hester, my boy. It set Leo free to marry another woman. It set Mary free to look after her husband in the way she liked, it set Micky free to live his own life in the way he cared about living it. Even little dark horse Tina sitting in her library may have wanted freedom."

"I had to come and talk to you," said Donald. "I had to know what you thought, whether you thought that - that it could be true."

"About Hester?"

"Yes."

"I think it could be true," said MacMaster slowly. "I don't know that it is."

"You think it could have happened just as I say?"

"Yes. I think what you've imagined is not farfetched and has an element of probability about it. But it's by no means certain, Donald."

The young man gave a shuddering sigh.

"But it's got to be certain, Mac. That's the one thing I do feel is necessary. I've got to know. If Hester tells me, if she tells me herself, then - then it will be all right. We'll get married as soon as possible. I'll look after her."

"It's as well Superintendent Huish can't hear you," said MacMaster dryly.

"I'm a law-abiding citizen as a rule," said Donald, "but you know very well yourself, Mac, how they treat psychological evidence in the law courts. In my view it was a bad accident, not a case of cold-blooded murder, or even hot-blooded murder for that matter."

"You're in love with the girl," said MacMaster. "I'm talking to you in confidence, mind." "I understand that," said MacMaster.

"All I'm saying is that if Hester tells me, and I know, we'll live it down together. But she must tell me. I can't go through life not knowing."

"You mean, you're not prepared to marry her with this probability overshadowing things?"

"Would you want to in my place?"

"I don't know. In my day, if it happened to me, and I was in love with the girl, I should probably be convinced she was innocent."

"It's not so much the guilt or innocence that matters, as that I've got to know."

"And if she did kill her mother, you're quite prepared to marry her and live happily ever afterwards, as they say?"

"Yes."

"Don'tyou believe it!" said MacMaster. "You'll be wondering if the bitter taste in your coffee is only coffee and thinking that the poker in the grate is a bit too hefty a size. And she'll see you thinking it. It won't do."