Ordeal by Innocence

Chapter 11
Night settled down on Sunny Point.

Sheltered by its walls seven people retired to rest, but none of them slept well...

Philip Durrant, since his illness and his loss of bodily activity, had found more and more solace in mental activity. Always a highly intelligent man, he now became conscious of the resources opening out to him through the medium of intelligence. He amused himself sometimes by forecasting the reactions of those around him to suitable stimuli. What he said and did was often not a natural outpouring, but a calculated one, motivated simply and solely to observe the response to it. It was a kind of game that he played; when he got the anticipated response, he chalked up, as it were, a mark to himself.

As a result of this pastime he found himself, for perhaps the first time in his life, keenly observant of the differences and realities of human personality.

Human personalities as such had not previously interested him very much. He liked or disliked, was amused or bored by, the people who surrounded him or whom he met. He had always been a man of action,

and not a man of thought. His imagination, which was considerable, had been exercised in devising various schemes for making money. All these schemes had a sound core; but a complete lack of business ability always resulted in their coming to nothing. People, as such, had up till now only been considered by him as pawns in the game. Now, since his illness, cut off from his former active life, he was forced to take account of what people themselves were like.

It had started in the hospital when the love lives of the nurses, the secret warfare and the petty grievances of hospital life had been forced on his attention since there was nothing else to occupy it. And now it was fast becoming a habit with him. People - really that was all that life held for him now. Just people. People to study, to find out about, to sum up. Decide for himself what made them tick and find out if he was right. Really, it could all be very interesting...

Only this very evening, sitting in the library, he had realised how little he really knew about his wife's family. What were they really like? What were they like inside, that is, not their outer appearance which he knew well enough.

Odd, how little you knew about people. Even your own wife?

He had looked thoughtfully over at Mary. How much did he really know about Mary?

He had fallen in love with her because he liked her good looks and her calm serious ways. Also, she had had money and that had mattered to

him too. He would have thought twice about marrying a penniless girl. It had all been most suitable and he had married her and teased her and called her Polly and had enjoyed the doubtful look she gave him when he made jokes she could not see. But what, really, did he know about her? Of what she thought and felt? He knew, certainly, that she loved him with a deep and passionate devotion. And at the thought of that devotion he stirred a little uneasily, twisting his shoulders as though to ease them of a burden. Devotion was all very well when you could get away from it for nine or ten hours of the day. It was a nice thing to come home to. But new he was lapped round with it; watched

over, cared for, cherished. It made one yearn for a little wholesome neglect... One had, in fact, to find ways of escape. Mental ways - since none other were possible. One had to escape to realms of fancy or speculation.

Speculation. As to who was responsible for his mother-in-law's death, for instance. He had disliked his mother-in-law, and she had disliked him. She had not wanted Mary to marry him (would she have wanted Mary to marry anybody? he wondered), but she had not been able to prevent it. He and Mary had started life happy and independent - and then things had begun to go wrong. First that South American company - and then the Bicycle Accessories Ltd. - good ideas both of them - but the financing of them had been badly judged - and then there had been the Argentine railway strike which had completed the disasters. All purely bad luck, but in some way he felt that somehow Mrs. Argyle was responsible. She hadn't wished him to succeed. Then

had come his illness. It had looked as though their only solution was to come and live at Sunny Point where a welcome was assured to them. He wouldn't have minded particularly. A man who was a cripple, only half a man, what did it matter where he was? - but Mary would have minded.

Oh well, it hadn't been necessary to live permanently at Sunny Point. Mrs. Argyle had been killed. The trustees had raised the allowance made to Mary under the trust and they had set up on their own again.

He hadn't felt any particular grief over Mrs. Argyle's death. Pleasanter, of course, if she had died of pneumonia or something like that, in her bed. Murder was a nasty business with its notoriety and its screaming headlines. Still, as murders go, it had been quite a satisfactory murder

-the perpetrator obviously having a screw loose in a way that could be served up decently in a lot of psychological jargon. Not Mary's own brother. One of those "adopted children" with a bad heredity who so often go wrong. But things weren't quite so good now. Tomorrow Superintendent Huish was coming to ask questions in his gentle West Country voice. One ought, perhaps, to think about the answers...

Mary was brushing her long fair hair in front of the mirror. Something about her calm remoteness irritated him.

He said: "Got your story pat for tomorrow, Polly?" She turned astonished eyes upon him.

"Superintendent Huish is coming. He'll ask you all over again just what your movements were on the evening of November 9th."

"Oh, I see. It's so long ago now. One can hardly remember."

"But he can, Polly. That's the point. He can. It's all written down somewhere in a nice little police note-book."

"Is it? Do they keep these things?"

"Probably keep everything in triplicate for ten years! Well, your movements are very simple, Polly. There weren't any. You were here with me in this room. And if I were you I shouldn't mention that you left it between seven and seven-thirty."

"But that was only to go to the bathroom. After all," said Mary reasonably, "everyone has to go to the bathroom."

"You didn't mention the fact to him at the time. I do remember that." "I suppose I forgot about it."

"I thought it might have been an instinct of self-preservation... Anyway, I remember backing you up. We were together here, playing picquet from six-thirty until Kirsty gave the alarm. That's our story and we're sticking to it."

"Very well, darling." Her agreement was placid - uninterested.

He thought: "Has she no imagination? Can't she foresee that we're in for a sticky time?"

He leaned forward.

"It's interesting, you know... Aren't you interested in who killed her?

We all know-Micky was quite right there - that it's one of us. Aren't you interested to know which?"

"It wasn't you or I," said Mary.

"And that's all that interests you? Polly, you're wonderful!"

She flushed slightly.

"I don't see what's so odd about that!"

"No, I can see you don't. Well, I'm different. I'm curious."

"I don't suppose we ever shall know. I don't suppose the police will ever know."

"Perhaps not. They'll certainly have precious little to go upon. But we're in rather a different position to the police."

"What do you mean, Philip?"

"Well, we've got a few bits of inside knowledge. We know our little lot from inside - have a fairly good idea of what makes them tick. You should have, anyway. You've grown up with them all. Let's hear your views. Who do you think it was?"

"I've no idea, Philip." "Then just make a guess."

Mary said sharply: "I'd rather not know who did it. I'd rather not even think about it."

"Ostrich," said her husband.

"Honestly, I don't see the point of - guessing. It's much better not to know. Then we can all go on as usual."

"Oh no, we can't," said Philip. "That's where you're wrong, my girl. The tot's set in already."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, take Hester and her young man - earnest young Doctor Donald. Nice chap, serious, worried. He doesn't really think she did it - but he's not really sure she didn't do it! And so he looks at her, anxiously, when he thinks she isn't noticing. But she notices all right. So there you are!

Perhaps she did do it - you'd know better than I would - but if she didn't, what the hell can she do about her young man? Keep on saying:

'Please, it wasn't me'? But that's what she'd say anyway."

"Really, Philip, I think you're imagining things."

"You can't imagine at all, Polly. Then take poor old Leo. Marriage bells with Gwenda are receding into the distance. The girl's horribly upset about it. Haven't you noticed?"

"I really don't see what Father wants to marry again for at his age."

"He sees all right! But he also sees that any hint of a love affair with Gwenda gives both of them a first-class motive for murder. Awkward."

"It's fantastic to think for a moment that Father murdered Mother!" said Mary. "Such things don't happen."

"Yes, they do. Read the papers." "Not our sort of people."

"Murder is no snob, Polly. Then there's Micky. Something's eating him all right. He's a queer, bitter lad. Tina seems in the clear, unworried, unaffected. But she's a little poker face if ever there was one. Then there's poor old Kirsty -"

A faint animation came into Mary's face. "Now that might be a solution!" "Kirsty?"

"Yes. After all, she's a foreigner. And I believe she's had very bad headaches the last year or two... It seems much more likely that she should have done it than any of us."

"Poor devil," said Philip. "Don't you see that that's just what she is saying to herself? That we'll all agree together that she's the one? For convenience. Because she's not a member of the family. Didn't you see tonight that she was worried stiff? And she's in the same position as Hester. What can she say or do? Say to us all: 'I did not kill my friend and employer'? What weight can that statement carry? It's worse hell for her, perhaps, than for anyone else. Because she's alone. She'll be going over in her mind every word she's ever said, every angry look she ever gave your mother - thinking that it will be remembered against her. Helpless to prove her innocence."

"I wish you'd calm down, Phil. After all, what can we do about it?"

"Only try to find out the truth."

"But how is that possible?"

"There might be ways. I'd rather like to try."

Mary looked uneasy.

"What sort of ways?"

"Oh, saying things - watching how people reset - one could think up things -" he paused, his mind working - "things that would mean something to a guilty person, but not to an innocent one "Again he was silent, turning ideas over in his mind. He looked up and said: "Don't you want to help the innocent, Mary?"

"No."

The word came out explosively. She came over to him and knelt by his chair. "I don't want you to mix yourself up in all this, Phil. Don't start saying things and laying traps. Leave it all alone. Oh, for God's sake, leave it alone!"

Philip's eyebrows rose.

"We-ell," he said. And he laid a hand on the smooth golden head.

Michael Argyle lay sleepless, staring into darkness.

His mind went round and round like a squirrel in a cage, going over the past. Why couldn't he leave it behind him? Why did he have to drag the past with him all through his life? What did it all matter anyway? Why did he have to remember so clearly the cheerful room in the London slum, and he "our Micky."

The casual exciting atmosphere! Fun in the streets! Ganging up on other boys! His mother with her bright golden head (cheap rinse, he thought, in his adult wisdom), her sudden furies when she would turn and lambast him (gin, of course!) and the wild gaiety she had when she was in a good mood. Lovely suppers offish and chips, and she'd sing songs - sentimental ballads. Sometimes they'd go to the pictures. There were always the Uncles, of course - that's what he always had to call them. His own dad had walked out before he could remember him... But his mother wouldn't stand for the Uncle of the day laying a hand on him. "You leave our Micky alone," she'd say.

And then there had come the excitement of the war. Expecting Hitler's bombers - abortive sirens. Moaning Minnies. Going down into the Tubes and spending the nights there. The fun of it! The whole street was there with their sandwiches and their bottles of pop. And trains rushing through practically all night. That had been life, that had! In the thick of things!

And then he'd come down here - to the country. A dead and alive place where nothing ever happened!

"You'll come back, love, when it's all over," his mother had said, but lightly as though it wasn't really true. She hadn't seemed to care about his going. And why didn't she come too? Lots of the kids in the street had been evacuated with their Mums. But his mother hadn't wanted to

go. She was going to the North (with the current Uncle, Uncle Harry!) to work in munitions.

He must have known then, in spite of her affectionate farewell. She didn't really care... Gin, he thought, that was all she cared for, gin and the Uncles...

And he'd been here, captured, a prisoner, eating tasteless, unfamiliar meals; going to bed, incredibly, at six o'clock, after a silly supper of milk and biscuits (milk and biscuits!), lying awake, crying, his head pushed down under the blankets, crying for Mom and home.

It was that woman! She'd got him and she wouldn't let him go. A lot of sloppy talk. Always making him play silly games. Wanting something from him. Something that he was determined not to give. Never mind. He'd wait. He'd be patient! And one day - one glorious day, he'd go home. Home to the streets, and the boys, and the glorious red buses and the tube, and fish and chips, and the traffic and the area cats - his mind went longingly over the catalogue of delights. He must wait. The war couldn't go on forever. Here he was stuck in this silly place with bombs falling all over London and half London on fire - coo! What a blaze it must make, and people being killed and houses crashing down.

He saw it in his mind all in glorious Technicolor.

Never mind. When the war was over he'd go back to Mom. She'd be surprised to see how he'd grown.

In the darkness Micky Argyle expelled his breath in a long hiss.

The war was over. They'd licked Hitler and Mussolini. Some of the children were going back. Soon, now...

And then she had come back from London and had said that he was going to stay at Sunny Point and be her own little boy...

He had said: "Where's my Mom? Did a bomb get her?"

If she had been killed by a bomb - well, that would be not too bad. It happened to boys' mothers.

But Mrs. Argyle said "No," she hadn't been killed. But she had some rather difficult work to do and couldn't look after a child very well - that sort of thing, anyway; soft soap, meaning nothing... His Mom didn't love him, didn't want him back - he'd got to stay here, for ever...

He'd sneaked round after that, trying to overhear conversations, and at last he did hear something, just a fragment between Mrs. Argyle and her husband. "Only too pleased to get rid of him - absolutely indifferent and something about a hundred pounds. So then he knew - his mother

had sold him for a hundred pounds..."

The humiliation - the pain - he'd never got over it... And she had bought him! He saw her, vaguely, as embodied power, someone against whom

he, in his puny strength, was helpless. But he'd grow up, he'd be strong one day, a man. And then he'd kill her...

He felt better once he'd made that resolution.

Later, when he went away to school, things were not so bad. But he hated the holidays - because of her. Arranging everything, planning, giving him all sorts of presents. Looking puzzled, because he was so undemonstrative. He hated being kissed by her... And later still, he'd taken a pleasure in thwarting her silly plans for him. Going into a bank!

An oil company. Not he. He'd go and find work for himself.

It was when he was at the university that he'd tried to trace his mother. She'd been dead for some years, he discovered - in a car crash with a man who'd been driving roaring drunk...

So why not forget it all? Why not just have a good time and get on with life? He didn't know why not.

And now - what was going to happen now? She was dead, wasn't she?

Thinking she'd bought him for a miserable hundred pounds. Thinking she could buy anything - houses and cars - and children, since she hadn't any of her own. Thinking she was God Almighty!

Well, she wasn't. Just a crack on the head with a poker and she was a corpse like any other corpse! (like the golden haired corpse in a car smash on the Great North Road...)

She was dead, wasn't she? Why worry?

What was the matter with him? Was it - that he couldn't hate her any more because she was dead?

So that was Death...

He felt lost without his hatred - lost and afraid.