Ordeal by Innocence

Chapter 15
"But I don't want to go home just yet," said Philip Durrant. He spoke with plaintive irritability.

"But, Philip, really, there's nothing to stay here for, any longer. I mean, we had to come to see Mr. Marshall to discuss the thing, and then wait for the police interviews. But now there's nothing to stop us going home right away."

"I think your father's quite happy for us to stop on for a bit," said Philip,

"he likes having someone to play chess with in the evenings. My word, he's a wizard at chess. I thought I wasn't bad, but I never get the better of him."

"Father can find someone else to play chess with," said Mary shortly.

"What - whistle someone up from the Women's Institute?"

"And anyway, we ought to go home," said Mary. "Tomorrow is Mrs. Carden's day for doing the brasses."

"Polly, the perfect housewife!" said Philip laughing. "Anyway, Mrs. Whatshername can do the brasses without you, can't she? Or if she can't, send her a telegram and tell her to let them moulder for another week."

"You don't understand, Philip, about household things, and how difficult they are."

"I don't see that any of them are difficult unless you make them difficult. Anyway, I want to stop on."

"Oh, Philip," Mary spoke with exasperation, "I do so hate it here." "But why?"

"It's so gloomy, so miserable and - and all that's happened here. The murder and everything."

"Now, come, Polly, don't tell me you're amass of nerves over things of that kind. I'm sure you could take murder without turning a hair. No, you want to go home because you want to see to the brasses and dust

the place and make sure no moths have got into your fur coat."

"Moths don't go into fur coats in winter," said Mary.

"Well, you know what I mean, Polly. The general idea. But you see, from my point of view, it's so much more interesting here."

"More interesting than being in our own home?" Mary sounded both shocked and hurt. Philip looked at her quickly.

"I'm sorry, darling, I didn't put it very well. Nothing could be nicer than our own home, and you've made it really lovely. Comfortable, neat, attractive. You see, it'd be quite different if - if I were like I used to be. I mean, I'd have lots of things to do all day. I'd be up to my ears in schemes. And it would be perfect coming back to you and having our own home, talking about everything that had happened during the day. But you see, it's different now."

"Oh, I know it's different in that way," said Mary. "Don't think I ever forget that, Phil. I do mind. I mind most terribly."

"Yes," said Philip, and he spoke almost between his teeth. "Yes, you mind too much, Mary. You mind so much that sometimes it makes me mind more. All I want is distraction and - no -" he held up his hand -" don't tell me that I can get distraction from jigsaw puzzles and all the gadgets of occupational therapy and having people to come and give me treatment, and reading endless books. I want so badly sometimes to get my teeth into something! And here, in this house, there is something to get one's teeth into."

"Philip," Mary caught her breath, "you're not still harping on - on that idea of yours?"

"Playing at Murder Hunt?" said Philip. "Murder, murder, who did the murder? Yes, Polly, you're not far off. I want desperately to know who did it."

"But why? And how can you know? If somebody broke in or found the door open -"

"Still harping on the outsider theory?" asked Philip. "It won't wash, you know. Old Marshall put a good face upon it. But actually he was just helping us to keep face. Nobody believes in that beautiful theory. It just isn't true."

"Then you must see, if it isn't true," Mary interrupted him, "if it isn't true - if it was, as you put it, one of us, then I don't want to know. Why should we know? Aren't we - aren't we a hundred times better not knowing?"

Philip Durrant looked up at her questioningly.

"Putting your head in the sand, eh, Polly? Haven't you any natural curiosity?"

"I tell you I don't want to know! I think it's all horrible. I want to forget it and not think about it."

"Didn't you care enough for your mother to want to know who killed her?"

"What good would it do, knowing who killed her? For two years we've been quite satisfied that Jacko killed her."

"Yes," said Philip, "lovely the way we've all been satisfied."

His wife looked at him doubtfully.

"I don't, I really don't know what you mean, Philip."

"Can't you see, Polly, that in a way this is a challenge to me? A challenge to my intelligence? I don't mean that I've felt your mother's death particularly keenly or that I was particularly fond of her. I wasn't. She'd done her very best to stop you marrying me, but I bore her no grudge for that because I succeeded in carrying you off all right. Didn't I, my girl? No, it's not a wish for revenge, it's not even a passion for justice. I think it's - yes, mainly curiosity, though perhaps there's a better side to it than that."

"It's the sort of thing you oughtn't to meddle about with," said Mary.

"No good can come of your meddling about with it. Oh, Philip, please, please don't. Let's go home and forget all about it."

"Well," said Philip, "you can pretty well cart me anywhere you like, can't you? But I want to stay here. Don't you sometimes want me to do what I want to do?"

"I want you to have everything in the world you want," said Mary.

"You don't really, darling. You just want to look after me like a baby in arms and know what's best for me every day and in every possible way." He laughed.

Mary said, looking at him doubtfully: "I never know when you're serious or not."

"Apart from curiosity," said Philip Durrant, "somebody ought to find out the truth, you know."

"Why? What good can it do? Having someone else sent to prison. I think it's a horrible idea."

"You don't quite understand," said Philip. "I didn't say that I'd turn in whoever it was (if I discovered who it was) to the police. I don't think that I would. It depends, of course, on the circumstances. Probably it wouldn't be any use my turning them over to the police because I still think that there couldn't be any real evidence."

"Then if there isn't any real evidence," said Mary, "how are you going to find out anything?"

"Because," said Philip, "there are lots of ways of finding out things, of knowing them quite certainly once and for all. And I think, you know, that that's becoming rather necessary. Things aren't going very well in this house and very soon they'll be getting worse."

"What do you mean?"

"Haven't you noticed anything, Polly? What about your father and Gwenda Vaughan?"

"What about them? Why my father should want to marry again at his age -"

"I can understand that," said Philip. "After all, he had rather a raw deal in marriage. He's got a chance now of real happiness. Autumn happiness, if you like, but he's got it. Or, shall we say, he had it. Things aren't going too well between them now."

"I suppose, all this business -" said Mary vaguely.

"Exactly," said Philip. "All this business. It's shoving them further apart every day. And there could be two reasons for that. Suspicion or guilt."

"Suspicion of whom?"

"Well, let's say of each other. Or suspicion on one side and consciousness of guilt on the other and vice versa and as you were and as you like it."

"Don't, Philip, you're confusing me." Suddenly a faint trace of animation came into Mary's manner.

"So you think it was Gwenda?" she said. "Perhaps you're right. Oh, what a blessing it would be if it was Gwenda."

"Poor Gwenda. Because she's one removed from the family, you mean?" "Yes," said Mary. "I mean then it wouldn't be one of us!"

"That's all you feel about it, is it?" said Philip. "How it affects us." "Of course," said Mary.

"Of course, of course," said Philip irritably. "The trouble with you is, Polly, you haven't got any imagination. You can't put yourself in anyone else's place."

"Why should one?" asked Mary.

"Yes, why should one?" said Philip. "I suppose if I'm honest I'd say to pass the time away. But I can put myself in your father's place, or in Gwenda's, and if they're innocent, what hell it must be. What hell for Gwenda to be held suddenly at arm's length. To know in her heart that she's not going to be able to marry the man she loves after all. And then put yourself in your father's place. He knows, he can't help knowing, that the woman he is in love with had an opportunity to do the murder and had a motive, too. He hopes she didn't do it, he thinks she didn't do it, but he isn't sure. And what's more he never will be sure."

"At his age -" began Mary.

"Oh, at his age, at his age," said Philip impatiently. "Don't you realise it's worse for a man of that age? It's the last love of his life. He's not likely to have another. It goes deep. And taking the other point of view," he went on, "suppose Leo came out of the mists and shadows of the self-contained world that he's managed to live in so long. Suppose it was he who struck down his wife? One can almost feel sorry for the poor devil, can't one? Not," he added meditatively, "that I really can imagine his doing anything of the sort for a moment. But I've no doubt the police can imagine it all right. Now, Polly, let's hear your views. Who do you think did it?"

"How can I possibly know?" said Mary.

"Well, perhaps you can't know," said Philip, "but you might have a very good idea - if you thought."

"I tell you I refuse to think about the thing at all."

"I wonder why... Is that just distaste? Or is it - perhaps - because you do know? Perhaps in your own cool, calm mind you're quite sure... so sure that you don't want to think about it, that you don't want to tell me

'Is it Hester you've got in mind?'"

"Why on earth should Hester want to kill Mother?"

"No real reason, is there?" said Philip meditatively. "But you know, you do read of those things. A son or a daughter fairly well looked after, indulged, and then one day some silly little thing happens. Fond parent refuses to stand up, up for the cinema or for buying a new pair of shoes or says when you're going out with the boy friend you've got to be in at ten. It mayn't be anything very important but it seems to set a match to a train that's already laid, and suddenly the adolescent in question has a brainstorm and up with a hammer or an axe, or possibly a poker, and that's that. Always hard to explain, but it happens. It's the culmination of a long train of repressed rebellion. That's a pattern which would fit Hester. You see, with Hester the trouble is that one doesn't know what goes on in that rather lovely head of hers. She's weak, of course, and she resents being weak. And your mother was the sort of person who would make her feel conscious of her weakness. Yes," said Philip, leaning forward with some animation, "I think I could make out quite a good case for Hester."

"Oh, will you stop talking about it," cried Mary.

"Oh, I'll stop talking," said Philip. "Talking won't get me anywhere. Or will it? After all, one has to decide in one's own mind what the pattern of the murder might be, and apply that pattern to each of the different people concerned. And then when you've got it taped out the way it must have been, then you start laying your little pitfalls and see if they tumble into them."

"There were only four people in the house," said Mary. "You speak as though there were half a dozen or more. I agree with you that Father couldn't possibly have done it, and it's absurd to think that Hester could have any real reason for doing anything of that kind. That leaves Kirsty and Gwenda."

"Which of then do you prefer?" asked Philip, with faint mockery in his tone.

"I can't really imagine Kirsty doing such a thing," said Mary. "She's always been so patient and good-tempered. Really quite devoted to Mother. I suppose she could go queer suddenly. One does hear of such things, but she's never seemed at all queer."

"No," said Philip thoughtfully, "I'd say Kirsty is a very normal woman, the sort of woman who'd have liked a normal woman's life. In a way she's something of the same type as Gwenda, only Gwenda is good- looking and attractive and poor old Kirsty is plain as a currant bun. I don't suppose any man's ever looked at her twice. But she'd have liked them to. She'd have liked to have fallen in love and married. It must be pretty fair hell to be born a woman and to be born plain and unattractive, especially if that isn't compensated for by having any special talent or brain. The truth is she'd been here far too long. She ought to have left after the war, gone on with her profession as masseuse. She might have hooked some well off elderly patient."

"You're like all men," said Mary. "You think women think of nothing but getting married."

Philip grinned.

"I still think it's all women's first choice," he said. "Hasn't Tina any boy friends, by the way?"

"Not that I know of," said Mary. "But she doesn't talk much about herself."

"No, she's a quiet little mouse, isn't she? Not exactly pretty, but very graceful. I wonder what she knows about this business?"

"I don't suppose she knows anything," said Mary.

"Don't you?" said Philip. "I do."

"Oh, you just imagine things," said Mary.

"I'm not imagining this. Do you know what the girl said? She said she hoped she didn't know anything. Rather a curious way of putting things. I bet she does know something."

"What sort of thing?"

"Perhaps there's something that ties in somewhere, but she herself doesn't quite realise where it does tie in. I hope to get it out of her."

"Philip!"

"It's no good, Polly. I've got a mission in life. I've persuaded myself that it's very much in the public interest that I should get down to it. Now where shall I start? I rather think I'll work on Kirsty first. In many ways she's a simple soul."

"I wish - oh, how I wish," said Mary, "that you'd give all this crazy idea up and come home. We were so happy. Everything was going along so

well -" Her voice broke as she turned away.

"Polly!" Philip was concerned. "Do you really mind so much? I didn't realise you were quite so upset."

Mary wheeled round, a hopeful look in her eye. "Then you will come home and forget about it all?"

"I couldn't forget about it all," said Philip. "I'd only go on worrying and puzzling and thinking. Let's stay here till the end of the week anyway, Mary, and then, well, we'll see."