Ordeal by Innocence

Chapter 18
"There's a young lady down below wanting to see you, sir."

"A young lady?" Calgary looked surprised. He could not think who was likely to visit him. He looked at the work which littered his desk, and frowned. The voice of the hall porter spoke again, discreetly lowered.

"A real young lady, sir, a very nice young lady." "Oh, well. Show her up then."

Calgary could not help smiling to himself slightly. The discreet undertones and the assurance tickled his sense of humour. He wondered who it could be who wanted to see him. He was completely

astonished when his door bell buzzed and on going to open it he was confronted by Hester Argyle.

"You!" The exclamation came out with full surprise.

Then, "Come in, come in," he said. He drew her inside and shut the door.

Strangely enough, his impression of her was almost the same as the first time he had seen her. She was dressed with no regard to the conventions of London. She was hatless, her dark hair hanging round

her face in a kind of elf-lock disarray. The heavy tweed coat showed a dark green skirt and sweater underneath. She looked as though she had just come in breathless from a walk on the moor.

"Please," said Hester, "please, you've got to help me."

"To help you?" He was startled. "In what way? Of course I'll help you if I can."

"I didn't know what to do," said Hester. "I didn't know who to come to. But someone's got to help me. I can't go on, and you're the person. You started it all."

"You're in trouble of some kind? Bad trouble?"

"We're all in trouble," said Hester. "But one's so selfish, isn't one? I mean, I only think of myself."

"Sit down, my dear," he said gently.

He cleared papers off an arm-chair and settled her there. Then he went over to his corner cupboard.

"You must have a glass of wine," he said. "A glass of dry sherry. Will that suit you?"

"If you like. It doesn't matter."

"It's very wet and cold out. You need something."

He turned, decanter and glass in hand. Hester was slumped down in the chair with a queer kind of angular grace that touched him by its complete abandonment.

"Don't worry," he said gently, as he put the glass by her side and filled it. "Things are never quite so bad as they seem, you know."

"People say that, but it's not true," said Hester. "Sometimes they're worse than they seem." She sipped the wine, then she said accusingly,

"We were all right till you came. Quite all right. Then - then it all started."

"I won't pretend," said Arthur Calgary, "that I don't know what you mean. It took me completely aback when you first said that to me, but now I understand better what my - my information must have brought to you."

"So long as we thought it was Jacko -" Hester said and broke off.

"I know, Hester, I know. But you've got to go behind that, you know. What you were living in was a false security. It wasn't a real thing, it was only a thing of make-believe, of cardboard - a kind of stage scenery. Something that represented security but which was not really, and could never be, security."

"You're saying, aren't you," said Hester, "that one must have courage, that it's no good snatching at a thing because it's false and easy?" She paused a minute and then said: "You had courage! I realise that. To come and tell us yourself. Not knowing how we'd feel, how we'd react. It was brave of you. I admire bravery because, you see, I'm not really very brave myself."

"Tell me," said Calgary gently, "tell me just what the trouble is now. It's something special, isn't it?"

"I had a dream," said Hester. "There's someone - a young man - a doctor -"

"I see," said Calgary. "You are friends, or, perhaps, more than friends?"

"I thought," said Hester, "we were more than friends... And he thought so too. But you see, now that all this has come up..."

"Yes?" said Calgary.

"He thinks I did it," said Hester. Her words came with a rush. "Or perhaps he doesn't think I did it but he's not sure. He can't be sure. He thinks -1 can see he thinks - that I'm the most likely person. Perhaps I am. Perhaps we all think that about each other. And I thought, somebody has got to help us in the terrible mess we're in, and I thought of you because of the dream. You see, I was lost and I couldn't find Don. He'd left me and there was a great big sort of ravine thing -an abyss. Yes, that's the word. An abyss. It sounds so deep, doesn't it? So deep and so - so unbridgeable. And you were there on the other side and you held out your hands and said 'I want to help you.'" She drew a deep breath. "So I came to you. I ran away and I came here because you've got to help us. If you don't help us, I don't know what's going to happen. You must help us. You brought all this. You'll say, perhaps, that it's nothing to do with you. That having once told us -told us the truth about what happened - that it's no business of yours. You'll say

"No," said Calgary, interrupting her. "I shall not say anything of the kind. It is my business, Hester. I agree with you. When you start a thing you have to go on with it. I feel that every bit as much as you do."

"Oh!" Colour flamed up into Hester's face. Suddenly, as was the way with her, she looked beautiful. "So I'm not alone," she said. "There is someone."

"Yes, my dear, there is someone - for what he's worth. So far I haven't been worth very much, but I'm trying and I've never stopped trying to help." He sat down and drew his chair nearer to her.

"Now tell me all about it," he said. "Has it been very bad?"

"It's one of us, you see," said Hester. "We all know that. Mr. Marshall came and we pretended it must have been someone who got in, but he

knew it wasn't. It's one of us."

"And your young man - what's-his-name?" "Don. Donald Craig. He's a doctor."

"Don thinks it's you?"

"He's afraid it's me," said Hester. She twisted her hands in a dramatic gesture. She looked at him. "Perhaps you think it's me, too?"

"Oh, no," said Calgary. "Oh no, I know quite well that you're innocent."

"You say that as though you were really quite sure." "I am quite sure," said Calgary. "But why? How can you be so sure?"

"Because of what you said to me when I left the house after telling all of you. Do you remember? What you said to me about innocence. You

couldn't have said that - you couldn't have felt that way - unless you were innocent."

"Oh," cried Hester. "Oh - the relief! To know there's someone who really feels like that!"

"So now," said Calgary, "we can discuss it calmly, can't we?" "Yes," said Hester. "It feels - it feels quite different now."

"Just as a matter of interest," said Calgary, "and keeping firmly in mind thatyou know what I feel about it, why should anyone for one moment think that you would kill your adopted mother?"

"I might have done," said Hester. "I often felt like it. One does sometimes feel just mad with rage. One feels so futile, so - so helpless. Mother was always so calm and so superior and knew everything, and

was right about everything. Sometimes I would think, 'Oh! I would like to kill her.'" She looked at him. "Do you understand? Didn't you ever feel like that when you were young?"

The last words gave Calgary a sudden pang, the same pang perhaps that he had felt when Micky in the hotel at Drymouth had said to him,

"You look older." When he was young? Did it seem so very long ago to Hester? He cast his mind back. He remembered himself at nine years old consulting with another small boy in the gardens of his prep school, wondering ingenuously what would be the best way to dispose

of Mr. Warborough, their form master. He remembered the

helplessness of rage that had consumed him when Mr. Warborough had been particularly sarcastic in his comments. That, he thought, was what Hester had felt too. But whatever he and young - what was his name now? - Porch, yes,

Porch had been the boy's name - although he and young Porch had consulted and planned, they had never taken any active steps to bring about the demise of Mr. Warborough.

"You know," he said to Hester, "you ought to have got over those sort of feelings a good many years ago. I can understand them, of course."

"It was just that Mother had that effect upon me," said Hester. "I'm beginning to see now, you know, that it was my own fault. I feel that if only she'd lived a little longer, just lived till I was a little older, a little more settled, that - that we'd have been friends in a curious way. That I'd have been glad of her help and her advice. But - but as it was I couldn't bear it; because, you see, it made me feel so ineffectual, so stupid. Everything I did went wrong and I could see for myself that the things I did were foolish things. That I'd only done them because I wanted to rebel, wanted to prove that I was myself. And I wasn't anybody. I was fluid. Yes, that's the word," said Hester. "It's exactly the word. Fluid. Never taking a shape for long. Just trying on shapes - shapes - shapes of other people that I admired. I thought, you see, if I ran away and went on the stage and had an affair with someone, that -"

"That you would feel yourself, or at any rate, feel somebody?

"Yes," said Hester. "Yes, that's just it. And of course really I see now that I was just behaving like a silly child. But you don't know how I wish, Dr. Calgary, that Mother was alive now. Because it's so unfair - unfair on her, I mean. She did so much for us and gave us so much. We didn't give her anything back. And now it's too late."

She paused. "That's why," she said, with a sudden renewal of vigour,

"I've determined to stop being silly and childish. And you'll help me, won't you?"

"I've already said I'll do anything in the world to help you."

She gave him a quick, rather lovely smile.

"Tell me," he said, "exactly what has been happening."

"Just what I thought would happen," said Hester. "We've all been looking at each other and wondering and we don't know. Father looks

at Gwenda and thinks perhaps it was her. She looks at father and isn't sure. I don't think they're going to get married now. It's spoilt everything. And Tina thinks Micky had something to do with it. I don't know why because he wasn't there that evening. And Kirsten thinks I did it and tries to protect me. And Mary - that's my older sister who you didn't meet - Mary thinks Kirsten did it."

"And who do you think did it, Hester?"

"Me?" Hester sounded startled.

"Yes, you," said Calgary. "I think, you know, it's rather important to know that."

Hester spread out her hands. "I don't know," she wailed. "I just don't know. I'm it's an awful thing to say - but I'm frightened of everybody. It's as though behind each face there was another face. A - sinister sort of face that I don't know. I don't feel sure that Father's Father, and Kirsten keeps saying that I shouldn't trust anybody - not even her. And I look at Mary and I feel I don't know anything about her. And Gwenda - I've always liked Gwenda. I've been glad that Father was going to marry Gwenda. But now I'm not sure about Gwenda any more. I see her as somebody different, ruthless and - and revengeful. I don't know what anybody's like. There's an awful feeling of unhappiness."

"Yes," said Calgary, "I can well imagine that."

"There's so much unhappiness," said Hester, "that I can't help feeling perhaps there's the murderer's unhappiness too. And that might be the worst of all. Do you think that's likely?"

"It's possible, I suppose," said Calgary, "and yet I doubt - of course I'm not an expert -1 doubt if a murderer is ever really unhappy."

"But why not? I should think it would be the most terrible thing to be, to know you'd killed someone."

"Yes," said Calgary, "it is a terrible thing and therefore I think a murderer must be one of two kinds of people. Either a person to whom it has not been terrible to kill anyone, the kind of person who says to himself, 'Well, of course it was a pity to have to do that but it was necessary for my own well being. After all, it's not my fault. I just - well, just had to do it' Or else -"

"Yes?" said Hester, "what's the other kind of murderer?"

"I'm only guessing, mind you, I don't know, but I think if you were what you call the other kind of murderer, you wouldn't be able to live with your unhappiness over what you'd done. You'd either have to confess it or else you'd have to rewrite the story for yourself, as it were. Putting the blame on someone else, saying 'I should never have done such a thing unless such and such a thing had happened! I'm not really a murderer because I didn't mean to do it. It just happened, and so really it was fate and not myself.' Do you understand a little what I am trying to say?"

"Yes," said Hester, "and I think it's very interesting." She half-closed her eyes. "I'm just trying to think."

"Yes, Hester," said Calgary, "think. Think as hard as you can because if I'm ever going to be able to help you I've got to see things through your mind."

"Micky hated Mother," said Hester slowly. "He always did... I don't know why. Tina, I think, loved her. Gwenda didn't like her. Kirsten was always loyal to Mother though she didn't always think that Mother was right in all the things she did. Father -" She paused for a long time.

"Yes?" Calgary prompted her.

"Father's gone a long way away again," said Hester. "After Mother died, you know, he was quite different. Not so - what shall I call it - remote. He's been more human, more alive. But now he's gone back to

some - some sort of shadowy place where you can't get at him. I don't know what he felt about Mother, really. I suppose he loved her when he married her. They never quarrelled, but I don't know what he felt about her. Oh -" her hands flew out again - "one doesn't know what anyone feels, does one, really? I mean, what goes on behind their faces, behind their nice everyday words? They may be ravaged with hate or love or despair, and one wouldn't know! It's frightening Oh, Dr. Calgary, it's frightening!"

He took both her hands in his.

"You're not a child any longer," he said. "Only children are frightened. You're grown-up, Hester. You're a woman."

He released her hands and said in a matter-of-fact tone: "Is there anywhere you can stay in London?"

Hester looked slightly bewildered.

"I suppose so. I don't know. Mother usually stayed at Curtis's."

"Well, that's a very nice, quiet hotel. I should go there and book a room if I were you."

"I'll do anything you tell me to do," said Hester.

"Good girl," said Calgary. "What's the time?"

He looked up at the clock. "Hallo, it's about seven o'clock already. Supposing you go and book yourself a room, and I'll come along about quarter to eight to take you out to dinner. How would that suit you?"

"It sounds wonderful," said Hester. "Do you really mean it?" "Yes," said Calgary, "I really mean it."

"But after that? What's going to happen next? I can't go on staying, can I, at Curtis's for ever?"

"Your horizon always seems bounded by infinity," said Calgary.

"Are you laughing at me?" she asked him doubtfully.

"Just a little," he said, and smiled.

Her expression wavered and then she, too, smiled.

"I suppose really," she said confidentially, "I've been dramatising myself again."

"It's rather a habit of yours, I suspect," said Calgary.

"That's why I thought I should do well on the stage," said Hester. "But I didn't. I was no good at all. Oh, I was a lousy actress."

"You'll get all the drama you want out of ordinary life, I should say," said Calgary. "Now I'm going to put you in a taxi, my dear, and you go off to Curtis's. And wash your face and brush your hair," he went on.

"Have you got any luggage with you?"

"Oh, yes. I've got a sort of overnight bag."

"Good." He smiled at her. "Don't worry, Hester," he said again. "We'll think of something."