Ordeal by Innocence

Chapter 21
There had been nothing to tell Philip Durrant that this day was different from any other day.

He had no idea that today would decide his future once and for all.

He woke in good health and spirits. The sun, a pale autumnal sun, shone in at the window. Kirsten brought him a telephone message which increased his good spirits.

"Tina's coming over for tea," he told Mary when she came in with his breakfast.

"Is she? Oh, yes, of course, it's her afternoon off, isn't it?"

Mary sounded preoccupied.

"What's the matter, Polly?"

"Nothing."

She chipped off the top of his egg for him. At once, he felt irritated.

"I can still use my hands, Polly."

"Oh, I thought it would save you trouble."

"How old do you think I am? Six?"

She looked faintly surprised. Then she said abruptly: "Hester's coming home today."

"Is she?" He spoke vaguely, because his mind was full of his plans for dealing with Tina. Then he caught sight of his wife's expression.

"For goodness' sake, Polly, do you think I've got a guilty passion for the girl?"

She turned her head aside.

"You're always saying she's so lovely."

"So she is. If you like beautiful bones and a quality of the unearthly." He added dryly: "But I'm hardly cut out to be a seducer, am I?"

"You might wish you were."

"Don't be ridiculous, Polly. I never knew you had this tendency to jealousy."

"You don't know anything about me."

He started to rebut that, but paused. It came to him, with something of a shock, that perhaps he didn't know very much about Mary.

She went on: "I want you to myself-all to myself. I want there to be nobody in the world but you and me."

"We'd run out of conversation, Polly."

He had spoken lightly, but he felt uncomfortable. The brightness of the morning seemed suddenly dimmed.

She said: "Let's go home, Philip, please let's go home."

"Very soon we will, but not just yet. Things are coming along. As I told you, Tina's coming this afternoon."

He went on, hoping to turn her thoughts into a new channel: "I've great hopes of Tina."

"In what way?"

"Tina knows something."

"You mean - about the murder?"

"Yes."

"But how can she? She wasn't even here that night."

"I wonder now. I think, you know, that she was. Funny how odd little things turn up to help. That daily, Mrs. Narracott - the tall one, she told me something."

"What did she tell you?"

"A bit of village gossip. Mrs. Somebody or other's Ernie - no - Cyril. He'd had to go with his mother to the police station. Something he'd seen on the night poor Mrs. Argyle was done in."

"What had he seen?"

"Well, there Mrs. Narracott was rather vague. She hadn't got it out of Mrs. Somebody yet. But one can guess, can't one, Polly? Cyril wasn't inside the house, so he must have seen something outside. That gives us two guesses. He saw Micky or he saw Tina. It's my guess that Tina came out here that night."

"She'd have said so."

"Not necessarily. It sticks out a mile that Tina knows something she isn't telling. Say she drove out that night. Perhaps she came into the house and found your mother dead."

"And went away again without saying anything? Nonsense."

"There may have been reasons... She may have seen or heard something that made her think she knew who'd done it."

"She was never particularly fond of Jacko. I'm sure she wouldn't have wanted to shield him."

"Then perhaps it wasn't Jacko she suspected... But later, when Jacko was arrested, she thought that what she had suspected was quite wrong. Having said she wasn't here, she had to stick to it. But now, of course, it's different."

Mary said impatiently: "You just imagine things, Philip. You make up a lot of things that can't possibly be true."

"They're quite likely to be true. I'm going to try and make Tina tell me what she knows."

"I don't believe she knows anything. Do you really think she knows who did it?"

"I wouldn't go as far as that. I think she either saw, or heard - something. I want to find out what that something is."

"Tina won't tell if she doesn't want to."

"No, I agree. And she's a great one for keeping things to herself. Little poker face, too. Never shows anything. But she's not really a good liar

-not nearly as good a liar as you are, for instance... My method will be to guess. Put my guess to her as a question. To be answered yes or no. Do you know what will happen then? One of three things. She'll either say yes - and that will be that. Or she will say no -and since she isn't a good liar I shall know whether her no is genuine. Or she will refuse to answer and put on her poker face - and that, Polly, will be as good as yes. Come now, you must admit that there are possibilities with this technique of mine."

"Oh, leave it all alone, Phil! Do leave it alone! It will all die down and be forgotten."

"No. This thing has got to be cleared up. Otherwise we'll have Hester throwing herself out of windows and Kirsty having a nervous breakdown. Leo's already freezing up into a kind of stalactite. As for poor old Gwenda, she's on the point of accepting a post in Rhodesia."

"What does it matter what happens to them?" "Nobody matters but us - that's what you mean."

His face was stern and angry. It startled Mary. She had never seen her husband look like that before.

She faced him defiantly.

"Why should I care about other people?" she asked.

"You never have, have you?"

"I don't know what you mean."

Philip gave a sharp exasperated sigh. He pushed his breakfast tray aside.

"Take this thing away. I don't want any more."

"But Philip -"

He made an impatient gesture. Mary picked up the tray and carried it out of the room. Philip wheeled himself over to the writing-table. Pen in hand, he stared out of the window. He felt a curious oppression of spirit. He had been so full of excitement a short while ago. Now he felt uneasy and restless.

But presently he rallied. He covered two sheets of paper rapidly. Then he sat back and considered.

It was plausible. It was possible. But he wasn't entirely satisfied. Was he really on the right track? He couldn't be sure. Motive. Motive was what was so damnably lacking. There was some factor, somewhere, that had escaped him.

He sighed impatiently. He could hardly wait for Tina to arrive. If only this could be cleared up. Just among themselves. That was all that was necessary. Once they knew - then they would all be free. Free of this stifling atmosphere of suspicion and hopelessness. They could all, except one, get on with their own lives. He and Mary would go back home and his thoughts stopped. Excitement died down again.

He faced his own problem. He didn't want to go home...

He thought of its orderly perfection, its shining chintzes, its gleaming brass. A clean bright, well-tended cage!

And he in the cage, tied to his invalid-chair, surrounded by the loving care of his wife.

His wife... When he thought of his wife, he seemed to see two people. One the girl he had married, fair-haired, blue-eyed, gentle, reserved. That was the girl he had loved, the girl he teased whilst she stared at him with a puzzled frown. That was his Polly. But there was another Mary - a Mary who was hard as steel, who was passionate, but incapable of affection - a Mary to whom nobody mattered but herself. Even he only mattered because he was hers.

A line of French verse passed through his mind - how did it go. C'est Venus toute entiere sa proie attachee...

And that Mary he did not love. Behind the cold blue eyes of that Mary was a stranger - a stranger he did not know...

And then he laughed at himself. He was getting nervy and het up like everybody else in the house. He remembered his mother-in-law talking to him about his wife. About the sweet little fair-haired girl in New York. About the moment when the child had thrown her arms round Mrs. Argyle's neck and had cried out: "I want to stay with you. I don't want to leave you ever!"

That had been affection, hadn't it? And yet - how very unlike Mary. Could one change so much between child and woman? How difficult, almost impossible it was for Mary ever to voice affection, to be demonstrative?

Yet certainly on that occasion - His thoughts stopped dead. Or was it really quite simple? Not affection, just calculation. A means to an end. A show of affection deliberately produced. What was Mary capable of to get what she wanted?

Almost anything, he thought - and was shocked with himself for thinking it.

Angrily he dashed down his pen, and wheeled himself out of the sitting- room into the bedroom next door, wheeled himself up to the dressing- table. He picked up his brushes and brushed back his hair from where it hanging over his forehead. His own face looked strange to him.

Who am I, he thought, and where am I going? Thoughts that had never

occurred to him before...

He wheeled his chair close to the window and looked out. Down below, one of the daily women stood outside the kitchen window and talked to someone inside. Their voices, softly accented in the local dialect, floated up to him...

His eyes widening, he remained as though tranced. A sound from the next room awakened him from his preoccupation. He wheeled himself

to the connecting door.

Gwenda Vaughan was standing by the writing-table. She turned towards him and he was startled by the haggardness of her face in the morning sunshine.

"Hallo, Gwenda."

"Hallo, Philip. Leo thought you might like the Illustrated London News."

"Oh, thanks."

"This is a nice room," said Gwenda, looking round her. "I don't believe I've ever been in it before."

"Quite the Royal Suite, isn't it?" said Philip. "Away from everybody. Ideal for invalids and honeymoon couples."

Just too late he wished he had not used the last two words. Gwenda's face quivered.

"I must get on with things," she said vaguely.

"The perfect secretary."

"Not even that nowadays. I make mistakes."

"Don't we all?" He added deliberately: "When are you and Leo getting married?"

"We probably never shall."

"That would be a real mistake," said Philip.

"Leo thinks it might cause unfavourable comment - from the police!"

Her voice was bitter.

"Dash it all, Gwenda, one has to take some risks."

"I'm willing to take risks," said Gwenda. "I've never minded taking risks. I'm willing to gamble on happiness. But Leo -"

"Yes? Leo?"

"Leo," said Gwenda, "will probably die as he has lived, the husband of Rachel Argyle."

The anger and bitterness in her eyes startled him.

"She might just as well be alive," said Gwenda. "She's here - in the house - all the time..."