Ordeal by Innocence

Chapter 6
The lights went up in the cinema. Advertisements flashed on to the screen. The cinema usherettes walked round with cartons of

lemonade and of ice-cream. Arthur Calgary scrutinised them. A plump

girl with brown hair, a tall dark one and a small, fair-haired one. That was the one he had come to see. Jacko's wife. Jacko's widow, now the wife of a man called Joe Clegg. It was a pretty, rather vapid little face, plastered with make-up, eyebrows plucked, hair hideous and stiff in a cheap perm. Arthur Calgary bought an ice-cream carton from her. He

had her home address and he meant to call there, but he had wanted to see her first while she was unaware of him.

Well, that was that. Not the sort of daughter-in-law, he thought, that Mrs. Argyle, from all accounts, would have cared about very much. That, no doubt, was why Jacko had kept her dark.

He sighed, concealed the ice-cream carton carefully under his chair, and leaned back as the lights went out and a new picture began to flash on the screen. Presently he got up and left the cinema.

At eleven o'clock the next morning he called at the address he had been given. A sixteen-year-old boy opened the door, and in answer to Calgary's enquiry, said: "Cleggs? Top floor."

Calgary climbed the stairs. He knocked at a door and Maureen Clegg opened it. Without her smart uniform and her make-up, she looked a different girl. It was a silly little face, good-natured but with nothing particularly interesting about it. She looked at him doubtfully, frowned suspiciously.

"My name is Calgary. I believe you have had a letter from Mr. Marshall about me."

Her face cleared.

"Oh, so you're the one! Come in, do." She moved back to let him enter.

"Sorry the place is in such a mess. I haven't had time to get around to things yet."

She swept some untidy clothes off a chair and pushed aside the remains of a breakfast consumed some time ago. "Do sit down. I'm sure it's ever so good of you to come."

"I felt it was the least I could do," said Calgary.

She gave a little embarrassed laugh, as though not really taking in what he meant.

"Mr. Marshall wrote me about it," she said, "About that story that Jackie made up - how it was all true after all. That someone did give him a lift back that night to Drymouth. So it was you, was it?"

"Yes," said Calgary. "It was I."

"I really can't get over it," said Maureen. "Talked about it half the night, Joe and I did. Really, I said, it might be something on the pictures. Two years ago, isn't it, or nearly?"

"About that, yes."

"Just the sort of thing you do see on the pictures, and of course you say to yourself that sort of thing's all nonsense, it wouldn't happen in real life. And now there it is! It does happen! It's really quite exciting in a way, isn't it?"

"I suppose," said Calgary, "that it might be thought of like that." He was watching her with a vague kind of pain.

She chattered on quite happily.

"There's poor old Jackie dead and not able to know about it. He got pneumonia, you know, in prison. I expect it was the damp or something, don't you?"

She had, Calgary realised, a definite romantic image of prison in her mind's eye. Damp underground cells with rats gnawing one's toes.

"At the time, I must say," she went on, "him dying seemed all for the best." "Yes, I suppose so. Yes, I suppose it must have done."

"Well, I mean, there he was, shut up for years and years and years. Joe said I'd better get a divorce and I was just setting about it."

"You wanted to divorce him?"

"Well, it's no good being tied to a man who's going to be in prison for years, is it? Besides, you know, although I was fond of Jackie and all that, he wasn't what you call the steady type. I never did think really that our marriage would last."

"Had you actually started proceedings for divorce when he died?"

"Well, I had in a kind of way. I mean, I'd been to a lawyer. Joe got me to go. Of course, Joe never could stand Jackie."

"Joe is your husband?"

"Yes. He works in the electricity. Got a very good job and they think a lot of him. He always told me Jackie was no good, but of course I was just a kid and silly then. Jackie had a great way with him, you know."

"So it seems from all I've heard about him."

"He was wonderful at getting round women -1 don't know why, really. He wasn't good-looking or anything like that. Monkey-face, I used to call him. But all the same, he'd got a way with him. You'd find you were doing anything he wanted you to do. Mind you, it came in useful once or twice. Just after we were married he got into trouble at the garage where he was working over some work done on a customer's car. I never understood the rights of it. Anyway, the boss was ever so angry. But Jackie got round the boss's wife. Quite old, she was. Must have been near on fifty, but Jackie flattered her up, played her off this way and that until she didn't know whether she was on her head or her heels. She'd have done anything for him in the end. Got round her husband, she did, and got him to say as he wouldn't prosecute if Jackie paid the money back. But he never knew where the money came from! It was his own wife what provided it. That reely gave us a laugh, Jackie and me!"

Calgary looked at her with faint repulsion. "Was it so very funny?"

"Oh, I think so, don't you? Reely, it was a scream. An old woman like that crazy about Jackie and raking out her savings for him."

Calgary sighed. Things were never, he thought, the way you imagined

them to be. Every day he found himself less attracted to the man whose name he had taken such trouble to vindicate. He was almost coming to understand and share the point of view which had so astounded him at Sunny Point.

"I only came here, Mrs. Clegg," he said, "to see if there was anything I could, well, do for you to make up for what had happened."

Maureen Clegg looked faintly puzzled.

"Very nice of you, I'm sure," she said. "But why should you? We're all right. Joe is making good money and I've got my own job. I'm an usherette, you know, at the Picturedrome."

"Yes, I know."

"We're going to get a telly next month," the girl went on proudly.

"I'm very glad," said Arthur Calgary, "more glad than I can say that this

-this unfortunate business hasn't left any - well, permanent shadow."

He was finding it more and more difficult to choose the right words when talking to this girl who had been married to Jacko. Everything he said sounded pompous, artificial. Why couldn't he talk naturally to her?

"I was afraid it might have been a terrible grief to you."

She stared at him, her wide, blue eyes not understanding in the least what he meant.

"It was horrid at the time," she said. "All the neighbours talking and the worry of it all, though I must say the police were very kind, all things considered. Talked to me very politely and spoke very nice about everything."

He wondered if she had had any feeling for the dead man. He asked her a question abruptly.

"Did you think he'd done it?" he said.

"Do you mean, do I think he'd done his mother in?"

"Yes. Just that."

"Well, of course - well - well - yes, I suppose I did in a way. Of course, he said he hadn't, but I mean you never could believe anything Jackie said, and it did seem as though he must have done. You see, he could get very nasty, Jackie could, if you stood up against him. I knew he was in a hole of some kind. He wouldn't say much to me, just swore at me when I asked him about it. But he went off that way and he said that it was going to be all right. His mother, he said, would stump up. She'd have to. So of course I believed him."

"He had never told his family about your marriage, I understand. You hadn't met them?"

"No. You see, they were classy people, had a big house and all that. I wouldn't have gone down very well. Jackie thought it best to keep me dark. Besides, he said if he took me along his mother'd want to run my life as well as his. She couldn't help running people, he said, and he'd had enough of it - we did very well as we were, he said."

She appeared to display no resentment, but to think, indeed, that her husband's behaviour had been perfectly natural.

"I suppose it was a great shock to you when he was arrested?"

"Well, naturally. 'However could he do such a thing?' I said to myself, but then, you can't get away from things. He always had a very nasty temper when anything upset him."

Calgary leaned forward.

"Let's put it like this. It really seemed to you not at all a surprising thing that your husband should have hit his mother on the head with a poker and stolen a large quantity of money from her?"

"Well, Mr - er - Calgary, if you'll excuse me, that's putting it in rather a nasty way. I don't suppose he meant to hit her so hard. Don't suppose he meant to do her in. She just refused to give him some money, he caught up the poker and he threatened her, and when she stuck it out he lost control of himself and gave her a swipe. I don't suppose he meant to kill her. That was just his bad luck. You see, he needed the money very badly. He'd have gone to prison if he hadn't got it."

"So - you don't blame him?"

"Well, of course I blamed him... I don't like all that nasty violent behaviour. And your own mother, too! No, I don't think it was a nice thing to do at all. I began to think as Joe was right in telling me I oughtn't to have had anything to do with Jackie. But, you know how it is. It's ever so difficult for a girl to make up her mind. Joe, you see, was always the steady kind. I've known him a long time. Jackie was different. He'd got education and all that. He seemed very well off, too, always splashing his money about. And of course he had a way with him, as I've been telling you. He could get round anybody. He got round me all right. 'You'll regret it, my girl,' that's what Joe said. I thought that was just sour grapes and the green-eyed monster, if you understand what I mean. But Joe turned out to be quite right in the end."

Calgary looked at her. He wondered if she still failed to understand the full implications of his story.

"Right in exactly what way?" he asked.

"Well, landing me up in the proper mess he did. I mean, we've always been respectable. Mother brought us up very careful. We've always had things nice and no talk. And there was the police arresting my husband! And all the neighbours knowing. In all the papers it was. News of the World and all the rest of them. And ever so many reporters coming round and asking questions. It put me in a very nasty position altogether."

"But, my dear child," said Arthur Calgary, "you do realise now that he didn't do it?"

For a moment the fair, pretty face looked bewildered.

"Of course! I was forgetting. But all the same - well, I mean, he did go there and kick up a fuss and threaten her and all that. If he hadn't done that he wouldn't have been arrested at all, would he?"

"No," said Calgary, "no. That is quite true."

Possibly, he thought, this pretty, silly child was more of a realist than he was.

"Oo, it was awful," went on Maureen. "I didn't know what to do. And then Mum said better go over right away and see his people. They'd have to do something for me, she said. After all, she said, you've got your rights and you'd best show them as you know how to look after them. So off I went. It was that foreign lady help what opened the door to me and at first I couldn't make her understand. Seemed as if she couldn't believe it. 'It's impossible,' she kept saying. 'It's quite impossible that Jacko should be married to you.' Hurt my feelings a bit that did. 'Well married we are,' I said, 'and not in a registry office neither. In a church! It was the way my Mum wanted!' And she said,

'It's not true. I don't believe it' And then Mr. Argyle came and he was ever so kind. Told me not to worry more than I could help, and that everything possible would be done to defend Jackie. Asked me how I was off for money, and sent me a regular allowance every week. He keeps it up, too, even now. Joe doesn't like me taking it, but I say to him, 'Don't be silly. They can spare it, can't they?' Sent me a very nice cheque for a wedding present as well, he did, when Joe and I got married. And he said he was very glad and that he hoped this marriage would be happier than the last one. Yes, he's ever so nice, Mr. Argyle is."

She turned her head as the door opened. "Oh. Here's Joe now."

Joe was a thin-lipped, fair-haired young man. He received Maureen's explanations and introduction with a slight frown.

"Hoped we'd done with all that," he said disapprovingly. "Excusing me for saying so, sir. But it does no good to go raking up the past. That's what I feel. Maureen was unlucky, that's all there is to say about..."

"Yes," said Calgary. "I quite see your point of view."

"Of course," said Joe Clegg, "she ought never to have taken up with a chap like that. I knew he was no good. There'd been stories about him already. He'd been under a Probation Officer twice. Once they begin like that, they go on. First it's embezzling, or swindling women out of their savings and in the end it's murder."

"But this," said Calgary, "wasn't murder."

"So you say, sir," said Joe Clegg. He sounded himself completely unconvinced.

"Jack Argyle has a perfect alibi for the time the crime was committed. He was in my car being given a lift to Drymouth. So you see, Mr. Clegg, he could not possibly have committed this crime."

"Possibly not, sir," said Clegg. "But all the same it's a pity raking it all up, if you'll excuse me. After all, he's dead now, and it can't matter to him. And it starts the neighbours talking again and making them think things."

Calgary rose. "Well, perhaps from your point of view that is one way of looking at it. But there is such a thing as justice, you know, Mr. Clegg."

"I've always understood," said Clegg, "that an English trial was as fair a thing as can be."

"The finest system in the world can make a mistake," said Calgary.

"Justice is, after all, in the hands of men, and men are fallible."

After he had left them and was walking down the street he felt more disturbed in his own mind than he could have thought possible. Would it really have been better, he said to himself, if my memory of that day had never come back to me? After all, as that smug, tight-lipped fellow has just said, the boy is dead. He's gone before a judge who makes no mistake. Whether he's remembered as a murderer or merely as a petty

thief, it can make no difference to him now.

Then a sudden wave of anger rose in him. 'But it ought to make a difference to someone,' he thought. 'Someone ought to be glad. Why aren't they? This girl, well, I can understand it well enough. She may have had an infatuation for Jacko, but she never loved him. Probably isn't capable of loving anybody. But the others. His father. His sister, his nurse... They should have been glad. They should have spared a thought for him before they began to fear for themselves Yes. - someone should have cared.'

"Miss Argyle? At the second desk there." Calgary stood for a moment watching her.

Neat, small, very quiet and efficient. She was wearing a dark blue dress, with white collar and cuffs. Her blue-black hair was coiled neatly in her neck Her skin was dark, darker than an English skin could ever be. Her bones, too, were smaller. This was the half-caste child that Mrs. Argyle had taken as a daughter into the family.

The eyes that looked up and met his were dark, quite opaque. They were eyes that told you nothing. Her voice was low and sympathetic.

"Can I help you?"

"You are Miss Argyle? Miss Christina Argyle?"

"Yes."

"My name is Calgary, Arthur Calgary. You may have heard -"

"Yes. I have heard about you. My father wrote to me."

"I would like very much to talk to you."

She glanced up at the clock.

"The library closes in half an hour. If you could wait until then?"

"Certainly. Perhaps you would come and have a cup of tea with me somewhere?"

"Thank you." She turned from him to a man who had come up behind him. "Yes. Can I help you?"

Arthur Calgary moved away. He wandered round, examining the

contents of the shelves, observant all the time of Tina Argyle. She remained the same, calm, competent, unperturbed. The half hour passed slowly for him, but at last a bell rang and she nodded to him.

"I will meet you outside in a few minutes' time."

She did not keep him waiting. She wore no hat, merely a thick dark coat. He asked her where they should go.

"I do not know Redmyn very well," he explained.

"There is a tea place near the Cathedral. It is not good, but for that reason it is less full than the others."

Presently they were established at a small table, and a desiccated bored waitress had taken their order with a complete lack of enthusiasm.

"It will not be a good tea," said Tina apologetically, "but I thought that perhaps you would like to be reasonably private."

"That is so. I must explain my reasons for seeking you out. You see, I have met the other members of your family, including, I may say, your brother Jacko's wife - widow. You were the only member of the family I had not met. Oh yes, and there is your married sister, of course."

"You feel it necessary to meet us all?"

It was said quite politely - but there was a certain detachment about her voice which made Calgary a little uncomfortable.

"Hardly as a social necessity," he agreed dryly. "And it is not mere curiosity." (But wasn't it?) "It is just that I wanted to express, personally, to all of you, my very deep regret that I failed to establish your brother's innocence at the time of the trial."

"I see..."

"If you were fond of him - Were you fond of him?"

She considered a moment, then said: "No. I was not fond of Jacko."

"Yet I hear from all sides that he had - great charm."

She said clearly, but without passion: "I distrusted and disliked him."

"You never had - forgive me - any doubts that he had killed your mother?" "It never occurred to me that there could be any other solution."

The waitress brought their tea. The bread and butter was stale, the jam a curious jellyfied substance, the cakes garish and unappetising. The tea was weak.

He sipped his and then said: "It seems -1 have been made to understand - that this information I have brought, which clears your brother of the charge of murder, may have repercussions that will not be so agreeable. It may bring fresh - anxieties to you all."

"Because the case will have to be reopened?"

"Yes. You have already thought about that?"

"My father seems to think it is inevitable."

"I am sorry. I am really sorry."

"Why are you sorry, Dr. Calgary?"

"I hate to be the cause of bringing fresh trouble upon you."

"But would you have been satisfied to remain silent?"

"You are thinking in terms of justice?"

"Yes. Weren't you?"

"Of course. Justice seemed to me to be very important. Now -1 am beginning to wonder whether there are things that are more

important."

"Such as?"

His thoughts flew to Hester.

"Such as - innocence, perhaps."

The opaqueness of her eyes increased. "What do you feel, Miss Argyle?"

She was silent for a moment or two, then she said: "I am thinking of those words in Magna Carta. 'To no man will we refuse justice.'"

"I see." he said. "That is your answer."