Ordeal by Innocence

Chapter 8
Hester Argyle was looking at herself in the glass. There was little vanity in her gaze. It was more an anxious questioning with behind it the humility of one who has never really been sure of herself. She pushed up her hair from her forehead, pulled it to one side and frowned at the result. Then, as a face appeared behind hers in the mirror, she started, flinched and swung round apprehensively.

"Ah," said Kirsten Lindstrom, "you are afraid!" "What do you mean, afraid, Kirsty?"

"You are afraid of me. You think that I come up behind you quietly and that perhaps I shall strike you down."

"Oh, Kirsty, don't be so foolish. Of course I wouldn't think anything like that."

"But you did think it," said the other. "And you are right, too, to think such things. To look at the shadows, to start when you see something that you do not quite understand. Because there is something here in this house to be afraid of. We know that now."

"At any rate, Kirsty darling," said Hester, "I needn't be afraid of you."

"How do you know?" said Kirsten Lindstrom. "Did I not read in the paper a short while back of a woman who had lived with another woman for years, and then one day suddenly she kills her. Suffocates her. Tries to scratch her eyes out. And why? Because, she tells the police very gently, for some time she has seen that the devil is inhabiting the woman. She has seen the devil looking out of the other woman's eyes and she knows that she must be strong and brave and kill the devil?"

"Oh, well, I remember that," said Hester. "But that woman was mad."

"Ah," said Kirsten. "But she did not know herself that she was mad. And she did not seem mad to those round her, because no one knew what was going on in her poor, twisted mind. And so I say to you, you do not know what is going on in my mind. Perhaps I am mad. Perhaps I looked one day at your mother and thought that she was Anti-Christ and that I would kill her."

"But, Kirsty, that's nonsense! Absolute nonsense."

Kirsten Lindstrom sighed and sat down.

"Yes," she admitted, "it is nonsense. I was very fond of your mother. She was good to me, always. But what I am trying to say to you, Hester, and what you have got to understand and believe, is that you cannot say 'nonsense' to anything or anyone. You cannot trust me or anybody else."

Hester turned round and looked at the other woman. "I really believe you're serious," she said.

"I am very serious," said Kirsten. "We must all be serious and we must bring things out into the open. It is no good pretending that nothing has happened. That man who came here. I wish he had not come, but

he did, and now he has made it, I understand, quite plain that Jacko was not a murderer. Very well then, someone else is a murderer, and that someone else must be one of us."

"No, Kirsty, no. It could have been someone who -" "Who what?"

"Well, who wanted to steal something, or who had a grudge against Mother for some reason in the past."

"You think your mother would let that someone in?"

"She might," said Hester. "You know what she was like. If somebody came with a hard luck story, if someone came to tell her about some child that was being neglected or ill-treated. Don't you think Mother would have let that person in and taken them to her room and listened to what they had to say?"

"It seems to me very unlikely," said Kirsten. "At least it seems to me unlikely that your mother would sit down at a table and let that person pick up a poker and hit her on the back of the head. No, she was at her ease, confident, with someone she knew in the room."

"I wish you wouldn't, Kirsty," cried Hester. "Oh, I wish you wouldn't. You're bringing it so near, so close."

"Because it is near, it is close. No, I will not say any more now, but I have warned you that though you think you know someone well, though you may think you trust them, you cannot be sure. So be on your guard. Be on your guard against me and against Mary and against your father and against Gwenda Vaughan."

"How can I go on living here and suspecting everybody?"

"If you will take my advice it will be better for you to leave this house."

"I can't just now."

"Why not? Because of the young doctor?"

"I don't know what you mean, Kirsty." Colour flamed up in Hester's cheeks.

"I mean Dr. Craig. He is a very nice young man. A sufficiently good doctor, amiable, conscientious. You could do worse. But all the same I think it would be better if you left here and went away."

"The whole thing's nonsense," Hester cried angrily, "nonsense, nonsense, nonsense.

"Oh, how I wish Dr. Calgary had never come here."

"So do I," said Kirsten, "with all my heart."

II

Leo Argyle signed the last of the letters which Gwenda Vaughan placed in front of him.

"Is that the last?" he asked.

"Yes."

"We've not done too badly today."

After a minute or two when Gwenda had stamped and stacked the letters, she asked: "Isn't it about time that you - took that trip abroad?"

"Trip abroad?"

Leo Argyle sounded very vague. Gwenda said: "Yes. Don't you remember you were going to Rome and to Siena."

"Oh, yes, yes, so I was."

"You were going to see those documents from the archives that Cardinal Massilini wrote to you about."

"Yes, I remember."

"Would you like me to make the reservations by air, or would you rather go by train?"

As though coming back from a long way away, Leo looked at her and smiled faintly.

"You seem very anxious to get rid of me, Gwenda," he said. "Oh no, darling, oh no."

She came quickly across and knelt down by his side. "I never want you to leave me, never. But - but I think - oh, I think it would be better if you went away from here after - after..."

"After last week?" said Leo. "After Dr. Calgary's visit?"

"I wish he hadn't come here," said Gwenda. "I wish things could have been left as they were."

"With Jacko unjustly condemned for something he didn't do?"

"He might have done it," said Gwenda. "He might have done it any time, and it's a pure accident, I think, that he didn't do it."

"It's odd," said Leo, thoughtfully. "I never really could believe he did do it. I mean, of course, I had to give in to the evidence - but it seemed to me so unlikely."

"Why? He always had a terrible temper, didn't he?"

"Yes. Oh, yes. He attacked other children. Usually children rather smaller than himself. I never really felt that he would have attacked Rachel."

"Why not?"

"Because he was afraid of her," said Leo. "She had great authority, you know. Jacko felt it just like everybody else."

"But don't you think," said Gwenda, "that that was just why -1 mean -" She paused.

Leo looked at her questioningly. Something in his glance made the colour come up into her cheeks. She turned away, went over to the fire and knelt down in front of it with her hands to the blaze. "Yes," she thought to herself, "Rachel had authority all right. So pleased with herself, so sure of herself, so much the queen bee bossing us all. Isn't that enough to make one want to take a poker, to make one want to strike her down, to silence her once and for all? Rachel was always right, Rachel always knew best, Rachel always got her own way."

She got up abruptly.

"Leo," she said. "Couldn't we - couldn't we be married quite soon instead of waiting until March?"

Leo looked at her. He was silent for a moment, and then he said: "No, Gwenda, no. I don't think it would be a good plan."

"Why not?"

"I think," said Leo, "it would be a pity to rush into anything."

"What do you mean?"

She came across to him. She knelt down again beside him.

"Leo, what do you mean? You must tell me."

He said: "My dear, I just think that we mustn't, as I said, rush into anything."

"But we will be married in March, as we planned?"

"I hope so... Yes, I hope so."

"You don't speak as though you were sure Leo, don't you care any more?"

"Oh, my dear," his hands rested on her shoulders, "of course I care. You mean everything in the world to me."

"Well, then," said Gwenda impatiently.

"No." He got up. "No. Not yet. We must wait. We must be sure."

"Sure of what?"

He did not answer. She said: "You don't think - you can't think -" Leo said: "I -1 don't think anything."

The door opened and Kirsten Lindstrom came in with a tray which she

put down on the desk.

"Here is your tea, Mr. Argyle. Shall I bring another cup for you, Gwenda, or will you join the others downstairs?"

Gwenda said: "I will come down to the dining-room. I'll take these letters. They ought to go off."

With slightly unsteady hands she picked up the letters Leo had just signed and went out of the room carrying them. Kirsten Lindstrom looked after her, then she looked back at Leo.

"What have you said to her?" she demanded. "What have you done to upset her?"

"Nothing," said Leo. His voice was tired. "Nothing at all."

Kirsten Lindstrom shrugged her shoulders. Then, without another word, she went out of the room. Her unseen, unspoken criticism, however, could be felt. Leo sighed, leaning back in his chair. He felt very tired. He poured out his tea but he did not drink it. Instead, he sat there in his chair staring unseeingly across the room, his mind busy in the past.

The social club he had been interested in, in the East End of London... It was there that he had first met Rachel Konstam. He could see her now clearly in his mind's eye. A girl of medium height, stocky in build, wearing what he had not appreciated at the time were very expensive

clothes, but wearing them with a dowdy air. A round-faced girl, serious, warm-hearted, with an eagerness and a naivety which had appealed to him. So much that needed doing, so much that was worth

doing!

She had poured out words eagerly, rather incoherently, and his heart had warmed to her. For he, too, had felt that there was much that needed doing, much that was worth doing; though he himself had a gift of natural irony that made him doubtful whether work worth doing was always as successful as it ought to be. But Rachel had had no doubts. If you did this, if you did that, if such and such an institution were endowed, the beneficial results would follow automatically.

She had never allowed, he saw now, for human nature. She had seen people always as cases, as problems to be dealt with. She had never seen that each human being was different, would react differently, had its own peculiar idiosyncrasies. He had said to her then, he remembered, not to expect too much. But she had always expected too much, although she had immediately disclaimed his accusation. She had always expected too much, and so always she had been disappointed. He had fallen in love with her quite quickly, and had been agreeably surprised to fred out that she was the daughter of wealthy parents.

They had planned their life together on a basis of high thinking and not precisely plain living. But he could see now clearly what it was that had principally attracted him to her. It was her warmth of heart. Only, and there was the tragedy, that warmth of heart had not really been for him. She had been in love with him, yes. But what she had really wanted from him and from life was children. And the children had not come.

They had visited doctors, reputable doctors, disreputable doctors, even quacks, and the verdict in the end had been one she was forced

to accept. She would never have children of her own. He had been sorry for her, very sorry, and he had acquiesced quite willingly in her suggestion that they should adopt a child. They were already in touch with adoption societies when on the occasion of a visit to New York their car had knocked down a child running out from a tenement in the poorer quarter of the city.

Rachel had jumped out and knelt down in the street by the child who was only bruised, not hurt; a beautiful child, golden-haired and blue- eyed. Rachel had insisted on taking her to hospital to make sure there was no injury. She'd interviewed the child's relations; a slatternly aunt and the aunt's husband who obviously drank.

It was clear that they had no feeling for the child they had taken in to live with them since her own parents were dead. Rachel had suggested that the child should come and stay with them for a few days, and the woman had agreed with alacrity.

"Can't look after her properly here," she'd said.

So Mary had been taken back to their suite at the hotel. The child had obviously enjoyed the soft bed and the luxurious bathroom. Rachel had bought her new clothes. Then the moment had come when the child had said: "I don't want to go home. I want to stay here with you."

Rachel had looked at him, looked at him with a sudden passion of longing and delight. She had said to him as soon as they were alone:

"Let's keep her. It'll easily be arranged. We'll adopt her. She'll be our own child. That woman'll be only too pleased to be rid of her."

He had agreed easily enough. The child seemed quiet, well-behaved, docile. She'd obviously no feeling for the aunt and uncle with whom she lived. If this would make Rachel happy, they'd go, ahead. Lawyers were consulted, papers were signed and henceforth Mary

O'Shaughnessy was known as Mary Argyle, and sailed with them for Europe. He had thought that at last poor Rachel would be happy. And she had been happy. Happy in an excited, almost feverish kind of way, doting on Mary, giving her every kind of expensive toy. And Mary had accepted placidly, sweetly. And yet, Leo thought, there had always been something that disturbed him a little. The child's easy acquiescence. Her lack of any kind of homesickness for her own place and people. True affection, he hoped, would come later. He could see no real signs of it now. Acceptance of benefits, complacence, enjoyment of all that was provided. But of love for her new adopted mother? No, he had not seen that.

It was from that time onwards, Leo thought, that he had somehow managed to slip to the background of Rachel Argyle's life. She was a woman who was by nature a mother, not a wife. Now with the acquiring of Mary, it was as though her maternal longings were not so much fulfilled as stimulated. One child was not enough for her.

All her enterprises from now on were connected with children. Her interest lay in orphanages, in endowments for crippled children, in cases of backward children, spastics, orthopaedics - always children. It was admirable. He felt all along that it was very admirable, but it had become the centre of her life. Little by little he began to indulge in his own activities. He began to go more deeply into the historical background of economics, which had always interested him. He withdrew more and more into his library. He engaged in research, in the writing of short, well phrased monographs. His wife, busy, earnest, happy, ran the house and increased her activities. He was courteous and acquiescent. He encouraged her.

"That is a very fine project, my dear."

"Yes, yes, I should certainly go ahead with that."

Occasionally a word of caution was slipped in.

"You want, I think, to examine the position very thoroughly before you commit yourself. You mustn't be carried away."

She continued to consult him, but sometimes now it was almost perfunctory. As time went on she was more and more an authoritarian. She knew what was right, she knew what was best. Courteously he withdrew his criticism and his occasional admonitions.

Rachel, he thought, needed no help from him, needed no love from him. She was busy, happy, terrifically energetic.

Behind the hurt that he could not help feeling, there was also, queerly enough, a sense of pity for her. It was as though he knew that the path she was pursuing might be a perilous one.

On the outbreak of war in 1939, Mrs. Argyle's activities were immediately redoubled. Once she had the idea of opening a war nursery for children from the London slums, she was in touch with many influential people in London. The Ministry of Health was quite willing to co-operate and she had looked for and found a suitable house for her purpose. A newly built, up to date, house in a remote part of England likely to be free from bombing.

There she could accommodate up to eighteen children between the ages of two and seven. The children came not only from poor homes but also from unfortunate ones. They were orphans, or illegitimate children whose mothers had no intention of being evacuated with them and who were bored with looking after them. Children from homes where they had been ill-treated and neglected. Three or four of the children were cripples. For orthopaedic treatment she engaged as well as a staff of domestic workers, a Swedish masseuse and two fully trained hospital nurses. The whole thing was done not only on a comfortable but on a luxurious basis. Once he remonstrated with her.

"You mustn't forget, Rachel, these children will have to go back to the background from which we took them. You mustn't make it too difficult for them."

She had replied warmly: "Nothing's too good for these poor mites. Nothing!" He had urged, "Yes, but they've got to go back, remember."

But she had waved that aside. "It mayn't be necessary. It may - we'll have to see in the future."

The exigencies of war had soon brought changes. The hospital nurses, restive at looking after perfectly healthy children when there was real nursing work to be done, had frequently to be replaced. In the end one elderly hospital nurse and Kirsten Lindstrom were the only two left. The domestic help failed and Kirsten Lindstrom had come to the rescue there also. She had worked with great devotion and

selflessness.

And Rachel Argyle had been busy and happy. There had been, Leo remembered, moments of occasional bewilderment. The day when

Rachel, puzzled at the way one small boy, Micky, was slowly losing weight, his appetite failing, had called in the doctor. The doctor could find nothing wrong but had suggested to Mrs. Argyle that the child might be homesick. Quickly she'd rebuffed the idea.

"That's impossible! You don't know the home he has come from. He was knocked about, ill-treated. It must have been hell for him."

"All the same," Dr. MacMaster had said, "all the same, I shouldn't be surprised. The thing is to get him to talk."

And one day Micky had talked. Sobbing in his bed, he cried out, pushing Rachel away with his fists: "I want to go home. I want to go home to our Mom and our Ernie."

Rachel was upset, almost incredulous.

"He can't want his mother. She didn't care tuppence for him. She knocked him about whenever she was drunk."

And he had said gently: "But you're up against nature, Rachel. She is his mother and he loves her."

"She was no kind of a mother!"

"He is her own flesh and blood. That's what he feels. That's what nothing can replace."

And she had answered: "But by now, surely he ought to look on me as his mother."

Poor Rachel, thought Leo. Poor Rachel, who could buy so many things... Not selfish things, not things for herself; who could give to unwanted children love, care, a home. All these things she could buy for them, but not their love for her.

Then the war had ended. The children had begun to drift back to London, claimed by parents or relatives. But not all of them. Some of them had remained unwanted and it was then that Rachel had said:

"You know, Leo, they're like our own children now. This is the moment when we can have a real family of our own. Four - five of these children can stay with us. We'll adopt them, provide for them and they'll really be our children."

He had felt a vague uneasiness, why he did not quite know. It was not that he objected to the children, but he had felt instinctively the falseness of it. The assumption that it was easy to make a family of one's own by artificial means.

"Don't you think," he had said, "that it's rather a risk?"

But she had replied: "A risk? What does it matter if it is a risk? It's worth doing."

Yes, he supposed it was worth doing, only he was not quite as sure as she was. By now he had grown so far away, so aloof in some cold misty region of his own, that it was not in him to object. He said as he had said so many times: "You must do as you please, Rachel."

She had been full of triumph, full of happiness, making her plans, consulting solicitors, going about things in her usual businesslike way. And so she had acquired her family. Mary, that eldest child brought from New York; Micky, the homesick boy who had cried himself to sleep for so many nights, longing for his slum home and his negligent, bad-tempered mother; Tina, the graceful dark half-caste child whose mother was a prostitute and whose father had been a Lascar seaman.

Hester, whose young Irish mother had borne an illegitimate child and who wanted to start life again. And Jacko, the engaging, monkey- faced little boy whose antics made them all laugh, who could always talk himself out of punishment, and charm extra sweets even from that disciplinarian, Miss Lindstrom. Jacko, whose father was serving a prison sentence and whose mother had gone off with some other man.

Yes, Leo thought, surely it was a worth-while job to take these children, to give them the benefits of a home and love and a father and mother. Rachel, he thought, had had a right to be triumphant. Only it hadn't worked out quite the way it was supposed to do... For these children were not the children that he and Rachel would have had. Within them ran none of the blood of Rachel's hardworking thrifty forebears, none of the drive and ambition by which the less reputable members of her family had gained their assured place in society, none of the vague kindliness and integrity of mind that he remembered in his own father and grandfather and grandmother. None of the intellectual brilliance of his grandparents on the other side.

Everything that environment could do was done for them. It could do a great deal, but it could not do everything. There had been those seeds of weakness which had brought them to the nursery in the first place, and under stress those seeds might bear flower. That was exemplified very fully in Jacko. Jacko, the charming, agile Jacko, with his merry quips, his charm, his easy habit of twisting everyone round his finger, was essentially of a delinquent type. It showed very early in childish thieving, in lies; all things that were put down to his original bad upbringing. Things that could be, Rachel said, easily ironed out. But they never did get ironed out.

His record at school was bad. He was sent down from the university and from then it was a long series of painful incidents where he and Rachel, doing the best they could, tried to give the boy the assurance of their love and their confidence, tried to find work that would be congenial to him where he could hope for success if he applied himself. Perhaps, Leo thought, they had been too soft with him. But no. Soft or hard, in Jacko's case, he thought the end would have been the same. What he wanted he must have. If he could not get it by any legitimate means he was quite willing to get it by any other means. He was not clever enough to be successful in crime, even petty crime. And so it had come to that last day when he had arrived broke, in fear of prison, angrily demanding money as his right, threatening. He had gone away, shouting out that he was coming back and that she had better have the money ready for him - or else! And so -Rachel had died. How remote all the past seemed to him. All those long years of the war with the boys and girls growing up. And he himself? Also remote, colourless. It was as though that robust energy and zest for life that was Rachel had eaten into him, leaving him limp and exhausted, needing, oh so badly, warmth and love.

Even now he could hardly remember when he had first become aware

how close these things were to him. Close at hand... Not proffered to him, but there. Gwenda... The perfect, helpful secretary, working for him, always at hand, kind, helpful. There was something about her that had reminded him of what Rachel had been when he first met her. The

same warmth, the same enthusiasm, the same warm-heartedness.

Only in Gwenda's case, that warmth, that warmheartedness, that enthusiasm were all for him. Not for the hypothetical children that she might one day have, just for him. It had been like warming one's hands at a fire... Hands that were cold and stiff with disuse. When had he first realised that she cared for him? It was difficult to say. It had not been any sudden revelation. But suddenly - one day, he had known that he loved her.

And that as long as Rachel lived, they could never marry. Leo sighed, sat up in his chair and drank his stone-cold tea.