Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie [15]
“I thought, you see,” went on Calgary, “that that would be the end of it. I was prepared for a certain amount of—what shall I say—natural resentment on their part. Although concussion may be termed, I suppose, an Act of God, yet from their viewpoint they could be forgiven for that, as I say. But at the same time I hoped it would be offset by the thankfulness they would feel over the fact that Jack Argyle’s name was cleared. But things didn’t turn out as I anticipated. Not at all.”
“I see.”
“Perhaps, Mr. Marshall, you anticipated something of what would happen? Your manner, I remember, puzzled me when I was here before. Did you foresee the attitude of mind that I was going to encounter?”
“You haven’t told me yet, Dr. Calgary, what that attitude was.”
Arthur Calgary drew his chair forward. “I thought that I was ending something, giving—shall we say—a different end to a chapter already written. But I was made to feel, I was made to see, that instead of ending something I was starting something. Something altogether new. Is that a true statement, do you think, of the position?”
Mr. Marshall nodded his head slowly. “Yes,” he said, “it could be put that way. I did think—I admit it—that you were not realizing all the implications. You could not be expected to do so because, naturally, you knew nothing of the background or of the facts except as they were given in the law reports.”
“No. No, I see that now. Only too clearly.” His voice rose as he went on excitedly, “It wasn’t really relief they felt, it wasn’t thankfulness. It was apprehension. A dread of what might be coming next. Am I right?”
Marshall said cautiously: “I should think probably that you are quite right. Mind you, I do not speak of my own knowledge.”
“And if so,” went on Calgary, “then I no longer feel that I can go back to my work satisfied with having made the only amends that I can make. I’m still involved. I’m responsible for bringing a new factor into various people’s lives. I can’t just wash my hands of it.”
The lawyer cleared his throat. “That, perhaps, is a rather fanciful point of view, Dr. Calgary.”
“I don’t think it is—not really. One must take responsibility for one’s actions and not only one’s actions but for the result of one’s actions. Just on two years ago I gave a lift to a young hitchhiker on the road. When I did that I set in train a certain course of events. I don’t feel that I can disassociate myself from them.”
The lawyer still shook his head.
“Very well, then,” said Arthur Calgary impatiently. “Call it fanciful if you like. But my feelings, my conscience, are still involved. My only wish was to make amends for something it had been outside my power to prevent. I have not made amends. In some curious way I have made things worse for people who have already suffered. But I still don’t understand clearly why.”
“No,” said Marshall slowly, “no, you would not see why. For the past eighteen months or so you’ve been out of touch with civilization. You did not read the daily papers, the account of this family that was given in the newspapers. Possibly you would not have read them anyway, but you could not have escaped, I think, hearing about them. The facts are very simple, Dr. Calgary. They are not confidential. They were made public at the time. It resolves itself very simply into this. If Jack Argyle did not (and by your account he cannot have), committed the crime, then who did? That brings us back to the circumstances in which the crime was committed. It was committed between the hours of seven and seven-thirty on a November evening in a house where the deceased woman was surrounded by the members of her own family and household. The house was securely locked and shuttered and if anyone entered from outside, then the outsider must have been admitted by Mrs. Argyle herself or have entered with their own key. In other words, it must have been someone she knew. It resembles in some ways the conditions of the Borden case in America where Mr. Borden and his wife were struck down by blows of an