Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie [20]
The superintendent considered. “It’s not a thing you can be sure about. He was the type, I’d say, that very often ends up as a killer. Like Harmon in 1938. Long record behind him of pinched bicycles, swindled money, frauds on elderly women, and finally he does one woman in, pickles her in acid, gets pleased with himself and starts making a habit of it. I’d have taken Jacko Argyle for one of that type.”
“But it seems,” said the Chief Constable slowly, “that we were wrong.”
“Yes,” said Huish, “yes, we were wrong. And the chap’s dead. It’s a bad business. Mind you,” he added, with sudden animation, “he was a wrong ’un all right. He may not have been a murderer—in fact he wasn’t a murderer, so we find now—but he was a wrong ’un.”
“Well, come on, man,” Finney snapped at him, “who did kill her? You’ve been over the case, you say, last night. Somebody killed her. The woman didn’t hit herself on the back of her head with the poker. Somebody else did. Who was it?”
Superintendent Huish sighed and leaned back in his chair.
“I’m wondering if we’ll ever know,” he said.
“Difficult as all that, eh?”
“Yes, because the scent’s cold and because there’ll be very little evidence to find and I should rather imagine that there never was very much evidence.”
“The point being that it was someone in the house, someone close to her?”
“Don’t see who else it could have been,” said the superintendent. “It was someone there in the house or it was someone that she herself opened the door to and let in. The Argyles were the locking-up type. Burglar bolts on the windows, chains, extra locks on the front door. They’d had one burglary a couple of years before and it had made them burglar conscious.” He paused and went on, “The trouble is, sir, that we didn’t look elsewhere at the time. The case against Jacko Argyle was complete. Of course, one can see now, the murderer took advantage of that.”
“Took advantage of the fact that the boy had been there, that he’d quarrelled with her and that he’d threatened her?”
“Yes. All that person had to do was to step in the room, pick up the poker in a gloved hand, from where Jacko had thrown it down, walk up to the table where Mrs. Argyle was writing and biff her one on the head.”
Major Finney said one simple word:
“Why?”
Superintendent Huish nodded slowly.
“Yes, sir, that’s what we’ve got to find out. It’s going to be one of the difficulties. Absence of motive.”
“There didn’t seem at the time,” said the Chief Constable, “to be any obvious motive knocking about, as you might say. Like most other women who have property and a considerable fortune of their own, she’d entered into such various schemes as are legally permitted to avoid death duties. A beneficiary trust was already in existence, the children were all provided for in advance of her death. They’d get nothing further when she did die. And it wasn’t as though she was an unpleasant woman, nagging or bullying or mean. She’d lavished money on them all their lives. Good education, capital sums to start them in jobs, handsome allowances to them all. Affection, kindness, benevolence.”
“That’s so, sir,” agreed Superintendent Huish. “On the face of it there’s no reason for anyone to want her out of the way. Of course—” He paused.
“Yes, Huish?”
“Mr. Argyle, I understand, is thinking of remarrying. He’s marrying Miss Gwenda Vaughan, who’s acted as his secretary over a good number of years.”
“Yes,” said Major Finney thoughtfully. “I suppose there’s a motive there. One that we didn’t know about at the time. She’s been working for him for some years, you say. Think there was anything between them at the time of the murder?”
“I should rather doubt it, sir,” said Superintendent Huish. “That sort of thing soon gets talked about in a village. I mean, I don’t think there were any goings-on, as you might say. Nothing for Mrs. Argyle to find out about or cut up rough about.”
“No,” said the Chief Constable, “but he might have wanted to marry Gwenda Vaughan quite badly.”
“She’s an attractive young woman,” said Superintendent Huish. “Not glamorous,