Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie [25]
“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 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. “Excuse 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 it—”
“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