Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie [27]
“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….”
Seven
Dr. MacMaster was an old man with bushy eyebrows, shrewd grey eyes and a pugnacious chin. He leaned back in his shabby armchair and studied his visitor carefully. He found that he liked what he saw.
On Calgary’s side also there was a feeling of liking. For the first time almost, since he had come back to England, he felt that he was talking to someone who appreciated his own feelings and point of view.
“It’s very good of you to see me, Dr. MacMaster,” he said.
“Not at all,” said the doctor. “I’m bored to death since I retired from practice. Young men of my own profession tell me I must sit here like a dummy taking care of my groggy heart, but don’t think it comes natural to me. It doesn’t. I listen to the wireless, blah—blah—blah—and occasionally my housekeeper persuades me to look at television, flick, flick, flick. I’ve been a busy man, run off my feet all my life. I don’t take kindly to sitting still. Reading tires my eyes. So don’t apologize for taking up my time.”
“The first thing I’ve got to make you understand,” said Calgary, “is why I’m still concerning myself over all this. Logically speaking, I suppose, I’ve done what I came to do—told the unpalatable fact of my concussion and loss of memory, vindicated the boy’s character. After that, the only sane and logical thing to do would be to go away and try to forget about it all. Eh? Isn’t that right?”
“Depends,” said Dr. MacMaster. “Something worrying you?” he asked in the ensuing pause.
“Yes,” said Calgary. “Everything worries me. You see, my news was not received as I thought it would be.”
“Oh, well,” said Dr. MacMaster, “nothing odd in that. Happens every day. We rehearse a thing beforehand in our own minds, it doesn’t matter what it is, consultation with another practitioner, proposal of marriage to a young lady, talk with your boy before going back to school—when the thing comes off, it never goes as you thought it would. You’ve thought it out, you see; all the things that you are going to say and you’ve usually made up your mind what the answers are going to be. And, of course, that’s what throws you off every time. The answers never are what you think they will be. That’s what’s upset you, I suppose?”
“Yes,” said Calgary.
“What did you expect? Expected them to be all over you?”
“I expected”—he considered a moment—“blame? Perhaps. Resentment? Very likely. But also thankfulness.”
MacMaster grunted. “And there’s no thankfulness, and not as much resentment as you think there ought to be?”
“Something like that,” Calgary confessed.
“That’s because you didn’t know the circumstances until you got there. Why have you come to me, exactly?”
Calgary said slowly:
“Because I want to understand more about the family. I only know the acknowledged facts. A very fine and unselfish woman doing her best for her adopted children, a public-spirited woman, a fine character. Set against that, what’s called, I believe, a problem child—a child that goes wrong. The young delinquent. That’s all I know. I don’t know anything else. I don’t know anything about Mrs. Argyle herself.”
“You’re quite right,” said MacMaster. “You’re putting your finger on the thing that matters. If you think it over, you know, that’s always the interesting part of any murder. What the person was like who was murdered. Everybody’s always so busy inquiring into the mind of the murderer. You’ve been thinking, probably, that Mrs. Argyle was the sort of woman who shouldn’t have been murdered.”
“I should imagine that everyone felt that.”
“Ethically,” said MacMaster, “you’re quite right. But you know”—he rubbed his nose—“isn’t it the Chinese who held that beneficence is to be accounted a sin rather than a virtue?