Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie [37]
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.
Nine
Calgary had only been gone a few minutes when Dr. MacMaster received a second visitor. This one was well known to him and he greeted him with affection.
“Ah, Don, glad to see you. Come in and tell me what’s on your mind. There is something on your mind. I always know when your forehead wrinkles in that peculiar way.”
Dr. Donald Craig smiled at him ruefully. He was a good-looking serious young man who took himself and his work in a serious manner. The old retired doctor was very fond of his young successor though there were times when he wished that it was easier for Donald Craig to see a joke.
Craig refused the offer of a drink and came straight to the point.
“I’m badly worried, Mac.”
“Not more vitamin deficiencies, I hope,” said Dr. MacMaster. From his point of view vitamin deficiency had been a good joke. It had once taken a veterinary surgeon to point out to young Craig that the cat belonging to a certain child patient was suffering with an advanced case of ringworm.
“It’s nothing to do with the patients,” said Donald Craig. “It’s my own private affairs.”
MacMaster’s face changed immediately.
“I’m sorry, my boy. Very sorry. Have you had bad news?”
The young man shook his head.
“It’s not that. It’s—look here, Mac, I’ve got to talk to someone about it and you know them all, you’ve been here for years, you know all about them. And I’ve got to know too. I’ve got to know where I stand, what I’m up against.”
MacMaster’s bushy eyebrows rose slowly up his forehead.
“Let’s hear the trouble,” he said.
“It’s the Argyles. You know—I suppose everyone knows—that Hester Argyle and I—”
The old doctor nodded his head.
“A nice little understanding,” he said approvingly. “That’s the old-fashioned term they used to use, and it was a very good one.”
“I’m terribly in love with her,” Donald said simply, “and I think—oh, I’m sure—that she cares too. And now all this happens.”
A look of enlightenment came into the older doctor’s face.
“Ah yes! Free pardon for Jacko Argyle,” he said. “A free pardon that’s come too late for him.”
“Yes. That’s just what makes me feel—I know it’s an entirely wrong thing to feel, but I can’t help it—that it would have been better if—if this new evidence hadn’t come to light.”
“Oh, you’re not the only one who seems to feel that,” said MacMaster. “It’s felt, as far as I can find out, from the Chief Constable through the Argyle family down to the man who came back from the Antarctic and supplied the evidence.” He added: “He’s been here this afternoon.”
Donald Craig looked startled.
“Has he? Did he say anything?”
“What did you expect him to say?”
“Did he have any idea of who—”
Slowly Dr. MacMaster shook his head.
“No,” he said. “He’s no idea. How could he have—coming out of the blue and seeing them all for the first time? It seems,” he went on, “that nobody has any idea.”
“No. No, I suppose not.”
“What’s upset you so much, Don?”
Donald Craig drew a deep breath.
“Hester rang me up that evening when this fellow Calgary had been there. She and I were going into Drymouth after the surgery to hear a lecture on criminal types in Shakespeare.”
“Sounds particularly suitable,” said MacMaster.
“And then she rang up. Said she wouldn’t be coming. Said there had been news of a peculiarly upsetting type.”
“Ah. Dr. Calgary’s news.”
“Yes. Yes, although she didn’t mention him at the time. But she was very upset. She sounded—I can’t explain to you how she sounded.”
“Irish blood,” said MacMaster.
“She sounded altogether stricken, terrified. Oh, I can’t explain it.”
“Well, what do you expect?” the doctor asked. “She’s not yet twenty, is she?”
“But why is she so upset?