Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie [45]
“It’s fantastic to think for a moment that Father murdered Mother!” said Mary. “Such things don’t happen.”
“Yes, they do. Read the papers.”
“Not our sort of people.”
“Murder is no snob, Polly. Then there’s Micky. Something’s eating him all right. He’s a queer, bitter lad. Tina seems in the clear, unworried, unaffected. But she’s a little poker face if ever there was one. Then there’s poor old Kirsty—”
A faint animation came into Mary’s face.
“Now that might be a solution!”
“Kirsty?”
“Yes. After all, she’s a foreigner. And I believe she’s had very bad headaches the last year or two … It seems much more likely that she should have done it than any of us.”
“Poor devil,” said Philip. “Don’t you see that that’s just what she is saying to herself? That we’ll all agree together that she’s the one? For convenience. Because she’s not a member of the family. Didn’t you see tonight that she was worried stiff? And she’s in the same position as Hester. What can she say or do? Say to us all: ‘I did not kill my friend and employer?’ What weight can that statement carry? It’s worse hell for her, perhaps, than for anyone else … Because she’s alone. She’ll be going over in her mind every word she’s ever said, every angry look she ever gave your mother—thinking that it will be remembered against her. Helpless to prove her innocence.”
“I wish you’d calm down, Phil. After all, what can we do about it?”
“Only try to find out the truth.”
“But how is that possible?”
“There might be ways. I’d rather like to try.”
Mary looked uneasy.
“What sort of ways?”
“Oh, saying things—watching how people react—one could think up things”—he paused, his mind working—“things that would mean something to a guilty person, but not to an innocent one …” Again he was silent, turning ideas over in his mind. He looked up and said: “Don’t you want to help the innocent, Mary?”
“No.” The word came out explosively. She came over to him and knelt by his chair. “I don’t want you to mix yourself up in all this, Phil. Don’t start saying things and laying traps. Leave it all alone. Oh, for God’s sake, leave it alone!”
Philip’s eyebrows rose.
“We-ell,” he said. And he laid a hand on the smooth golden head.
III
Michael Argyle lay sleepless, staring into darkness.
His mind went round and round like a squirrel in a cage, going over the past. Why couldn’t he leave it behind him? Why did he have to drag the past with him all through his life? What did it all matter anyway? Why did he have to remember so clearly the frowsty cheerful room in the London slum, and he “our Micky.” The casual exciting atmosphere! Fun in the streets! Ganging up on other boys! His mother with her bright golden head (cheap rinse, he thought, in his adult wisdom), her sudden furies when she would turn and lambast him (gin, of course!) and the wild gaiety she had when she was in a good mood. Lovely suppers of fish and chips, and she’d sing songs—sentimental ballads. Sometimes they’d go to the pictures. There were always the Uncles, of course—that’s what he always had to call them. His own dad had walked out before he could remember him … But his mother wouldn’t stand for the Uncle of the day laying a hand on him. “You leave our Micky alone,” she’d say.
And then there had come the excitement of the war. Expecting Hitler’s bombers—abortive sirens. Moaning Minnies. Going down into the Tubes and spending the nights there. The fun of it! The whole street was there with their sandwiches and their bottles of pop. And trains rushing through practically all night. That had been life, that had! In the thick of things!
And then he’d come down here—to the country. A dead and alive place where nothing ever happened!
“You’ll come back, love, when it’s all over,” his mother had said, but lightly as though it wasn’t really true. She hadn’t seemed to care about his going. And why didn’t she come too? Lots of the kids in the street had been evacuated with their Mums. But his mother hadn’t wanted to go. She was going to