Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie [48]
Actually, there had been no difficulty at all. All that was needed was a show of affection; never easy for her, for she was not affectionate by disposition, but she had managed it. And there she was, established for life! A rich father and mother, clothes, cars, ships, aeroplanes, servants to wait on her, expensive dolls and toys. A fairy tale come true….
A pity that all those other children had had to be there, too. That was the war, of course. Or would it have happened anyway? That insatiable mother love! Really something unnatural in it. So animal.
She had always felt a faint contempt for her adopted mother. Stupid in any case to choose the children she had chosen. The under-privileged! Criminal tendencies like Jacko’s. Unbalanced like Hester. A savage like Micky. And Tina, a half-caste! No wonder they had all turned out badly. Though she couldn’t really blame them for rebelling. She, herself, had rebelled. She remembered her meeting with Philip, a dashing young pilot. Her mother’s disapproval. “These hurried marriages. Wait until the war is over.” But she hadn’t wanted to wait. She had as strong a will as her mother’s, and her father had backed her up. They had married, and the war had ended soon afterwards.
She had wanted to have Philip all to herself—to get away out of her mother’s shadow. It was Fate that had defeated her, not her mother. First the failure of Philip’s financial schemes and then that horrifying blow—polio of the paralytic type. As soon as Philip was able to leave hospital they had come to Sunny Point. It had seemed inevitable that they would have to make their home there. Philip himself had seemed to think it inevitable. He had gone through all his money and her allowance from the Trust was not so very big. She had asked for a larger one, but the answer had been that perhaps for a while it would be wise to live at Sunny Point. But she wanted Philip to herself, all to herself, she didn’t want him to be the last of Rachel Argyle’s “children.” She had not wanted a child of her own—she only wanted Philip.
But Philip himself had seemed quite agreeable to the idea of coming to Sunny Point.
“Easier for you,” he said. “And people always coming and going there makes a distraction. Besides, I always find your father very good company.”
Why didn’t he want only to be with her as she wanted only to be with him? Why did he crave for other company—her father’s, Hester’s?
And Mary had felt a wave of futile rage sweep over her. Her mother, as usual, would get her own way.
But she hadn’t got her own way … she had died.
And now it was going to be all raked up again. Why, oh, why?
And why was Philip being so trying about it all? Questioning, trying to find out, mixing himself up in what was none of his business?
Laying traps….
What kind of traps?
III
Leo Argyle watched the morning light fill the room slowly with dim grey light.
He had thought out everything very carefully.
It was quite clear to him—exactly what they were up against, he and Gwenda.
He lay looking at the whole thing as Superintendent Huish would look at it. Rachel coming in and telling them about Jacko—his wildness and his threats. Gwenda had tactfully gone into the next room, and he had tried to comfort Rachel, had told her she was quite right to have been firm, that helping Jacko in the past had done no good—that for better or worse he must take what was coming to him. And she had gone away easier in her mind.
And then Gwenda had come back into the room, and gathered up the letters for the post and had asked if there was anything that she could do, her voice saying more than the actual words. And he had thanked her and said no. And she had said good night and gone out of the room. Along the passage and down the stairs and past the room where Rachel was sitting at her desk and so out of the house with no one to watch her go….
And he himself had sat on alone in the library, and there had been