Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie [60]
“You don’t understand, Philip, about household things, and how difficult they are.”
“I don’t see that any of them are difficult unless you make them difficult. Anyway, I want to stop on.”
“Oh, Philip,” Mary spoke with exasperation, “I do so hate it here.”
“But why?”
“It’s so gloomy, so miserable and—and all that’s happened here. The murder and everything.”
“Now, come, Polly, don’t tell me you’re a mass of nerves over things of that kind. I’m sure you could take murder without turning a hair. No, you want to go home because you want to see to the brasses and dust the place and make sure no moths have got into your fur coat—”
“Moths don’t go into fur coats in winter,” said Mary.
“Well, you know what I mean, Polly. The general idea. But you see, from my point of view, it’s so much more interesting here.”
“More interesting than being in our own home?” Mary sounded both shocked and hurt.
Philip looked at her quickly.
“I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t put it very well. Nothing could be nicer than our own home, and you’ve made it really lovely. Comfortable, neat, attractive. You see, it’d be quite different if—if I were like I used to be. I mean, I’d have lots of things to do all day. I’d be up to my ears in schemes. And it would be perfect coming back to you and having our own home, talking about everything that had happened during the day. But you see, it’s different now.”
“Oh, I know it’s different in that way,” said Mary. “Don’t think I ever forget that, Phil. I do mind. I mind most terribly.”
“Yes,” said Philip, and he spoke almost between his teeth. “Yes, you mind too much, Mary. You mind so much that sometimes it makes me mind more. All I want is distraction and—no”—he held up his hand—“don’t tell me that I can get distraction from jigsaw puzzles and all the gadgets of occupational therapy and having people to come and give me treatment, and reading endless books. I want so badly sometimes to get my teeth into something! And here, in this house, there is something to get one’s teeth into.”
“Philip,” Mary caught her breath, “you’re not still harping on—on that idea of yours?”
“Playing at Murder Hunt?” said Philip. “Murder, murder, who did the murder? Yes, Polly, you’re not far off. I want desperately to know who did it.”
“But why? And how can you know? If somebody broke in or found the door open—”
“Still harping on the outsider theory?” asked Philip. “It won’t wash, you know. Old Marshall put a good face upon it. But actually he was just helping us to keep face. Nobody believes in that beautiful theory. It just isn’t true.”
“Then you must see, if it isn’t true,” Mary interrupted him, “if it isn’t true—if it was, as you put it, one of us—then I don’t want to know. Why should we know? Aren’t we—aren’t we a hundred times better not knowing?”
Philip Durrant looked up at her questioningly.
“Putting your head in the sand, eh, Polly? Haven’t you any natural curiosity?”
“I tell you I don’t want to know! I think it’s all horrible. I want to forget it and not think about it.”
“Didn’t you care enough for your mother to want to know who killed her?”
“What good would it do, knowing who killed her? For two years we’ve been quite satisfied that Jacko killed her.”
“Yes,” said Philip, “lovely the way we’ve all been satisfied.”
His wife looked at him doubtfully.
“I don’t—I really don’t know what you mean, Philip.”
“Can’t you see, Polly, that in a way this is a challenge to me? A challenge to my intelligence? I don’t mean that I’ve felt your mother’s death particularly keenly or that I was particularly fond of her. I wasn’t. She’d done her very best to stop you marrying me, but I bore her no grudge for that because I succeeded in carrying you off all right. Didn’t I, my girl? No, it’s not a wish for revenge, it’s not even a passion for justice. I think it’s—yes, mainly curiosity, though perhaps there’s a better side to it than that.”
“It’s the sort of thing you oughtn’t to meddle about with,” said Mary. “No good can come of your meddling about with it. Oh, Philip, please, please don’t. Let’s go home and forget all about