Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie [62]
“How can I possibly know?” said Mary.
“Well, perhaps you can’t know,” said Philip, “but you might have a very good idea—if you thought.”
“I tell you I refuse to think about the thing at all.”
“I wonder why … Is that just distaste? Or is it—perhaps—because you do know? Perhaps in your own cool, calm mind you’re quite sure … So sure that you don’t want to think about it, that you don’t want to tell me? Is it Hester you’ve got in mind?”
“Why on earth should Hester want to kill Mother?”
“No real reason, is there?” said Philip meditatively. “But you know, you do read of those things. A son or a daughter fairly well looked after, indulged, and then one day some silly little thing happens. Fond parent refuses to stump up for the cinema or for buying a new pair of shoes or says when you’re going out with the boy friend you’ve got to be in at ten. It mayn’t be anything very important but it seems to set a match to a train that’s already laid, and suddenly the adolescent in question has a brainstorm and up with a hammer or an axe, or possibly a poker, and that’s that. Always hard to explain, but it happens. It’s the culmination of a long train of repressed rebellion. That’s a pattern which would fit Hester. You see, with Hester the trouble is that one doesn’t know what goes on in that rather lovely head of hers. She’s weak, of course, and she resents being weak. And your mother was the sort of person who would make her feel conscious of her weakness. Yes,” said Philip, leaning forward with some animation, “I think I could make out quite a good case for Hester.”
“Oh, will you stop talking about it,” cried Mary.
“Oh, I’ll stop talking,” said Philip. “Talking won’t get me anywhere. Or will it? After all, one has to decide in one’s own mind what the pattern of the murder might be, and apply that pattern to each of the different people concerned. And then when you’ve got it taped out the way it must have been, then you start laying your little pitfalls and see if they tumble into them.”
“There were only four people in the house,” said Mary. “You speak as though there were half a dozen or more. I agree with you that Father couldn’t possibly have done it, and it’s absurd to think that Hester could have any real reason for doing anything of that kind. That leaves Kirsty and Gwenda.”
“Which of them do you prefer?” asked Philip, with faint mockery in his tone.
“I can’t really imagine Kirsty doing such a thing,” said Mary. “She’s always been so patient and good-tempered. Really quite devoted to Mother. I suppose she could go queer suddenly. One does hear of such thing, but she’s never seemed at all queer.”
“No,” said Philip thoughtfully, “I’d say Kirsty is a very normal woman, the sort of woman who’d have liked a normal woman’s life. In a way she’s something of the same type as Gwenda, only Gwenda is good-looking and attractive and poor old Kirsty is plain as a currant bun. I don’t suppose any man’s ever looked at her twice. But she’d have liked them to. She’d have liked to have fallen in love and married. It must be pretty fair hell to be born a woman and to be born plain and unattractive, especially if that isn’t compensated for by having any special talent or brain. The truth is she’d been here far too long. She ought to have left after the war, gone on with her profession as masseuse. She might have hooked some well off elderly patient.”
“You’re like all men,” said Mary. “You think women think of nothing but getting married.”
Philip grinned.
“I still think it’s all women’s first choice,” he said. “Hasn’t Tina any boy friends, by the way?”
“Not that I know of,” said Mary. “But she doesn’t talk much about herself.”
“No, she’s a quiet little mouse, isn’t she? Not exactly pretty, but very graceful. I wonder what she knows about this business?”
“I don’t suppose she knows anything,” said Mary.
“Don’t you?” said Philip. “I do.”
“Oh, you just imagine things,” said Mary.
“I’m not imagining this. Do you know what the girl said? She said she hoped she didn’t know anything. Rather a curious