Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie [70]
“I might have done,” said Hester. “I often felt like it. One does sometimes feel just mad with rage. One feels so futile, so—so helpless. Mother was always so calm and so superior and knew everything, and was right about everything. Sometimes I would think, ‘Oh! I would like to kill her.’” She looked at him. “Do you understand? Didn’t you ever feel like that when you were young?”
The last words gave Calgary a sudden pang, the same pang perhaps that he had felt when Micky in the hotel at Drymouth had said to him, “You look older!” “When he was young?” Did it seem so very long ago to Hester? He cast his mind back. He remembered himself at nine years old consulting with another small boy in the gardens of his prep school, wondering ingenuously what would be the best way to dispose of Mr. Warborough, their form master. He remembered the helplessness of rage that had consumed him when Mr. Warborough had been particularly sarcastic in his comments. That, he thought, was what Hester had felt too. But whatever he and young—what was his name now?—Porch, yes, Porch had been the boy’s name—although he and young Porch had consulted and planned, they had never taken any active steps to bring about the demise of Mr. Warborough.
“You know,” he said to Hester, “you ought to have got over those sort of feelings a good many years ago. I can understand them, of course.”
“It was just that Mother had that effect upon me,” said Hester. “I’m beginning to see now, you know, that it was my own fault. I feel that if only she’d lived a little longer, just lived till I was a little older, a little more settled, that—that we’d have been friends in a curious way. That I’d have been glad of her help and her advice. But—but as it was I couldn’t bear it; because, you see, it made me feel so ineffectual, so stupid. Everything I did went wrong and I could see for myself that the things I did were foolish things. That I’d only done them because I wanted to rebel, wanted to prove that I was myself. And I wasn’t anybody. I was fluid. Yes, that’s the word,” said Hester. “It’s exactly the word. Fluid. Never taking a shape for long. Just trying on shapes—shapes—shapes of other people that I admired. I thought, you see, if I ran away and went on the stage and had an affair with someone, that—”
“That you would feel yourself, or at any rate, feel somebody?”
“Yes,” said Hester. “Yes, that’s just it. And of course really I see now that I was just behaving like a silly child. But you don’t know how I wish, Dr. Calgary, that Mother was alive now. Because it’s so unfair—unfair on her, I mean. She did so much for us and gave us so much. We didn’t give her anything back. And now it’s too late.” She paused. “That’s why,” she said, with a sudden renewal of vigour, “I’ve determined to stop being silly and childish. And you’ll help me, won’t you?”
“I’ve already said I’ll do anything in the world to help you.”
She gave him a quick, rather lovely smile.
“Tell me,” he said, “exactly what has been happening.”
“Just what I thought would happen,” said Hester. “We’ve all been looking at each other and wondering and we don’t know. Father looks at Gwenda and thinks perhaps it was her. She looks at father and isn’t sure. I don’t think they’re going to get married now. It’s spoilt everything. And Tina thinks Micky had something to do with it. I don’t know why because he wasn’t there that evening. And Kirsten thinks I did it and tries to protect me. And Mary—that’s my older sister who you didn’t meet—Mary thinks Kirsten did it.”
“And who do you think did it, Hester?”
“Me?” Hester sounded startled.
“Yes, you,” said Calgary. “I think, you know, it’s rather important to know that.”
Hester spread out her hands. “I don’t know,” she wailed. “I just don’t know. I’m—it’s an awful thing to say—but I’m frightened of everybody. It’s as though behind each face there was another face. A—sinister sort of face that I don’t know. I don’t feel sure that Father’s Father, and Kirsten keeps saying that I shouldn’t trust anybody—not even her. And I look at Mary and I feel I don’t know