Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie [86]
“What has happened?”
“Philip has been killed.”
“Philip! Philip Durrant?”
Calgary sounded incredulous.
“Yes. And Tina, too—at least she isn’t dead yet. She’s in hospital.”
“Tell me,” he ordered.
She told him. He questioned and requestioned her narrowly until he got all the facts.
Then he said grimly:
“Hold on, Hester, I’m coming. I’ll be with you”—he looked at his watch—“in an hour’s time. I’ve got to see Superintendent Huish first.”
II
“What exactly do you want to know, Dr. Calgary?” asked Superintendent Huish, but before Calgary could speak the telephone rang on Huish’s desk and the superintendent picked it up. “Yes. Yes, speaking. Just a moment.” He drew a piece of paper towards him, picked up a pen and prepared to write. “Yes. Go ahead. Yes.” He wrote. “What? How do you spell that last word? Oh, I see. Yes, doesn’t seem to make much sense yet, does it? Right. Nothing else? Right. Thanks.” He replaced the receiver. “That was the hospital,” he said.
“Tina?” asked Calgary.
The superintendent nodded.
“She regained consciousness for a few minutes.”
“Did she say anything?” asked Calgary.
“I don’t really know why I should tell you that, Dr. Calgary.”
“I ask you to tell me,” said Calgary, “because I think that I can help you over this business.”
Huish looked at him consideringly.
“You’ve taken all this very much to heart, haven’t you, Dr. Calgary?” he said.
“Yes, I have. You see, I felt responsible for reopening the case. I even feel responsible for these two tragedies. Will the girl live?”
“They think so,” said Huish. “The blade of the knife missed the heart, but it may be touch and go.” He shook his head. “That’s always the trouble,” he said. “People will not believe that a murderer is unsafe. Sounds a queer thing to say, but there it is. They all knew there was a murderer in their midst. They ought to have told what they knew. The only safe thing if a murderer is about is to tell the police anything you know at once. Well, they didn’t. They held out on me. Philip Durrant was a nice fellow—an intelligent fellow; but he regarded this as a kind of game. He went poking about laying traps for people. And he got somewhere, or he thought he got somewhere. And somebody else thought he was getting somewhere. Result: I get a call to say he’s dead, stabbed through the back of the neck. That’s what comes of messing about with murder and not realizing its dangers.” He stopped and cleared his throat.
“And the girl?” asked Calgary.
“The girl knew something,” said Huish. “Something she didn’t want to tell. It’s my opinion,” he said, “she was in love with the fellow.”
“You’re talking about—Micky?”
Huish nodded. “Yes. I’d say, too, that Micky was fond of her, in a way. But being fond of anyone isn’t enough if you’re mad with fear. Whatever she knew was probably more deadly than she herself realized. That’s why, after she found Durrant dead and she came rushing out straight into his arms, he took his chance and stabbed her.”
“That’s merely conjecture on your part, isn’t it, Superintendent Huish?”
“Not entirely conjecture, Dr. Calgary. The knife was in his pocket.”
“The actual knife?”
“Yes. It had blood on it. We’re going to test it, but it’ll be her blood all right. Her blood and the blood of Philip Durrant!”
“But—it couldn’t have been.”
“Who says it couldn’t have been?”
“Hester. I rang her up and she told me all about it.”
“She did, did she? Well, the facts are very simple. Mary Durrant went down to the kitchen, leaving her husband alive, at ten minutes to four—at that time there were in the house Leo Argyle and Gwenda Vaughan in the library, Hester Argyle in her bedroom on the first floor, and Kirsten Lindstrom in the kitchen. Just after four o’clock, Micky and Tina drove up. Micky went into the garden and Tina went upstairs, following close on Kirsten’s foosteps, who had just gone up with coffee and biscuits for Philip. Tina stopped to speak to Hester, then went on to join Miss Lindstrom and together they found Philip dead.”
“And all this time Micky was in the garden. Surely that’s a perfect