Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie [9]
She spoke with displeasure.
“His memory must be cleared,” said Arthur Calgary.
“Fine sentiments! They are all very well. But you do not really think of what it all means. Men, they never think.” She stamped her foot. “I love them all. I came here, to help Mrs. Argyle, in 1940—when she started here a war nursery—for children whose homes had been bombed. Nothing was too good for those children. Everything was done for them. That is nearly eighteen years ago. And still, even after she is dead, I stay here—to look after them—to keep the house clean and comfortable, to see they get good food. I love them all—yes, I love them … and Jacko—he was no good! Oh yes, I loved him too. But—he was no good!”
She turned abruptly away. It seemed she had forgotten her offer to show him out. Calgary descended the stairs slowly. As he was fumbling with the front door which had a safety lock he did not understand, he heard light footsteps on the stairs. Hester came flying down them.
She unlatched the door and opened it. They stood looking at each other. He understood less than ever why she faced him with that tragic reproachful stare.
She said, only just breathing the words:
“Why did you come? Oh, why ever did you come?”
He looked at her helplessly.
“I don’t understand you. Don’t you want your brother’s name cleared? Don’t you want him to have justice?”
“Oh, justice!” She threw the word at him.
He repeated: “I don’t understand….”
“Going on so about justice! What does it matter to Jacko now? He’s dead. It’s not Jacko who matters. It’s us!”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not the guilty who matter. It’s the innocent.”
She caught his arm, digging her fingers into it.
“It’s we who matter. Don’t you see what you’ve done to us all?”
He stared at her.
Out of the darkness outside, a man’s figure loomed up.
“Dr. Calgary?” he said. “Your taxi’s here, sir. To drive you to Drymouth.”
“Oh—er—thank you.”
Calgary turned once more to Hester, but she had withdrawn into the house.
The front door banged.
Three
I
Hester went slowly up the stairs pushing back the dark hair from her high forehead. Kirsten Lindstrom met her at the top of the stairs.
“Has he gone?”
“Yes, he’s gone.”
“You have had a shock, Hester.” Kirsten Lindstrom laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Come with me. I will give you a little brandy. All this, it has been too much.”
“I don’t think I want any brandy, Kirsty.”
“Perhaps you do not want it, but it will be good for you.”
Unresisting, the young girl allowed herself to be steered along the passage and into Kirsten Lindstrom’s own small sitting room. She took the brandy that was offered her and sipped it slowly. Kirsten Lindstrom said in an exasperated voice:
“It has all been too sudden. There should have been warning. Why did not Mr. Marshall write first?”
“I suppose Dr. Calgary wouldn’t let him. He wanted to come and tell us himself.”
“Come and tell us himself, indeed! What does he think the news will do to us?”
“I suppose,” said Hester, in an odd, toneless voice, “he thought we should be pleased.”
“Pleased or not pleased, it was bound to be a shock. He should not have done it.”
“But it was brave of him, in a way,” said Hester. The colour came up in her face. “I mean, it can’t have been an easy thing to do. To come and tell a family of people that a member of it who was condemned for murder and died in prison was really innocent. Yes, I think it was brave of him—but I wish he hadn’t all the same,” she added.
“That—we all wish that,” said Miss Lindstrom briskly.
Hester looked at her with her interest suddenly aroused from her own preoccupation.
“So you feel that too, Kirsty? I thought perhaps it was only me.”
“I am not a fool,” said Miss Lindstrom sharply. “I can envisage certain possibilities that your Dr. Calgary does not seem to have thought about.”
Hester rose. “I must go to Father,” she said.
Kirsten Lindstrom agreed.
“Yes. He will have had time now to think what is best to be done.”
As Hester went into the library Gwenda Vaughan was busy with the telephone. Her father beckoned