Ordeal by Innocence

‘Right,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Send him in, will you?’

Superintendent Huish was a tall, sad-looking man. His air of melancholy was so profound that no one would have believed that he could be the life and soul of a children’s party, cracking jokes and bringing pennies out of little boys’ ears, much to their delight. The Chief Constable said:

‘Morning, Huish, this is a pretty kettle of fish we’ve got here. What d’you think of it?’

Superintendent Huish breathed heavily and sat down in the chair indicated.

‘It seems as though we made a mistake two years ago,’ he said. ‘This fellow–what’s-his-name–’

The Chief Constable rustled his papers. ‘Calory–no, Calgary. Some sort of a professor. Absent-minded bloke, maybe? People like that often vague about times and all that sort of thing?’ There was perhaps a hint of appeal in his voice, but Huish did not respond. He said:

‘He’s a kind of scientist, I understand.’

‘So that you think we’ve got to accept what he says?’

‘Well,’ said Huish, ‘Sir Reginald seems to have accepted it, and I don’t suppose there’s anything would get past him.’ This was a tribute to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

‘No,’ said Major Finney, rather unwillingly. ‘If the DPP’s convinced, well I suppose we’ve just got to take it. That means opening up the case again. You’ve brought the relevant data with you, have you, as I asked?’

‘Yes, sir, I’ve got it here.’

The superintendent spread out various documents on the table.

‘Been over it?’ the Chief Constable asked.

‘Yes, sir, I went all over it last night. My memory of it was fairly fresh. After all, it’s not so long ago.’

‘Well, let’s have it, Huish. Where are we?’

‘Back at the beginning, sir,’ said Superintendent Huish. ‘The trouble is, you see, there really wasn’t any doubt at the time.’

‘No,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘It seemed a perfectly clear case. Don’t think I’m blaming you, Huish. I was behind you a hundred per cent.’

‘There wasn’t anything else really that we could think,’ said Huish thoughtfully. ‘A call came in that she’d been killed. The information that the boy had been there threatening her, the fingerprint evidence–his fingerprints on the poker, and the money. We picked him up almost at once and there the money was, in his possession.’

‘What sort of impression did he make on you at the time?’

Huish considered. ‘Bad,’ he said. ‘Far too cocky and plausible. Came reeling out with his times and his alibis. Cocky. You know the type. Murderers are usually cocky. Think they’re so clever. Think whatever they’ve done is sure to be all right, no matter how things go for other people. He was a wrong ’un all right.’

‘Yes,’ Finney agreed, ‘he was a wrong ’un. All his record goes to prove that. But were you convinced at once that he was a killer?’

The superintendent considered. ‘It’s not a thing you can be sure about. He was the type, I’d say, that very often ends up as a killer. Like Harmon in 1938. Long record behind him of pinched bicycles, swindled money, frauds on elderly women, and finally he does one woman in, pickles her in acid, gets pleased with himself and starts making a habit of it. I’d have taken Jacko Argyle for one of that type.’

‘But it seems,’ said the Chief Constable slowly, ‘that we were wrong.’

‘Yes,’ said Huish, ‘yes, we were wrong. And the chap’s dead. It’s a bad business. Mind you,’ he added, with sudden animation, ‘he was a wrong ’un all right. He may not have been a murderer–in fact he wasn’t a murderer, so we find now–but he was a wrong ’un.’

‘Well, come on, man,’ Finney snapped at him, ‘who did kill her? You’ve been over the case, you say, last night. Somebody killed her. The woman didn’t hit herself on the back of her head with the poker. Somebody else did. Who was it?’

Superintendent Huish sighed and leaned back in his chair.

‘I’m wondering if we’ll ever know,’ he said.

‘Difficult as all that, eh?’

‘Yes, because the scent’s cold and because there’ll be very little evidence to find and I should rather imagine that there never was very much evidence.’

‘The point being that it was someone in the house, someone close to her?’

‘Don’t see who else it could have been,’ said the superintendent. ‘It was someone there in the house or it was someone that she herself opened the door to and let in. The Argyles were the locking-up type. Burglar bolts on the windows, chains, extra locks on the front door. They’d had one burglary a couple of years before and it had made them burglar conscious.’ He paused and went on, ‘The trouble is, sir, that we didn’t look elsewhere at the time. The case against Jacko Argyle was complete. Of course, one can see now, the murderer took advantage of that.’

‘Took advantage of the fact that the boy had been there, that he’d quarrelled with her and that he’d threatened her?’

‘Yes. All that person had to do was to step in the room, pick up the poker in a gloved hand, from where Jacko had thrown it down, walk up to the table where Mrs Argyle was writing and biff her one on the head.’

Major Finney said one simple word:

‘Why?’

Superintendent Huish nodded slowly.

‘Yes, sir, that’s what we’ve got to find out. It’s going to be one of the difficulties. Absence of motive.’

‘There didn’t seem at the time,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘to be any obvious motive knocking about, as you might say. Like most other women who have property and a considerable fortune of their own, she’d entered into such various schemes as are legally permitted to avoid death duties. A beneficiary trust was already in existence, the children were all provided for in advance of her death. They’d get nothing further when she did die. And it wasn’t as though she was an unpleasant woman, nagging or bullying or mean. She’d lavished money on them all their lives. Good education, capital sums to start them in jobs, handsome allowances to them all. Affection, kindness, benevolence.’

‘That’s so, sir,’ agreed Superintendent Huish. ‘On the face of it there’s no reason for anyone to want her out of the way. Of course–’ He paused.

‘Yes, Huish?’

‘Mr Argyle, I understand, is thinking of remarrying. He’s marrying Miss Gwenda Vaughan, who’s acted as his secretary over a good number of years.’

‘Yes,’ said Major Finney thoughtfully. ‘I suppose there’s a motive there. One that we didn’t know about at the time. She’s been working for him for some years, you say. Think there was anything between them at the time of the murder?’

‘I should rather doubt it, sir,’ said Superintendent Huish. ‘That sort of thing soon gets talked about in a village. I mean, I don’t think there were any goings-on, as you might say. Nothing for Mrs Argyle to find out about or cut up rough about.’

‘No,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘but he might have wanted to marry Gwenda Vaughan quite badly.’

‘She’s an attractive young woman,’ said Superintendent Huish. ‘Not glamorous, I wouldn’t say that, but good-looking and attractive in a nice kind of way.’

‘Probably been devoted to him for years,’ said Major Finney. ‘These women secretaries always seem to be in love with their boss.’

‘Well, we’ve got a motive of a kind for those two,’ said Huish. ‘Then there’s the lady help, the Swedish woman. She mightn’t really have been as fond of Mrs Argyle as she appeared to be. There might have been slights or imagined slights; things she resented. She didn’t benefit financially by the death because Mrs Argyle had already bought her a very handsome annuity. She seems a nice, sensible kind of woman and not the sort you can imagine hitting anyone on the head with a poker! But you never know, do you? Look at the Lizzie Borden case.’

‘No,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘you never know. There’s no question of an outsider of any kind?’

‘No trace of one,’ said the superintendent. ‘The drawer where the money was pulled out. A sort of attempt had been made to make the room look as though a burglar had been there, but it was a very amateurish effort. Sort of thing that fitted in perfectly with young Jacko having tried to create that particular effect.’

‘The odd thing to me,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘is the money.’