Ordeal by Innocence

She began to close the door.

‘Then you’d better write…’

‘I’m sorry, but I particularly want to see him. Are you–Miss Argyle?’

She admitted it grudgingly.

‘I’m Hester Argyle, yes. But my father doesn’t see people–not without an appointment. You’d better write.’

‘I’ve come a long way…’ She was unmoved.

‘They all say that. But I thought this kind of thing had stopped at last.’ She went on accusingly, ‘You’re a reporter, I suppose?’

‘No, no, nothing of the sort.’

She eyed him suspiciously as though she did not believe him.

‘Well, what do you want then?’

Behind her, some way back in the hall, he saw another face. A flat homely face. Describing it, he would have called it a face like a pancake, the face of a middle-aged woman, with frizzy yellowish grey hair plastered on top of her head. She seemed to hover, waiting, like a watchful dragon.

‘It concerns your brother, Miss Argyle.’

Hester Argyle drew in her breath sharply. She said, without belief, ‘Michael?’

‘No, your brother Jack.’

She burst out: ‘I knew it! I knew you’d come about Jacko! Why can’t you leave us in peace? It’s all over and finished with. Why go on about it?’

‘You can never really say that anything is finished.’

‘But this is finished! Jacko is dead. Why can’t you let him be? All that’s over. If you’re not a journalist, I suppose you’re a doctor, or a psychologist, or something. Please go away. My father can’t be disturbed. He’s busy.’

She began to close the door. In a hurry, Calgary did what he ought to have done at first, pulled out the letter from his pocket and thrust it towards her.

‘I have a letter here–from Mr Marshall.’

She was taken aback. Her fingers closed doubtfully on the envelope. She said uncertainly:

‘From Mr Marshall–in London?’

She was joined now suddenly by the middle-aged woman who had been lurking in the recesses of the hall. She peered at Calgary suspiciously and he was reminded of foreign convents. Of course, this should have been a nun’s face! It demanded the crisp white coif or whatever you called it, framed tightly round the face, and the black habit and veil. It was the face, not of a contemplative, but of the lay-sister who peers at you suspiciously through the little opening in the thick door, before grudgingly admitting you and taking you to the visiting parlour, or to Reverend Mother.

She said: ‘You come from Mr Marshall?’

She made it almost an accusation.

Hester was staring down at the envelope in her hand. Then, without a word, she turned and ran up the stairs.

Calgary remained on the doorstep, sustaining the accusing and suspicious glance of the dragon-cum-lay-sister.

He cast about for something to say, but he could not think of anything. Prudently, therefore, he remained silent.

Presently Hester’s voice, cool and aloof, floated down to them.

‘Father says he’s to come up.’

Somewhat unwillingly, his watchdog moved aside. Her expression of suspicion did not alter. He passed her, laid his hat on a chair, and mounted the stairs to where Hester stood waiting for him.

The inside of the house struck him as vaguely hygienic. It could almost, he thought, have been an expensive nursing home.

Hester led him along a passage and down three steps. Then she threw open a door and gestured to him to pass through it. She came in behind him, closing the door after her.

The room was a library, and Calgary raised his head with a sense of pleasure. The atmosphere of this room was quite different from the rest of the house. This was a room where a man lived, where he both worked and took his ease. The walls were lined with books, the chairs were large, rather shabby, but easeful. There was a pleasant disorder of papers on the desk, of books lying about on tables. He had a momentary glimpse of a young woman who was leaving the room by a door at the far end, rather an attractive young woman. Then his attention was taken by the man who rose and came to greet him, the open letter in his hand.

Calgary’s first impression of Leo Argyle was that he was so attenuated, so transparent, as hardly to be there at all. A wraith of a man! His voice when he spoke was pleasant, though lacking in resonance.

‘Dr Calgary?’ he said. ‘Do sit down.’

Calgary sat. He accepted a cigarette. His host sat down opposite him. All was done without hurry, as though in a world where time meant very little. There was a faint gentle smile on Leo Argyle’s face as he spoke, tapping the letter gently with a bloodless finger as he did so.

‘Mr Marshall writes that you have an important communication to make to us, though he doesn’t specify its nature.’ His smile deepened as he added: ‘Lawyers are always so careful not to commit themselves, aren’t they?’

It occurred to Calgary with a faint shock of surprise, that this man confronting him was a happy man. Not buoyantly or zestfully happy, as is the normal way of happiness–but happy in some shadowy but satisfactory retreat of his own. This was a man on whom the outer world did not impinge and who was contented that this should be so. He did not know why he should be surprised by this–but he was.

Calgary said:

‘It is very kind of you to see me.’ The words were a mere mechanical introduction. ‘I thought it better to come in person than to write.’ He paused–then said in a sudden rush of agitation, ‘It is difficult–very difficult…’

‘Do take your time.’

Leo Argyle was still polite and remote.

He leaned forward; in his gentle way he was obviously trying to help.

‘Since you bring this letter from Marshall, I presume that your visit has to do with my unfortunate son Jacko–Jack, I mean–Jacko was our own name for him.’

All Calgary’s carefully prepared words and phrases had deserted him. He sat here, faced with the appalling reality of what he had to tell. He stammered again.

‘It’s so terribly difficult…’

There was a moment’s silence, and then Leo said cautiously:

‘If it helps you–we’re quite aware that Jacko was–hardly a normal personality. Nothing that you have to tell us will be likely to surprise us. Terrible as the tragedy was, I have been fully convinced all along that Jacko was not really responsible for his actions.’

‘Of course he wasn’t.’ It was Hester, and Calgary started at the sound of her voice. He had momentarily forgotten about her. She had sat down on the arm of a chair just behind his left shoulder. As he turned his head, she leaned forward eagerly towards him.

‘Jacko was always awful,’ she said confidentially. ‘He was just the same as a little boy–when he lost his temper, I mean. Just caught up anything he could find and–and went for you…’