Calgary said slowly: "I saw them both; I talked to them. I can't really believe that either of them -"
"I know," said MacMaster. "One can't believe, can one? And yet - one of that household did it, you know."
"You really think so?"
"I don't see what else there is to think. The police are fairly sure that it wasn't the work of an outsider, and the police are probably right."
"But which of them?" said Calgary.
MacMaster shrugged his shoulders. "One simply doesn't know."
"You've no idea yourself from your knowledge of them all?"
"Shouldn't tell you if I had," said MacMaster. "After all, what have I got to go on? Unless there's some factor that I've missed none of them seems a likely murderer to me. And yet -1 can't rule any one of them out as a possibility. No," he added slowly, "my view is that we shall never know. The police will make inquiries and all that sort of thing. They'll do their best, but to get evidence after this time and with so little to go upon -"
He shook his head. "No, I don't think that the truth will ever be known. There are cases like that, you know. One reads about them. Fifty - a hundred years ago, cases where one of three or four or five people must have done it but there wasn't enough evidence and no one's ever been able to say."
"Do you think it's going to be like that here?" "Well," said Dr. MacMaster, "yes, I do..."
Again he cast a shrewd look at Calgary. "And that's what's so terrible, isn't it?" he said.
"Terrible," said Calgary, "because of the innocent. That's what she said to me." "Who? Who said what to you?"
"The girl - Hester. She said I didn't understand that it was the innocent who mattered. It's what you've just been saying to me. That we shall never know -"
"- who is innocent?" The doctor finished for him. "Yes, if we could only know the truth. Even if it doesn't come to an arrest or trial or conviction. Just to know. Because otherwise -"
He paused.
"Yes?" said Calgary.
"Work it out for yourself," said Dr. MacMaster. "No -1 don't need to say that -you already have."
He went on: "It reminds me, you know, of the Bravo Case - nearly a hundred years ago now, I suppose, but books are still being written about it; making out a perfectly good case for his wife having done it, or Mrs. Cox having done it, or Dr. Gully - or even for Charles Bravo having taken the poison in spite of the Coroner's verdict. All quite plausible theories - but no one now can ever know the truth. And so Florence Bravo, abandoned by her family, died alone of drink, and Mrs. Cox, ostracised, and with three little boys, lived to be an old woman with most of the people she knew believing her to be a murderess, and Dr. Gully was ruined professionally and socially.
"Someone was guilty - and got away with it. But the others were innocent - and didn't get away with anything."
"That mustn't happen here," said Calgary. It mustn't!"
Chapter 8
Hester Argyle was looking at herself in the glass. There was little vanity in her gaze. It was more an anxious questioning with behind it the humility of one who has never really been sure of herself. She pushed up her hair from her forehead, pulled it to one side and frowned at the result. Then, as a face appeared behind hers in the mirror, she started, flinched and swung round apprehensively.
"Ah," said Kirsten Lindstrom, "you are afraid!" "What do you mean, afraid, Kirsty?"
"You are afraid of me. You think that I come up behind you quietly and that perhaps I shall strike you down."
"Oh, Kirsty, don't be so foolish. Of course I wouldn't think anything like that."
"But you did think it," said the other. "And you are right, too, to think such things. To look at the shadows, to start when you see something that you do not quite understand. Because there is something here in this house to be afraid of. We know that now."
"At any rate, Kirsty darling," said Hester, "I needn't be afraid of you."
"How do you know?" said Kirsten Lindstrom. "Did I not read in the paper a short while back of a woman who had lived with another woman for years, and then one day suddenly she kills her. Suffocates her. Tries to scratch her eyes out. And why? Because, she tells the police very gently, for some time she has seen that the devil is inhabiting the woman. She has seen the devil looking out of the other woman's eyes and she knows that she must be strong and brave and kill the devil?"
"Oh, well, I remember that," said Hester. "But that woman was mad."
"Ah," said Kirsten. "But she did not know herself that she was mad. And she did not seem mad to those round her, because no one knew what was going on in her poor, twisted mind. And so I say to you, you do not know what is going on in my mind. Perhaps I am mad. Perhaps I looked one day at your mother and thought that she was Anti-Christ and that I would kill her."
"But, Kirsty, that's nonsense! Absolute nonsense."
Kirsten Lindstrom sighed and sat down.
"Yes," she admitted, "it is nonsense. I was very fond of your mother. She was good to me, always. But what I am trying to say to you, Hester, and what you have got to understand and believe, is that you cannot say 'nonsense' to anything or anyone. You cannot trust me or anybody else."
Hester turned round and looked at the other woman. "I really believe you're serious," she said.
"I am very serious," said Kirsten. "We must all be serious and we must bring things out into the open. It is no good pretending that nothing has happened. That man who came here. I wish he had not come, but he did, and now he has made it, I understand, quite plain that Jacko was not a murderer. Very well then, someone else is a murderer, and that someone else must be one of us."
"No, Kirsty, no. It could have been someone who -" "Who what?"
"Well, who wanted to steal something, or who had a grudge against Mother for some reason in the past."
"You think your mother would let that someone in?"
"She might," said Hester. "You know what she was like. If somebody came with a hard luck story, if someone came to tell her about some child that was being neglected or ill-treated. Don't you think Mother would have let that person in and taken them to her room and listened to what they had to say?"
"It seems to me very unlikely," said Kirsten. "At least it seems to me unlikely that your mother would sit down at a table and let that person pick up a poker and hit her on the back of the head. No, she was at her ease, confident, with someone she knew in the room."
"I wish you wouldn't, Kirsty," cried Hester. "Oh, I wish you wouldn't. You're bringing it so near, so close."
"Because it is near, it is close. No, I will not say any more now, but I have warned you that though you think you know someone well, though you may think you trust them, you cannot be sure. So be on your guard. Be on your guard against me and against Mary and against your father and against Gwenda Vaughan."
"How can I go on living here and suspecting everybody?"
"If you will take my advice it will be better for you to leave this house."
"I can't just now."
"Why not? Because of the young doctor?"
"I don't know what you mean, Kirsty." Colour flamed up in Hester's cheeks.
"I mean Dr. Craig. He is a very nice young man. A sufficiently good doctor, amiable, conscientious. You could do worse. But all the same I think it would be better if you left here and went away."
"The whole thing's nonsense," Hester cried angrily, "nonsense, nonsense, nonsense.
"Oh, how I wish Dr. Calgary had never come here."
"So do I," said Kirsten, "with all my heart."
II
Leo Argyle signed the last of the letters which Gwenda Vaughan placed in front of him.
"Is that the last?" he asked.
"Yes."
"We've not done too badly today."
After a minute or two when Gwenda had stamped and stacked the letters, she asked: "Isn't it about time that you - took that trip abroad?"
"Trip abroad?"
Leo Argyle sounded very vague. Gwenda said: "Yes. Don't you remember you were going to Rome and to Siena."
"Oh, yes, yes, so I was."
"You were going to see those documents from the archives that Cardinal Massilini wrote to you about."
"Yes, I remember."
"Would you like me to make the reservations by air, or would you rather go by train?"
As though coming back from a long way away, Leo looked at her and smiled faintly.
"You seem very anxious to get rid of me, Gwenda," he said. "Oh no, darling, oh no."
She came quickly across and knelt down by his side. "I never want you to leave me, never. But - but I think - oh, I think it would be better if you went away from here after - after..."
"After last week?" said Leo. "After Dr. Calgary's visit?"
"I wish he hadn't come here," said Gwenda. "I wish things could have been left as they were."
"With Jacko unjustly condemned for something he didn't do?"
"He might have done it," said Gwenda. "He might have done it any time, and it's a pure accident, I think, that he didn't do it."
"It's odd," said Leo, thoughtfully. "I never really could believe he did do it. I mean, of course, I had to give in to the evidence - but it seemed to me so unlikely."
"Why? He always had a terrible temper, didn't he?"
"Yes. Oh, yes. He attacked other children. Usually children rather smaller than himself. I never really felt that he would have attacked Rachel."
"Why not?"
"Because he was afraid of her," said Leo. "She had great authority, you know. Jacko felt it just like everybody else."
"But don't you think," said Gwenda, "that that was just why -1 mean -" She paused.
Leo looked at her questioningly. Something in his glance made the colour come up into her cheeks. She turned away, went over to the fire and knelt down in front of it with her hands to the blaze. "Yes," she thought to herself, "Rachel had authority all right. So pleased with herself, so sure of herself, so much the queen bee bossing us all. Isn't that enough to make one want to take a poker, to make one want to strike her down, to silence her once and for all? Rachel was always right, Rachel always knew best, Rachel always got her own way."
She got up abruptly.
"Leo," she said. "Couldn't we - couldn't we be married quite soon instead of waiting until March?"
Leo looked at her. He was silent for a moment, and then he said: "No, Gwenda, no. I don't think it would be a good plan."
"Why not?"
"I think," said Leo, "it would be a pity to rush into anything."
"What do you mean?"
She came across to him. She knelt down again beside him.
"Leo, what do you mean? You must tell me."
He said: "My dear, I just think that we mustn't, as I said, rush into anything."
"But we will be married in March, as we planned?"
"I hope so... Yes, I hope so."
"You don't speak as though you were sure Leo, don't you care any more?"
"Oh, my dear," his hands rested on her shoulders, "of course I care. You mean everything in the world to me."
"Well, then," said Gwenda impatiently.
"No." He got up. "No. Not yet. We must wait. We must be sure."
"Sure of what?"
He did not answer. She said: "You don't think - you can't think -" Leo said: "I -1 don't think anything."
The door opened and Kirsten Lindstrom came in with a tray which she put down on the desk.
"Here is your tea, Mr. Argyle. Shall I bring another cup for you, Gwenda, or will you join the others downstairs?"
Gwenda said: "I will come down to the dining-room. I'll take these letters. They ought to go off."
With slightly unsteady hands she picked up the letters Leo had just signed and went out of the room carrying them. Kirsten Lindstrom looked after her, then she looked back at Leo.
"What have you said to her?" she demanded. "What have you done to upset her?"
"Nothing," said Leo. His voice was tired. "Nothing at all."
Kirsten Lindstrom shrugged her shoulders. Then, without another word, she went out of the room. Her unseen, unspoken criticism, however, could be felt. Leo sighed, leaning back in his chair. He felt very tired. He poured out his tea but he did not drink it. Instead, he sat there in his chair staring unseeingly across the room, his mind busy in the past.
The social club he had been interested in, in the East End of London... It was there that he had first met Rachel Konstam. He could see her now clearly in his mind's eye. A girl of medium height, stocky in build, wearing what he had not appreciated at the time were very expensive clothes, but wearing them with a dowdy air. A round-faced girl, serious, warm-hearted, with an eagerness and a naivety which had appealed to him. So much that needed doing, so much that was worth doing!
She had poured out words eagerly, rather incoherently, and his heart had warmed to her. For he, too, had felt that there was much that needed doing, much that was worth doing; though he himself had a gift of natural irony that made him doubtful whether work worth doing was always as successful as it ought to be. But Rachel had had no doubts. If you did this, if you did that, if such and such an institution were endowed, the beneficial results would follow automatically.
She had never allowed, he saw now, for human nature. She had seen people always as cases, as problems to be dealt with. She had never seen that each human being was different, would react differently, had its own peculiar idiosyncrasies. He had said to her then, he remembered, not to expect too much. But she had always expected too much, although she had immediately disclaimed his accusation. She had always expected too much, and so always she had been disappointed. He had fallen in love with her quite quickly, and had been agreeably surprised to fred out that she was the daughter of wealthy parents.
