Ordeal by Innocence. Agatha Christie

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СКАЧАТЬ you bottle it up for? What’s all this about concussion?’

      Patiently Calgary told him. Strangely enough, he felt heartened by the boy’s roughness and rudeness. Here, at any rate, was someone who felt strongly on his brother’s behalf.

      ‘Gives Jacko an alibi, that’s the point, is it? How do you know the times were as you say they were?’

      ‘I am quite sure about the times.’ Calgary spoke with firmness.

      ‘You may have made a mistake. You scientific blokes are apt to be absent-minded sometimes about little things like times and places.’

      Calgary showed slight amusement.

      ‘You have made a picture for yourself of the absent-minded professor of fiction–wearing odd socks, not quite sure what day it is or where he happens to be? My dear young man, technical work needs great precision; exact amounts, times, calculations. I assure you there is no possibility of my having made a mistake. I picked up your brother just before seven and put him down in Drymouth at five minutes after the half hour.’

      ‘Your watch could have been wrong. Or you went by the clock in your car.’

      ‘My watch and the clock in the car were exactly synchronized.’

      ‘Jacko could have led you up the garden path some way. He was full of tricks.’

      ‘There were no tricks. Why are you so anxious to prove me wrong?’ With some heat, Calgary went on: ‘I expected it might be difficult to convince the authorities that they had convicted a man unjustly. I did not expect to find his own family so hard to convince!’

      ‘So you’ve found all of us a little difficult to convince?’

      ‘The reaction seemed a little–unusual.’

      Micky eyed him keenly.

      ‘They didn’t want to believe you?’

      ‘It–almost seemed like that…’

      ‘Not only seemed like it. It was. Natural enough, too, if you only think about it.’

      ‘But why? Why should it be natural? Your mother is killed. Your brother is accused and convicted of the crime. Now it turns out that he was innocent. You should be pleased–thankful. Your own brother.’

      Micky said:

      ‘He wasn’t my brother. And she wasn’t my mother.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Hasn’t anyone told you? We were all adopted. The lot of us. Mary, my eldest “sister”, in New York. The rest of us during the war. My “mother”, as you call her, couldn’t have any children of her own. So she got herself a nice little family by adoption. Mary, myself, Tina, Hester, Jacko. Comfortable, luxurious home and plenty of mother love thrown in! I’d say she forgot we weren’t her own children in the end. But she was out of luck when she picked Jacko to be one of her darling little boys.’

      ‘I had no idea,’ said Calgary.

      ‘So don’t pull out the “own mother”, “own brother” stop on me! Jacko was a louse!’

      ‘But not a murderer,’ said Calgary.

      His voice was emphatic. Micky looked at him and nodded.

      ‘All right. It’s your say so–and you’re sticking to it. Jacko didn’t kill her. Very well then–who did kill her? You haven’t thought about that one, have you? Think about it now. Think about it–and then you’ll begin to see what you’re doing to us all…’

      He wheeled round and went abruptly out of the room.

      Chapter 4

      Calgary said apologetically, ‘It’s very good of you to see me again, Mr Marshall.’

      ‘Not at all,’ said the lawyer.

      ‘As you know, I went down to Sunny Point and saw Jack Argyle’s family.’

      ‘Quite so.’

      ‘You will have heard by now, I expect, about my visit?’

      ‘Yes, Dr Calgary, that is correct.’

      ‘What you may find it difficult to understand is why I have come back here to you again…You see, things didn’t turn out exactly as I thought they would.’

      ‘No,’ said the lawyer, ‘no, perhaps not.’ His voice was as usual dry and unemotional, yet something in it encouraged Arthur Calgary to continue.

      ‘I thought, you see,’ went on Calgary, ‘that that would be the end of it. I was prepared for a certain amount of–what shall I say–natural resentment on their part. Although concussion may be termed, I suppose, an Act of God, yet from their viewpoint they could be forgiven for that, as I say. But at the same time I hoped it would be offset by the thankfulness they would feel over the fact that Jack Argyle’s name was cleared. But things didn’t turn out as I anticipated. Not at all.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘Perhaps, Mr Marshall, you anticipated something of what would happen? Your manner, I remember, puzzled me when I was here before. Did you foresee the attitude of mind that I was going to encounter?’

      ‘You haven’t told me yet, Dr Calgary, what that attitude was.’

      Arthur Calgary drew his chair forward. ‘I thought that I was ending something, giving–shall we say–a different end to a chapter already written. But I was made to feel, I was made to see, that instead of ending something I was starting something. Something altogether new. Is that a true statement, do you think, of the position?’

      Mr Marshall nodded his head slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it could be put that way. I did think–I admit it–that you were not realizing all the implications. You could not be expected to do so because, naturally, you knew nothing of the background or of the facts except as they were given in the law reports.’

      ‘No. No, I see that now. Only too clearly.’ His voice rose as he went on excitedly, ‘It wasn’t really relief they felt, it wasn’t thankfulness. It was apprehension. A dread of what might be coming next. Am I right?’

      Marshall said cautiously: ‘I should think probably that you are quite right. Mind you, I do not speak of my own knowledge.’

      ‘And if so,’ went on Calgary, ‘then I no longer feel that I can go back to my work satisfied with having made the only amends that I can make. I’m still involved. I’m responsible for bringing a new factor into various people’s lives. I can’t just wash my hands of it.’

      The lawyer cleared his throat. ‘That, perhaps, is a rather fanciful point of view, Dr Calgary.’

      ‘I don’t think it is–not really. One must take responsibility for one’s actions and not only one’s actions but for the result of one’s actions. Just on two years ago I gave a lift to a young hitch-hiker on the road. When I did that I set in train a certain course of events. I СКАЧАТЬ