Ordeal by Innocence. Agatha Christie

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      Calgary looked for a moment up and down the river. One should have built a castle here, he thought, an impossible, ridiculous, fairy tale castle! The sort of castle that might be made of gingerbread or of frosted sugar. Instead there was good taste, restraint, moderation, plenty of money and absolutely no imagination.

      For that, naturally, one did not blame the Argyles. They had only bought the house, not built it. Still, they or one of them (Mrs Argyle?) had chosen it…

      He said to himself: ‘You can’t put it off any longer…’ and pressed the electric bell beside the door.

      He stood there, waiting. After a decent interval he pressed the bell again.

      He heard no footsteps inside but, without warning, the door swung suddenly open.

      He moved back a step, startled. To his already overstimulated imagination, it seemed as though Tragedy herself stood there barring his way. It was a young face; indeed it was in the poignancy of its youth that tragedy had its very essence. The Tragic Mask, he thought, should always be a mask of youth…Helpless, fore-ordained, with doom approaching…from the future…

      Rallying himself, he thought, rationalizing: ‘Irish type.’ The deep blue of the eyes, the dark shadow round them, the upspringing black hair, the mournful beauty of the bones of the skull and cheekbones–

      The girl stood there, young, watchful and hostile.

      She said:

      ‘Yes? What do you want?’

      He replied conventionally.

      ‘Is Mr Argyle in?’

      ‘Yes. But he doesn’t see people. I mean, people he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know you, does he?’

      ‘No. He doesn’t know me, but–’

      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.

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