Ordeal by Innocence. Agatha Christie

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.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Huish. ‘That’s very difficult to understand. One of the fivers Jack Argyle had on him was definitely one that had been given to Mrs Argyle at the bank that morning. Mrs Bottleberry was the name written on the back of it. He said his mother had given the money to him, but both Mr Argyle and Gwenda Vaughan are quite definite that Mrs Argyle came into the library at a quarter to seven and told them about Jacko’s demands for money and categorically said she’d refused to give him any.’