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, 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.'
'It's possible, of course,' the Chief Constable pointed out, 'with what we know now, that Argyle and the Vaughan girl might have been lying.'
'Yes, that's a possibility — or perhaps –' the superintendent broke off. 'Yes, Huish?' Finney encouraged him.
'Say someone — we'll call him or her X for the moment — overheard the quarrel and the threats that Jacko was making. Suppose someone saw an opportunity there. Got the money, ran after the boy, said that his mother after all wanted him to have it, thus paving the way to one of the prettiest little frame-ups ever. Careful to use the poker that he'd picked up to threaten her with, without smearing his fingerprints.'
'Dammit all,' said the Chief Constable angrily. 'None of it seems to fit with what I know of the family. Who else was in the house that evening besides Argyle and Gwenda Vaughan, Hester Argyle and this Lindstrom woman?'
'The eldest married daughter, Mary Durrant, and her husband were staying there.'
'He's a cripple, isn't he? That lets him out. What about Mary Durrant?'
'She's a very calm piece of goods, sir. You can't imagine her getting excited or, well, or killing anyone.'
'The servants?' demanded the Chief Constable. 'All dailies, sir, and they'd gone home by six o'clock.' 'Let me have a look at the times.' The superintendent passed the paper to him.
'H'm… yes, I see. A quarter to seven Mrs. Argyle was in the library talking to her husband about Jacko's threats. Gwenda Vaughan was present during part of the conversation. Gwenda Vaughan went home just after seven. Hester Argyle saw her mother alive at about two or three minutes to seven. After that, Mrs. Argyle was not seen till half past seven, when her dead body was discovered by Miss Lindstrom. Between seven andhalfpastthere was plenty of opportunity. Hester could have killed her, Gwenda Vaughan could have killed her after she left the library and before she left the house. Miss Lindstrom could have killed her when she 'discovered the body'. Leo Argyle was alone in his library from ten past seven until Miss Lindstrom sounded the alarm. He could have gone to his wife's sitting-room and killed her any time during that twenty minutes. Mary Durrant, who was upstairs, could have come down during that half hour and killed her mother. And –' said Finney thoughtfully — 'Mrs. Argyle herself could have let anyone in by the front door as we thought she let Jack Argyle in. Leo Argyle said, if you remember, that he thought he did hear a ring at the bell, and the sound of the front door opening and closing, but he was very vague about the time. We assumed that that was when Jacko returned and killed her.'
'He needn't have rung the bell,' said Huish. 'He had a key of his own. They all had.'
'There's another brother, isn't there?'
'Yes, Michael. Works as a car salesman in Drymouth.'
'You'd better find out, I suppose,' said the Chief Constable, 'what he was doing that evening.'
'After two years?' said Superintendent Huish. 'Not likely anyone will remember, is it?'
'Was he asked at the time?'
'Out testing a customer's car, I understand. No reason for suspecting him then, but he had a key and he could have come over and killed her.'
The Chief Constable sighed.
'I don't know how you're going to set about it, Huish. I don't know whether we're ever going to get anywhere.'
'I'd like to know myself who killed her,' said Huish. 'From all I can make out, she was a fine type of woman. She'd done a lot for people. For unlucky children, for all sorts of charities. She's the sort of person that oughtn't to have been killed. Yes. I'd like to know. Even if we can never get enough evidence to satisfy the D.P.P. I'd still like to know.'
'Well, I wish you the best of luck, Huish,' said the Chief Constable. 'Fortunately we've nothing very much on just now, but don't be discouraged if you can't get anywhere. It's a very cold trail. Yes, it's a very cold trail.'
Chapter 6
The lights went up in the cinema. Advertisements flashed on to the screen. The cinema usherettes walked round with cartons of lemonade and of ice-cream. Arthur Calgary scrutinised them. A plump girl with brown hair, a tall dark one and a small, fair-haired one. That was the one he had come to see. Jacko's wife. Jacko's widow, now the wife of a man called Joe Clegg. It was a pretty, rather vapid little face, plastered with make-up, eyebrows plucked, hair hideous and stiff in a cheap perm. Arthur Calgary bought an ice-cream carton from her. He had her home address and he meant to call there, but he had wanted to see her first while she was unaware of him.
Well, that was that. Not the sort of daughter-in-law, he thought, that Mrs. Argyle, from all accounts, would have cared about very much. That, no doubt, was why Jacko had kept her dark.
He sighed, concealed the ice-cream carton carefully under his chair, and leaned back as the lights went out and a new picture began to flash on the screen. Presently he got up and left the cinema.
At eleven o'clock the next morning he called at the address he had been given. A sixteen-year-old boy opened the door, and in answer to Calgary 's enquiry, said: 'Cleggs? Top floor.'
Calgary climbed the stairs. He knocked at a door and Maureen Clegg opened it. Without her smart uniform and her make-up, she looked a different girl. It was a silly little face, good-natured but with nothing particularly interesting about it. She looked at him doubtfully, frowned suspiciously.
'My name is Calgary . I believe you have had a letter from Mr. Marshall about me.'
Her face cleared.
'Oh, so you're the one! Come in, do.' She moved back to let him enter. 'Sorry the place is in such a mess. I haven't had time to get around to things yet.'
She swept some untidy clothes off a chair and pushed aside the remains of a breakfast consumed some time ago. 'Do sit down. I'm sure it's ever so good of you to come.'
'I felt it was the least I could do,' said Calgary .
She gave a little embarrassed laugh, as though not really taking in what he meant.
'Mr. Marshall wrote me about it,' she said, 'About that story that Jackie made up — how it was all true after all. That someone did give him a lift back that night to Drymouth. So it was you, was it?'
