'Yes. You have already thought about that?'
'My father seems to think it is inevitable.'
'I am sorry. I am really sorry.'
'Why are you sorry, Dr. Calgary?'
'I hate to be the cause of bringing fresh trouble upon you.'
'But would you have been satisfied to remain silent?'
'You are thinking in terms of justice?'
'Yes. Weren't you?'
'Of course. Justice seemed to me to be very important. Now –1 am beginning to wonder whether there are things that are more important.'
'Such as?'
His thoughts flew to Hester.
'Such as — innocence, perhaps.'
The opaqueness of her eyes increased. 'What do you feel, Miss Argyle?'
She was silent for a moment or two, then she said: 'I am thinking of those words in Magna Carta. 'To no man will we refuse justice.''
'I see.' he said. 'That is your answer.'
Chapter 7
Dr. MacMaster was an old man with bushy eyebrows, shrewd grey eyes and a pugnacious chin. He leaned back in his shabby arm-chair and studied his visitor carefully. He found that he liked what he saw.
On Calgary 's side also there was a feeling of liking. For the first time almost, since he had come back to England , he felt that he was talking to someone who appreciated his own feelings and point of view.
'It's very good of you to see me, Dr. MacMaster,' he said.
'Not at all,' said the doctor. 'I'm bored to death since I retired from practice. Young men of my own profession tell me I must sit here like a dummy taking care of my groggy heart, but don't think it comes natural to me. It doesn't. I listen to the wireless, blah — blah — blah — and occasionally my housekeeper persuades me to look at television, flick, flick, flick. I've been a busy man, run off my feet all my life. I don't take kindly to sitting still. Reading tires my eyes. So don't apologise for taking up my time.'
'The first thing I've got to make you understand,' said Calgary , 'is why I'm still concerning myself over all this. Logically speaking, I suppose, I've done what I came to do — told the unpalatable fact of my concussion and loss of memory, vindicated the boy's character. After that, the only sane and logical thing to do would be to go away and try to forget about it all. Eh? Isn't that right?'
'Depends,' said Dr. MacMaster. 'Something worrying you?' he asked in the ensuing pause.
'Yes,' said Calgary . 'Everything worries me. You see, my news was not received as I thought it would be.'
'Oh well,' said Dr. MacMaster, 'nothing odd in that. Happens every day. We rehearse a thing before-hand in our own minds, it doesn't matter what it is, consultation with another practitioner, proposal of marriage to a young lady, talk with your boy before going back to school — when the thing comes off, it never goes as you thought it would. You've thought it out, you see; all the things that you are going to say and you've usually made up your mind what the answers are going to be. And, of course, that's what throws you off every time. The answers never are what you think they will be. That's what's upset you, I suppose?'
'Yes,' said Calgary .
'What did you expect? Expected them to be all over you?'
'I expected –' he considered a moment — 'blame? Perhaps. Resentment? Very likely. But also thankfulness.'
MacMaster grunted. 'And there's no thankfulness, and not as much resentment as you think there ought to be?'
'Something like that,' Calgary confessed.
'That's because you didn't know the circumstances until you got there. Why have you come to me, exactly?'
Calgary said slowly: 'Because I want to understand more about the family. I only know the acknowledged facts. A very fine and unselfish woman doing her best for her adopted children, a public-spirited woman, a fine character. Set against that, what's called, I believe, a problem child — a child that goes wrong. The young delinquent. That's all I know. I don't know anything else. I don't know anything about Mrs. Argyle herself.'
'You're quite right,' said MacMaster. 'You're putting your finger on the thing that matters. If you think it over, you know, that's always the interesting part of any murder. What the person was like who was murdered. Everybody's always so busy enquiring into the mind of the murderer. You've been thinking, probably, that Mrs. Argyle was the sort of woman who shouldn't have been murdered.'
'I should imagine that everyone felt that.'
'Ethically,' said MacMaster, 'you're quite right. But you know –' he rubbed his nose — 'isn't it the Chinese who held that beneficence is to be accounted a sin rather than a virtue? They've got something there, you know. Beneficence does things to people. Ties 'em up in knots. We all know what human nature's like. Do a chap a good turn and you feel kindly towards him. You like him. But the chap who's had the good turn done to him, does he feel so kindly to you? Does he really like you? He ought to, of course, but does he?
'Well,' said the doctor, after a moment's pause. 'There you are. Mrs. Argyle was what you might call a wonderful mother. But she overdid the beneficence. No doubt of that. Or wanted to. Or definitely tried to do so.'
'They weren't her own children,' Calgary pointed out.
'No,' said MacMaster. 'That's just where the trouble came in, I imagine. You've only got to look at any normal mother cat. She has her kittens, she's passionately protective of them, she'll scratch anyone who goes near them. And then, in a week or so, she starts resuming her own life. She goes out, hunts a bit, takes a rest from her young. She'll still protect them if anyone attacks them, but she is no longer obsessed by them, all the time. She'll play with them a bit; then when they're a bit too rough, she'll turn on them and give them a spank and tell them she wants to be let alone for a bit. She's reverting, you see, to nature. And as they grow up she cares less and less about them, and her thoughts go more and more to the attractive Toms in the neighbourhood. That's what you might call the normal pattern of female life. I've seen many girls and women, with strong maternal instincts, keen on getting married but mainly, though they mayn't quite know it themselves — because of their urge to motherhood. And the babies come; they're happy and satisfied. Life goes back into proportion for them. They can take an interest in their husbands and in the local affairs and in the gossip that's going round, and of course in their children. But it's all in proportion. The maternal instinct, in a purely physical sense, is satisfied, you see.
'Well, with Mrs. Argyle the maternal instinct was very strong, but the physical satisfaction of bearing a child or children, never came. And so her maternal obsession never really slackened. She wanted children, lots of children. She couldn't have enough of them. Her whole mind, night and day, was on those children. Her husband didn't count any more. He was just a pleasant abstraction in the background. No, everything was the children. Their feeding, their clothing, their playing, everything to do with them. Far too much was done for them. The thing she didn't give them and that they needed, was a little plain, honest-to-goodness neglect. They weren't just turned out into the garden to play like ordinary children in the country. No, they had to have every kind of gadget, artificial climbing things and stepping stones, a house built in the trees, sand brought and a little beach made on the river. Their food wasn't plain, ordinary food. Why, those kids even had their vegetables sieved, up to nearly five years old, and their milk sterilised the water tested and their calories weighed and the vitamins computed! Mind you, I'm not being professional in talking to you like this. Mrs. Argyle was never my patient. If she needed a doctor she went to one in Harley Street . Not that she often went. She was very robust and healthy woman.
'But I was the local doctor who was called in to the children, though she was inclined to think I was a bit casual over them. I told her to let 'em eat a few blueberries from the hedges. I told her it wouldn't hurt them to get their feet wet and have an occasional cold in the head, and that there's nothing much wrong with a child who's got
