her.'
'Yes,' said Philip, 'lovely the way we've all been satisfied.'
His wife looked at him doubtfully.
'I don't, I really don't know what you mean, Philip.'
'Can't you see, Polly, that in a way this is a challenge to me? A challenge to my intelligence? I don't mean that I've felt your mother's death particularly keenly or that I was particularly fond of her. I wasn't. She'd done her very best to stop you marrying me, but I bore her no grudge for that because I succeeded in carrying you off all right. Didn't I, my girl? No, it's not a wish for revenge, it's not even a passion for justice. I think it's — yes, mainly curiosity, though perhaps there's a better side to it than that.'
'It's the sort of thing you oughtn't to meddle about with,' said Mary. 'No good can come of your meddling about with it. Oh, Philip, please, please don't. Let's go home and forget all about it.'
'Well,' said Philip, 'you can pretty well cart me anywhere you like, can't you? But I want to stay here. Don't you sometimes want me to do what I want to do?'
'I want you to have everything in the world you want,' said Mary.
'You don't really, darling. You just want to look after me like a baby in arms and know what's best for me every day and in every possible way.' He laughed.
Mary said, looking at him doubtfully: 'I never know when you're serious or not.'
'Apart from curiosity,' said Philip Durrant, 'somebody ought to find out the truth, you know.'
'Why? What good can it do? Having someone else sent to prison. I think it's a horrible idea.'
'You don't quite understand,' said Philip. 'I didn't say that I'd turn in whoever it was (if I discovered who it was) to the police. I don't think that I would. It depends, of course, on the circumstances. Probably it wouldn't be any use my turning them over to the police because I still think that there couldn't be any real evidence.'
'Then if there isn't any real evidence,' said Mary, 'how are you going to find out anything?'
'Because,' said Philip, 'there are lots of ways of finding out things, of knowing them quite certainly once and for all. And I think, you know, that that's becoming rather necessary. Things aren't going very well in this house and very soon they'll be getting worse.'
'What do you mean?'
'Haven't you noticed anything, Polly? What about your father and Gwenda Vaughan?'
'What about them? Why my father should want to marry again at his age –'
'I can understand that,' said Philip. 'After all, he had rather a raw deal in marriage. He's got a chance now of real happiness. Autumn happiness, if you like, but he's got it. Or, shall we say, he had it. Things aren't going too well between them now.'
'I suppose, all this business –' said Mary vaguely.
'Exactly,' said Philip. 'All this business. It's shoving them further apart every day. And there could be two reasons for that. Suspicion or guilt.'
'Suspicion of whom?'
'Well, let's say of each other. Or suspicion on one side and consciousness of guilt on the other and vice versa and as you were and as you like it.'
'Don't, Philip, you're confusing me.' Suddenly a faint trace of animation came into Mary's manner.
'So you think it was Gwenda?' she said. 'Perhaps you're right. Oh, what a blessing it would be if it was Gwenda.'
'Poor Gwenda. Because she's one removed from the family, you mean?' 'Yes,' said Mary. 'I mean then it wouldn't be one of us!' 'That's all you feel about it, is it?' said Philip. 'How it affects us.' 'Of course,' said Mary.
'Of course, of course,' said Philip irritably. 'The trouble with you is, Polly, you haven't got any imagination. You can't put yourself in anyone else's place.'
'Why should one?' asked Mary.
'Yes, why should one?' said Philip. 'I suppose if I'm honest I'd say to pass the time away. But I can put myself in your father's place, or in Gwenda's, and if they're innocent, what hell it must be. What hell for Gwenda to be held suddenly at arm's length. To know in her heart that she's not going to be able to marry the man she loves after all. And then put yourself in your father's place. He knows, he can't help knowing, that the woman he is in love with had an opportunity to do the murder and had a motive, too. He hopes she didn't do it, he thinks she didn't do it, but he isn't sure. And what's more he never will be sure.'
'At his age –' began Mary.
'Oh, at his age, at his age,' said Philip impatiently. 'Don't you realise it's worse for a man of that age? It's the last love of his life. He's not likely to have another. It goes deep. And taking the other point of view,' he went on, 'suppose Leo came out of the mists and shadows of the self-contained world that he's managed to live in so long. Suppose it was he who struck down his wife? One can almost feel sorry for the poor devil, can't one? Not,' he added meditatively, 'that I really can imagine his doing anything of the sort for a moment. But I've no doubt the police can imagine it all right. Now, Polly, let's hear your views. Who do you think did it?'
'How can I possibly know?' said Mary.
'Well, perhaps you can't know,' said Philip, 'but you might have a very good idea — if you thought.'
'I tell you I refuse to think about the thing at all.'
'I wonder why… Is that just distaste? Or is it — perhaps — because you do know? Perhaps in your own cool, calm mind you're quite sure… so sure that you don't want to think about it, that you don't want to tell me 'Is it Hester you've got in mind?''
'Why on earth should Hester want to kill Mother?'
'No real reason, is there?' said Philip meditatively. 'But you know, you do read of those things. A son or a daughter fairly well looked after, indulged, and then one day some silly little thing happens. Fond parent refuses to stand up, up for the cinema or for buying a new pair of shoes or says when you're going out with the boy friend you've got to be in at ten. It mayn't be anything very important but it seems to set a match to a train that's already laid, and suddenly the adolescent in question has a brainstorm and up with a hammer or an axe, or possibly a poker, and that's that. Always hard to explain, but it happens. It's the culmination of a long train of repressed rebellion. That's a pattern which would fit Hester. You see, with Hester the trouble is that one doesn't know what goes on in that rather lovely head of hers. She's weak, of course, and she resents being weak. And your mother was the sort of person who would make her feel conscious of her weakness. Yes,' said Philip, leaning forward with some animation, 'I think I could make out quite a good case for Hester.'
'Oh, will you stop talking about it,' cried Mary.
'Oh, I'll stop talking,' said Philip. 'Talking won't get me anywhere. Or will it? After all, one has to decide in one's own mind what the pattern of the murder might be, and apply that pattern to each of the different people concerned. And then when you've got it taped out the way it must have been, then you start laying your little pitfalls and see if they tumble into them.'
'There were only four people in the house,' said Mary. 'You speak as though there were half a dozen or more. I agree with you that Father couldn't possibly have done it, and it's absurd to think that Hester could have any real reason for doing anything of that kind. That leaves Kirsty and Gwenda.'
'Which of then do you prefer?' asked Philip, with faint mockery in his tone.
'I can't really imagine Kirsty doing such a thing,' said Mary. 'She's always been so patient and good- tempered. Really quite devoted to Mother. I suppose she could go queer suddenly. One does hear of such things, but she's never seemed at all queer.'
'No,' said Philip thoughtfully, 'I'd say Kirsty is a very normal woman, the sort of woman who'd have liked a normal woman's life. In a way she's something of the same type as Gwenda, only Gwenda is good-looking and attractive and poor old Kirsty is plain as a currant bun. I don't suppose any man's ever looked at her twice. But she'd have liked them to. She'd have liked to have fallen in love and married. It must be pretty fair hell to be born a woman and to be born plain and unattractive, especially if that isn't compensated for by having any special talent or brain. The truth is she'd been here far too long. She ought to have left after the war, gone on with her profession as masseuse. She might have hooked some well off elderly patient.'
'You're like all men,' said Mary. 'You think women think of nothing but getting married.'
Philip grinned.
'I still think it's all women's first choice,' he said. 'Hasn't Tina any boy friends, by the way?'
'Not that I know of,' said Mary. 'But she doesn't talk much about herself.'
