Ordeal by Innocence

Author:Christie, Agatha [Agatha, Christie,]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-06-23T04:00:00+00:00

Ordeal by Innocence

Chapter 12

In her spotlessly kept bedroom, Kirsten Lindstrom plaited her grizzled blonde hair into two unbecoming plaits and prepared for bed.

She was worried and afraid.

The police didn't like foreigners. She had been in England so long that she herself did not feel foreign. But the police could not know that.

That Dr. Calgary - why did he have to come and do this to her?

Justice had been done. She thought of Jacko and repeated to herself that justice had been done.

She thought of him as she had known him from a small boy.

Always, yes, always, a liar and a cheat! But so charming, so engaging. Always one forgave him. Always one tried to shield him from punishment.

He lied so well. That was the horrible truth. He lied so well that one believed him - that one couldn't help believing him. Wicked, cruel Jacko.

Dr. Calgary might think he knew what he was talking about! But Dr. Calgary was wrong. Places and times and alibis indeed! Jacko could arrange things of that kind easily enough. Nobody really knew Jacko as she had known him.

Would anybody believe her if she told them just exactly what Jacko was like? And now - tomorrow, what was going to happen? The police would come. And everyone so unhappy, so suspicious. Looking at each other... not sure what to believe.

And she loved them all so much... so much. She knew more about them all than anyone else could know. Far more than Mrs. Argyle had ever known. For Mrs. Argyle had been blinded by her intense maternal possessiveness. They were her children - she saw them always as belonging to her. But Kirsten had seen them as individuals - as themselves - with all their faults and virtues. If she had had children of her own, she might have felt possessive about them, she supposed. But she was not pre-eminently a maternal woman. Her principal love would have been for the husband she had never had.

Women like Mrs. Argyle were difficult for her to understand. Crazy about a lot of children who were not her own, and treating her husband as though he were not there! A good man, too, a fine man, none better. Neglected, pushed aside. And Mrs. Argyle too self-absorbed to notice what was happening under her nose. That secretary, a good-looking girl and every inch a woman. Well, it was not too late for Leo - or was it too late now? Now, with murder raising its head from the grave in which it had been laid, would those two ever dare to come together?

Kirsten sighed unhappily. What was going to happen to them all? To Micky, who had borne that deep, almost pathological grudge against his adopted mother. To Hester, so unsure of herself, so wild. Hester, who had been on the point of finding peace and security with that nice stolid young doctor. To Leo and Gwenda, who had had motive and, yes, it had to be faced, opportunity, as they both must realise.

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