you up the garden path some way. He was full of tricks.” “There were no tricks. Why are you so anxious to prove me wrong?”
With some heat, Calgary went on: “I expected it might be difficult to convince the authorities that they had convicted a man unjustly. I did not expect to find his own family so hard to convince!”
“So you've found all of us a little difficult to convince?”
“The reaction seemed a little - unusual.”
Micky eyed him keenly.
“They didn't want to believe you?”
“It - almost seemed like that...”
“Not only seemed like it. It was. Natural enough, too, if you only think about it.”
“But why? Why should it be natural? Your mother is killed. Your brother is accused and convicted of the crime. Now it turns out that he was innocent. You should be pleased - thankful. Your own brother.”
Micky said: “He wasn't my brother. And she wasn't my mother.” “What?”
“Hasn't anyone told you? We were all adopted. The lot of us. Mary, my eldest 'sister,' in New York. The rest of us during the war. My 'mother,' as you call her, couldn't have any children of her own. So she got herself a nice little family by adoption. Mary, myself, Tina, Hester, Jacko. Comfortable, luxurious home and plenty of mother love thrown in! I'd say she forgot we weren't her own children in the end. But she was out of luck when she picked Jacko to be one of her darling little boys.”
“I had no idea,” said Calgary.
“So don't pull out the 'own mother,' 'own brother' stop on me! Jacko was a louse!”
“But not a murderer,” said Calgary.
His voice was emphatic. Micky looked at him and nodded.
“All right. It's your say so - and you're sticking to it. Jacko didn't kill her. Very well then - who did kill her? You haven't thought about that one, have you? Think about it now. Think about it - and then you'll begin to see what you're doing to us all...”
He wheeled round and went abruptly out of the room.
Ordeal by Innocence
Chapter 4
Calgary said apologetically, “It's very good of you to see me again, Mr. Marshall.”
“Not at all,” said the lawyer.
“As you know, I went down to Sunny Point and saw Jack Argyle's family.”
“Quite so.”
You will have heard by now, I expect, about my visit?"
“Yes, Dr. Calgary, that is correct.”
“What you may find it difficult to understand is why I have come back here to you again. You see, things didn't turn out exactly as I thought they would.”
“No,” said the lawyer, “no, perhaps not.” His voice was as usual dry and unemotional, yet something in it encouraged Arthur Calgary to continue.
“I thought, you see,” went on Calgary, “that that would be the end of it. I was prepared for a certain amount of- what shall I say - natural resentment on their part. Although concussion may be termed, I suppose, an Act of God, yet from their viewpoint they could be forgiven for harbouring resentment against me. I was prepared for that, as I say. But at the same time I hoped it would be offset by the thankfulness they would feel over the fact that Jack Argyle's name was cleared. But things didn't turn out as I anticipated. Not at all.”
“I see.”
“Perhaps, Mr. Marshall, you anticipated something of what would happen? Your manner, I remember, puzzled me when I was here before. Did you foresee the attitude of mind that I was going to encounter?”
“You haven't told me yet, Dr. Calgary, what that attitude was.”
Arthur Calgary drew his chair forward. “I thought that I was ending something, giving - shall we say - a different end to a chapter already written. But I was made to feel, I was made to see, that instead of ending something I was starting something. Something altogether new. Is that a true statement, do you think, of the position?”
Mr. Marshall nodded his head slowly.
“Yes,” he said, “it could be put that way. I did think -1 admit it - that you were not realising all the implications. You could not be expected to