Unsolved Mysteries: Ordeal by Innocence | 1958

(image from here)

"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..." -Micky Argyle, Ordeal by Innocence, p. 42

The Sum of It:
I'm going through a phase in this Year of Agatha project where I'm reading a lot of her books that have my most favorite premises, and today's read is no exception. Ordeal by Innocence follows the tribulations of the Argyle family, specifically, their painstaking efforts to figure out who killed their mother. Some years ago, mother Rachel Argyle was found dead, having been struck down from behind #yikes! At the time of her death, it was pretty clear she was killed by someone else in the house, meaning her husband, one of her children, the husband's secretary, or the household's long-time housekeeper. The most likely suspect was hot mess son, Jacko. Jacko had a history of disagreements with his mother, had a history of money troubles, and had recently been caught stealing by his mother and she wasn't gonna let that happen anymore. But Jacko says, I couldn't have killed her because at the time of her death I had been hitchhiking and was picked up by some random car driver so I'm innocent! However, no such car driver could be found during his trial, and so Jacko is convicted of the crime and thrown in jail, where soon after he dies of pneumonia.

The Argyle family has done their best to move on with their lives and so are pretty shocked when they receive a surprise visitor at their door, a geophysicist named Arthur Calgary, proclaiming: "GUYS, I WAS THE GUY IN THE CAR!" Apparently, Arthur picked Jacko up on his rounds of saying goodbye to pals before heading way out of town on the Hayes Bentley Expedition, and after dropping Jacko off Arthur is hit by a car and has a bit of amnesia and then heads to Australia to meet up with his expedition. He just recently has his memory restored when he sees old newspapers with the Jacko stories and realizes he was the alibi Jacko needed all along! Arthur expects the Argyle family to feel a sense of relief that Jacko wasn't Rachel's killer. However, as each one in turn explains to him, well then which of the rest of us DID kill her!?

The YOA Treatment:
You can tell when you read Agatha Christie's works, particularly this one, that she was intrigued by unsolved crime. In more than one book she mentions the Lizzie Borden case, and in this book she talks about another unsolved crime, the murder of Charles Bravo. I highly recommend looking up the story of Charles Bravo because it is pretttttty crazy! And it speaks to the drama of Ordeal by Innocence because after Jacko is shown to have an alibi for the time of the murder, the rest of the family is left in terrified mystery about which of them could have killed her...and which of them could be next? All in all, Ordeal by Innocence is a great read and I highly recommend it!

-A.