The murder of Roger Ackroyd
these others who sit round this table, Mrs. Ackroyd, Major Blunt, Dr.
Sheppard, Mr. Raymond. You are all friends and intimates of the missing
man. If you know where Ralph Paton is hiding, speak out.”
There was a long silence. Poirot looked to each in turn.
“I beg of you,” he said in a low voice, “speak out.”
But still there was silence, broken at last by Mrs. Ackroyd.
“I must say,” she observed in a plaintive voice, “that Ralph’s absence
is most peculiar—most peculiar indeed. Not to come forward at such a
time. It looks, you know, as though there were something _behind_ it.
I can’t help thinking, Flora dear, that it was a very fortunate thing
your engagement was never formally announced.”
“Mother!” cried Flora angrily.
“Providence,” declared Mrs. Ackroyd. “I have a devout belief in
Providence—a divinity that shapes our ends, as Shakespeare’s beautiful
line runs.”
“Surely you don’t make the Almighty directly responsible for
thick ankles, Mrs. Ackroyd, do you?” asked Geoffrey Raymond, his
irresponsible laugh ringing out.
His idea was, I think, to loosen the tension, but Mrs. Ackroyd threw
him a glance of reproach and took out her handkerchief.
“Flora has been saved a terrible amount of notoriety and
unpleasantness. Not for a moment that I think dear Ralph had anything
to do with poor Roger’s death. I _don’t_ think so. But then I have a
trusting heart—I always have had, ever since a child. I am loath to
believe the worst of any one. But, of course, one must remember that
Ralph was in several air raids as a young boy. The results are apparent
long after, sometimes, they say. People are not responsible for their
actions in the least. They lose control, you know, without being able
to help it.”
“Mother,” cried Flora, “you don’t think Ralph did it?”
“Come, Mrs. Ackroyd,” said Blunt.
“I don’t know what to think,” said Mrs. Ackroyd tearfully. “It’s all
very upsetting. What would happen to the estate, I wonder, if Ralph
were found guilty?”
Raymond pushed his chair away from the table violently. Major Blunt
remained very quiet, looking thoughtfully at her. “Like shell-shock,
you know,” said Mrs. Ackroyd obstinately, “and I dare say Roger kept
him very short of money—with the best intentions, of course. I can see
you are all against me, but I do think it is very odd that Ralph has
not come forward, and I must say I am thankful Flora’s engagement was
never announced formally.”
“It will be to-morrow,” said Flora in a clear voice.
“Flora!” cried her mother, aghast.
Flora had turned to the secretary.
“Will you send the announcement to the _Morning Post_ and the _Times_,
please, Mr. Raymond.”
“If you are sure that it is wise, Miss Ackroyd,” he replied gravely.
She turned impulsively to Blunt.
“You understand,” she said. “What else can I do? As things are, I must
stand by Ralph. Don’t you see that I must?”
She looked very searchingly at him, and after a long pause he nodded
abruptly.
Mrs. Ackroyd burst out into shrill protests. Flora remained unmoved.
Then Raymond spoke.
“I appreciate your motives, Miss Ackroyd. But don’t you think you’re
being rather precipitate? Wait a day or two.”
“To-morrow,” said Flora, in a clear voice. “It’s no good, mother, going
on like this. Whatever else I am, I’m not disloyal to my friends.”
“M. Poirot,” Mrs. Ackroyd appealed tearfully, “can’t you say anything
at all?”
“Nothing to be said,” interpolated Blunt. “She’s doing the right thing.
I’ll stand by her through thick and thin.”
Flora held out her hand to him.
“Thank you, Major Blunt,” she said.
“Mademoiselle,” said Poirot, “will you let an old man congratulate you
on your courage and your loyalty? And will you not misunderstand me if
I ask you—ask you most solemnly—to postpone the announcement you speak
of for at least two days more?”
Flora hesitated.
“I ask it in Ralph Paton’s interests as much as in yours, mademoiselle.
You frown. You do not see how that can be. But I assure you that it
is so. _Pas de blagues_. You put the case into my hands—you must not
hamper me now.”
Flora paused a few minutes before replying.
“I do not like it,” she said at last, “but I will do what you say.”
She sat down again at the table.
“And now, messieurs et mesdames,” said Poirot rapidly, “I will continue
with what I was about to say. Understand this, I mean to arrive at
the truth. The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and
beautiful to the seeker after it. I am much aged, my powers may not
be what they were.” Here he clearly expected a contradiction. “In all
probability this is the last case I shall ever investigate. But Hercule
Poirot does not end with a failure. Messieurs et mesdames, I tell you,
I mean to _know_. And I shall know—in spite of you all.”
He brought out the last words provocatively, hurling them in our face
as it were. I think we all flinched back a little, excepting Geoffrey
Raymond, who remained good humored and imperturbable as usual.
“How do you mean—in spite of us all?” he asked, with slightly raised
eyebrows.
“But—just that, monsieur. Every one of you in this room is concealing
something from me.” He raised his hand as a faint murmur of protest
arose. “Yes, yes, I know what I am saying. It may be something
unimportant—trivial—which is supposed to have no bearing on the case,
but there it is. _Each one of you has something to hide._ Come, now, am
I right?”
His glance, challenging and accusing, swept round the table. And every
pair of eyes dropped before his. Yes, mine as well.
“I am answered,” said Poirot, with a curious laugh. He got up from his
seat. “I appeal to you all. Tell me the truth—the whole truth.” There
was a silence. “Will no one speak?”
He gave the same short laugh again.
“_C’est dommage_,” he said, and went out.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GOOSE QUILL
That evening, at Poirot’s request, I went over to his house after
dinner. Caroline saw me depart with visible reluctance. I think she
would have liked to have accompanied me.
Poirot greeted me hospitably. He had placed a bottle of Irish whisky
(which I detest) on a small table, with a soda water siphon and a
glass. He himself was engaged in brewing hot chocolate. It was a
favorite beverage of his, I discovered later.
He inquired politely after my sister, whom he declared to be a most
interesting woman.
“I’m afraid you’ve been giving her a swelled head,” I said dryly. “What
about Sunday afternoon?”
He laughed and twinkled.
“I always like to employ the expert,” he remarked obscurely, but he
refused to explain the remark.
“You got all the local gossip anyway,” I remarked. “True, and untrue.”
“And a great deal of valuable information,” he added quietly.
“Such as——?”
He shook his head.
“Why not have told me the truth?” he countered. “In a place like this,
all Ralph Paton’s doings were bound to be known. If your sister had not
happened to pass through the wood that day somebody else would have
done so.”
“I suppose they would,” I said grumpily. “What about this interest of
yours in my patients?”
Again he twinkled.
“Only one of them, doctor. Only one of them.”
“The last?” I hazarded.
“I find Miss Russell a study of the most interesting,” he said
evasively.
“Do you agree with my sister and Mrs. Ackroyd that there is something
fishy about her?” I asked.
“Eh? What do you say—fishy?”
I explained to the best of my ability.
“And they say that, do they?”
“Didn’t my sister convey as much to you yesterday afternoon?”
“_C’est possible._”
“For no reason whatever,” I declared.
“_Les femmes_,” generalized Poirot. “They are marvelous! They invent
haphazard—and by miracle they are right. Not that it is that, really.
Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing
that they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little
things together—and they call the result intuition. Me, I am very
skilled in psychology. I know these things.”
He swelled his chest out importantly, looking so ridiculous, that I
found it difficult not to burst out laughing. Then he took a small sip
of his chocolate, and carefully wiped his mustache.
“I wish you’d tell me,” I burst out, “what you really think of it all?”
He put down his cup.
“You wish that?”
“I do.”
“You have seen what I have seen. Should not our ideas be the same?”
“I’m afraid you’re laughing at me,” I said stiffly. “Of course, I’ve no
experience of matters of this kind.”
Poirot smiled at me indulgently.
“You are like the little child who wants to know the way the engine
works. You wish to see the affair, not as the family doctor sees it,
but with the eye of a detective who knows and cares for no one—to whom
they are all strangers and all equally liable to suspicion.”
“You put it very well,” I said.
“So I give you then, a little lecture. The first thing is to get a
clear history of what happened that evening—always bearing in mind that
the person who speaks may be lying.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Rather a suspicious attitude.”
“But necessary—I assure you, necessary. Now first—Dr. Sheppard leaves
the house at ten minutes to nine. How do I know that?”
“Because I told you so.”
“But you might not be speaking the truth—or the watch you went by might
be wrong. But Parker also says that you left the house at ten minutes
to nine. So we accept that statement and pass on. At nine o’clock you
run into a man—and here we come to what we will call the Romance of the
Mysterious Stranger—just outside the Park gates. How do I know that
that is so?”
“I told you so,” I began again, but Poirot interrupted me with a
gesture of impatience.
“Ah! but it is that you are a little stupid to-night, my friend. _You_
know that it is so—but how am _I_ to know? _Eh bien_, I am able to
tell you that the Mysterious Stranger was not a hallucination on your
part, because the maid of a Miss Ganett met him a few minutes before
you did, and of her too he inquired the way to Fernly Park. We accept
his presence, therefore, and we can be fairly sure of two things about
him—that he was a stranger to the neighborhood, and that whatever his
object in going to Fernly, there was no great secrecy about it, since
he twice asked the way there.”
“Yes,” I said, “I see that.”
“Now I have made it my business to find out more about this man. He had
a drink at the Three Boars, I learn, and the barmaid there says that he
spoke with an American accent and mentioned having just come over from
the States. Did it strike you that he had an American accent?”
“Yes, I think he had,” I said, after a minute or two, during which I
cast my mind back; “but a very slight one.”
“_Précisément._ There is also this which, you will remember, I picked
up in the summer-house?”
He held out to me the little quill. I looked at it curiously. Then a
memory of something I had read stirred in me.
Poirot, who had been watching my face, nodded.
“Yes, heroin ‘snow.’ Drug-takers carry it like this, and sniff it up
the nose.”
“Diamorphine hydrochloride,” I murmured mechanically.
“This method of taking the drug is very common on the other side.
Another proof, if we wanted one, that the man came from Canada or the
States.”
“What first attracted your attention to that summer-house?” I asked
curiously.
“My friend the inspector took it for granted that any one using that
path did so as a short cut to the house, but as soon as I saw the
summer-house, I realized that the same path would be taken by any one
using the summer-house as a rendezvous. Now it seems fairly certain
that the stranger came neither to the front nor to the back door. Then
did some one from the house go out and meet him? If so, what could be a