The murder of Roger Ackroyd
yesterday) one of the wealthiest men in these parts.”
Mrs. Ackroyd paused to dab her eyes with the frilled handkerchief.
“Yes,” I said encouragingly. “You were talking about bills?”
“Those dreadful bills. And some I didn’t like to show Roger at all.
They were things a man wouldn’t understand. He would have said the
things weren’t necessary. And of course they mounted up, you know, and
they kept coming in——”
She looked at me appealingly, as though asking me to condole with her
on this striking peculiarity.
“It’s a habit they have,” I agreed.
“And the tone altered—became quite abusive. I assure you, doctor,
I was becoming a nervous wreck. I couldn’t sleep at nights. And a
dreadful fluttering round the heart. And then I got a letter from a
Scotch gentleman—as a matter of fact there were two letters—both Scotch
gentlemen. Mr. Bruce MacPherson was one, and the other were Colin
MacDonald. Quite a coincidence.”
“Hardly that,” I said dryly. “They are usually Scotch gentlemen, but I
suspect a Semitic strain in their ancestry.”
“Ten pounds to ten thousand on note of hand alone,” murmured Mrs.
Ackroyd reminiscently. “I wrote to one of them, but it seemed there
were difficulties.”
She paused.
I gathered that we were just coming to delicate ground. I have never
known any one more difficult to bring to the point.
“You see,” murmured Mrs. Ackroyd, “it’s all a question of expectations,
isn’t it? Testamentary expectations. And though, of course, I expected
that Roger would provide for me, I didn’t _know_. I thought that if
only I could glance over a copy of his will—not in any sense of vulgar
prying—but just so that I could make my own arrangements.”
She glanced sideways at me. The position was now very delicate indeed.
Fortunately words, ingeniously used, will serve to mask the ugliness of
naked facts.
“I could only tell this to you, dear Dr. Sheppard,” said Mrs. Ackroyd
rapidly. “I can trust you not to misjudge me, and to represent the
matter in the right light to M. Poirot. It was on Friday afternoon——”
She came to a stop and swallowed uncertainly.
“Yes,” I repeated encouragingly. “On Friday afternoon. Well?”
“Every one was out, or so I thought. And I went into Roger’s study—I
had some real reason for going there—I mean, there was nothing
underhand about it. And as I saw all the papers heaped on the desk, it
just came to me, like a flash: ‘I wonder if Roger keeps his will in
one of the drawers of the desk.’ I’m so impulsive, always was, from a
child. I do things on the spur of the moment. He’d left his keys—very
careless of him—in the lock of the top drawer.”
“I see,” I said helpfully. “So you searched the desk. Did you find the
will?”
Mrs. Ackroyd gave a little scream, and I realized that I had not been
sufficiently diplomatic.
“How dreadful it sounds. But it wasn’t at all like that really.”
“Of course it wasn’t,” I said hastily. “You must forgive my unfortunate
way of putting things.”
“You see, men are so peculiar. In dear Roger’s place, I should not
have objected to revealing the provisions of my will. But men are so
secretive. One is forced to adopt little subterfuges in self-defence.”
“And the result of the little subterfuge?” I asked.
“That’s just what I’m telling you. As I got to the bottom drawer,
Bourne came in. Most awkward. Of course I shut the drawer and stood
up, and I called her attention to a few specks of dust on the surface.
But I didn’t like the way she looked—quite respectful in manner, but a
very nasty light in her eyes. Almost contemptuous, if you know what I
mean. I never have liked that girl very much. She’s a good servant, and
she says Ma’am, and doesn’t object to wearing caps and aprons (which
I declare to you a lot of them do nowadays), and she can say ‘Not at
home’ without scruples if she has to answer the door instead of Parker,
and she doesn’t have those peculiar gurgling noises inside which so
many parlormaids seem to have when they wait at table——Let me see,
where was I?”
“You were saying, that in spite of several valuable qualities, you
never liked Bourne.”
“No more I do. She’s—odd. There’s something different about her from
the others. Too well educated, that’s my opinion. You can’t tell who
are ladies and who aren’t nowadays.”
“And what happened next?” I asked.
“Nothing. At least, Roger came in. And I thought he was out for a
walk. And he said: ‘What’s all this?’ and I said, ‘Nothing. I just came
in to fetch _Punch_.’ And I took _Punch_ and went out with it. Bourne
stayed behind. I heard her asking Roger if she could speak to him for a
minute. I went straight up to my room, to lie down. I was very upset.”
There was a pause.
“You will explain to M. Poirot, won’t you? You can see for yourself
what a trivial matter the whole thing was. But, of course, when he was
so stern about concealing things, I thought of this at once. Bourne
may have made some extraordinary story out of it, but you can explain,
can’t you?”
“That is all?” I said. “You have told me everything?”
“Ye-es,” said Mrs. Ackroyd. “Oh! yes,” she added firmly.
But I had noted the momentary hesitation, and I knew that there was
still something she was keeping back. It was nothing less than a flash
of sheer genius that prompted me to ask the question I did.
“Mrs. Ackroyd,” I said, “was it you who left the silver table open?”
I had my answer in the blush of guilt that even rouge and powder could
not conceal.
“How did you know?” she whispered.
“It was you, then?”
“Yes—I—you see—there were one or two pieces of old silver—very
interesting. I had been reading up the subject and there was an
illustration of quite a small piece which had fetched an immense
sum at Christy’s. It looked to me just the same as the one in the
silver table. I thought I would take it up to London with me when I
went—and—and have it valued. Then if it really was a valuable piece,
just think what a charming surprise it would have been for Roger?”
I refrained from comments, accepting Mrs. Ackroyd’s story on its
merits. I even forbore to ask her why it was necessary to abstract what
she wanted in such a surreptitious manner.
“Why did you leave the lid open?” I asked. “Did you forget?”
“I was startled,” said Mrs. Ackroyd. “I heard footsteps coming along
the terrace outside. I hastened out of the room and just got up the
stairs before Parker opened the front door to you.”
“That must have been Miss Russell,” I said thoughtfully. Mrs. Ackroyd
had revealed to me one fact that was extremely interesting. Whether her
designs upon Ackroyd’s silver had been strictly honorable I neither
knew nor cared. What did interest me was the fact that Miss Russell
must have entered the drawing-room by the window, and that I had not
been wrong when I judged her to be out of breath with running. Where
had she been? I thought of the summer-house and the scrap of cambric.
“I wonder if Miss Russell has her handkerchiefs starched!” I exclaimed
on the spur of the moment.
Mrs. Ackroyd’s start recalled me to myself, and I rose.
“You think you can explain to M. Poirot?” she asked anxiously.
“Oh, certainly. Absolutely.”
I got away at last, after being forced to listen to more justifications
of her conduct.
The parlormaid was in the hall, and it was she who helped me on with my
overcoat. I observed her more closely than I had done heretofore. It
was clear that she had been crying.
“How is it,” I asked, “that you told us that Mr. Ackroyd sent for you
on Friday to his study? I hear now that it was _you_ who asked to speak
to _him_?”
For a minute the girl’s eyes dropped before mine.
Then she spoke.
“I meant to leave in any case,” she said uncertainly.
I said no more. She opened the front door for me. Just as I was passing
out, she said suddenly in a low voice:—
“Excuse me, sir, is there any news of Captain Paton?”
I shook my head, looking at her inquiringly.
“He ought to come back,” she said. “Indeed—indeed he ought to come
back.”
She was looking at me with appealing eyes.
“Does no one know where he is?” she asked.
“Do you?” I said sharply.
She shook her head.
“No, indeed. I know nothing. But any one who was a friend to him would
tell him this: he ought to come back.”
I lingered, thinking that perhaps the girl would say more. Her next
question surprised me.
“When do they think the murder was done? Just before ten o’clock?”
“That is the idea,” I said. “Between a quarter to ten and the hour.”
“Not earlier? Not before a quarter to ten?”
I looked at her attentively. She was so clearly eager for a reply in
the affirmative.
“That’s out of the question,” I said. “Miss Ackroyd saw her uncle alive
at a quarter to ten.”
She turned away, and her whole figure seemed to droop.
“A handsome girl,” I said to myself as I drove off. “An exceedingly
handsome girl.”
Caroline was at home. She had had a visit from Poirot and was very
pleased and important about it.
“I am helping him with the case,” she explained.
I felt rather uneasy. Caroline is bad enough as it is. What will she be
like with her detective instincts encouraged?
“Are you going round the neighborhood looking for Ralph Paton’s
mysterious girl?” I inquired.
“I might do that on my own account,” said Caroline. “No, this is a
special thing M. Poirot wants me to find out for him.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“He wants to know whether Ralph Paton’s boots were black or brown,”
said Caroline with tremendous solemnity.
I stared at her. I see now that I was unbelievably stupid about these
boots. I failed altogether to grasp the point.
“They were brown shoes,” I said. “I saw them.”
“Not shoes, James, boots. M. Poirot wants to know whether a pair of
boots Ralph had with him at the hotel were brown or black. A lot hangs
on it.”
Call me dense if you like. I didn’t see.
“And how are you going to find out?” I asked.
Caroline said there would be no difficulty about that. Our Annie’s
dearest friend was Miss Ganett’s maid, Clara. And Clara was walking
out with the boots at the Three Boars. The whole thing was simplicity
itself, and by the aid of Miss Ganett, who coöperated loyally, at once
giving Clara leave of absence, the matter was rushed through at express
speed.
It was when we were sitting down to lunch that Caroline remarked, with
would-be unconcern:—
“About those boots of Ralph Paton’s.”
“Well,” I said, “what about them?”
“M. Poirot thought they were probably brown. He was wrong. They’re
black.”
And Caroline nodded her head several times. She evidently felt that she
had scored a point over Poirot.
I did not answer. I was puzzling over what the color of a pair of Ralph
Paton’s boots had to do with the case.
CHAPTER XV
GEOFFREY RAYMOND
I was to have a further proof that day of the success of Poirot’s
tactics. That challenge of his had been a subtle touch born of his
knowledge of human nature. A mixture of fear and guilt had wrung the
truth from Mrs. Ackroyd. She was the first to react.
That afternoon when I returned from seeing my patients, Caroline told
me that Geoffrey Raymond had just left.
“Did he want to see me?” I asked, as I hung up my coat in the hall.
Caroline was hovering by my elbow.
“It was M. Poirot he wanted to see,” she said. “He’d just come from The
Larches. M. Poirot was out. Mr. Raymond thought that he might be here,
or that you might know where he was.”
“I haven’t the least idea.”
“I tried to make him wait,” said Caroline, “but he said he would call
back at The Larches in half an hour, and went away down the village. A
great pity, because M. Poirot came in practically the minute after he
left.”
“Came in here?”
“No, to his own house.”
“How do you know?”