The murder of Roger Ackroyd

I was not quite prepared for such a sudden demand. I racked my brains to remember certain details. “I hope you won’t mind,” I stammered. “I may have been a little—er—_personal_ now and then.” “Oh! I comprehend perfectly; you have referred to me as comic—as, perhaps, ridiculous now and then? It matters not at all. Hastings, he also was not always polite. Me, I have the mind above such trivialities.” Still somewhat doubtful, I rummaged in the drawers of my desk and produced an untidy pile of manuscript which I handed over to him. With an eye on possible publication in the future, I had divided the work into chapters, and the night before I had brought it up to date with an account of Miss Russell’s visit. Poirot had therefore twenty chapters. I left him with them. I was obliged to go out to a case at some distance away, and it was past eight o’clock when I got back, to be greeted with a plate of hot dinner on a tray, and the announcement that Poirot and my sister had supped together at half-past seven, and that the former had then gone to my workshop to finish his reading of the manuscript. “I hope, James,” said my sister, “that you’ve been careful in what you say about me in it?” My jaw dropped. I had not been careful at all. “Not that it matters very much,” said Caroline, reading my expression correctly. “M. Poirot will know what to think. He understands me much better than you do.” I went into the workshop. Poirot was sitting by the window. The manuscript lay neatly piled on a chair beside him. He laid his hand on it and spoke. “_Eh bien_,” he said, “I congratulate you—on your modesty!” “Oh!” I said, rather taken aback. “And on your reticence,” he added. I said “Oh!” again. “Not so did Hastings write,” continued my friend. “On every page, many, many times was the word ‘I.’ What _he_ thought—what _he_ did. But you—you have kept your personality in the background; only once or twice does it obtrude—in scenes of home life, shall we say?” I blushed a little before the twinkle in his eye. “What do you really think of the stuff?” I asked nervously. “You want my candid opinion?” “Yes.” Poirot laid his jesting manner aside. “A very meticulous and accurate account,” he said kindly. “You have recorded all the facts faithfully and exactly—though you have shown yourself becomingly reticent as to your own share in them.” “And it has helped you?” “Yes. I may say that it has helped me considerably. Come, we must go over to my house and set the stage for my little performance.” Caroline was in the hall. I think she hoped that she might be invited to accompany us. Poirot dealt with the situation tactfully. “I should much like to have had you present, mademoiselle,” he said regretfully, “but at this juncture it would not be wise. See you, all these people to-night are suspects. Amongst them, I shall find the person who killed Mr. Ackroyd.” “You really believe that?” I said incredulously. “I see that you do not,” said Poirot dryly. “Not yet do you appreciate Hercule Poirot at his true worth.” At that minute Ursula came down the staircase. “You are ready, my child?” said Poirot. “That is good. We will go to my house together. Mademoiselle Caroline, believe me, I do everything possible to render you service. Good-evening.” We went out, leaving Caroline, rather like a dog who has been refused a walk, standing on the front door step gazing after us. The sitting-room at The Larches had been got ready. On the table were various _sirops_ and glasses. Also a plate of biscuits. Several chairs had been brought in from the other room. Poirot ran to and fro rearranging things. Pulling out a chair here, altering the position of a lamp there, occasionally stooping to straighten one of the mats that covered the floor. He was specially fussy over the lighting. The lamps were arranged in such a way as to throw a clear light on the side of the room where the chairs were grouped, at the same time leaving the other end of the room, where I presumed Poirot himself would sit, in a dim twilight. Ursula and I watched him. Presently a bell was heard. “They arrive,” said Poirot. “Good, all is in readiness.” The door opened and the party from Fernly filed in. Poirot went forward and greeted Mrs. Ackroyd and Flora. “It is most good of you to come,” he said. “And Major Blunt and Mr. Raymond.” The secretary was debonair as ever. “What’s the great idea?” he said, laughing. “Some scientific machine? Do we have bands round our wrists which register guilty heart-beats? There is such an invention, isn’t there?” “I have read of it, yes,” admitted Poirot. “But me, I am old-fashioned. I use the old methods. I work only with the little gray cells. Now let us begin—but first I have an announcement to make to you all.” He took Ursula’s hand and drew her forward. “This lady is Mrs. Ralph Paton. She was married to Captain Paton last March.” A little shriek burst from Mrs. Ackroyd. “Ralph! Married! Last March! Oh! but it’s absurd. How could he be?” She stared at Ursula as though she had never seen her before. “Married to Bourne?” she said. “Really, M. Poirot, I don’t believe you.” Ursula flushed and began to speak, but Flora forestalled her. Going quickly to the other girl’s side, she passed her hand through her arm. “You must not mind our being surprised,” she said. “You see, we had no idea of such a thing. You and Ralph have kept your secret very well. I am—very glad about it.” “You are very kind, Miss Ackroyd,” said Ursula in a low voice, “and you have every right to be exceedingly angry. Ralph behaved very badly—especially to you.” “You needn’t worry about that,” said Flora, giving her arm a consoling little pat. “Ralph was in a corner and took the only way out. I should probably have done the same in his place. I do think he might have trusted me with the secret, though. I wouldn’t have let him down.” Poirot rapped gently on a table and cleared his throat significantly. “The board meeting’s going to begin,” said Flora. “M. Poirot hints that we mustn’t talk. But just tell me one thing. Where is Ralph? You must know if any one does.” “But I don’t,” cried Ursula, almost in a wail. “That’s just it, I don’t.” “Isn’t he detained at Liverpool?” asked Raymond. “It said so in the paper.” “He is not at Liverpool,” said Poirot shortly. “In fact,” I remarked, “no one knows where he is.” “Excepting Hercule Poirot, eh?” said Raymond. Poirot replied seriously to the other’s banter. “Me, I know everything. Remember that.” Geoffrey Raymond lifted his eyebrows. “Everything?” He whistled. “Whew! that’s a tall order.” “Do you mean to say you can really guess where Ralph Paton is hiding?” I asked incredulously. “You call it guessing. I call it knowing, my friend.” “In Cranchester?” I hazarded. “No,” replied Poirot gravely, “not in Cranchester.” He said no more, but at a gesture from him the assembled party took their seats. As they did so, the door opened once more and two other people came in and sat down near the door. They were Parker and the housekeeper. “The number is complete,” said Poirot. “Every one is here.” There was a ring of satisfaction in his tone. And with the sound of it I saw a ripple of something like uneasiness pass over all those faces grouped at the other end of the room. There was a suggestion in all this as of a trap—a trap that had closed. Poirot read from a list in an important manner. “Mrs. Ackroyd, Miss Flora Ackroyd, Major Blunt, Mr. Geoffrey Raymond, Mrs. Ralph Paton, John Parker, Elizabeth Russell.” He laid the paper down on the table. “What’s the meaning of all this?” began Raymond. “The list I have just read,” said Poirot, “is a list of suspected persons. Every one of you present had the opportunity to kill Mr. Ackroyd——” With a cry Mrs. Ackroyd sprang up, her throat working. “I don’t like it,” she wailed. “I don’t like it. I would much prefer to go home.” “You cannot go home, madame,” said Poirot sternly, “until you have heard what I have to say.” He paused a moment, then cleared his throat. “I will start at the beginning. When Miss Ackroyd asked me to investigate the case, I went up to Fernly Park with the good Dr. Sheppard. I walked with him along the terrace, where I was shown the footprints on the window-sill. From there Inspector Raglan took me along the path which leads to the drive. My eye was caught by a little summer-house, and I searched it thoroughly. I found two things—a scrap of starched cambric and an empty goose quill. The scrap of cambric immediately suggested to me a maid’s apron. When Inspector Raglan showed me his list of the people in the house, I noticed at once that one of the maids—Ursula Bourne, the parlormaid—had no real alibi. According to her own story, she was in her bedroom from nine-thirty until ten. But supposing that instead she was in the summer-house? If so, she must have gone there to meet some one. Now we know from Dr. Sheppard that some one from outside _did_ come to the house that night—the stranger whom he met just by the gate. At a first glance it would seem that our problem was solved, and that the stranger went to the summer-house to meet Ursula Bourne. It was fairly certain that he _did_ go to the summer-house because of the goose quill. That suggested at once to my mind a taker of drugs—and one who had acquired the habit on the other side of the Atlantic where sniffing ‘snow’ is more common than in this country. The man whom Dr. Sheppard met had an American accent, which fitted in with that supposition. “But I was held up by one point. _The times did not fit._ Ursula Bourne could certainly not have gone to the summer-house before nine-thirty, whereas the man must have got there by a few minutes past nine. I could, of course, assume that he waited there for half an hour. The only alternative supposition was that there had been two separate meetings in the summer-house that night. _Eh bien_, as soon as I went into that alternative I found several significant facts. I discovered that Miss Russell, the housekeeper, had visited Dr. Sheppard that morning, and had displayed a good deal of interest in cures for victims of the drug habit. Taking that in conjunction with the goose quill, I assumed that the man in question came to Fernly to meet the housekeeper, and not Ursula Bourne. Who, then, did Ursula Bourne come to the rendezvous to meet? I was not long in doubt. First I found a ring—a wedding ring—with ‘From R.’ and a date inside it. Then I learnt that Ralph Paton had been seen coming up the path which led to the summer-house at twenty-five minutes past nine, and I also heard of a certain conversation which had taken place in the wood near the village that very afternoon—a conversation between Ralph Paton and some unknown girl. So I had my facts succeeding each other in a neat and orderly manner. A secret marriage, an engagement announced on the day of the tragedy, the stormy interview in the wood, and the meeting arranged for the summer-house that night. “Incidentally this proved to me one thing, that both Ralph Paton and Ursula Bourne (or Paton) had the strongest motives for wishing Mr. Ackroyd out of the way. And it also made one other point unexpectedly clear. It could not have been Ralph Paton who was with Mr. Ackroyd in the study at nine-thirty. “So we come to another and most interesting aspect of the crime. Who was it in the room with Mr. Ackroyd at nine-thirty? Not Ralph Paton, who was in the summer-house with his wife. Not Charles Kent, who had already left. Who, then? I posed my cleverest—my most audacious question: _Was any one with him?_”