The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie [accelerated reader books TXT] 📗

Caroline gave a sniff of disapproval and retired. She returned in a moment or two, ushering in Poirot, and then retired again, shutting the door with a bang.

“Aha! my friend,” said Poirot, coming forward and rubbing his hands. “You have not got rid of me so easily, you see!”

“Finished with the inspector?” I asked.

“For the moment, yes. And you, you have seen all the patients?”

“Yes.”

Poirot sat down and looked at me, tilting his egg-shaped head on one side, with the air of one who savours a very delicious joke.

“You are in error,” he said at last. “You have still one patient to see.”

“Not you?” I exclaimed in surprise.

“Ah, not me, bien entendu. Me, I have the health magnificent. No, to tell you the truth, it is a little complot of mine. There is someone I wish to see, you understand⁠—and at the same time it is not necessary that the whole village should intrigue itself about the matter⁠—which is what would happen if the lady were seen to come to my house⁠—for it is a lady. But to you she has already come as a patient before.”

“Miss Russell!” I exclaimed.

“Précisément. I wish much to speak with her, so I send her the little note and make the appointment in your surgery. You are not annoyed with me?”

“On the contrary,” I said. “That is, presuming I am allowed to be present at the interview?”

“But naturally! In your own surgery!”

“You know,” I said, throwing down the pincers I was holding, “it’s extraordinarily intriguing, the whole thing. Every new development that arises is like the shake you give to a kaleidoscope⁠—the thing changes entirely in aspect. Now, why are you so anxious to see Miss Russell?”

Poirot raised his eyebrows. “Surely it is obvious?” he murmured.

“There you go again,” I grumbled. “According to you everything is obvious. But you leave me walking about in a fog.”

Poirot shook his head genially to me. “You mock yourself at me. Take the matter of Mademoiselle Flora. The inspector was surprised⁠—but you⁠—you were not.”

“I never dreamed of her being the thief,” I expostulated.

“That⁠—perhaps no. But I was watching your face and you were not⁠—like Inspector Raglan⁠—startled and incredulous.”

I thought for a minute or two. “Perhaps you are right,” I said at last. “All along I’ve felt that Flora was keeping back something⁠—so the truth, when it came, was subconsciously expected. It upset Inspector Raglan very much indeed, poor man.”

“Ah! pour ça, oui! The poor man must rearrange all his ideas. I profited by his state of mental chaos to induce him to grant me a little favour.”

“What was that?”

Poirot took a sheet of notepaper from his pocket. Some words were written on it, and he read them aloud.

“The police have, for some days, been seeking for Captain Ralph Paton, the nephew of Mr. Ackroyd of Fernly Park, whose death occurred under such tragic circumstances last Friday. Captain Paton has been found at Liverpool, where he was on the point of embarking for America.”

He folded up the piece of paper again.

“That, my friend, will be in the newspapers tomorrow morning.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. “But⁠—but it isn’t true! He’s not at Liverpool!”

Poirot beamed on me. “You have the intelligence so quick! No, he has not been found at Liverpool. Inspector Raglan was very loath to let me send this paragraph to the press, especially as I could not take him into my confidence. But I assured him most solemnly that very interesting results would follow its appearance in print, so he gave in, after stipulating that he was, on no account, to bear the responsibility.”

I stared at Poirot. He smiled back at me.

“It beats me,” I said at last, “what you expect to get out of that.”

“You should employ your little grey cells,” said Poirot gravely.

He rose and came across to the bench.

“It is that you have really the love of the machinery,” he said, after inspecting the debris of my labours.

Every man has his hobby. I immediately drew Poirot’s attention to my homemade wireless. Finding him sympathetic, I showed him one or two little inventions of my own⁠—trifling things, but useful in the house.

“Decidedly,” said Poirot, “you should be an inventor by trade, not a doctor. But I hear the bell⁠—that is your patient. Let us go into the surgery.”

Once before I had been struck by the remnants of beauty in the housekeeper’s face. This morning I was struck anew. Very simply dressed in black, tall, upright and independent as ever, with her big dark eyes and an unwonted flush of colour in her usually pale cheeks, I realized that as a girl she must have been startlingly handsome.

“Good morning, mademoiselle,” said Poirot. “Will you be seated? Dr. Sheppard is so kind as to permit me the use of his surgery for a little conversation I am anxious to have with you.”

Miss Russell sat down with her usual composure. If she felt any inward agitation, it did not display itself in any outward manifestation.

“It seems a queer way of doing things, if you’ll allow me to say so,” she remarked.

“Miss Russell⁠—I have news to give you.”

“Indeed!”

“Charles Kent has been arrested at Liverpool.”

Not a muscle of her face moved. She merely opened her eyes a trifle wider, and asked, with a tinge of defiance: “Well, what of it?”

But at that moment it came to me⁠—the resemblance that had haunted me all along, something familiar in the defiance of Charles Kent’s manner. The two voices, one rough and coarse, the other painfully ladylike⁠—were strangely the same in timbre. It was of Miss Russell that I had been reminded that night outside the gates of Fernly Park.

I looked at Poirot, full of my discovery, and he gave me an imperceptible nod.

In answer to Miss Russell’s question, he threw out his hands in a thoroughly French gesture.

“I thought you might be interested, that is all,” he said mildly.

“Well I’m not particularly,” said Miss Russell. “Who is this Charles Kent anyway?”

“He is a man, mademoiselle, who was