The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Author:Agatha Christie [Christie, Agatha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1926-08-15T07:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

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 whiskey (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 favourite 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 drily. “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 marvellous! 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 moustache.

“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.

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