Nothing there surely.
I went on:
‘I suppose you’d met her before?’
‘Last time I was here - she and her husband had just come here to live.’
He paused a minute and then added:
‘Rum thing, she had changed a lot between then and now.’
‘How - changed?’ I asked.
‘Looked ten years older.’
‘Were you down here when her husband died?’ I asked, trying to make the question sound as casual as possible.
‘No.
From all I heard it would be good riddance.
Uncharitable, perhaps, but the truth.’ I agreed.
‘Ashley Ferrars was by no means a pattern husband,’ I said cautiously.
‘Blackguard, I thought,’ said Blunt.
‘No,’ I said, ‘only a man with more money than was good for him.’
‘Oh! money!
All the troubles in the world can be put down to money - or the lack of it.’
‘Which has been your particular trouble?’
I asked.
‘Enough for what I want.
I’m one of the lucky ones.’ ‘Indeed.’
‘I’m not too flush just now, as a matter of fact.
Came into a legacy a year ago, and like a fool let myself be persuaded into putting it into some wild-cat scheme.’
I sympathized, and narrated my own similar trouble.
Then the gong pealed out, and we all went in to lunch.
Poirot drew me back a little.
Why shouldn’t he?
I’ll swear the man is perfectly square and above board.’
‘Without doubt, without doubt,’ said Poirot soothingly.
‘Do not upset yourself.’
He spoke as though to a fractious child.
We all trooped into the dining-room.
It seemed incredible that less than twenty-four hours had passed since I last sat at that table.
Afterwards, Mrs Ackroyd took me aside and sat down with me on a sofa.
‘I can’t help feeling a little hurt,’ she murmured, producing a handkerchief of the kind obviously not meant to be cried into. ‘Hurt, I mean, by Roger’s lack of confidence in me.
That twenty thousand pounds ought to have been left to me - not to Flora.
A mother could be trusted to safeguard the interests of her child. A lack of trust, I call it.’
‘You forget, Mrs Ackroyd,’ I said, ‘Flora was Ackroyd’s own niece, a blood relation.
It would have been different had you been his sister instead of his sister-in-law.’
‘As poor Cecil’s widow, I think my feelings ought to have been considered,’ said the lady, touching her eyelashes gingerly with the handkerchief.
‘But Roger was always most peculiar - not to say mean - about money matters.
It has been a most difficult position for both Flora and myself.
He did not even give the poor child an allowance.
He would pay her bills, you know, and even that with a good deal of reluctance and asking what she wanted all those fal-lals for so like a man - but - now I’ve forgotten what it was I was going to say!
Oh, yes, not a penny we could call our own, you know.
Flora resented it - yes, I must say she resented it - very strongly. Though devoted to her uncle, of course. But any girl would have resented it.
Yes, I must say Roger had very strange ideas about money.
He wouldn’t even buy new face towels, though I told him the old ones were in boles.
And then,’ proceeded Mrs Ackroyd, with a sudden leap highly characteristic of her conversation, ‘to leave all that money - a thousand pounds, fancy, a thousand pounds! - to that woman.’
‘What woman?’